Welcome to The Viddiverse!

We love our clients. Working with their brands, figuring out their objectives and helping to create, develop and execute on strategies that will propel their business towards an even more successful future. It’s a pretty great way to to spend the day.

But about a year ago we were presented with a very cool opportunity. A natural evolution. Our good friend, and co-AOL alumnus Malcolm Bird came to us with a very exciting proposition. Malcolm is a veteran of the kids entertainment industry. Nickelodeon UK, AOLKids and AOLRed just part of his long and storied history in the business.

He came to us with an amazing vision – creating an online video property aimed squarely at the under-served 8-14 segment. Kids old enough to demand screen time, but too young to head into the unchaperoned (and often extremely unpleasant) waters of YouTube. Old enough to know about social media, but far too young for the rigors of Facebook or Instagram. Savvy enough to create their own videos, but limited in their ability to share them with their pals.

Malcolm had in his head an idea for a create-edit-share video sharing platform. A place where kids could have unfettered access to only age-appropriate content. A suite of tools to enable them to get hands-on and create their own programming. A place to have parent-approved but independent fun.

It was exciting stuff. A blank sheet of paper. Building from the ground up. We were IN! Our role was to design, create and build the platform itself. Develop the brand. Design the corporate identity. As founding partners we invested financially and emotionally.

Founding Partners. And parents. This is a site that our own kids will use. It is designed to be COPPA-complaint. COPPA is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which governs websites that target kids under 13. COPPA’s complex set of rules complicates matters, likely why Facebook, YouTube, Vine and others restrict their sites to kids 13 and over. For example, aside from requiring parental consent, Viddiverse doesn’t collect any personal information from children, doesn’t allow bad language and won’t link to non-Coppa sites, plus parents can review every video a kid posts. Designing a service with that framework is challenging, but so very worthwhile.

The Viddiverse has just launched. The platform looks amazing. Kids are signing up and already creating videos, posting comments, getting involved and engaged. We love it. We hope you will too. Check it out. Or click here to play a video that will give you a three minute overview.

Viddiverse.com – the new, online create-edit-share video network just for tweens. Parent-approved. COPPA-compliant. Awesome! And hey, don’t forget to tell your kids to sign up!

This Week’s Wonder: Life Unfiltered

This Week’s Wonder comes from the pen of our own Bill Klavon. Read, relax, enjoy…

It’s been a long, cold Winter. But last weekend the warm spring sun finally put in an appearance. I went out hiking with my family. Life was good. No, life was great.

And I had an a-ha moment.

It struck me, as I was peering at the amazing view of the Shenandoah Valley through my iPhone, that many of the moments I wish to remember the most, I experience largely through the filter of a lens or a screen. I’m so busy capturing the experience for all posterity that I’m actually removing myself from the very thing I wish to remember. So I captured these beautiful images of the Shenandoah Valley as we headed toward the Dickey Ridge trail in lovely Virginia, about 75 miles west of Washington D.C.

And then I did a crazy thing.

I put my iPhone away.

And for the next 2 hours of the hike, it remained safely tucked into my pocket while I simply breathed. And walked. And looked. And occasionally huffed and puffed (I don’t go hiking very often).

And what did I get out of this, besides a reminder of how out of shape I am? Well I was reminded that Winter really IS over at last (despite what HBO would have you believe). I was also reminded that while hiking objects – like the top of a hill or the end of a trail – are often much farther away than they appear. Most importantly, though, I was reminded that when it comes to experiencing wonder there is no replacement for the five senses in their raw and natural state unaugmented by lenses, chips, or a connection to the social hive that is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like.

Our sense of wonder needs to be nurtured, nourished and fed. And in turn it will feed our soul. A soul starved of wonder slowly withers until nothing – not a cute cat video, the announcement of the new cast of Star Wars Episode VII, and not even a visit to one of the ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die‘ will bring it back.

So get out there and feed your soul. Take a photo or two if you must. But then put your device away. Post when you get home. As Ram Dass would say ‘Be Here Now’. And keep on wondering…

Brand (Un)Awareness

Check out this amazing video. If this doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your neck nothing will. It’s terrifying, crazy, and awe-inspiring. With all due respect to Felix Baumgartner and Red Bull, this video scares us more than any jump out of a balloon from the edge of space.

It’s also viral content at its best with 1,300,000 views on YouTube in just a few days. Unfortunately, it’s also some of the best UNbranded content we’ve seen.

Who’s the cyclist? Who does he ride for? Does he have a sponsor? Whose bike is that? Whose gloves? Whose helmet? We assume that’s a GoPro strapped to his helmet, but who knows for certain? Maybe it’s an iHead?

