Twitter Re-Tweets and Facebook Shares

I created a survey to find out what people like sharing on Facebook and re-tweeting on Twitter, as well as what sort of posts they thought were the most shared and re-tweeted.

Twitter

Everyone who uses Twitter that replied only re-tweet funny tweets. They said this was because they think that if something makes them laugh, it's also going to make their followers laugh. A couple of people also said they re-tweet interesting facts.

They tend to find however, that most re-tweets they see are based on celebrity culture or controversial news, although there is often an element of humour within the posts that get the most re-tweets.

Facebook

People share on Facebook stuff they find interesting as opposed to funny. The focus on Facebook tends to be entertainment in a broader sense than just humour. 

In line with this, they tend to find that most shared posts on Facebook are about gossip or controversial issues, but then there are also a lot of competitions and funny videos as well.

Differences

In general, people said that they think a lot less about what they put on Twitter than what they put on Facebook. Twitter is more like a stream of peoples thoughts, whereas Facebook is more informative and enlightening.

Foreign Print-Based Viral Adverts/Campaigns

My research on the internet suggested that the internet wasn't as much of an influence in other countries as it is in the UK and US, so I thought it'd be interesting to see how print-based viral campaigns differed in foreign countries. 

Brazil - Anorexia Awareness

Star Models is a modelling agency in Brazil, which launched a campaign to raise awareness of how the media was subliminally encouraging anorexia, and wanted to stop this. They did this by taking the stereotypically quirky drawing style used in fashion advertising, and compared that to a photoshopped version of a model, showing how unrealistic the figures of the people in these drawings are. 

South Africa - Cape Times

Cape Times, a South African newspaper, decided to promote itself in a way to reach the younger generations in an attempt to change their attitudes towards newspapers. They did this by applying a recent internet trend to itself, the "selfy". By doing this they are trying to show that newspapers can relate to a younger audience, while at the same time spreading the message that they are and always have been the most reliable newspaper. 

UK Print-Based Viral Adverts/Campaigns

Viral campaigns are mainly associated with the internet because of how many campaigns there have been that have gained huge popularity and success, but this only makes the print-based viral campaigns stand out more.

Whiskas - Feeding Your Instincts

The Whiskas adverts were designed to make cat owners think differently about their cats. Cats are generally seen as lazy creatures in England, but by generalising what a cat is, Whiskas managed to completely juxtapose our thoughts about cats, but in a way that makes sense. Their advertising was used in billboard form.

Expedia - Travel Bag Labels

With over 9,000 airports across the world each having their own 3 letter code, Expedia decided to put their message across by using the codes to encourage people to go on holiday, with each different poster portraying a different holiday scenario or message.

The Internet, YouTube and Social Networking.

The Internet

The Internet was the result of some thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields.

Despite the fact that the internet has been around for 50 years in theory, it didn't really start to take off as a real force of communication until the early naughties. In the year 2000, only 7% of the world population was using the internet. Perhaps a more appropriate statistic is that 30% of the developed world were. Only 10 years later, just under a fifth of the internets lifetime, that number had risen to over double at 67%. Perhaps what's more interesting is that, while it's usage in the developed world had doubled in that particular period, it's usage in the world as a whole had more more than quadrupled, going from 7% to 30% of the world population. Statistics like these show how much of a global force the internet is. Essentially, it allows people in the poorer areas West Africa to use the same global resources as the upper classes in the posher areas of London or Monaco. This can only be a good thing.

That said, the two charts below show that the internet is still a very western-based deity.

Internet Users By Spoken Language

Internet Content By Language

As you can see, the internet is mainly an English-based resource, but these sort of statistics aren't necessarily reflective of how useful the internet is to people who speak different languages. For example, if 80% of the English content of the internet is complete rubbish, then it's not of any real benefit to the english-speaking population. All these statistics show is that a lot more gets uploaded to the internet by the english-speaking population than any other language. For example, below are a few statistics I found about what happens on the internet every 60 seconds.

