Rob McPherson's blog

RMink's Hand Picked Best Superbowl XLV Commercials of 2011

The Packers and the Steelers put on quite a show for the 26.8 million viewers out there. Of all those viewers, some would admit they only watch the commercials. It's no secret that big brands out there creatively bring it when it comes to these spots. Some years are good, some are bad. I found last year commercials were kinda showing off their skills via best computer animation.This year it was the way its supposed to be — all about the creative idea.

This year, it was the way its supposed to be — all about the creative idea.

This kind of recipe creates the most amazing commercials. I saw some greats that focused on some amazing strategy and implementation. Here are a few. Enjoy!

Volkswagen: "The Force"

Volkswagen rarely has a bad spot, if ever. It seems they have built a brand flexible enough to stretch between emphasizing it's German culture into the brand to it's comedic portrayals. I think a challenge for Volkswagen (and well any brand) is not just to showcase an amazing spot, but to communicate with the consumer in manner that pushes a purchase or trial. You can make me laugh — does that mean I want to by a Volkswagen? Great spot though!  

Best Buy: Justin Bieber & Ozzy Osbourne

Best Buy does a great job of communicating and personifying the technology curve. They poke fun a making commercials, which puts them in a good spot with their target tech savvy's and resonates with the slow adopters. The implementation works great as it would appeal to the family segments, and touch the parent-child relationship. This relationship is important for most making a purchase decision from these consumers. I want to see more of these, the idea has legs!  

HomeAway.com: Test Baby

Newcomer HomeAway.com does a great job of captivating us with this new brand. I always love an online brand looking to take a risk to capture their audience. They are almost forced to as most of their consumers will have to jump through hoops to trial their brand. It's a good example of how its done. Online entity = boring. Online brands should jump through hoops to get their consumers to do the same. A well chosen media mix does too, of course.  

Doritos: Don't Touch

Doritos hits another home run. All their superbowl spots were just awesome. Such good direction, well thought out scenes. I might be bias though, as they are appealing to my segment, I feel it was for me. That's another example of good planning and pulling out those small moments in life that are just priceless.  

CareerBuilder.com: Parking Lot

Another newcomer, Careerbuilder.com gives us a great portrayal of walling yourself in when it comes to choices in the employment world. My theory is that they are trying to open the eyes of employment site users to not "put all eggs into one basket" when it comes to employment sources. Great idea, perfect direction and leaves us with a great impression. Good job!  

GM: Bumblebee

I kinda saw this coming, but yet I desperately wanted it to happen. The agency new that, putting a transformer into a real life low budget commercial. Brilliant! I loved it, and I wanted more! This idea has legs, think of all the great spots that could come with this idea.  

Brisk Ice Tea: Eminem

Eminem takes the opportunity to set it straight when it comes to who he is, combatting who you think he is. Its a great technique to simultaneously deliver a message and news at the same time. This type of direction can be quiet viral at the same time. Cool decision to go animated too. I feel Eminem is better received animated. It maybe does him more justice?  

Doritos: The Sauna

Doritos with another great spot with this innuendo commercial. It's kinda funny shedding a playful light on the sexual orientation. Its almost taboo and phallic, no matter the sexual orientation. Funny!  

Doritos: Pug Attack

Doritos knows everyone shares similar feelings to the naturally comical pug. Love the idea, it's funny and simple. Personally I think they could have done more with the ending, stretch that climax a little longer. It was fun though! I love the comedic approach to the brand, it works really well.  

Doritos: Told You So

Here is Doritos playing on the sexual orientation again, very similar reaction and impression to The Sauna spot. Funny!  

Colours — and what they mean for your brand.

Colours vs Multiple Colours

Colours bring life to anything they touch, and independently they can convey different emotions which vary completely from culture to culture. Most what-colours-mean websites offer you the mundane same list of what emotion each colour can produce. These sites are everywhere. This blog will help you decipher which colours to go for, and what your multiple colours mean in any part of the world.

The most important factor to think about is that colours are interpreted differently depending on what culture you in. If your brand is online now, consider who is seeing your brand and how they may interpret your colours. If you have some brand colours defined, take a look at how you hold up individually with a regular what-colours-mean websites. I attached one here to get an idea of what to expect.

 

Photo from www.infovis.net

Haven't defined your colours yet? Or maybe revamping current colours?

You should do your research to see what colour culturally works for you. You aren't in Kansas anymore. You have a global audience - are you going to turn away potential business from other cultures because your colours aren't working? Sounds silly doesn't it? Do your research. GOOGLE IT.

Here's some questions to ask yourself when embarking on this process:

- What kind of service do you have?

- Do your colours work for you individually?

- Does it convey the emotions you were looking for?

- Where will you be operating, and what countries will you be exposed to for marketing?

- What do these cultures need from your brand to convey your intended message?

Answer these questions to help you define your brand colours, and determine their success globally.

 

IBM Blue, Coca Cola Red: Industry Colours?