It doesn’t take a huge number of clicks to get the to the bottom of the who, when, and where, but it shouldn’t take any clicks at all. This is a giant, missed opportunity for all the brands involved. Geoff Gulevich (@geoffgulevich) is the cyclist – an amazing athlete with stellar equipment. He’s sponsored by Dakine, Adidas eyewear, Rocky Mountain Bikes, and Marzocchi Suspension (amongst others), but – at time of press – a search for Geoff’s name on all of those sites yields zero results. (Marzoocchi, unbelievably, does not even have search functionality on their site.) And yes, that is a GoPro. Geoff’s sponsors should be all over this content. While @Dakinenews links to this video from their Twitter page, there’s no mention of it at @Adidas, @Rockymountain, or @marzocchisusp. This could be content marketing at it’s best. But it’s not even close.

Of course true viral success comes out of nowhere. Nobody could have predicted the speed with which – once it gained momentum – it was shared, viewed, tweeted, commented upon. But once Geoff’s sponsors caught wind of the viral phenomenon it would have served them very well indeed to give their brand a shout-out.

So, we wonder, why do so many content marketing “experts” advise advertisers, wrongly, not to brand their content. Content this awesome and death-defying should be branded proudly—or, If you don’t have the rights to brand it, at least link to it proudly.

Learning to (Re)Love the Internet

If you’re old enough to remember life before the Internet, then no doubt you recall those early heady days when you could easily lose hours browsing the web via your 28.8 modem. You could click on text! Sometimes the text blinked! There were buttons! It was all so new that it almost didn’t matter if the content was any good. In fact, does anyone else remember The Big Red Button? It was a page with a big red button. You clicked it. Nothing happened. It was awesome.

Fast forward to today. Almost all of us walk around with the Internet in our pocket. Instant access to any information we could possibly want is expected. (Can you imagine having to wait to “dial up” a connection using a modem?) But I wonder – is it also taken for granted? Is there anything on the web today that can inspire the same delight and awe I experienced regularly in 1998?

My vote is yes. And here are three reasons why:

If the Moon Were Only One Pixel

Designer Josh Worth wanted to explain the vastness of the solar system to his 5-year-old son. Golf ball metaphors weren’t doing the trick, so he whipped up this pretty incredible map of the solar system. Go take a look. I’ll wait.

Cool, right? Two things came to mind as I scrolled through, firstly we are incredibly insignificant and tiny and all our big problems are meaningless when confronted by all that exists in the great beyond. And secondly, printing this would take a ton of paper and more wall space than most people have available. If Josh and his son were transported back in time and had this same conversation in, say, 1985, there would be no easy way to visualize the reality of our universe. What he did is so simple, and yet so brilliant. And pretty much impossible without the Internet.

Some stories lend themselves to the written word. Some to film. Some to art. And some can only come to life online.

Michael Paul Smith

Another assignment: take a look at this gallery. Beautiful photography of a bygone era, right? Not quite. Artist Michael Paul Smith has created every one of those images using diecast cars and miniature models he creates himself with incredibly detailed accuracy. He then sets up his diorama out in the real world and forces the perspective to create an image that looks exactly like the town your grandparents grew up in. And, perhaps best of all, he does all this with a basic point-and-shoot camera.

Artists like Michael have been around forever. But what’s changed is that now there are easy, accessible ways for the rest of us to discover these incredible talents. Michael posts much of his work on Flickr, including detailed shots showing his step-by-step process. If just a handful of people share his photos, and then their friends share, Michael’s art can become a viral sensation pretty quickly. His photographs can reach more people than anyone would have imagined back in the time period they are set.

The Internet provides us all with a platform to share our passions, whatever that passion might be. A Google search for “soap carving,” “beer can art,” or, inspired by Michael, “diorama artists” provides a brief glimpse into the incredible talent we can all now browse in an instant. Democratization of the Internet, indeed.

The Content Explosion

It’s probably no surprise that an employee at The Wonderfactory is a big fan of infographics. After all, we spend our days working with clients to determine the best possible way to display their information interactively. So when I stumbled upon The Content Explosion I was understandably tickled. It’s a well-designed, one-page experience illustrating what happens in just one second online, created by FrontRange Solutions. And it’s filled with wow-inducing facts and figures like this one: 18,144 novels-worth of blog content is produced each day on WordPress. (Wow!)

