David Levin

This week at the OMMA Awards in New York City, 360i was awarded best youth website for our work on Marvel’s Create Your Own Comic site.

The fun and robust comic creation site allows young people (and their parents) to build comic strips or full 22-page comic books using fully editable Marvel characters.  Users can edit easy-to-add word balloons, backgrounds, objects and sound effects. Once complete, users can download, share or print their comics, or upload them to the Marvel.com gallery.

The Marvel Create Your Own Comic site takes advantage of young people’s affinity for creating and sharing content online.  Young people are vocal.  According to Forrester, nearly 50% are content creators, and 85% participate in social media monthly.  In contrast, only 21% of adults create content online.

What also is cool about the site is what users don’t see.  The site includes content management tools so that Marvel artists can upload new characters, backgrounds and objects at any time – inviting young people back to create all new narratives.

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AOL’s new ad unit grants marketers with more opportunities to integrate rich media (via WSJ).

Today, AOL is expected to roll out its already leaked “Project Devil” (see the WSJ article that leaked it here), which launches new advertising opportunities within AOL.

The media company is touting the concept as being about more than just a bigger ad unit — and it is.  AOL has developed some interesting ideas to allow marketers to more easily develop rich ads by using an Ad App API to deliver content and functionality such as:

• Photo and video galleries
• 3-D rotation and zooming
• Mapping (including store locator)
• Facebook and Twitter feeds
• Couponing
• Email / Send-to-friend
• Data capture (e.g., email address)

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Last week 360i attended a Dynamic Logic and 4A’s webinar during which they presented best practices for display banners based on analysis of best- and worst-performing campaigns (you can access the press release about the study on Dynamic Logic’s Web site).

One key insight, which we have espoused for years, is that taking the time to develop strong online creative is critical. So much so that poor-performing banners don’t merely perform worse than better creative, they actually can negatively impact brand metrics such as awareness, favorability and intent.

Here are some key design and messaging recommendations from Dynamic Logic’s analysis and some of 360i’s thoughts based on our display creative experience:

1. Brand impact is only as strong as brand presence.
Specifically keep your logo on every frame. Intrigue rarely drives awareness and response. The longer the logo appears, the higher the lift in aided awareness. And consumers most likely will not see the logo if it only appears on the product and not prominently within the ad. For example, here is one of the ads we developed for a recent Panasonic campaign. Note that the logo is persistent throughout the interactive animations.

Click image to play ad:

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It’s been a busy summer for 360i with a number of major Web sites completed and others under way.  I’m pleased to report that two of our recently developed sites won WebAwards from the Web Marketing Association this past week:

• Red Roof Inn won a Hotel and Lodging Standard of Excellence Award. The site is viewable at http://www.redroofinn.com/.
• HGTV’s “Design Your Dream Home” Web site won an Outstanding Web site award. 
  

The Red Roof Inn site features a refreshed look and feel for the brand, synchronizing with its revamped hotel properties and interactive Trip Planner, which helps you plan a driving trip with multiple stops and find Red Roof Inns along your route.

The Design Your Dream Home site allows you to choose the style of your dream home, place yourself inside the house and then watch HGTV turn the dream into reality by changing the house from an illustration to an actual picture of your dream home.  It’s fun.  Try it out.

Special thanks and congrats to our Red Roof and HGTV clients and all the folks at 360i who worked tirelessly to design and build these two sites.  More to come…

360i client Fasig-Tipton (see site above) enjoyed a big win this weekend when graduate Mine That Bird won the 2009 Kentucky Derby.

Lately, I’ve been writing about banner and Web site trends, as well as announcing creative awards we have won. Today is a little different. I’m honored to congratulate one of 360i’s clients on a win of their own. And it was a big win.

On Saturday, Mine That Bird, a graduate of 360i client Fasig-Tipton — North America’s oldest Thoroughbred auction house — won the 135th Kentucky Derby. The 50-to-1 long shot, brilliantly ridden by Calvin Borel, used the rail in a scintillating stretch run to complete a stunning last-to-first finish.

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Yesterday the New York Times visited 360i’s New York office. The folks at nytimes.com met with agency creative directors to discuss fresh approaches to display advertising. They shared with us some new integration opportunities for advertising and editorial, including the newest Apple homepage roadblock ad.

By now everyone who has visited the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired or NYT online (or read the trades) in the last few months has seen one or more of these placements. The most recent Apple ads featured the Mac and PC characters discussing how PC is as easy to use as 1 through 23 steps, mostly involving restarts. Another ad showed hundreds of iPhone app icons flying over the publisher masthead, across the page and into a waiting iPhone. The payoff: “Thanks a billion. One billion downloads. Only on the App Store.”

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360i and Marvel's wildly popular Create Your Own Superhero site is up for a 2009 Webby Award.

by David Levin, President of 360i’s Design & Development Group

360i and Marvel Entertainment’s Create Your Own Superhero site has just been nominated for a Webby Award. The highly interactive site enables visitors to fully customize a superhero from start to finish using countless hand-drawn comic assets (headgear, facial features, outfits and accessories). The tool also includes Hero Packs, which allow visitors to use assets from their favorite Marvel characters, such as Iron Man and The Hulk. The site was designed with a backend interface where Marvel staff members can easily upload new character assets and manipulate existing images.

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