Recently, Rich University’s Department of Psychology released a study, “The Effect of Content Desirability on Subjective Video Quality Ratings”, authored by Philip Kortum. In summary, the study showed that people’s perceptions of video quality is correlated to how much they enjoy what they’re watching. So, if the content of what is being watched is captivating enough, people not only overlook poorer video quality, but actually perceive it to be higher.

Similarly, in advertising, the effectiveness of ads is primarily dependent on the content. The more captivating, interesting, memorable, identifiable, and relevant you make your ads, the more effective they will be – whether shown on TV, on the internet, in print, or heard on the radio. Look at any effective advertising campaign today, and the ads will score highly in each of these five adjectives.

Let’s look at each of these individually.

• Captivating – If something about the ad doesn’t jar your attention away from whatever else you were thinking about, and doesn’t hold your attention, then whatever message is conveyed throughout the ad will be lost.
• Interesting – An annoying ad can be captivating, but that doesn’t make it effective. Once captivated, you must also want to keep watching – and also to share and talk about it. This adjective is critical to making an ad go viral. Note that “interesting” can encompass intellectually stimulating, funny, emotional, or other.
• Memorable – For how many ads do you recall part of the jingle or visuals, but can’t remember what brand the ad was for? So ads have to be memorable both for the brand and message being communicated. However, they also have to be memorable in and of themselves. They should pop into people’s heads during the course of the day, during conversations, and especially when shopping.
• Identifiable – This is related to the above, because if the advertised brand is not immediately and clearly identifiable, then the chances of it being memorable are small. In today’s age, though, “identifiable” has more facets than in the past. For example, the brand should still be identifiable if the viewer is fast-forwarding the ad on TV with a DVR.
• Relevant – This is somewhat related to “identifiable”, but is more focused on the message. In addition to being identified with a brand, the ad needs to support and enhance the brand position.

If you are creating ads – display ads, videos, print ads, or whatever – measure your work-in-progress along these five scales. The higher you get on each, the more effective your work will be.

Domus is an exciting marketing agency, combining classic marketing principles with state-of-the-art digital execution to continually deliver effective strategies and campaigns for our clients. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com or visit our digital and social media site at http://www.domusdigital.com.

In an environment where traditional marketing is overshadowed by technological methods, equipping yourself with the newest and greatest digital capabilities is essential for any business to thrive.

Domus has upped the ante with the launch of Domus Digital, its leading edge digital marketing unit.  In addition to common digital capabilities, the agency can now harness scalable enterprise technologies such as cloud computing, as well as leading-edge technologies like augmented reality, computer vision and face recognition. We’re talking the latest and greatest in digital technology.

Not every Tom, Dick or Harry can pull this off.  Domus has armed itself with a team of high tech visionaries who built the digital marketing unit to provide clients with web service development, application development, technology envisioning and more.  Have you heard of computer vision?  If not, Google it.  Domus can integrate this scientific technology into client advertisements to augment reality, utilize photosynth integration, implement optical flow and face detection. It looks like sci-fi stuff, but the claims and capabilities of the technology are legit.

If you want to remain at the forefront of the marketing/communications industry, then you must adopt the newest digital capabilities available.  And if you don’t have the capabilities or you’re not looking to invest, then let us show you what going digital is all about.

Domus is an exciting marketing agency, combining classic marketing principles with state-of-the-art digital execution to continually deliver effective strategies and campaigns for our clients. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com or visit our digital and social media site at http://www.domusdigital.com.

Yesterday Twitter announced on its blog a new feature, “Fast Follow”. This allows people in the US to receive tweets on their phones even if they have not signed up for Twitter. It’s sort of a teaser to get people hooked on Twitter so they’ll eventually sign up.

How many people are interested in getting tweets (as SMS txt messages) from their favorite vendor or brand, but have been reluctant because of the requirement to sign up with Twitter? There might well be quite a few, which means that tweeters will start seeing more followers soon.

Domus is an innovative marketing communications firm that incorporates state-of-the-art technologies and classic marketing principles into effective marketing campaigns. For more information visit us at Domus, Inc. and Domus Digital.

Printer manufacturers have long since given up most of their profit margins on the actual printer hardware. Rather, they make most of their profit on the continuing sales of ink once the printers have been purchased.

When ebooks were first introduced, they were relatively expensive. Both Sony’s and Amazon’s were over $300. Now there is a version of the Barnes and Noble Nook for $149 and a version of the Amazon Kindle for $139. At these price points, they’re starting to make very little on the hardware itself, but hope to make longer term profits on the subsequent ebook sales.

The major implication for the market is that dedicated ebook readers that don’t have an integrated ebook distribution system are not going to fare well. In fact, most of the ebook readers that were announced earlier this year have already folded. The only major player other than B&N or Amazon that is left is Sony and, unfortunately for them, they don’t have a (book) content distribution system that compares with the other two.

Of course, the wild card in the race is the iPad and other up-and-coming non-dedicated ebook readers. And a big wild card it is. Of course, neither Amazon nor B&N are hurt too much by the iPad because both have iPad apps that let their customers read their books on it, but it does damage their exclusivity and force more price competition on the books themselves.

The next twelve months should be interesting.

Domus, Inc. is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.