Albright News

Hello, London

2009-05-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

We're closed for business—After 6 years of consulting and creative for BBC Motion Gallery, I have been named Head of Digital for BBC Motion Gallery based out of London, and that means the agency is closed for business and not taking any new assignments. My responsibilities for BBC Motion Gallery include global marketing and creative direction, ownership of web site properties and management of strategic partnerships. Thank you so much for all your support over the years! Meanwhile, my brilliant and extremely talented colleagues can still help with your projects.

True Blood: Season 2 Teasers

2009-04-15T23:49:00.000-07:00

We were delighted to work with the wonderful And Advertising on concepts and copy for the teaser campaign for the second season of HBO's True Blood.

Now you see it

2009-04-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

Print ad for a magician's instructional video.

Advantage Play

2009-03-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

Cover for Advantage Play: The Manager's Guide to Creative Problem Solving. The book uses the practice of developing and performing magic as a means to help corporate managers create and implement innovative solutions to business problems.

Revelation

2009-02-27T23:50:00.000-08:00

We recently designed this book by Dai Vernon, considered the greatest sleight-of-hand artist who ever lived. Happily, it received glowing reviews, with critics calling it a "work of art" and a "masterpiece." Don't know about that, but it did turn out pretty well. Copies on eBay are selling for $1,000+. Insane.

BBC Motion Gallery site redesign

2009-02-09T04:02:00.000-08:00

The BBC Motion Gallery site is the access point to 2.5 million hours of BBC footage, not counting that of its content partners such as CBS News.

We streamlined the UI, simplified search and reorganized the navigation, laying the foundation for an aggressive 2009 expansion plan. We also designed and marketed BBC Motion Gallery's new Entertainment section, featuring red carpet footage from Hollywood's hottest events.

See the before and after.

Visit bbcmotiongallery.com.

Apple's iPhone TV Ads Boost Individual App Sales

2009-02-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

It's long been observed that songs featured prominently in Apple's ads have seen a sudden boost in popularity. Lesser known artists such as Feist and Yael Naim have

seen instant fame

following the airing of Apple's

iPod Nano (1234)

and

MacBook Air (New Soul)

ads.

This phenomenon appears to extend to iPhone applications as well. Apple's recent iPhone ads have prominently featured a number of App Store apps. Andrew Kaz and Phill Ryu's

Classics App

[

App Store

] which was featured in Apple's

"Read" commercial

saw a remarkable boost in sales immediately following the ad's broadcast:

Sales of the book reader immediately jumped up 6 times their previous baseline. Since then, Classics has managed to stay in the

Top 15 paid apps

.

While any prominent exposure will obviously help stimulate sales, even the developers were surprised at the magnitude of the response. (Thanks to MacRumors for this.)

Lovely Packaging

2009-02-04T11:27:00.000-08:00

Lovely package

. Devoted to packaging design.

If Leonardo had designed the iPhone

2009-02-03T10:37:00.000-08:00

I especially love the analog clock and the muffler. T-shirts are available here.

Can you define yourself with only 5 brands?

2009-02-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

Could you define yourself with only

5 brands

? This is obviously pretty disgusting but it's interesting to see how just five logos does bring a certain kind of person to mind.

Apple's "1984" is 25 years old

2009-01-22T01:20:00.000-08:00

On this date in 1984, during the 3rd Quarter of Superbowl XVII, Apple ran the famous Ridley Scott directed "1984" spot, which is pretty much recognized as the best commercial ever made. A few weeks prior to its release, I recall sitting wide-eyed in the offices of Chiat/Day talking to its thoughtful creator, Steve Hayden, who told me that everybody at the agency believed their Apple advertising would make history. They were right. The "1984" spot was so different than anything any of us had ever seen, the experience was transformative.

For me, personally, it changed everything. The commercial—and the rest of the early Macintosh advertising—inspired me to leave a big, bland agency in favor of a young, highly-creative shop. It caused me to rethink all the principles I had learned; traditional, conformist rationale as espoused in books like Ogilvy on Advertising. Steve's writing was genius, serving as the focal point of my studies for years. The rhythm of his words, his conversational style, his insightful turn of phrase ("The computer for the rest of us." Usurped a billion times since to the point of becoming a cliché.) Of course, none of it would have been possible without the visionary brilliance and courage of Steve Jobs.

