• 1/13/2012
  • Post By: Dan

Oneupweb Reviews : Coca-Cola on Tumblr

Fresh off a pretty radical social marketing experiment in Portugal, Coca-Cola has opened another can of serious social on Tumblr with its “Happiness is…” blog. Aimed at the network’s active young blogger demographic, the “Happiness is…” campaign draws on the traditional marketing strengths of both Coca-Cola and Tumblr, respectively: sugary, feel-good sentiment and photography. As reported by Jason Keath for Social Fresh, Coca-Cola launched its Tumblr blog just after Christmas and is one of the first consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to the use the platform. From what we’ve seen so far, I’d say they’ve nailed it. Touchdown, Coke.

What makes the “Happiness is…” campaign tick? Well, being one of the world’s most recognizable – and admired – brands certainly doesn’t hurt. But it’s the design of the Tumblr blog itself that truly distinguishes Coca-Cola’s campaign. We’ll keep it simple and focus on three important lessons:

1) Less Can Be More

Much like the theme of the campaign itself, “Happiness is…”, the Coca-Cola Tumblr page focuses on essence – and is careful not to overpower the user with graphic wizardry and surface static. In doing so, the Coca-Cola team is positioning itself to appeal to the platform’s core demographic – young, artistically inclined bloggers looking for authentic experience, not commercial polish.

Coca-Cola Happiness Is Tumblr Blog

Coca-Cola's "Happiness Is..." Tumblr blog invites users to experience the essence of the brand.

2) Push the Idea, Sell the Product

Social media is all about relationships – and a platform like Tumblr is perfect for forging emotional connection between a brand and its audience. By focusing the conversation on what happiness means, Coca-Cola’s “Happiness is…” campaign not only connects the brand with potential customers; it connects the product with a desirable feeling.

3) Hand Over the Wheel

When I can hangout with the Muppets, why would I bother sticking around a brand page that treats me like a museum visitor? Today’s social consumer needs to feel involved. While paying close attention to message and design consistency, Coca-Cola has given visitors to its “Happiness is…” Tumblr blog plenty of creative license, posting user-generated content and encouraging interaction with the content.

Coca-Cola's "Happiness is..." Tumblr Blog

Coca-Cola shares plenty of user-generated content on its "Happiness is..." blog, curating the user experience.

So what do you think? Can this latest social media campaign by the world’s 6th most valuable brand maintain its fizz?

Categories: Campaigns, Design, Social Networking
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Oneupweb Reviews: YouTube’s New Design – Pushing the Sell

FYI: The content shared in this blog has been written by two OneupWeb social team members known as the Dangeline D’SocialTeam – written in reading script format!

————————————————————————————————————

Angeline: This past week here at Oneupweb my partner in crime (socially speaking) and I have been on the topic of all the social network brand redesigns doing the baseball wave as of late. From Google+ launching their business pages to Twitter’s new look for brands.

OLD CHANNEL:

For this review we have decided to touch base on YouTube’s new facelift. I wasn’t so swept away by it at first, but Dan was.

Dan: Indeed I was, Angeline. Indeed I was, and let me tell you why. It is cleaner. It is more organized. It is more efficient. It has better analytics and options for customization for brands and channels. It has better integration with Google+, Facebook, etc.–

Link Integration

Angeline: — Really?

Dan: What?

Angeline: You’re that “pro” about their face lift?

Dan: Of course. You’re not?

Angeline: Hmm. Well, upon first trying it out I agree it is cleaner and a nice layout. But the initial navigation is not the greatest. I had to switch back and forth to the old design to the new a few times to get a sense of where I was going. I feel navigation for setting up the new design isn’t as user friendly as I feel it could be.

For example -

Feature tab selection

The Default Tab to select to feature tab wouldn’t for the life of me let me save it to that setting in one of my other YouTube project accounts. It kept giving me this notice that said I couldn’t do this at this time. Maybe it was due to it is in Beta, I’m not sure, but it was frustrating me. I decided for now, at least for that account, to stick to the old channel design.

Dan: Ah that is interesting. It could very well be that it is in Beta, but hear this out. Let me share the YouTube specs. Although the YouTube redesign has been active for several weeks, branded channels must still manually opt in to the new look. I’ve summarized changes below.

NEW CHANNEL SPECS

NEW CHANNEL:

Background

  • The redesigned channel is 970px wide (a slight 10px increase over the old design) – this is constant, so any background image wider than 970px will be visible “outside” the channel.
  • YouTube recommends background images be at least 1024×768, but larger images can best accommodate a variety of screen sizes.
  • Background image cannot exceed 256 KB.
  • Background image will resize and center based on the user’s screen size.