• 27,800 Photo's will be uploaded to Instagram, resulting in 510,000 likes.
• There will be 278,000 tweets.
• There will be 1,875,000 likes on Facebook.
• 208,300 Photo's will be uploaded on Facebook.
• 200,000 People will be watching pornography (conservative estimate).
• 6 New articles will be published on Wikipedia.
• 204,000,000 E-mails will be sent, with 132,600,000 (65%) of them being spam.
• Amazon will sell $83,000 worth of stuff.
• 100 Hours worth of video content will be uploaded to YouTube.
• 2,800,000 Videos will be watched on YouTube.

These sorts of statistics show the fundamental uselessness of most of the content on the internet for anything other than entertainment or social networking. It is well known that a large part of the internet is pornography, so I found some statistics about internet porn as well.

• It is estimated the 4%, 1 in 25 of all websites on the internet are porn websites.
• Porn accounts for roughly 37% of all internet pages.
• 34% Of internet users have found porn on the internet by accident.
• 45% Of internet users admit to accessing internet porn monthly.
• Porn accounts for over a third of all internet downloads.
• Over 90% of porn sites are in the English language.

By my reckoning, if 90% of 37% is 33%, which means that a third of all the content of the internet in the English language is pornography, which drastically reduces the amount of useful material on the internet available to the english-speaking population straight away, without even taking into account things like Facebook and YouTube.

YouTube

YouTube is the worlds third most visited website, behind Google and Facebook. Despite the site only being 8 years old, (founded in May 2005), over 2 million videos a day are watched on YouTube. In November 2005, only 6 months after the launch, one of the founders claimed that more content was being uploaded every day than the contents of your average Blockbusters store, such was the popularity of the site. It was bought by Google in Autumn 2006 for $1.65 billion, a price justified by the advertising power that YouTube allows. Currently more content is uploaded every day than a years worth of content of all 3 of America's major TV channels combined. Today YouTube has over 1billion different viewers every month.

Most viral campaigns, adverts and videos in general go viral because of the massive userbase of YouTube. Videos such as the Fenton video which have no actual meaning other than entertainment have gone viral purely for their amusement factor. Their are however various "YouTubers" who run channels that create viral videos for a specific reason.

Dude Perfect

Dude Perfect is a YouTube channel, who, at the time of me posting this, are only 318 subscriptions away from have 2.25 million subscribers. The channel was founded by two mates having a bet that they could do a trick shot better than each other, with the winner earning a free sandwich. It shows that you don't necessarily need to mean for something to go viral in order for it to happen, if you create something that people want to see, people will see it. The idea behind the Dude Perfect videos isn't for them to be famous on the internet, but instead is to make innocent entertainment that seems to be lacking in modern western society. They work alongside charities such as Charity Water and Compassion International to promote charity, as well as doing some commercial work in order to earn a living. 

Screen Junkies

In a world where information is being taken from the internet more and more as opposed to magazines and newspapers, writing articles becomes a less unique talent because the internet is a massive platform allowing more and more people to have an opinion, bias or not. Screen Junkies is a YouTube channel with just over 1.4million subscribers, it's the place to go to find out what film or TV show you should watch. It's less like a standard review site where you get a rating of a film and a final summative paragraph that either slates or hypes the movie to warp your mind, but more open ended and humorous, leaving you to make up your own mind. Whilst their videos might not be overly informative, they set the record straight about what the film actually is so you have a more realistic view as to what to expect. That's why so many people follow Screen Junkies.

Social Networking
It's alright having a video on YouTube for people to stumble across by accident, but social networking is the reason why things go viral. All it takes is for one person to find a video, then share that to their 300 friends. Then those 300 can potentially share that to their 300 friends and so on. 