Beyond the information, here’s why I love this experience. Some folks at a company that produces IT software wanted to visualize what happens online in one second. They looked around the web to find the data. Then they designed an experience to highlight that data that is visually engaging and enhanced by subtle yet purposeful animation. They posted it. People discovered and shared the site. And now anyone across the world with access to the web can enjoy the experience. It all sounds relatively simple when typed, but this would never have been possible 30 years ago.

All three of these experiences remind me of the greatest fact about the Internet: Anyone, anywhere can create amazing work and share it with the entire world. Because I work on the web, it’s easy to occasionally grow immune to the potential that this platform has brought to all of us. The endless stream of selfies alone often makes me want to unplug forever. But these sites remind me that there is so much more out there that will inspire delight and awe. And hopefully, we at The Wonderfactory can continue to create experiences that will do the same for you.

What’s inspired you online recently? We’d love to know…

 

 

 

 

This Week’s Wonder: Is Virtual Reality the New Reality?

Facebook’s purchase of Oculus – a snip at two billion dollars – has taken the virtual out of virtual reality. It’s here. It’s now. And it’s pretty awesome.

So what exactly is the social media giant up to?

The wow-factor of a VR world for gamers is a given. Who wouldn’t want to be immersed in-theatre whilst battling in Call of Duty? And what little kid (or big kid for that matter) would say no to playing inside Hogwarts Castle. Minecraft though is off the table – when news of the Facebook deal leaked Minecraft creator Markus Persson tweeted ‘We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.’ Duly noted Mr Persson.

Gaming is big business. But it’s not where Facebook is at. Facebook is still a social play. It’s about interaction. Engagement. Community. So what is it about developers darling Oculus that makes it $2 billion dollars of Facebook’s money well spent?

Mark Zuckerberg said “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”

Oculus CEO Brandon Iribe is clearly on the same page “We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it’s only just the beginning.”

It is ‘connect’ that is the key. VR can be an awfully lonely place if this grocery shopping demo from Tesco’s is anything to go by – the shelves may be fully-stocked and there are no harried parents and screaming children bashing your ankles with their cart – but it’s just TOO quiet. What – outside of convenience and cost effectiveness – would encourage people to shop in VR world? To shop with their friends? To meet new people? To be guided by experts who can tell you what to buy and how to cook it. Or what wine to pick, how to taste it and how to talk about it. Or how about you run into a personal trainer from your gym who can help you pick healthier version of the items in your cart?

And what does VR mean for advertisers? How will they maximize the opportunities offered by a fully immersive brand experience? This will – once again – turn the old ad model on its head.

Advertisers will bring customers into the closest proximity with their brand. The intimacy of the VR world cannot be overstated and overt sales pitches and promos will quickly appear crass and uninspiring. Advertisers will be looking to develop virtual experiences that engage, entertain, inform, enlighten, delight and help. So you’ll buy a ticket to a iTunes-sponsored Taylor Swift concert, and you’ll sit next to, and interact with Katy Perry. You’ll walk through the Amazon VR book store and receive an invitation to a book group at which you’ll sit face-to-face and discuss The Goldfinch with a group of like-minded literary mavens. You and your pals meet in the Adidas store. You check out the latest kicks. Score tickets for that night’s Knick’s game. Courtside. With Spike Lee. Perhaps VR will offer the democratization promised by Mastercard with regards to at least some of things that money can’t buy?

But never mind the engagement factor, the potential for customer insight is huge. As advertisers create and deliver these brand interactions they’ll have the ability to track and evaluate the customer interaction and reaction pixel by pixel and provide real-time responses and tailored updates.

So is that where Mr Zuckerberg is taking us? Slip on the headset and it’s a whole new world waiting.

It’s exciting. It’s kind of weird. And we wonder, is virtual reality the way you want to see the future?

This Week’s Wonder: Smells Like Success

All hail ‘The Oscar Mayer Institute for the Advancement of Bacon‘. Oscar Mayer partnered with Scentee and brought in 360i and Olson Engage to create an innovative integrated marketing campaign scentered around the delicious aroma of freshly cooked bacon. It’s gone viral fast.

The Wake Up and Smell the Bacon app is downloaded. A dongle containing the bacon scent is plugged into the headphone jack of an iPhone and when the pre-set alarm goes off it activates the bacon odor pack and fills one’s bedroom and early morning dreams with the smell of delicious bacon.

That sounds good enough to us.

But those clever Mayer marketers have thrown the lure of FOMO into the mix. Only a few thousand of the bacon dongles have been created. In order to score one you have to visit wakeupandsmellthebacon.com, watch a pretty wild video, enter your details and a competition – and if you’re one of the lucky winners a bacon awakening could be in your future.

