Working in Digital Media Week 11
This weeks guest speaker was Robbie Ward.
Robbie works at BPN Media, where the main goal is influencing their products to customers through Digital Media. They work using the three mediums of information; Visual, Audio and Interaction.
Some of the work that BPN Media does is placing music video captions in for the audience in clubs such as The Barge or Copper Head Jacks. They even give the option of texting in to have their messages displayed along with the video. Advertisement is usually played during intersections of the video, these are usually adverts for restaurants and other establishments. Selective music is also used to increase the chances of customers revisiting certain places. An example he gave was for a wine seller who used French music to influence the purchase of french wine. Beforehand in the advertisement the key motto was “Content is King”. This has now changed over to “Relevance is King”. Such as the correct type and use of music in stores that can keep customers in for longer and hopefully encourage more spending. They usually perform customer research to find out the best way to influence them.
When designing relevant content there are several things that we need to be aware of. The most important is that the advert is interesting, if it isn’t then customers will not pay attention. I think there are a few names that come to mind that seemed to have hit the nail on the head when it comes to interesting adverts. Namely the new Old Spice adverts that seemed to have become viral over the past few months. Another important issue is to keep information up to date. Thanks to slim monitors the information being displayed in the areas of restaurants and food establishments can now be updated in seconds. Treating any sort of audio with care is also quite important. You wouldn’t want to go shopping for groceries while listening to loud techno music. Usually tests are performed to check the acoustic of the venue to make it as audible as possible without it being intrusive to our senses.
In a nutshell, make sure you message is clear, have it in line of sight and make sure the audio and video is clear and simple.
Personally, today’s lecture was on an area that I ever wish to dwell on too deeply, but it was interesting nonetheless and I did manage to learn a few new things about the advertisement world. Now to go and get me some of that Old Spice, can’t have myself using woman’s fragrance shampoos.