Oreo's 100th Birthday - Daily Twist Campaign
In 2012 Oreo ran the Daily Twist Campaign to celebrate their 100th birthday and make people more aware of global news or memorable dates. By doing this they showed that their 100 year old is still relevant to a modern day market. The idea was that for 100 days Oreo would release an image that celebrated something, some of which were determined before the end, whereas others were made based on the days news. Probably the most influential or controversial design was the gay pride Oreo, which promoted gay pride to it's 27 million fans on Facebook. Oreo now have 35 million fans on Facebook, showing the success of the campaign. In total, the campaign got over 430million views on Facebook as people shared it to each other. The most viewed post was in the one in honour of a new born panda, which, due to it's global engagement factor, ended up being seen by 4,409,344 people during the 100 day period.

Three Mobile Network - Dance Pony Dance
The idea behind the advertising campaign for Three was to spread the message that silly things in life matter, something that I think their market would like to hear due to the world becoming more and more serious. The advert went viral through twitter and the hashtag #danceponydance which was tweeted over 140,000 times in its first 5 days of being online despite being a UK based advert. The video has over 7.8 million views on YouTube and more than 13,000 shares on Facebook, proving that silly things do matter when it comes to viral advertising and campaigns. Similar to the videos produced by Dude Perfect, Three wanted to find something that would make people happy in order to get them to share the video, because generally, if something makes you happy, it'll make others happy as well.

Successful Viral Campaigns

Viral campaigns differ from adverts in their underlying message. Adverts are all about getting you to buy something or pay for a particular service so that the company behind the advert profits. Campaigns however are all about spreading a message. Because of this, the content of a viral campaign can differ quite greatly from a viral advert, despite the fact that they're fundamentally the same thing in that they get spread from person to person. Adverts are about making the company look good, whereas campaigns are about making people show each other the campaign. This means that whilst the content of an advert has to be at least somewhat relevant to the company, the content of a campaign doesn't necessarily have to, as long as it captures the attention of the audience and delivers the message in a way that makes the audience want to pass it on.

The Melbourne Metro system created the “Dumb Ways To Die” video in an attempt to improve peoples awareness of safety when using trains. Their video was very catchy and has got over 72,500,000 views on YouTube due to its unique nature and comedic value. It’s a great example of how humour can be used to capture peoples interest and then use the interest for good as opposed to financial gain. 2 months after the videos release, the Melbourne Metro announced a 30% cut in the number of incidents occurring on the train lines. I personally feel the campaign is very successful due to how it appeals to a younger audience, which is the audience that are more than likely going to be the ones stupid enough to prat around by train lines. This is only backed up further by the campaign having a game available to download as an app for smartphones. I feel however that the game opens up the campaign to criticism as it has little or no value due to how it doesn't give any more train-relevant safety tips, or any more safety tips at all for that matter. If anything it seems to be encouraging using forks to get toast out of toasters etc. This was a problem which was raised by some with the initial video, showing these stupid acts is only going to glorify them, as is the nature of the internet today. Unfortunately, there are always going to be people stupid enough to make YouTube videos titled "Dumb Ways 2 Die - Real Life" and, even more worryingly "Dumb Ways 2 Die - Real Life (WARNING: Graphic)", and any attempts to stop this sort of stupidity will always be futile. Personally I think that all the causes of death in the video that aren't train related are so obviously stupid things to do that anyone doing those things on YouTube and anyone replicating those videos is just contributing to natural selection. The train-related ones, whilst being obvious, are seemingly less obvious, as the drop in incidents shows, so I feel that the Melbourne Metro system can justify their campaign quite easily.

For many things in life, there are two ways to do things, the right way and the wrong way. The Rainforest Alliance shows how you can support its cause by showing what happens when you choose the wrong option. This viral campaign is clever in how it encourages you to do the simple things by discouraging you to do the extravagant and complicated things. It allows the viewer to lower any guards they may have up to receiving the message, and the end result is that this charity can get their message across and build a positive connection with their viewer. I think more charities should consider using more positive methods when promoting themselves such as inspiration and humour because your stereotypical charity advert generally tries to guilt-trip people. In September 2012 the video was posted on YouTube and to the Rainforest Alliance's 30,000 followers on Twitter. That number has since risen to 67,000, which is a measure of the success it's had. 