Social media etiquette handbook

2008-12-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

People tend to forget that social media mimics real relationships. The drama might be less, but it's still not a bad idea to know how things are done on a service you're using, especially if you're new to that service.

There are some great tips here.

Pirates are just underserved customers (4 in a 4-part series)

2008-12-07T00:47:00.000-08:00

Wrapping up our brief series on piracy is this tidbit from our friends at TechDirt. They recently wrote about Jason Holtman, the director of business development and legal affairs for Valve, who was speaking a video game conference, when he noted: "Pirates are underserved customers." This is a point that plenty of folks have been making for a while, but having an exec at a company like Valve make it is important. Even more important was his next sentence:

"When you think about it that way, you think, 'Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.'"

We're hearing an increasing number of television, feature film and music industry folks say something at least somewhat similar to the first part of the comment: talking about how they had to learn to bring "pirates" back into being legitimate customers. But, then most miss the second part. Most fret out about how much money they will lose, while ignoring how much money there is to be made.

Piracy morals and the need for change (3 in a 4-part series)

2008-12-04T01:57:00.000-08:00

Morals are often defined by what the general public sees as right or wrong. Most people don’t feel that they’re doing wrong when they download an MP3 or share a movie, but in most countries they're actually breaking laws, laws which do not reflect what the general public considers to be legal, fair use, or even moral.

Law and morals are clearly out of sync when it concerns sharing copyrighted works on the Internet. To give an example, David Pogue, technology writer for the New York Times, often questions his public during talks to find out where the line between wrong and right lies in this case. He starts of with a simple statement such as:

“I own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the same CD from the library and rip it to my computer.”

He then asks the public whether they think it’s wrong or not. Normally the more extreme the examples are, the more hands are raised, but when he spoke to an audience of 500 college students, something different happened.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, “O.K., let’s try one that’s a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it.” There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever. “Who thinks that might be wrong?” Two hands out of 500.

Pogue was blown away by this response, and he realized that there is a clear generation gap when it comes to copyright morals. Indeed there is, but what else do you expect from a generation grew up with iPods, CD-burners and the biggest copying machine ever invented (the Internet) at their fingertips. There’s a whole industry built around filesharing. Take the 160GB iPod for example. Any idea how much it costs to fill that with legally purchased songs?

Computers and the Internet made it easier than ever to reproduce and share files, and it is virtually impossible to stop people from sharing and copying music and videos online. I’m not talking about copying movies for profit here, just for personal use. Besides, in our view, sharing files is not as bad as most anti-piracy lobbies want people to believe.

A recent study has shown that people don’t buy less CDs when they download songs. Instead, they discover music they otherwise wouldn’t have listened to, and buy more CDs than people who don’t download. On top of this, research continues to show less popular artists actually profit from piracy simply because it allows people to try new music.

From people who missed an episode of their favorite TV show we often get the question whether it is legal for them to download these off BitTorrent. For them, the only way to see that show is to download it. Hence, they don’t make any money off it, they just want to see an episode they missed. Is that immoral?

In the end, our view is that it is all about alternatives. Movie, TV and music companies should put their content online and make it available in high quality for a reasonable price without restrictions such as DRM. At the moment there are often no products online that can compete with their pirated counterparts in quality. Sure, there are ways to download (some) music and movies online, but apart from the ridiculous prices, these products are often offered in a low quality format and restricted through DRM.

I'm confident the entertainment industry will learn how to embrace technology and compete with piracy, instead of fighting its customers. The rise of illegal downloading is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels — it’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free, as illustrated by the missed TV show example.

Honestly, the real problem isn’t so much about protecting the rights of the artist, but about protecting the revenue stream for the big media companies. The people who actually create the movies and music want their content to be shared, only the large corporations behind it are too afraid to move on. Lobbying groups such as the MPAA and the RIAA represent the distributors of movies and music, NOT the creators. They even pay politicians to support their cause by voting for or against laws so that legislation is made with their interests in mind. Is that moral?

