A Wider Net

Big3D - the big, er, 3D people famous for 3D motion lenticular billboards and soon-to-be-famous for delivering printed video clips have launched their 3D motion cups.

Big3D has been able to produce high resolution (9600dpi) lenticular 3D and animated posters and cards for years now, but they have managed to get the material thin enough to wrap around a drinking cup. They also, of course, have managed to handle the hairy math of creating a 3D illusion printed on 2D paper laminated in lenticular lens sheet and wrapped around an almost-cylinder. Part of me thinks it should not work - it’s just too many transforms from 3D to flat to cylinder. It’s as if they’ve created a perpetual motion machine or a time machine.

Unlike the perpetual motion machine and time machine, these things are real, they’re real cheap, and they’re real recyclable. Yes, these cups may appear to be wrapped in plastic, and they sort of are wrapped in plastic, but these are recyclable - unlike other lenticular cups. They even have a green statement on the page. Bravo.

I forgot to ask them if anyone has played the practical joke of creating a 3D virtual “mug handle” sticking out of the side of the cup.

EDIT - I stand corrected - the cups are made from polypropylene lens material with the printing directly on them - there is no paper, and the whole thing is recyclable. Slick.

Making it’s way around the more buzz-trendy web sites over the past year or two has been talk of Moo Cards - tiny business cards that have different images on the back (or front, really) of each card. Having received samples and caught a few in the wild, I have to say I really like these things.

For starters, they feel great. They have a nice matte laminate to them and they feel substantial. Secondly, the images are completely unique and can convey whatever sentiment you want. And they’re pretty cheap - a box of 100 is $19.99.

You can purchase pre-made sets of images, but the real magic is pulling images from your own photo archives on one of a dozen photo sharing sites including Flickr. You can make them personal, using images that speak to your professional expertise or family life, or corporate-wide, with a marketing group controlling the image pool that is used for the cards.

They also successfully scan through a CardScan scanner. I love unusual business cards but hate it when they don’t work through scanners and other useful business card extra-curricular activities. The really nasty ones are the ones that are made of metal and get confiscated at airport security because they could be considered lethal weapons. Brilliant.

These little cards are insanely collectible, too. There are hoards of Flickr members trading them through their photo galleries all the time. Now how cool is that? That your card would end up being kept because of it’s collectible value? Nice.

I like the idea of having different departments with their own image galleries. Let the consistent corporate stuff live on the information side, and give the image side some personality. Cool.

More stories on Moo Cards can be found at Buzz Feed.

Michael Stelzner, a prominent white paper author and consultant, wrote about a new RainToday study into the state of lead generation. From his post:

A new study by RainToday revealed that 74 percent of professional services companies ranked white papers as an excellent source of lead generation.

In addition, white papers are one of the top two marketing strategies businesses plan on implementing in the next two years.

White papers make a lot of sense for B2B marketing because they position your company as a thought leader and they foster deep conversations that can lead to new business. One thing that isn’t clear to me is whether these papers are getting read. I’m sure Mr. Stelzner has plenty to say on that topic on his blog. It comes to mind that Forrester Research discovered several years ago that their study briefs, which were only a dozen pages or so, were considered too long. Their solution was to boil the study down into a 3-5 minute video summary.

That, to me, is a more compelling way to leverage all the work that went into the white paper. Record a 3-5 minute video and post it on your website and maybe in one or more aggregation sites. The video player should be embeddable on other people’s blogs, so they can better reference your example. B2B customers will appreciate the short-form because it shows sensitivity to their time, and it makes your company look more tech savvy.

Having just written that, I expect a call from my marketing department any minute now about a couple of my white papers…

I signed up for the Response Project a while ago. It’s a highly interactive direct marketing campaign from NewPage Corporation, a company that, not-so-coincidentally, makes paper for direct marketing. Cleverly disguised as a scientific Direct Marketing study, the Response Project lured me in with a simple call to action and a promise to provide me with useful information. I’m kind of outside their target market (I don’t buy direct marketing paper products) but I’m always curious about clever marketing campaigns. I also try these things out so I can find new stuff to show our employees and customers. The Response Project has been pretty interesting.

