HTC has been slowly expanding its brand awareness beyond techies into the mass market mindshare. This recent spot is a great move in that effort. They’ve injected just the right amount of hipness as to not alienate the non-hip while making all the other players (except for Apple) look ordinary. It’s a spot that’s easy to connect to.
Their tagline “Quietly Brilliant” speaks to how they’ve been an understated innovator. I suspect that that will change as they gain ground in the marketplace.
You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you.
Sparks went off when MasterCard’s Worldwide CMO Larry Flanagan realized that when you provide value to consumers you’ll have their attention.
Larry’s realization seems to align with a previous post I did that talks about how that’s exactly what MasterCard hasn’t been doing.
I have to admit the demo of the Priceless Picks iPhone app caught my eye. But after playing with it I realized that it’s just more of the same fluffy, 3D, useless crap - the user reviews seem to agree.
I continue to be disappointed with how MasterCard fails to bring to life one of the most icon brand platforms in recent history. Truly priceless indeed.
Every once in a while it’s interesting to reflect on how the social web is impacting our lives and ways both big and small. Over the past few months I started to get an influx of enthusiastic reactions to photos I was uploading to Facebook from my mobile phone. At some point I think the figure finally tipped, where my non-New York connections outnumbers my local connections. These random photos, while trivial to my local friends, were a glimpse into the textured world of NYC.
I recently decided to take things a little further and upload a photo set taken with a better camera. The funny thing is, so far I haven’t gotten any reactions. I can almost see why though. There’s a certain spontaneous quality to my mobile pics. The lower resolution and the sometimes random pixelation actually adds to the charm of them. The above photos, while equally as spontaneous somehow don’t feel that way.
Nonetheless, I thought it might be nice to share them with y’all on my blog too. Enjoy.
Great video here from Clay Shirky on how social media has permanently changed the media and communication landscape.
He reviews some powerful moments such as the citizen journalism that happened during last year’s earthquake in China, and recent user interactions with Obama.
Coincidently, I was reading yesterday of the collapse of a building in Brooklyn. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. The news came via the local, The New York Times local news channel that harnesses citizen journalism and bloggers
Great presentation here from Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. This was from Mix 09 a few weeks back. Silverlight is needed to view.
Bill does a great job articulating the value of experience in the context of design. Like myself, he’s also really big on the value and role of sketching during the design process. He’s even written a book about it.
Allegedly, he’s been brought on to Microsoft to elevate the role of design in the company culture. I have yet to ping a few of my old Microsoft clients to hear their take on this.
The presentation is 20 minutes, but well worth it.
I checked out a few minutes of Scott Guthrie’s presentation which immediately follows. There was a demo of Microsoft’s Expression Web SuperPreview - which had some cool features for cross-browser programming.
As an aside, I love how Bill’s site is completely, and I’m sure intentionally, stripped-down.