Posts filed under “Kansas City”

I'm at the Highlights Midwest Web Conference in Kansas City. It's been a killer event so far. I've seen three great presentations this morning. Of particular interest was a presentation on leveraging social media for brand management by Lavarow from Des Moines. Hillary and Nate really have their stuff together. Good show so far.

The tweeting is going down at highlightmw. I'm doing some live twittering of the event at wmeredith. I'll have another update tomorrow.

The Voltage crew took part in the annual Walk for PKD, held by the PKD Foundation, on September 20, 2008 at Theis Park in Kansas City.

If you're a web designer in Missouri, this is a good place to get listed: The Missouri Web Design Directory. (They also offer a national directory as well as one by city.)

Yesterday, a video was making the rounds called Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit. It definitely struck a chord with me (A 27-year-old male, aka the intended audience) as it featured a girl gyrating around and bending over repeatedly in her underwear, courtesy of actually playing Nintendo's Wii Fit. (Video is mildly NSFW.)

This viral video was uploaded to YouTube 4 days ago and now has 475,776 views. It was dugg 8000+ times on Digg. It's got 64 up-votes and 123 comments on Reddit.

Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit was originally submitted to YouTube by a user named tinsleyadvertising and the two people featured in the video appear to be Tinsley Full Service Advertising employees Giovanny Gutierrez, Director of Interactive Media, and Lauren Bernat, Account Executive. At least it sure looks like it, after doing a quick search for "Giovanny Guiterrez" at Flickr...

Now, one of two things is going on here:

1. Nintendo has paid Tinsley Full Service Advertising for a viral marketing campaign that was worth every penny.
2. They should have.

In 4 days this video has been viewed almost half-million times by people who use YouTube, Reddit, and/or Digg. Not necessarily all first-adopters at this point, but definitely a tech-savvy crowd. Most definitely made up of people that would buy or own a Nintendo Wii. This was a very nice piece of viral marketing.

Or so I thought until I read the YouTube comment that was submitted with the video: "This is why I love Wii Fit. 'Nuff said. PS This is a personal video I made... I just work at Tinsley Advertising (not related to Nintendo whatsoever). However I'd love to do work for them :)" This led to an argument about Giovanny's agenda with my co-worker, Geoff. Maybe, they weren't paid by Nintendo, maybe they were, maybe they want to be.

Either way, they've surely got Nintendo's attention now. Nice, er, move, Giovanny.

UPDATED 05/30/08: The L.A. Times picked up on the story yesterday afternoon. They contacted Giovanny, who said that it was not a paid viral and that his girlfriend...

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame.

LA Times - Wii Fit girl was 'FURIOUS' at her boyfriend

When it comes to cost cutting, many times it's design or marketing that goes first. This is like an applicant ditching the cover letter on their resume when the job market is down: it's laughably bad timing. (You're business is the applicant; your customer is interviewing your product all day every day. See how that works?)

So, why is such a silly mistake so common? It has to do with vocabulary. Even people who don't care about design, care about it. They just think they don't care, because they don't know the language. They don't take note of poorly thought out ergonomics when they encounter them, but they sure recognize it when they've purchased a product the maker clearly never used for it's intended purpose. When they feel they've wasted money, they certainly do take note. And they tell their friends.

People who say design is unimportant are taking it for granted. We're literally surrounded by products, information, and communication that's been worked over and focused grouped to death. Example: there are 300 kinds of cereal at the grocery store. All of these companies have 0.1 seconds to pitch to you as you fly down the aisle, hoping your rug-rat doesn't see the really-sugary-crap, but does see the kind-of-sugary-crap that you want. The cereal companies know this, and 90% of those boxes have been meticulously designed to stop you and/or your kid dead in your tracks.

We are inundated with superbly designed products. A lot of us don't know it, but it's more likely that we just don't know what to call it. When we see an ad with bad kerning, even if you don't know what's wrong with it, you still think it looks cheap; an impression you immediately transfer to the product. This doesn't make you someone who's into typography, it makes you a seasoned consumer. Which is what most of us are by the age of 6, thanks to McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and co.

So what about it? Well, if you want to sell somebody something; an idea, an mp3 player, whatever; then you'd better get your design shoes on. Or pay someone else to do the legwork for you.

A 3-year Fortune-500 study conducted by research firm Peer Insight found companies focused on customer-experience design outperformed the S&P 500 by 10-to-1 from 2000-2005. One more time for those in the back: that was 10-1. Your customers care about design; a lot; ten-to-one a lot. Even if they don't (know it).

[Photo Credit]

This is the first post of many on the Voltage Blog. We're an interactive design house located in the Historic River Market in Kansas City.

Otherwise, stick around. We'll be talking modern design & marketing and we'll touch on some of the classics, as well. If you're a blogger or a web developer, we want to entertain you and maybe even solve a problem or two along the way.

Enjoy,
Wade