It started with a cool postcard that promised me SWAG (Aha! The true motivation is revealed!) and drove me to a website. On the site, which has NewPage branding in the corner but is clearly all about the Response Project, I played a kind of interactive “pick the colors and pictures that appeal to you the most” game. A couple of weeks later, I received mailings with response cards of different types - I was to pick some and mail them back. I then received a heavyweight T-shirt that said something cool like “Act Before You Think” (sadly, this is also the fight song for idiots who drive on Route 128 near Boston). I also received a tall poster of a woman wearing the same T-Shirt (well, probably not the same t-shirt - that would be unusually racy for a paper maker, in my experience.) The poster and T-shirt were the promised SWAG, fulfilled as promised and with no small degree of coolness due to the quality of the merchandise and the attractive and unusual packaging. So far, this program has raised my eyebrows more times than my coworker’s beamers.

There have been some follow-up mailings and emails. I received a selection of papers and later, a pack of cards loaded with DM information, packed in a cool box (I hand all these to Marketing who do something smart with them, I trust). Today I received another email. Each of the emails has had a nugget of information gleaned from the study. One spoke of how over 70% of the cards mailed back were on the thickest two coated papers - a sign that people are more likely to respond to thicker paper. Another mentioned that over 52% of the responses included comments on the cards that left space for comments, and that most were positive. This pointed out that if you ask people what they think, they will tell you, and that when they perform this ritual, they become more deeply engaged with your brand. Today’s email spoke of how bright colors tend to help your program stand out in the mail bag. (Ok, some of these are pretty obvious but it’s nice to have data behind it, even if that data came from a fairly biased source).

This study may be the work of someone who wants to sell you heavy coated paper, but it’s well-executed, loaded with tactile and interactive activities, and seems to be keeping the data honest. If the opportunity still exists to participate at the level I did, then I recommend it highly. I also recommend the T-shirt (the poster of the t-shirt… not so much).

Here’s a nice post about something I was noticing in our kitchen just the other day - Equal sugar packets with bold messaging. Since I’ve spent far too much time ranting about the fact that salt packets have “ingredients” on the side, which really really bugs me, it’s nice to see a marketing campaign on sugar packets that makes lots of sense.

Frankly, I’d rather see more edgy billboards on these packets, and I’m sure that has been done, but I imagine this hits the target Equal demo fairly well. I’d love to see how these little buggers boost brand perception.

Originally spotted on Seths blog.

Recently we were discussing technology innovations for printed communications. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an authority in the world of things you can print on (except, apparently, bottle openers). In fact, I think that I may have remarked at one point long ago that “print innovation” was an oxymoron (which is a wholesale mistake and I apologize). That embarrassing little admission is important for you to understand where my next bit of idiocy came from. I was shown a picture of a product called Z-Card. It’s essentially a two-sided colored sheet of paper folded between two thin credit-card-sized cardboard ends. When folded, it fits anywhere a credit card fits. When unfolded, it’s a… well, it’s a piece of paper. My initial reaction was (to the tone of a dull drooling Homer Simpson) “ooOOooh… Folded Paper!”. The counter-reaction was an appropriate email slap.

When I finally got one of these in my hands, however, I became one of the converted.

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Mirage Motion Media produces a unique wall-mounted lightbox that creates the illusion of 3D moving images as you walk by. What makes this remarkable is the fact that this sign has no moving parts, and no electronics other than a couple of light bulbs. The illusion is created by producing a special ultra-high-resolution print piece that is viewed through a series of incredibly narrow slits. Depending on where you stand, you see through the slits to view a different part of the printed graphic. As you walk by, you see a continuous series of images through the slits, creating the illusion of moving video. While loosely related to the Zoetrope, the stereo effect and larger images make this a powerful advertising medium. (I guess another BIG advantage over the Zoetrope is the fact that this is only 4″ thick, and a Zoetrope capable of images this large would be the size of one of those inflatable swimming pools at Walmart.) The illusion is startling and often results in people walking back and forth to make the image animate forwards and backwards. It’s clearly most effective next to moving sidewalks and areas where traffic flow is continuous. New graphics can be printed and inserted by simply lowering the hinged (and locked) front glass.

 ADDENDUM - They appear to be out of business.