Viral marketing

There's no denying the sheer power of viral marketing when implemented well, but when is viral marketing too much.  'The Dark Knight' viral campaign ran for almost an entire year before the release of the film, recruiting millions of people in an obsessive hunt for clues, only to be short changed by events not entirely in their control.  Is this adding value to the finished product or simply a waste of time?

Certainly it brought fans of the film together, but would the film have generated the same high amount of revenue through simply word of mouth and the quality of the finished film?  These are questions not easily answered.  I know that I did not actively involve myself with the viral campaign (it probably reached me on a subliminal level from other people talking about it) and I still enjoyed the movie.  Is this extreme viral marketing now a necessity for the success of a product? 

New beginning

This blog is a promise that I will begin proper once again with my blog, early tomorrow afternoon/evening.  Apologies to everyone that has visited and been disappointed over the last couple of months, needless to say this problem will soon be rectified.

Ted talk on creativity through play

Hi everyone, sorry for not updating the blog in a few days, I fell into a small pattern  of self indulgence, but I'm back with a quick snippet of interesting information.  

Just today I discovered another interesting talk by Tim Brown which I feel is almost directly linked to the talk below by Ken Robinson.  Tim Browns talk is about the link between creativity and play and as I am, this following weekend about to start a 'teach english as a foreign language' course, find this talk incredibly pertinent to the subject I am about to embark on.  It's also a lot of fun to watch.

More talks at ted.com

Presentation + More from Ted.com

In this mornings lecture we were introduced to a variety of methods on how to present yourself during a presentation, how to prepare and how to deliver what you want to say to your audience.  This involved how to hold yourself, boys ignore those pockets and girls leave that hair alone.  We were also introduced to powerpoint methods, a simple effect was how I just utilized bold in some text to highlight a point and draw your eye immediately there, afterward you may or may not read the remainder of the text.

There is so much more to this, but it is already quite late as I type this and I am tucked up in my bed.  However before I go, I will introduce you to another fantastic speaker from ted.com, Sir Ken Robinson, note how he uses rhetorical question throughout to engage his audience

sketch furniture

I was just over at Fiona Campbells blog and she had an awesome video on a program that allows individuals to sketch their own furniture and then have it replicated and built for real using some form of cad cam, it's a very cool video

ted.com

Today we had a lecture from the head of Master of Design Hazel White, who talked about her recent visit to Hong Kong for the design and emotion conference (I'm going to have that double check that heading because I'm fairly certain that is wrong), providing us with a list of speakers on variety of subjects that could be of use to a number of us.

Hazel also introduced us to a fantastic website simply titled ted.com  which is where a large number of innovators congregate to share their thoughts and ideas.  Below is an example of a fantastic talk by Jan Chip Chase a researcher for Nokia communications.

Ok I can't get the video to upload but here is the link to the video hosted by Jan at ted.com.

David Townson group proj after lecture & seminar

This is a post I meant to put up ages ago but never got around to it until now.  The following video and images are of our first miniature group project, the team consisted of Arlene, Gio, Fiona and myself and our task was to design a service around the idea of luggage.

We came up with an idea for transporting luggage around an airport via an electrically motorized carrier system complete with benefits and friendly service provided by staff.  Remember this is entirely fictional and as of yet as not been applied in any physical capacity, at least by us anyway.

This was conducted during the seminar after a lecture by David Townson on service design which I think everybody found interesting and informative.