The main reason why these corporations are hesitant to go online is because they are trying to make most of their money of something that can easily done by the public — distribution. They're striving to preserve outdated business models because that’s how they make their money. We're not proposing that everyone should just pirate everything, but I suggest that the television and movie industry make their content available online on a timely basis for a reasonable price.

The Internet and filesharing technologies make it possible to make production (of the copies) and distribution costs disappear, yet the prices still don’t change. Why? Because they cling onto their old business models.

So should sharing copyrighted material be legalized? No. But the entertainment industry should focus on monetizing filesharing networks instead of bringing them down. Sharing is a good thing and there are tons of possibilities to profit from it.

What do you think? (Article courtesy of TorrentFreak.com)

The 10 most pirated TV shows of 2008 (2 in a 4-part series)

2008-11-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

As the year draws near conclusion, we now take a quick look at the most downloaded TV shows. "Lost" is the hands-down winner, with over—gulp—5 million downloads for one single episode.

TV shows are becoming increasingly more popular on BitTorrent. Understandably, most TV broadcasters won’t be happy to hear this, but one could argue that BitTorrent has actually helped TV shows to build a stronger, broader and more involved fanbase. Visionary marketers are already thinking about how to take advantage of this opportunity, compensating for the loss of revenue in other, perhaps less tangible but still meaningful, ways. Moreover, the tidal wave of downloads is causing everyone to rethink their distribution models.

Perhaps even more importantly, the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability—not price—seems to be the key reason why people turn to BitTorrent.

This also becomes clear when we look at the geographical location of the downloaders. The vast majority of the downloads come from overseas—over 90% on average. Outside the US, fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Legal online streaming services are only available in the US, and change very little in the overall download figures. Until the availability problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV show downloads from BitTorrent. Indeed, compared to last year, the download figures have grown a little, especially for the top three TV shows in the list.

Below, TorrentFreak.com has compiled a list of the most downloaded TV shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the US based on data from Nielsen. Note that the download count for each show is per episode, the most downloaded in this case. The Olympics Opening Ceremony was one of the most desired broadcasts of the year with 4,620,000 downloads, but this list only includes series television.

The data for the top 10 was collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. The download number is the sum of all torrent downloads for the most popular episode. Based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that might have been missed.

Most downloaded TV shows on BitTorrent, 2008

RANK / TITLE / DOWNLOADS / EST. US TV VIEWERS
1 Lost 5,730,000 / 13,400,000
2 Heroes 4,400,000 / 8,200,000
3 Prison Break 3,840,000 / 6,100,000
4 Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2,240,000 / 5,500,000
5 Desperate Housewives 1,990,000 / 16,200,000
6 Stargate Atlantis 1,810,000 / 1,700,000
7 Dexter 1,660,000 / 7,200,000
8 House 1,520,000 / 15,700,000
9 Grey’s Anatomy 1,380,000 / 16,000,000
10 Smallville 1,150,000 / 4,100,000

(Courtesy of TorrentFreak.com)

More on this to come.

50% Of all BitTorrent downloads are TV shows (1 in a 4-part series)

2008-11-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

Reports show that 50% of all people using BitTorrent at any given point in time do so to download TV series. In total, over a billion TV shows are downloaded every year, and this number continues to rise. Piracy? Certainly. Immoral? Not going to debate it here. Whatever the case, it's an indisputable marketing opportunity which we're going to explore further in coming posts.

By way of background, it's safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Some episodes of popular TV shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 5 million downloads per episode, spread over hundreds of sites. This number is getting awfully close to the average number of viewers on TV in the US. However, the major difference is that the BitTorrent “viewers” come from all over the world.