Perhaps the most famous viral campaign of all time is Kony 2012. The charity Invisible Children released a 30 minute video with the intent of making Joseph Kony famous in an attempt to cause action to be taken against him. Kony is the leader of the Lords Resistance Army, which was initially set-up to free north Uganda from government oppression in 1986. Kony kidnapped children to fill his army, with the boys being given guns to fight with and the girls being kept as sex slaves. It is estimated that the LRA have abducted over 30,000 children and killed over 100,000 people. The campaign against Kony went viral so quickly that within one week of the video being posted, there were over 5 million tweets talking about it, as well as over 100 million views on YouTube. At the time I knew what the basic message behind Kony 2012 was, and I knew there was some controversy around it, although I wasn't sure what it was. Looking back on it now it seems that the controversy was about the intentions of the charity, Invisible Children. It seems to me that a lot of people were criticising them for their financial management and advertising methods. It seems ludicrous to me that the financial management of a charity gets called into question in a case like this given how serious the campaign was, but that just goes some way to explaining the scrutiny viral campaigns come under. 

Successful Viral Adverts

Adverts that are so funny or entertaining that people redistribute advertising on their own and voluntarily select to view the ads and related materials are almost always successful. Making ads that may have less to do with the product and more to do with the entertainment value of the ad can be a successful strategy but risks being completely wasteful if people do not like the ad. This type of success is difficult to predict because people like unusual and strange things.

Making games or blurring the line between real-world and virtual events can also be good strategies for creating successful viral marketing campaigns. These strategies make viewers want to look for more information about what is going on and may strike potential consumers when they do not expect advertising. Using online games provides access to more people, but using real-world meetings can be more fun for participants.

Interactive marketing schemes also have the potential to go viral. When potential consumers can interact in a very direct way with the company or the advertisement itself and understand that a human may respond to their interaction, people are more likely to pay attention. Various social networking sites provide ways in which people can interact with advertisements and also have the benefit of informing others when they do interact. This not only promotes positive feelings about a product or brand, but also spreads advertising somewhat discreetly.

In 2009, Evian released the advert of roller skating babies to promote their brand. As of now, it has over 70,000,000 views on YouTube. The idea behind the advert is that is shows the effect Evian has on your body by using extreme exaggeration. It goes with the tag line Live Young, which is suggesting that drinking Evian will make you feel younger.

In 2012, The Guardian released an advert which put a twist on the story of the three little pigs by covering it from all angles as if it were a real life case that needed solving. It is the cleverest advert I can remember ever seeing, and is, to my mind, a lot more appropriate way of humanising animals for the use of advertising than adverts such as for compare the market. Obviously people react positively to cutesy little animals, but when I see the size of the brand that compare the market have raised based on a seemingly random Russian meerkat, it annoys me.

The compare the meerkat started in 2009. Though the concept has little to do with insurance other than that meerkat sounds vaguely like market, it has become one of the most popular adverts in TV history. The campaign has helped the company go from being relatively unknown to having a website which gets over 200million hits a year, as well as the company having profited an estimated £220million. Aleksandr's (the main character in the advert) autobiography had more pre-orders Tony Blair, Cheryl Cole, Russell Brand or Dannii Minogue, and the words "simples" was added to the Collins English Dictionary.

Pattern Research

Web Vector Patterns

Below are 4 examples of vector based patterns that are the sort of things that are commonly used to make things look prettier, generally in web design, but tend not to have any sort of context. I find myself in a situation where I need something like this to brighten up my design, but I want to find something with context, not that just looks nice

Context
There are two lines in the song from which I can draw inspiration from for the pattern:

"There’s a Chinese cigarette case and the rest you can keep" and "There’ll be twisted karaoke at the Aniseed Lounge"

Chinese Cigarette Cases

Having looked online at the sort of patterns on Chinese cigarette cases, I've come to the rather predictable conclusion that all Chinese cigarette cases have the stereotypical oriental style dragon on them, which doesn't really link to the song or artist.

