Fontshop launches Fontstruct

Fontshop has just launched a new website, FontStruct, which enables users to create, download and share fonts for free.

FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks.

You create ‘FontStructions’ using the ‘FontStructor’ font editor.

Once you're done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.

You can keep your creations to yourself, but users are encouraged to share their "FontStructions". Explore the gallery of fonts made by other FontStruct users and download them or even copy them and make your own variations.

You can also use the FontStruct widget to show your FontStructions on your own website or blog.

Check it out at http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

Findings: Why Companies Should Talk to Customers

Thanks again Jeremiah for sharing yet more light in the role fo social approaches in business

ExpoTV recently ran a research study to determine how do consumers relate to each other. While this isn’t Forrester Research, so I will not defend, nor explain their methodology. It’s rare that analysts point to research other than their own, if I put your interests first, you’ll continue to come back to me.

Blog ExpoTV found that:

55% of customers in their survey want to have an ongoing discussion brands

Respondents were most anxious to talk to the product design (49%) department, followed by customer support (14%), marketing (14%) and pricing (13%)

89% said they felt more loyal if they knew the brand was listening through a feedback group (attention insight community vendors)

WOM: Sixty-one percent of survey respondents said that they told at least 10 people about the last brand they liked.

WOM: Eighty-one percent of respondents will tell at least five people.

Despite this evidence, it’s interesting to note that a recent WSJ Article that Most Corporate Blogs Are Unimaginative Failures featuring a Forrester report shows that many corporate blogs (a common way companies talk to customers) isn’t going that well. One common mis-step is that corporate blogs are focused on pushing their own agenda, not that of the readers/customers.

Every Print Ad Has Mobile Interactivity In New Issue of Men's Health

Thanks Branding Unbound, for this follow up on the launch of the first totally interactive print mag

It's finally here: The new issue of Men's Health is hitting newsstands and making history at the same time.

Back in April, I posted about how every ad in the July/August issue of Rodale's Men's Health title will enable readers to snap pics of the ads using their mobile phones and send to SnapTell to get instant promotional responses from marketers.

Now, the issue is hitting the street, and is being billed as the "first fully interactive advertising magazine" in American magazine history.

According to SnapTell, the technology is compatible with all camera phones, does not require special software for downloading advertiser images and is an opt-in solution for the reader.

“As technology continues to proliferate our everyday lives and devices become more advanced we are always looking for innovative ways to stay competitive in the industry,” says Jack Essig, VP/Publisher of Men’s Health in a statement. “[This approach seems] easy and appealing to our readers, yet compelling and novel to our customers.”

There's even a built-in mechanism for promoting reader/advertiser interaction. Each "Snap and Send" enters readers into a drawing to win a trip for two to the Wyndham Rio Mar Beach, Golf, Casino and Spa resort in Puerto Rico for 5 days and 4 nights plus round-trip airfare. And three runners up will win brand new iPhones.

Some of the nearly 100 advertisers participating in the July/August issue include AT&T, Anheuser-Busch, Honda Motors, Louis Vuitton, Quaker Oats, The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble and Unilever USA.

As I write in BRANDING UNBOUND the book, this is the future of print magazine publications (with or without the "snap a photo and send it" model), and a view of how mobile marketing works best - as a interaction mechanism to commercial messages we experience in print, broadcast, outdoor, direct mail and more.

In this particular case, the initiative offers a great deal of flexibility for marketers to provide instant brand messaging, sales incentives such as product samples and discounts, sweepstakes information, and links to websites, photos and videos.

To be clear, this is hardly the first such initiative to bring this kind of interactivity to American publications.

Jane, for instance, is just one of the U.S. publications that long ago started enabling readers to interact with brands by snapping and sending ad images.

And just in the last few months, Wenner Media's Rolling Stone started offering similar mobile marketing solutions for groups of advertisers in an issue.

But this is perhaps the most expansive to date, in that it includes every ad in an issue, and is promoted throughout on behalf of every advertiser therein.