Earlier this year, TorrentFreak published this list of the “most downloaded TV shows“, which showed that the most popular episode of “Heroes” was downloaded 2.5 million times on Mininova alone. Even more impressive; across all BitTorrent sites more than a billion episodes are downloaded every year worldwide:

2007 Movies
Ranking (downloads on Mininova)
1 Transformers (569,259)
2 Knocked Up (509,314)
3 Shooter (399,960)
4 Pirates Of The Caribbean At World’s End (379,749)
5 Ratatouille (359,904)
6 300 (358,226)
7 Next (354,044)
8 Hot Fuzz (352,905)
9 The Bourne Ultimatum (336,326)
10 Zodiac (334,699)

2007 TV Shows
Ranking (downloads on Mininova)
1 Heroes (2,439,154)
2 Top Gear (1,217,923)
3 Battlestar Galactica (706,209)
4 Lost (705,724)
5 Prison Break (608,487)
6 Desperate Housewives (457,805)
7 24 (524,303)
8 Family Guy (522,839)
9 Dexter (435,670)
10 Scrubs (427,420)

The graph below shows the percentage of torrent files per category downloaded on Mininova over the last 2 years — over 40 percent are TV shows. To support this, TorrentFreak analyzed a sample of 400,000 torrents earlier this year. That data indicated that approximately half of all the people using BitTorrent at any given point in time, were using it to download a TV-show.

The popularity of TV torrents hasn’t gone unnoticed. In fact, there are reports of TV studios that allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, by leaking unaired pilots intentionally. While the movie and music studios continue to fight their “war on piracy”, most of the TV studios lay low.

On the contrary, Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group, admitted that she was “inspired” after seeing a pirated copy of the hit-show “Desperate Housewives”. The pirated copy of this popular TV show was the main reason (besides the revenue) for Disney to sell their shows online. “Coming ‘face to face’ with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version (of Desperate Housewives) told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates and as such was an experience that prompted us to do the iTunes deal with Apple.” Sweeney said at the time.

BitTorrent’s popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed by actors either. Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura in the popular show “Heroes”, made some pro-BitTorrent comments earlier this year. When he was in France to promote the series (before they aired), he was surprised to see how many people had already seen the show thanks to BitTorrent. Oka said that BitTorrent is a great promotion tool, but added “Hopefully, if they can buy the DVD after they watch it on BitTorrent, that would be great.”

One of the members of EZTV, the leading TV-torrent distribution group, told TorrentFreak in an earlier interview that he doesn’t think their work has a negative impact on the TV industry either. “The only possible impacts can see are positive ones,” Boggibill said “it is free publicity, which may lead to higher ratings when people “discover” new shows and also larger numbers of DVD purchases; it is my understanding that many of the people that download TV shows from us are avid TV fans and will usually buy DVD boxsets of shows they like.”

A factor that plays a role in the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is that most people simply don’t see it as stealing. It is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels and it’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free. It’s not a threat, but more an opportunity. — Thanks to TorrentFreak

Why a rhino? Why not?

2008-11-09T07:39:00.000-08:00

An awesome photograph of a rhinoceros. And that is reason enough.

Finger painting

2008-10-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

It takes him four hours to do a hand, which he then photographs. The remarkable gallery is worth a look.

Best picture of the year: It was no project for old men, either

2008-10-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

We were brought on to do the concepts and copy for the DVD release of the multiple Oscar-winning Coen Brothers' film, "No Country for Old Men." We worked with our affiliate Black Box Kelvin and collaborated with the always brilliant designer Georgia Young.

Whenever we work on an entertainment project, it's always exciting and challenging. The deadlines are immediate, the pressure is on and the creative possibilities are endless. As a best-picture contender, the stakes on this project were especially high.

We gave the ads an unconventional, uncluttered graphic treatment that underscores the raw violence, the memorable characters and the chilling storyline. The taglines promise that this is going to be one wild ride, and yet, their mordant humor reflects the Coen Brothers distinct situational laughs. Have a look.

Modern products in old style ads

2008-10-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

The folks at Worth1000.com have done some cool things with the challenge to put modern products in old-style ads.

Check out this gallery of some of the best examples.

Exactly what the author had in mind

2008-10-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

Our new favorite book cover. Discovered on typography.com.

Wasted traffic

2008-10-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

This is a truth of the Internet: When traffic comes to your site without focused intent, it bounces.

75% of all unfocused visitors leave within three seconds.
Any site, anywhere, anytime. 75% bounce rate within three seconds.

By unfocused, I mean people who visit via Digg or Stumbleupon or even a typical Google search. If your site is spammy or clearly selling something, the number is certainly higher. If you’re getting traffic because you have a clever domain name, it might be even higher. I don’t know of many examples where it is lower.