Aniseed

After unsuccessfully trying to find out what an Aniseed Lounge is (although I have a niggling feeling it's some sort of crack den), I've decided to narrow down this line to aniseed, which I know is some kind of herb or seed or something of that nature, in a sense, it's quite similar to a coffee bean in the grand scheme of things.

I will experiment using ground coffee to make aniseed patters like the ones above and will experiment with implementing them into the design to give it more depth and character. I feel as if doing this could make the cover look a bit happier due to the sun-like shape of the aniseed though, and so I'll have to be careful no to change the attitude of my design, as I feel it was spot on beforehand.

Abstract Photography Album Artwork

The Deepfield cover I thought was  photography at first, although taking a closer look at it I'm no longer sure. Clearly there's been some element of photoshop involved, but the lack of light reflections is something that makes me question it, and is something I think doesn't work about the cover. On a side note, I think the text is truly awful.

The Kings Of Leon single cover is the complete opposite of this. It's the sort of inspirational stock photo style image that you expect to see/use when making something to purely look nice, although I really don't see any reason for that particular photo to be used.

The Noel Gallagher cover is pretty much what you'd expect from his style of music. An urban photo at an odd angle to change to perspective and focus of the image, with various lighting effects to cheer it up a bit. This is the sort of photography I'd like to stay away from because if you're taking a photo only to change its focus anyway, what's the point in taking it in the first place?

The Killers album I think is quite clever. It shows a corroding wooden hand in a forest, which immediately puts an image in your head of your arm falling of and disintegrating, well it does to me at least. This is sort of consistent with the somewhat strange lyrics the bad use in some of their songs. This sort of photography is, I think, a lot more interesting than the stock image style of photography as it's a lot more relatable and unique.

Heart-Based Album Covers

The above albums all have artwork based around hearts, although all in different ways. I think the Kanye West cover is meant purely to be abstract and strange. He has this persona of being arrogant, and I think that having an album cover that's pretty empty reflects his arrogant personality by almost showing a lack of effort. At the same time I do think the strong contrast works very well.

The example cover has a different angle. It shows him destroying a heart, and the ribbons and confetti that come out of the heart suggest it's a good thing via the connotations of celebration. By doing this it reflects the rebellious nature the artist wants to give off. Also, by having the heart at the angle, we only see one full half of it, which is suggesting he's heartbroken, and yet the fact that he's destroying it could be interpreting him 'kickstart'ing his phase of getting over it.

The Kings of Leon Cover is meant to depict two birds of prey fighting with each other. Clearly it's a very abstract depiction, but that goes with the bands music as a strange mix of Indie and Rock. The colours are very strong, the red and black represent blood and the night respectively, suggesting the two go hand in hand with each other by the composition and the name of the album.

The Scouting For Girls cover is a lot more literal than the rest. It cleverly uses negative space to create a heart-shaped light between two people, which creates a very literal depiction of the album name, whilst still having a visual that works strongly because of the contrast of silhouettes against a light background.

This is the single for The Frays cover of Heartless by Kanye West. I find this of particular interest and importance to my project because Kanye West and The Fray have completely different styles of music, and so I'd have thought their album covers would be completely different, but that's not the case. Also, the fact that it's a re-design of a cover makes it a strong example to the project. I think this cover is very clever, the original Kanye West artwork shows an empty balloon, something which stretches and doest break easily, whereas the Frey chose to use a light bulb, the complete opposite to this. The shattered glass represents a shattered heart, due to someone being heartless. Also, by including the screw bit of the bulb, a visual focal point is created from which the heart splits into two directions, creating connotations of separations. All in all, this is a very clever cover as it shows a complete heart, yet every connotation refers to a broken one. 

