5 kick-ass content examples
It’s always great to find examples of cool content. It gives me new ideas and sometimes it even opens up new possibilities. New ways of interacting with your audience or new ways of using channels. It’s always inspiring if something is made with proper attention and if it goes beyond the ordinary . Or to say it with new presidential elan: it’s great people!
And don’t worry — I won’t just post 5 viral vid’s that you’ve already seen on Facebook. No — this is somewhat ‘undiscovered’ content (not necessarily all fresh from the needle) that I find interesting and useful in many ways.
this is somewhat ‘undiscovered’ content
- The IKEA data mixing board
The Swedish furniture company launched this rather unknown toolkit in May 2015. This is a great way of using data for better understanding of your audience and getting possible new insights that will lead to new concepts.
It’s the data of over 11.000 people in 11 cities around the globe on their behaviour related to waking up and having breakfast. An exploring way to find out what happens during morning rituals. All focused on thoughts and habits around the kitchen. Or as IKEA puts it: We’ve created this tool for you to dig into our findings, make your own connections and take the hypotheses for a spin.
Take some time to fiddle around with the results on http://lifeathome.ikea.com/data-mixing-board/
2. The Land Rover Adventuregram
In a previous blogpost I wrote about creating the right content for specific target groups on the channels of their choice. You should make the visit on all this different channels more engaging and not trying to seduce me to leave the channel in order to get a more rich experience somewhere else.
Of course brands want to engage with their audience on channels they own. So there is a cultivated economic battle between stickiness of the channel (and user) and level of seduction to make them click. Instagram tries to keep the visitors on their channel and even started a war with SnapChat by releasing the Stories feature.
Instagram allows only one URL in the profile overview which makes it hard to post content that relates with another campaign or landing page. By offering the possibility to interact with the content and link to new profile pages, new ways are opening up. A great example of this is the Land Rover Adventuregram game: Drive to Campsite. https://www.instagram.com/drive_to_campsite/
This fairly new way of storytelling within Instagram makes it possible to link a variety of accounts to a storyline and by clicking you travel from one account to another diving in deeper and deeper into the message. It opens up new ways to communicate a variety of URL’s — related to possible different landing pages — and so seducing your audience to leave the sticky platform and start engaging on new paths. Well done by Land Rover.
This fairly new way of storytelling within Instagram makes it possible to link a variety of accounts to a storyline
If you are truly connected to this fairly new way of using Instagram also check out https://www.instagram.com/RickandMortyRickstaverse/ And take the day off!
3. World’s shortest cooking show, Bart’s Fish tales
A dutch guy on a mission with a great online concept framed as ‘the shortest cooking show on earth’ has caught the eye of Jamie Oliver. The mission: We believe that you can truly enjoy wild caught fish when it is caught by fishermen who care about their catch and the ocean. It’s great content because you get engaged on cooking, eating fish and the simplicity of making the great varieties of recipes.
The reason why I mention this concept (that’s out there since 2014) is because it’s smart to frame your concept as something unique. Framing something on Instagram as The shortest cooking show is smart and makes it stand out. Of course the design of the channel and the quality of the content do the rest. Being discovered by a world famous cook helps. Check out: https://www.instagram.com/bartsfishtales/ & https://www.youtube.com/user/Bartsfishtales
Framing something on Instagram as The shortest cooking show is smart and makes it stand out
So if you start thinking about doing something outstanding on a crowded stage think about being unique. Maybe a complex product could frame itself as ‘Complex stuff explained by kids’ and have weekly episodes on Instagram.
4. Network Effect
An artist who inspires me for a long time is Jonathan Harris. The first time I learned about his work was when he released the ‘WeFeelFine’ project. A mind blowing concept considering the fact that the visualization of the complex data was created in 2006!
You should definitely explore his work and check out ‘The Whale Hunt’ for example. In this project he related the heartbeat to the amount of pictures taken on a whale hunt with traditional inuits. A fascinating way of presenting images on a timeline taking in consideration that the intensity of images correlate with the heartbeat.
In 2015 he released his latest project Network Effect.
To explain the project Harris writes about the work:
Like the Internet itself, the project is effectively endless, containing 10,000 video clips, 10,000 spoken sentences, news, tweets, charts, graphs, lists, and millions of individual data points, all presented in a classically-designed data visualization environment. To see and hear it all would take hours, but the viewing window is limited to around seven minutes (according to the average life expectancy in the viewer’s country), which induces a state of anxiety, triggers a fear of missing out, and totally frustrates any attempt at completeness.
The sentence … triggers a fear of missing out … interests me. It’s true that while exploring the project you want to learn more, feed the beast of voyeurism. And when you’re cut off after about 8 minutes (it depends on the average life expectations in your country) you’re left with a frustrated feeling knowing you can’t get more until after another 24 hours.
Normally you wouldn’t think of denying people to engage with your content. But in this project Harris shows that it’s maybe the best way to stay top of mind! Interesting to think about when you’re working on your next concept!
5. iFly Magazine of KLM
I’m a big fan of digital magazines. And I’m not talking about poorly animated PDF-to-screen version of leaflets and brochures but the engaging and explorative ones that grab you and truly mesmerize. The absolute best version I know of is KLM’s iFlyMagazine.
Every month there’s a new edition that has animation, video, music, smashing images and interactions. It lets you explore different countries, it feeds your dreams to travel and discover new places. It’s so well made you can almost smell the food, feel the temperature and picture yourself in all these wonderful and exciting places. Of course this fits the brand like a glove.
If you want to create a digital magazine yourself and take your storytelling ambitions to the next level explore the iFlyMagazine and cherrypick on all the examples that are out there.
It’s so well made you can almost smell the food, feel the temperature and picture yourself in all these wonderful and exciting places
Finally:
Since I’m always interested in finding more. Please feel free to let me know! It’s always nice to find about online content that makes the difference.