It’s good for your ego, that’s certain. You can brag about hits if you can get away with it, or pageviews or visits. But the bounce rate is still that scary 75%.
So, what should you do about silly traffic?

The tempting thing to do is to obsess over it. If you could just convert 10% of the bouncers, you’d be increasing your conversion rate by almost a third! (7.5% is about a third of the 25% who don’t bounce). There’s a million things you can do to focus on this, and almost none of them will show you much improvement.

One other thing you can do is get hooked on the traffic, focus on building your top line number. Keep working on sensational controversies or clever images, robust controversies or other link bait that keeps the silly traffic coming back

I think it’s more productive to worry about two other things instead.
1. Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.

2. Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent.

“I’m just looking,” is no fun for most retailers. Yet they continue to pay high rent for high-traffic locations, and invest time and money in window displays. Very few retailers lament all the traffic that walks by the front door without ever walking in. A long time ago, they realized that the shoppers with focused intent are far more valuable. Smart retailers work hard to get focused people to walk in the door and to keep the riff raff walking on down the sidewalk.

Your website can do the same thing. In fact, you might want to make it more likely that bouncers bounce, not less, but only if those changes increase the results you get from the visitors you truly care about.

— Thanks to Seth Godin for this excellent counsel.

Yahoo plays "me too," releases search video ads

2008-07-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn’t take long. Now Yahoo is following Google’s lead, introducing video ads into its search results.

Want to check one out? Try a “Special K” search and you’ll likely see a Partner ad result appear at the top of the page. There’s a small thumbnail for the video ad, with an enticing little green button and overlay text that reads, “play video.”

This is where it gets ugly. Once you click the Yahoo video ad, you’ll get a disturbingly large video that pops up in the center of your screen, graying out all other options for web navigation. Ugh.

While many web travelers will see this as a mere video that’s presented as an option for partner results (a bit deceptive if you ask me), more savvy web users will see it for what it is: a commercial. At least Google’s ads come under the text option of “watch commercial,” which might not sound as appealing but is a helluva lot more honest.

Yahoo’s thumbnails definitely grab more attention (Is this a good thing? Many users would argue not.), but the non-intrusive nature of Google’s drop-down video is a more appealing experience.

— Thanks to mashable.com for this one.

Google video ads are here

2008-06-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

The move is not unexpected, as Marissa Mayer told The New York Times last month that visual ads were on the way.

There are a few differences from the traditional text ad format. Advertisers will pay when a video ad is viewed, regardless of whether the user clicks thru to the advertised web site. Also, the video clip doesn’t show up until you click a “Watch a Commercial” link under the text ad, which triggers a drop down.

What’s the motive for the change? Well, one obvious reason is the evergrowing shift towards the web become a “replacement” for traditional television. But in the immediate sense, as you might have seen, last month a report came out showing that the amount of clicks on Google’s text ads was no longer increasing, in turn leading many analysts to project the company’s earnings would stop growing as fast as they have been historically. Google’s stock is still around $300 lower than the all-time high reached in November 2007.

While the new video ads will not be immediately obvious, the “watch commercial” should lead to plenty of curous clicks by users and perhaps, in the short term, boost earnings. But in my view, if Google wants to make this a real success they’re going to have to incorporate the commercials into the results without requiring a user action. Sure, a few years ago this would’ve seemed inconceivable for a company with the purist attitude of Google, but today, they have those pesky shareholders to answer to.

Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers

2008-04-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

Every year about this time, a group of the greatest minds on the planet converge in Monterey, California for the annual TED Conference.

World-renowned scientists, designers, entertainers and doers

are challenged to give the talk of their lives—about their passion—in 18 minutes. The presentations are fascinating, profound, life-changing, often humorous, poignant and almost always, downright amazing.

The

TED web site

features videos of almost all the talks ever given, nearly 200 in all, an absolute treasure-trove of brilliance and inspiration, and they’re all free! They’re also available as podcasts via iTunes.

Besides talks, there are also very special performances, and here is one of my favorites. Violinist Sirena Huang, then only 11, in a dazzling performance of virtuosity and emotional nuance. Her music earns three standing ovations.

Go over to

TED.com

and get ready to be truly inspired.