Peripheral vision is not something we normally think about when designing marketing media, but eye tracking has demonstrated how crucial it really is to their performance. The peripheral field of vision has a significant influence on eye movement and direction, and can be a decisive factor in encouraging readers to maintain engagement in marketing material. So now let’s take a closer look at how it all works and how we can capitalise on it to create more effective communications.
Our visual span broadly consists of three distinctive levels of perception. When you focus on an object you see it in every detail that your eye can distinguish (the fovea), but you will also notice everything in the background, only in gradually decreasing levels of detail towards the edges of your visual span (the parafovea and periphery).
The fovea is the smallest region and is typically used for activities that require high focus, such as reading. But this task would take forever if it weren’t for the parafovea (the area directly surrounding the fovea), which helps us to see the things in close proximity to what we’re already focusing on. It is this mechanism that allows us to read several words on a page rather than one at a time, drastically increasing our reading speed. It also helps us to identify objects in our environment to enhance our awareness, allowing us to focus on anything that catches our eye from the periphery. Read more…
At the moment we seem to be getting more and more Olympic related advertisements as the country gears up to the London 2012. With so much money thrown behind sponsorship deals and having athletes as brand spokespeople, you’d think there would be one campaign that would impress. Yet, the campaign that has most impressed me this year has to be the marketing activity being conducted on behalf of Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie ‘Prometheus’.
Now I’ll be honest with you. I don’t have that much interest in the Olympics, and I am a big movie fan… so my views are probably biased. Yet as an ‘Ad Man’, I am genuinely in awe with what I am seeing created to raise awareness of Prometheus. Now forget about the flashy website and the teaser trailers and international trailers that come attached to any movie release… what I want to highlight are some of the cute and clever things that have been done to raise awareness of what will probably be one of the year’s biggest films.
Back in November I attended the NatMag 100 conference at the Saatchi Gallery in London. One of the many interesting talks on the day was by the Future Foundation, who highlighted a few emerging audiences such as Media Madonnas and Digital Divas… audiences who are becoming increasingly hard to sell to thanks to the way they consume their media… essentially these people are disengaged.
It can’t have failed to escape you that over the last few years more and more consumers are becoming disengaged. Many of them sit at home watching the TV with their Smartphone by their side or their laptop or iPad on their knee surfing the web as they catch up on their favourite soaps! In fact it is common knowledge that as a result of this, these consumers are no longer saying, “persuade me and I’ll buy from you” they are saying, “entertain me and I’ll engage with you”.
TV ads. I have to say… I love them. They are the main reason I got into this business in the first place… to create some arresting TV Advertising that my mates might talk about down the pub. One thing that has always infuriated me about TV Advertising, however, has been the inability to really effectively target them like you could other forms of advertising.
Well, it looks like those little niggles I have could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the thing that has been nicknamed Smart TV. Its real name is Targeted Substitutional Advertising (TSA) and it looks like it could be the thing to deliver accountability and personalisation that digital media advertisers have enjoyed for years.
Earlier this week I gave a talk on digital video and how advertising agencies are changing to facilitate a wide range of video needs that are required by clients. From high budget brand TV video adverts to medium budget DRTV adverts right to low budget web-video… the demand is increasing and now’s the time to invest in skills and training.
I gave the talk on behalf of GBM at ‘Band on the Wall’ in Manchester and have split it into three parts of around 10 minutes each. Thanks to GBM and everyone who came to the talk, I hope you found it informative… I certainly enjoyed putting it together.
Parts two and three can be viewed by clicking the red button below.
Marketing is not a nostalgic business. With the constant emergence of new technologies, advertisers need to keep bang up to date to avoid being left behind. Just think back a year. At the beginning of 2009, Twitter was still a relatively niche social network, Spotify wasn’t yet available to the general public and search engine Bing didn’t even exist. One year on and all these technologies may be fundamental to creating a successful advertising campaign.