Colours aren't associated with a certain type of industry, although some are simply better suited than others. I invite you to google it — to see what brands come up and what is associated with it.

Psychology of Colour — Emotional Marketing

The psychology of colour helps us understand and convey our intended emotional information through design, architecture, marketing and advertising. It's not easy to take advantage of your brand's colour psychology, as it is still not completely understood. But do what you can with what we know, as it is the secret to brand recognition, loyalty and association — key elements to a successful brand. Think of it as an open door for your brand to your potential consumers, don't bottle neck this precious process by closing that door. It's how they come back for more. In an online case - it's your content they are coming back for.

Multiple Brand Colours
There are little to no sites that offer modern multiple colour schemes - who uses just one colour anymore? The odds are very high you will have at least two colours as part of your brand image. So how do those colours represent themselves with the single colour meaning? How do they rate individually? Your colours look great but may be giving the wrong message according to the above picture charts.

Understanding multiple colour schemes will help get the most out of your brand colours. The single colour meaning may not apply to multiple colours schemes, as it alters it's meaning. Multiple colours together evoke a completely different emotion as the colours separated, so it is best to do your research. Try simply googling your colour combination and see what comes up. How does the world rate your colours and why? These are the questions you want to ask yourself.

For more on understanding multiple colour schemes and colour harmony, I recommend you visit my resources to point in the right direction. Keep in mind I'm here to help you with your choices, so please if you have any questions email me: rob@rminkdesign.com

Resources:

Understanding colour harmonies
www.chainstyle.com

Multi Colour Schemes
www.colorschemer.com

BrandStrategy Insider.com
Brand identity: The importance of Colour with The Blake Project

Here are a couple sites that have great what-colours-mean legends:

Infovis.net 

Entrepreneur.com with John Williams

Duct Tape Marketing.com with Karen Saunders

Digital Skratch with Joshua Hughes

Amazing What colours mean book:

Cailin Boyle’s book Color Harmony for the web

About robmcfee:
Rob is an art lover, and enjoys branding, design and strategy. He is an art director & graphic designer for a large media agency, operating under www.rminkdesign.com, and serves a global clientele remotely as a virtual designer. His educational background is in advertising.

Convert Pixels To Inches - Easily.

It's a much talked about issue; the pixel vs the inch, print vs online. Designers are separated into groups when it comes to their opinion on what to use for web design, or what designers out there are using as far as applications. Some are solely using Photoshop for their creations, some in the Photoshop/InDesign group and some in Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator+ group. Some argue the Photoshop text engine is far inferior than that of InDesign's text engine, and you should be using Photoshop for your imaging and InDesign for typography, and use illustrator to it's full abilities with both. Indesign offers great choices for exporting too —You're game if you have this recipe. They say anyhow.

If you are going to use InDesign to create your 72ppi work, when you open a new document it doesn't offer a pixel as a unit of measurement. So some would have to figure out the size in inches from pixels.

I have a quick and easy way to convert your pixels into inches, providing you have Photoshop open. Why not make Photoshop calculate it?

Here's how:

Go to Image on the top menu bar and select image size.

Next, put in your web image dimensions in the box. I'm going to change this to 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Next you see that Photoshop will calculate your web image dimensions from pixels to inches. Record your inches measurement.

Below you see in your InDesign you just put in your measurements and you are ready. Hope this helps!

Good Luck!    

Branding yourself with social networking sites for the new peeps

Social Networking is a collage of 400 million people.
 With that many people using some form of social networking sites, and typically using about 3-10 sites at a time, there is a lot of room for clutter. As in advertising, it is imperative to be heard through the clutter — otherwise you just look like everyone else. Booorrrriinngggg.

Creating a brand image
 The unique, planned, and strategized messaging pierces through even the most traffic-jammed messaging. As in many product and service categories, competing brands are so similar that it is very difficult to communicate a unique attribute or benefit. Most advertising dollars are spent in trying to differentiate. The problem: with heavy traffic you get everyone trying to say the same thing. What can you do to be heard?

Well there are many tools and vehicles you can use, but most of them cost money to have impact. The best thing the average person can do to stand a chance against a big budget is cohesiveness.

What you need to do:
 On all your social vehicles, try to embody the same look, colours, personal image — with a link network that connects them all. For example:  Your facebook page links to your twitter, stumbleupon, blog, homesite etc.

You can even go as far as your own logo. Save these attributes in a file or legend for easy access. Follow it as close as you can, when you make a change, update everything!

This way visitors can recognize your work and pages, adding to the viral-ability of your stuff. The greater similarity between your sites, the less part reason plays in brand selection. You give visitors the obvious choice to choose.

Next Blog:
 Follow me for my next blog about what colours to choose, how they affect consumers and some advice on what to do about your personal online image.

About Rob McPherson:
 Rob McPherson is a creative geek with a background in media strategy, advertising, and interactive promotions. Please email him for any advice or help: rob@rminkdesign.com