SuperGeekery

Navigation

Home | Send me an email. | Links

About This Site

This is the personal blog of John F. Morton. It's where I talk about the stuff that interests me. Primarily technology, marketing and pop culture. If you are looking for my portfolio of work, visit johnfmorton.com. Thanks for stopping by!

Members

Login | Register | Member List

Monthly Archives

• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007

Syndicate

• RSS 2.0
• Atom

Join our Mailing List

Filtered by Category: Video

Talking with Colmeia TV About Agencies, Advertising Failure & Geekery

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Eduardo Camargo from Colmeia. He, Vini Reis (a friend and former colleague of mine) and I had a great time hanging out and talking about the things that excite a geeks like us: technology, innovation, marketing and more. Eduardo taped it and put part of our conversation on Colmeia’s vlog which you can see below. You can also follow Eduardo and Vini on Twitter.

colmeia na gringa | @NYC | episodio 2 from eduardo camargo on Vimeo.

How To Download Youtube Videos, Part 2: Super Easy

How to Get YouTube Videos on your iPod and iPhone from john morton on Vimeo.

If you don’t have time to watch the movie above, just visit Tooble.tv, download the free Tooble software, cut and paste the URL of your favorite YouTube video and presto, your video is in iTunes. That’s super easy.

If you’re on a PC, or just want more flexibility, also check out the earlier post How to Download Flash Video and Play It Back on Your Mac. (And More.). Contrary to the title, you even get some PC how to instructions there as well.

Parody Ads Tell You A Lot About Your Brand

Last year Tom Ford released a fragrance for men that has received less than stellar reviews. A friend showed me the parody of the site. If you want to see them both, do so at your own risk. They are not what I’d call “safe for work”. Click here for the original site. Click here for the parody. I can see why someone did a parody of those Tom Ford ads. They are pretentious and stupid. I think the parody serves as fair warning for any brand with such crappy advertising.

But what happens when a brand listens to their customer and gives them what they want? I’ve got a couple example to share that show what happens when consumers really love a brand/product and take the marketing materials and make it their own. Yes, it’s an Apple example, a brand that almost seems unfair to compare any other to, but it’s worth the comparison if only to show how high the bar is set.

Witness “Hit Me With Your iPhone,” a song composed by a fan and with video remixed from a marketing video on Apple’s site:

Next, take that same video, remix it with a feature suggestion for an improvement to the iPhone. That ”I love you” at the end speaks volumes as to how this brand reaches people.

iPhone Copy and Paste

P.S. iPhone, I love you too.

How to make a video go “viral.”

A friend who is a director recently asked me about how to get his viral video he’s made “seen” by people. That’s sort of the $6 million question, right? I don’t have the answer unfortunately, but I’ve got some clues, thanks to 6 really good blog posts. Here they are.

Seven Deadly Sins of Advertising Via Viral Video
More Viral Video Lessons: An Interview with the My-Box-In-A-Box Geniuses
The Rules Of Viral Web Success, according to AdWeek.
And the rebuttal, The Rules Of Viral Web Success (My Foot)
6 Things Not To Do With Your Viral Video
I also like the LEGS rule from this post on the Video Insider blog: Viral Videos Ads: No Marketing Panacea

Here’s an excerpt from Viral Videos Ads: No Marketing Panacea:

[Viral] ads need LEGS, a convenient acronym that means viral ads have to have a Laugh out loud quality, Edgy content, must Grip your attention and most often have some Sexual content. Given that few campaigns (viral or otherwise) have LEGS, few will be able to create a successful viral campaign as Dove did with Evolution, and in most cases the reach is low. It comes back to the bottom line — a question of opportunity, cost, and return on investment.

Lastly,The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos has some interesting pointers in it.

There's more to read. Click here for the rest. >>

A Cool Little $100 Video Camera.

My Canon video camera stopped working recently. It had a good run, lasting around 6 years, longer than I expect of most electronics with moving parts. Instead of replacing it with another expensive camera, I’ve bought a Flip Video Camcorder that’s about $100 for the model that stores 30 minutes of video and $120 for the 60 minute model.

The camera is about the size of a standard iPod and has a small USB plug that flips out on the side to easily import the movies you take into your computer. It’s light, made entirely of plastic, and comes with a small pouch to protect it from scratches. Their is some capability to zoom, but it’s done digitally, so the results aren’t great. Amazingly, the video is 640x480 pixels which means it’s same as standard definition television. There aren’t any tapes or discs to buy since all the video is stored on flash memory inside the unit.

It’s inexpensive enough and small enough to simply keep with you in your bag. The video is much better than I have recorded from a mobile phone or my digital camera that I use for still photos.

I recently went to see a show by The Loser’s Lounge when they performed a tribute to Fleetwood Mac. I shot some video with the FlipVideo Camera there to show you how the video looks. What you’ll see below is highly compressed because it’s undergone the YouTube process, but it may be enough to persuade you to part with $100 for an easy to use video camera. Come on, you know you want one.

By the way, if you’re on a Mac, check out Perian, the free add-on for QuickTime that I mentioned in an earlier post. I needed it to play the raw files that I downloaded from the camera.