So what’s next? What will the ‘big thing’ of 2010 be? Well, I’m not going to try and predict that, but I will tell you what will make the next ‘big thing’ happen – and that’s the Ubiquitous Network. In fact, I’m confident it’ll change the future of advertising and marketing forever…
Imagine walking down any street and holding up your iPhone… what you see on the screen is a view of the street yet there are lots of Zombies running towards you that you then have to shoot. Or imagine walking up to a wall and touching it… just for the wall to then display the view that is on the other side of it…. This is the world of Augmented Reality and it’s a world that looks like it’s going to be very big indeed.
Put simply, Augmented Reality blurs the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell. It adds graphics, sounds, and smell to our world… and through a normal pair of glasses or display screen, informative graphics appear in your field of view, and audio coincides with whatever you see. These enhancements are then refreshed continually to reflect the movements of your head and the world around you.
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that in September an edition of Entertainment Weekly in the US will feature the world’s first video-in-print advert. Previewing programmes from CBS’s upcoming season as well as adverts for Pepsi… the video advert will work by having slim screens inserted into the magazine that are activated when the magazine pages are opened – kinda like what happens on greeting cards.
Each chip that feeds the screen can hold up to 40 minutes of video with the battery that powers the chip and screen being able to play for about 65 to 70 minutes. This battery can then be recharged by plugging in a mini USB cord and once you’ve got bored of the content contained in the chip… you can download additional content from the Web. Sounds clever, and expensive… so will it take off?
These days you need more than just a great Portfolio of work to get yourself a job in a Creative Department in digital or direct marketing. You need a certain drive and attitude that will get your Book noticed, and help you stand out from the other great Candidates out there who are competing for the same role.
It can’t have escaped you that jobs are thin on the ground at the moment in this industry. So I’ve written this posting to not only give you some essential advice when you get in front of someone like me… but also some advice on how to market yourself so someone like me is impressed enough to make time in their day to see you.
So what TV show you watched last night did you discuss at work today? CSI? The Wire? Lost? It’s fair to say at some point during your working day you will have discussed a TV show you have seen with someone. Or perhaps it was a movie you saw at the weekend.
Imagine, though, having a conversation with someone about what you have both seen… yet what you watched and how the episode or film ended was totally different for you both! Not only that, but while you were watching you took part in a car chase that meant you test drove the new BMW Roadster and during the episode the character put some music on when they got home… but the music they put on, you chose!
At the moment we seem to be getting more and more Olympic related advertisements as the country gears up to the London 2012. With so much money thrown behind sponsorship deals and having athletes as brand spokespeople, you’d think there would be one campaign that would impress. Yet, the campaign that has most impressed me this year has to be the marketing activity being conducted on behalf of Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie ‘Prometheus’.
Marketing is not a nostalgic business. With the constant emergence of new technologies, advertisers need to keep bang up to date to avoid being left behind. Just think back a year. At the beginning of 2009, 
Imagine walking down any street and holding up your iPhone… what you see on the screen is a view of the street yet there are lots of Zombies running towards you that you then have to shoot. Or imagine walking up to a wall and touching it… just for the wall to then display the view that is on the other side of it…. This is the world of Augmented Reality and it’s a world that looks like it’s going to be very big indeed.
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that in September an edition of Entertainment Weekly in the US will feature the world’s first video-in-print advert. Previewing programmes from CBS’s upcoming season as well as adverts for Pepsi… the video advert will work by having slim screens inserted into the magazine that are activated when the magazine pages are opened – kinda like what happens on greeting cards.
These days you need more than just a great Portfolio of work to get yourself a job in a Creative Department in digital or direct marketing. You need a certain drive and attitude that will get your Book noticed, and help you stand out from the other great Candidates out there who are competing for the same role.
So what TV show you watched last night did you discuss at work today? CSI? The Wire? Lost? It’s fair to say at some point during your working day you will have discussed a TV show you have seen with someone. Or perhaps it was a movie you saw at the weekend.