Which leads us to wonder, where else could the power of smell be integrated into online marketing campaigns. Well it’s clear that perfume samples have found their new digital home. The scent of a spice market emanating from a travel ad? The aroma of the latest coffee blend steaming out of the Starbucks website? And just imagine the range of smells that one could use to enhance the traditional storytelling experience – ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’ anyone?

It’s going to be fascinating to see how the technology evolves. And where marketers and storytellers take it. We’re really looking forward to playing in this space. But first off let’s do lunch, all this talk of bacon has left our bellies growling…

This Week’s Wonder: A Good Story Well Told

We love a good story well told.

In this era of ‘big data’ and location-based targeted offers, marketers should keep in mind that great stories, well told, are what move people and stay with them forever.

‘The Moth’ is the Peabody award-winning NY-based non-profit dedicated to the ‘art and craft of storytelling’.  It provides a platform for ordinary people with extraordinary tales to share their true experiences in front of a live audience. No notes, no net.

Stories are based around a central theme such as ‘Firsts’, ‘Loss’, and ‘Courage’. Storytellers are given a few minutes to share their tale, and musical cues let them know when they’ve gone over their allotted time. Judges, typically individuals picked from the audience, score the storytellers and a winner is declared. Winners of the smaller events – ‘StorySLAMs’, then work their way up to ‘GrandSLAMS‘ and eventually onto The Moth Mainstage where storytellers have the opportunity to tell their stories alongside literary greats such as Adam Gopnik and Salman Rushdie.

A really great storyteller, not just a good storyteller, takes you by the hand into the rabbit-hole and through the emotional highs and lows of their experience. You are invested, you’re there with them – a front-seat passenger on their journey. You relate to their tales of untamed love, crushing anguish, foolish pride, and devastating loss. A powerful story told by a masterful teller stays with you long after the lights come on and the audience has left.

The Moth has a weekly radio hour, heaps of content available for download on their site or through their app. If you’re a fan of NPR’s, ‘This American Life‘, you’ll appreciate The Moth.

This Week’s Wonder: Reading Re-Imagined

Read
This
As
Fast
As
You
Can
Please.

All
Of
Us
At
The
Wonderfactory
Tried
Out
A
New
Reading
Tool
Called
“Spritz.”

Spritz
Flashes
One
Word
At
A
Time
In
Front
Of
Readers,
And
Uses
What
They
Call
“Optimal
Recognition
Points”
(or
One
Red
Letter
In
Every
Word)
To
Guide
Reader’s
Eyes
To
The
Relevant
Clue
in
a
Stream
Of
Words
To
Minimize
The
Need
For
Eyes
To
Travel
Left
And
Right
Or
Up
And
Down.
You
Keep
Your
Eyes
Centered
On
The
Page,
And
Spritz
Places
The
Words
Exactly
Where
Your
Eyes
Need
Them
To
Optimize
Your
Speed.

It’s
Sort
Of
Like
This
Blog
Post,
Except
Spritz
Only
Shows
One
Word
At
A
Time
In
Steadily
Increasing
Speeds.

In
Our
Trials
TWF
Employees
Went
From
200
Words
Per
Minute
To
500.

Crazy.

Half
Of
Us
Loved
It.

Half
Of
Us
Were
Completely
Stressed
Out
About
It.

If
You
Tire
Of
The
Interminable
Infinite
Scrolling
Required
By
Many
Mobile
News
And
Entertainment
Sites
And
Apps
Today,
You
Might
Love
Spritz.

Imagine
Reading
A
Long
Form
Article
At
The
Rate
Of
500
WPM
One
Word
At
A
Time
On
Your
Smart
Phone,
And
Never
Having
To
Touch
The
Screen.

Not
Only
Will
That
Make
Your
Life
Easier,
You’ll
Never
Accidentally
Tap
On
Any
Annoying
Ad
Banners.

If
All
Spritz
Does
Is
Rid
The
World
Of
Accidental
Mobile
Banner
Clicks
Somebody
There
Should
Win
A
Pulitzer.

Check
It
Out
Here
Spritz

This Week’s Wonder: Seats for Tweets

File this one under “we wish we had thought of that”.

We do a ton of content strategy and content development work with publishers and advertisers. For publishers, our focus is on the “packaging” of their content. They have editorial staffs to take care of content creation.