Single Colour or Colour Drop Album Artwork

The Deaf Havana album is a personal favourite of mine, both the music and the album artwork. It's sepia tent is sort of stereotypical when it comes to photography that's meant to be thought provoking, but I think the contrast between a young child and the very formal clothes is what makes this different to most of these sorts of photos. I also think the fact that the child is looking directly at you makes the photo a lot more emotional.

The Chase and Status album is quite iconic due to the bright yellow text. I really have no idea about what the dog is doing there or why they chose yellow, but it's a good example of how colour can make something generic iconic.

The Chris Brown album uses colour dropping in the cover to exaggerate himself to give himself more of a sense of power and more of a presence within the photo. This is another style of using colour in black and white photos, but this creates a different feel to the Deaf Havana cover. The bright red has connotations of wealth and royalty etc, whereas the sepia tones are much more humble and emotional.

The Linkin Park cover is grungy, and the use of colour is meant to re-create a stencil that's been used for spray paint. This shows how colour can be used in various different saturation levels to create the effect where in part you don't even notice it to be colour.

Elbow

Elbow have been together as a band since 1990 and known as Elbow since 1997. All their 6 of their albums have been in the Top 15 In the charts in the UK in addition to 7 of their singles being in the UK Top 40. They are an Alternative Rock band who play a similar sort of music to Coldplay, Mumford and Sons, and Young the Giant. Their song "first steps" was released in 2012 to be used as the BBC's theme for the Olympics.

Possibly the most interesting thing about the band is the name. They're called elbow because Phillip Marlow (a character from the TV show 'The Singing Detective') stated that it is the most 'sensuous' word in the English language due to how it made him feel after saying it. 

This artwork seems fairly simple to me, and judging by how I couldn't find any information about it online I would imagine that there's no deeper meaning to it. It shows a photo of a back door in cold and lonely colours, which matches the title of the album, as generally from the phrase "asleep in the back", I imagine a child crying in a dark room somewhere, and the somewhat sinister artwork matches this.

The two characters on the album cover are 3 meter tall  polystyrene figures, named "Elle" and "Bo", which were originally by the side of the M1 Motorway near Mansfield, but were removed by police following reported "alien" sightings by passing drivers. They were sold to charity after the album was finished being promoted. I find it interesting that they chose to use large figures when the image creates the impression of something small. I think as much as anything it's a play on the idea of size and making things smaller. The fact that the name of the album suggests something large but then is typed in a very small font, which is consistent with the image.

The album cover shows five characters from the songs on the album:

1.    The ticket conductor from the train in "Station Approach" or the bus conductor in "Great Expectations".

2.    The bouncer "the man at the door" from "Forget Myself." During "An Imagined Affair," "I drink until the doorman is a Christmas tree" is possibly the same character.

3.    The man "kicking up mischief" and drinking from "Picky Bugger" or possibly the man who drinks "until the doorman is a Christmas tree" in "An Imagined Affair".

4.    A Mexican, from "Mexican Standoff."

5.    A man needing patching up, with tea and a bike pump, as in "Puncture Repair."

This is the most iconic Elbow album cover, and is the sole reason I know who they are. It depicts a rubiks cube cornering off a wall. The cube has no colour on it which represents a lack of emotion and fun in the childhood of the child referred too in the albums name. It shows you the outside of the wall as opposed to the enclosed area, creating the impression that something is hidden, which again relates to the title via the phrase "seldom seen". The orangey brown colour is used because it has high contrast with the white and so highlights the lack of emotion in the rubiks cube. The darker shades of brown also somewhat reflect the dullness of some aspects of life, whereas the lighter oranges are used for the sky which is sometimes associated with inspiration and other such positive things.

This cover is very strange. It's definitely the most conceptual of all their album covers, and it seems to me that the image is based on movement. It looks as if there's a person who's jumping upwards, which is primarily the direction rockets travel in. The fact that it's a person, and looks to have been painted by a primary school child links into the use of the term "boys"

One thing I notice is that the album covers get continuously weirder, in my opinion at least. Which is re-assuring as it means that I won't feel obliged to create something "normal" or at least generic.