Channel Banner

  • A significant change over the previous design.
  • Instead of uploading a separate banner, admins can now opt for 1-150px of Banner Height Push to expose more of the background image.

Eliminated:

  • Channel Side Column Image
  • Video Page Banner

* These changes mean channels lose significant control over in-channel advertising, but also gain significant marketing tools like integrated Facebook and Twitter, etc.

Angeline: I will say I like the layout. It does feed to a more contemporary look and flow.

Dan: I agree. The previous layout was old school.

Angeline: Old school? Good call. Got anything not so “pro” for the new direction?

Dan: Well, I do, yes.  Some features have been removed, including enhanced backgrounds for AdWords advertisers.

Angeline: In reviewing the new layout when it is able to have the feature video on first landing of the channel I do like the ability to showcase the playlists. You can control which playlists show and in what order. That is nice.

New YouTube Playlist Look

Dan: You’re getting closer to sold?

Angeline: Hmm.[Long pause]

Dan: Really?

Angeline: What?

Dan: Its great, come on.

(Angeline leans forward intentionally not answering. Dan gives a look of “for real?”)

Angeline: I’m also enjoying that you can pop in some related channels to your own channel. For example, if you have more than one YouTube channel and they are somehow connected and/or related you can now give your visitors a way to see that connection and click through. Definitely like that.

Other Channels added

Dan: Sold?

Angeline: I don’t know… got to chew on this one for a few.

Dan: Stubborn. You know what?

Angeline: What?

Dan: You’re old school.

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So, what are your thoughts on the new design? Have you check it out? What are your pros and cons on the new options?

Meanwhile, you can get a Getting Started guide that is available  from Google.

Categories: Design
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  • 8/1/2011
  • Post By: admin

Oneupweb Reviews : HTML Animator Tool Adobe Edge

To Flash or not to Flash—nowadays that is the question amongst web developers. And I’m not talking about the trench coat wearing developers (if you’re one of them the answer is not to Flash), I’m talking about whether Adobe’s breakthrough technology – Flash – has a future on the web. One commenter on YouTube said this:

“I am a certified Adobe Flash developer and I think Flash is a dead duck. I know Flash is much more powerful than HTML 5, but let’s face it, it needs a rewrite, so why not just invest in HTML 5.”

Well Adobe, being the forward thinking company they are, has released an HTML 5 animator tool called Adobe Edge. Let’s take a look…

Oneupweb Reviews Adobe Edge

I would describe Edge’s interface like a mashup of After Effects and Dreamweaver. You have some of the capabilities of After Effects along with some of the program abilities of Dreamweaver. Animation in Edge is fairly simple. If you’ve ever used After Effects or Premier before you will recognize familiar elements such as key frames and the timeline.

Once you select an element you have basic property controls such as location, rotation and transformation options. All editable elements will be listed in the top right of the interface.

Give it a try yourself! It’s free, and fairly simple to use. Just download it from Adobe’s site here: Adobe Edge Download.

So far I like the GUI of Adobe Edge. It’s intuitive and simple enough almost anyone can animate in HTML 5. Give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Categories: Design
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  • 5/11/2010
  • Post By: admin

Oneupweb Reviews: Thesixtyone

It can be difficult to find music that you like. For example I spent hours this past weekend trying to find a good method of discovering new music. After using Google to try and hunt down some good resources I found a few decent songs. But this certainly wasn’t the most efficient method. So let me share with you a site that can help you in your search for the perfect song.

The site is called thesixtyone and it is a great way to discover new tunes.

After arriving at the site you’ll immediately recognized the aesthetics and quality. The site pulls images that musicians have uploaded and uses those images to create an entire page for the band. The results can be very beautiful.

Named after Highway 61, a U.S. route that runs along the Mississippi River and marks the origin of American music culture, thesixtyone actively supports new artists. They explain:

“Unlike a record or distribution deal where they only make $1-2 per album (if they ever get paid, that is), artists on thesixtyone make at least $7 per album and are paid every 30 days — no wait for recoupment and no complex royalty schemes!”

Discover Music By Moods:

I think the best way to discover music is by moods. You can do exactly this and find some great stuff using thesixtyone.

Simply navigate to “popular” in the upper right of the site, click the drop down and then select “moods”. You’ll then see a pop up allowing you to select what mood you would like.

Different Ways to Listen:

As seen above there are several ways to discover new music. Under popular you can select top, hot, posted, cc, and of course moods. These options give you an easy way to narrow down your search by allowing thesixtyone to do the work for you.

You can also explore and select open mic, search, revives, channels. If these options weren’t enough, once logged in, you can further filter your music by selecting what genre of music you would like to listen to.

Oneupweb Review: Thumbs Up

Do you have any interesting ways of discovering new music? Let us know by commenting below!

Categories: Design, Social Networking
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