Advertisers, however, need a little help at first to learn the ropes of assignment desks, editorial calendars, content creation, curation, distribution, and measurement. The toughest thing to wrap their heads around is “where will all that content come from?” It’s not as easy as phoning up your ad agency and briefing in a print ad. Good journalism is created by good journalists. And great stories come from great writers. Building those relationships takes time. Because of our connections with so many publishers, we can often be very helpful with those introductions, and very creative about where content originates. Nurturing those relationships is key.

Amtrak received quite a bit of attention for a clever idea they came up with recently.

A smart mind in the marketing department at Amtrak took note of a Twitter exchange between writers which originated when Alexander Chee, interviewed in ‘Pen America’, said that the train was his favorite place to write. A couple of writers chimed in on Twitter and suggested that Amtrak should offer residencies to up-and-coming writers. The idea took hold. Next thing she knew, freelance writer Jessica Gross took a test ride from NYC to Chicago and back again. The ticket was free. She sat, she wrote, she enjoyed. A couple of tweets and a post-ride interview were all Amtrak asked in return.

It’s gone viral. It’s captured the public’s imagination. Big corporation connecting with starving artists? The romance of riding the rails whilst writing a romance? Whatever the reason Amtrak has seen an up-tick in warmth toward their brand and there’s a line of writers snaking around the booking hall waiting to get on-board with the program. Amtrak are establishing connections with writers of the future as well as personalizing their brand.

This one could run and run.

Ever Wondered About UBOOQUITY?

This Week’s Wonder comes from The Wonderfactory’s road warrior, Bill Klavon.

“I travel frequently, primarily between the D.C. Suburbs and NYC. I’ve learned to pack light.

Like many other commuters, I tote an iPhone and an iPad. I LOVE to read, always have. I read anywhere and everywhere I can. Even so, I average only 10-15 books per year – if I’m lucky. Why so few if I’m ‘always’ reading? You may well ask.

On the road I do all of my reading via a combination of iPad and iPhone using the Kindle, Nook or iBook apps. This means the window of time I have to “consume” a book can be limited by – amongst other things – battery life, direct sunlight, FAA rules, driving vs riding, dry eye fatigue, and – if I’m reading at night in bed – my partner’s desire to sleep in the dark vs. in the gentle glow of an electronic screen.

E-readers have a big place in my backpack. But in my heart there’s no replacement for physical books. Hardcover, paperback, old, new…it really doesn’t matter. For me nothing can take the place of the feel of a book in my hands and the smell of paper and ink in my nose. I delight in a bookshelf shelf filled with great reading.

So much so in fact, that my iPad is cloaked in a special case produced by a small company out of South Carolina by the name of Twelve South called ‘BookBook’, which replicates the look and feel of a classic leather-bound book.

I know that I’m not alone. Bibliophiles like me are a dime a dozen. But we are missing something in this golden age of digital access. At a time when companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble increasingly give us a choice between physical, e-book or audio book, NONE offer us the option of “all of the above” – at least not without paying individually for each. Sure, Amazon recently started bundling (on a very limited basis) the sale of Kindle e-books with audiobook versions of the same…but it isn’t enough. I want to be able to travel light and read my e-book on my iPad, listen to the audiobook while I drive (or when my aging eyes grow tired of reading), and pick up the old-school bound copy from my nightstand and read the old fashioned way – and once finished, place my beloved biblio-trophy on my bookshelf as my reward.

I’d even be willing to pay more to get this bundle – $5, maybe even $10 more. But not $20 or $30 more, which is what I’d have to do today.

I’ve heard the excuses for why not – most of which revolve around the fact that the old publishing business model still rules — but if I could seamlessly move between e-book, audio and physical copy – at the right price – my consumption would increase considerably. I would spend more, publishers (and authors) would make more, and the rising tide would lift all boats.

So take heed, publishers and booksellers — there is a big market out here for whichever one of you cracks the code first. I even have a name for this service and a URL for you when you’re ready to jump in: UBOOQUITY.”

So, do you agree with Bill? You want the full-monty bundle o’ book too? Here at The Wonderfactory publishing is in our DNA. Magazines are our passion, our meat, our drink, but we are bibliophiles too. We love stories. We love reading. We love books. And we’ve been lucky enough to work with some pretty cool players in this space.

We enjoyed a very successful partnership with B&N. And currently we have a very exciting publishing project in the works for a non-profit that is led by an award-winning author of international repute. And let’s just say that a consulting project with a very senior book agent is going to turn the content world on its head – we’re looking at YOU @nike.

And as if that’s not enough you want to hear Co-Founder David Link bang on about Transmedia. In fact next week you will, when David Link launches his very own Wonderblog kicking off with his vision for the future of storytelling.

It ain’t UBOOQUITY, but it ain’t half bad.