Kudos to Rodale and SnapTell for giving us a, er, snapshot of tomorrow's print pub, today.

Read more, here.

SMS mobile coupons

MCDONALD'S REVEALS RESULTS FROM MOBILE COUPON PROGRAM

Did somebody say McCoupons?

As I've posted here, McDonald's is running a number of sms-based mobile coupon solutions worldwide, including here in the US. Now, at least one of the programs is releasing results.

The MMA is reporting that 12Snap's SMS Lounge in McDonald's enables customers to send an SMS message to begin receiving embedded QR codes on their handsets that they could redeem in-restaurant.

According to 12Snap, since the program's launch last summer, more than 10.000 participants have used the service, and at least 29% of recipients redeemed at least one coupon.

I think in general, these kinds of offerings could be boosted by tying them to third party solutions like Mobo, which allow consumers to sign up for SMS ordering at several participating fast food chains, and enables them to opt-in for coupons.

That way consumers can deal with one entity instead of signing up for a separate solution at each restaurant they frequent - and even order food while they're en route, paid for by pre-set credit card. Now that's what you call fast food.

Thanks to Branding Unbound for this entry which can also be found at: http://maverix.typepad.com/brandingunbound/2008/06/mcdonalds-revea.html

Example of a dedicated MOBILE website

UNILEVER LAUNCHES BRAND-SPECIFIC MOBILE SITE FOR POT NOODLE.

A UK-based Unilever brand is getting what's billed as the personal care giant's first dedicated mobile web site.

According to Brand Republic, Pot Noodle - which I take to be a packaged noodle meal - will be the subject of potnoodle.mobi, a new site that offers branded entertainment, including ringtones (think "Moussaka Rap"), wallpapers, and more.

One offering: a short film called "Tipping Pot," which describes its plot thusly:

"Who needs Argentineans and a massive budget when you've got a flatulent drunk and some old shopping trolleys?"

It's unclear if that's a dig at Argentineans, whom the Brits went to war with in the 1980s. But either way, it's clearly meant to bring something different to a noodle brand.

Apparently the launch is getting support from The Sun, which is sending videos via Bluetooth at Cineworld and other movie theaters.

Unilever has always been a leader in mobile marketing - and in fact, since I posted this, at least one reader has pointed to Unilever's sedateens.mobi as an earlier brand-specific mobile site, in that case a social network site for a hair care product).

As for the Pot Noodles site, it's kind of funny to think of packaged noodles having enough of my attention for me to bother going to any website - mobile or otherwise - to download a branded ringtone or wallpaper. But in many nations, this is a primary way of interacting with the brand.

In fact, as I talk about in BRANDING UNBOUND the book, Unilever and others have long placed short codes on packaging so that shoppers can use their mobile phones to instantly get recipes or menu ideas.

I think adding that kind of capability here could make this particular mobile offering more useful to its target audience.

http://maverix.typepad.com/brandingunbound/2008/06/unilever-launch.html

Brands punk'd by social media sites

This is a neat list of brands that have been brand-jacked by social media... in other words, when online turns bad. Let's learn from them and hope we never join them:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/02/a-chonology-of-brands-that-got-punkd-by-social-media/

The new billboard - Advertising in store windows

Selling Ad Space Into Store Windows: The New Billboard Business

As marketers and media buyers scramble for more street-level advertising space in big cities, store windows are emerging as a new kind of billboard business. Store operators and building owners are going for the idea because it turns underused window space into cash. A growing number of marketers like it because new technology can make window advertisements three dimensional and interactive -- and more likely to directly engage pedestrians.
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Again, thanks to AdAge for this insight into the newest way that advertising will start to invade our lives and our sanity... although I do think that the interactive 3D animations would be fun and could hopefully provide some higher purpose. Combine this space with the technology of billboards with eyes* that I posted an article about ("Billboards that look back" June 2) a few weeks ago, and it is also a highly targeted media.

*These 'eyes' are cameras that capture data about passers-by, e.g gender, approx. age, etc

http://adage.com/brightcove/lineup.php?lineup=1266084202