If you visit your local IKEA, or Target store you put your trust in the design gurus there that each piece you purchase will yield an aesthetic design result. What happens when one day those stores don’t have what your looking for and you want something unique to complete a design scheme? The solution of savvy Millenials’ is to rely on your inner creativity and “do-it-yourself.” The old solution would have been to hire a professional, which doesn’t allow you to embrace your inherent inner creativity. The constant fear of making mistakes inhibits the creative process and the result is another vanilla design solution that in the end will not represent your personal aesthetic. Nobody wants those kinds of solutions anymore and the only way to protect your creativity is to become a “do-it-yourself” guru who is proud to say after the completion of a final design: “I made that.”

Being able to utter those three joyous words has created a niche community of “do-it-yourself” individuals. With more and more people adopting the crafting movement a platform to engage and showcase before and after achievements became the blog manifesto for Design*Sponge, which was launched in 2004.

The Millenial “do it yourself” movement is still going strong in 2012, and the blog has attracted a diverse following with 75,000 daily readers on the main site, over 121,000 RSS readers, 315,000+ Twitter followers and 30,000 Facebook followers. The success of the blog continues to showcase the power of the niche community. The formula for the Design*Sponge success was summarized in a recent 2011 interview with the blog author, Grace Bonney, for Open Forum.

First, create a voice that is different from others in your niche. Make sure your voice and taste are different from others in your category.

Second, speak from an authentic place and don’t be afraid to be informal. A lot of blogs want to be super professional, but that really puts people off. People want someone to relate to.

Third, invest in a blog design that speaks to your style and the message you are sending. You will have to spend money up front, but if your site looks and feels like what you are talking about, people will latch on quickly.

These points help teach an upcoming blogger like myself to embrace creativity and speak my mind on topics that interest me. Blogging is all about finding my niche community interested in reading my posts. As I set out on my journey, I will continue to take note from the “design do-it-yourself” guru, Grace Bonney, who has helped define the Millenial design movement with a blog and a subsequent book release.

Relevant Material
Design Sponge
Open Forum

The 2 minute, 20 second animated video titled “Back to the Start” has received more than 4 million YouTube views. This video is set to an acoustic version of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” performed by Willie Nelson. The director, John Kelly, depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his ways and opts for a more sustainable future. The soundtrack can be downloaded on iTunes and the proceeds benefit The Chipotle Cultivate Foundation, which is dedicated to creating a sustainable, healthful, and equitable food future.

The brand will feature the full-length video (2:20) during the 2012 Grammy Awards. This is unlike the traditional model of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or 60 seconds time slots, and will mark Chipotle’s first national TV ad campaign.

The animation is fresh, and engaging with a focused message of sustainable agriculture, family farming, and culinary education. The conflict, or climax happens when the farmer makes his decision to opt for a sustainable farming lifestyle. The success of this branded online video is highlighted in the 4 million YouTube views. The following 10 tips for making your branded video truly go viral from Advertising Age:

1. Start with a goal for your brand
2. Pick a creative concept that’s going to grab attention
3. Encourage engagement
4. Go easy on the branding
5. If you do use heavy branding, use it wisely
6. The more the merrier
7. Celebrities don’t guarantee views
8. Network, network, network
9. Use paid media strategically
10.  Don’t underestimate Facebook

Relevant Material

Chipotle
Mashable
Advertising Age

The email address provided becomes the contact for music lovers to learn about upcoming events, and musician news. According to the company, each collected
e-mail address is worth about $1 to a band in music, merchandise and ticket sales over the long term. With the power of email marketing, and social media a musician is able to benefit from NoiseTrade according to the website in the following ways:

1. Distribute music instantly
2. Connect with a huge community of music lovers
3. Get your fans on the marketing team
4. Maximize your exposure

According to musician Kate Herzig: “I can’t imagine my little indie world without NoiseTrade. It fills the very large gap between the formal record releases and going door to door with a karaoke machine and clipboard.” – NoiseTrade.com

If you’re a fan of free music, and don’t mind becoming an advocate for your artist, this platform is a great example of a marriage of free content, social media, and publicity.

Relevant Material

NoiseTrade
Wired

In a world of instantaneous communications, social media has become a back and forth conversation that can be personalized to each recipient. Instead, of the old way of marketing that delivered one message on one or two platforms, social media isn’t limited by platform. The term “conversation prism” is one way to describe the center of activity generated by all the social media platforms. This graphic showcases a holistic view of the social media universe.

When looking at the graphic, it is no surprise that a brand is at the center of the universe with functions of: routing, observation, listening, identification, internalization, and prioritization helping to define conversations. For those brands looking to participate in social media, brand managers should look holistically at which platforms make sense for the organization by observing the target audience. Can a brand ever participate in too many platforms, or conversations?

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The Conversation Prism

The social media platform, Pinterest, is the catalyst that is inspiring a digital archiving revolution. This tool allows savvy connoisseurs to create pin boards that can be shared with their network of followers. Even though each user pins and archives images for later reference the overall result becomes a personal mood board for self-expression.

The network is 70% female and the audience is highly engaged with a reported 3.3 million users logging more than 421 million page views. These figures present an opportunity for brands to catch the eye of engaged Pinterest users. Companies have started creating their own boards and The Gap has 7 Pinterest boards with 135 pins and 1 like. All images posted by the Gap brand become part of the social pinning network.

Even though this is a platform for self-expression and a place for brands to push their products some rules for engagement have been established. Pin Etiquette is defined as:

• Be Nice
• Credit Your Sources
• Avoid Self-Promotion
• Report Objectionable Content
• Tell Us How to Make Pinterest Better

Avoiding self-promotion challenges marketers to come up with content that only engages Pinterest followers.Suggested ways to engage might include:

• Hold a Contest
• Conduct Market Research
• Feature Customers
• Put a Face to Your Brand
• Sell More Products
• Present Concepts in a New Way
• Promote Your Image Content

In a world of sync media how can brands leverage the platform to increase engagement with Pinterest users?

Relevant Material

Brand Channel
Pinterest
CBS

Below is a link illustrating the power of responsive design. By scaling and moving the width of the browser window you can see the dimensions and platforms change based on your size.

Thanks to the latest in responsive web standards this blog is now poised to showcase the relevancy of topics pertaining to emerging media.

One might ask why is emerging media relevant?

Emerging media is everywhere, and the train has left the station with no stop in sight. Each day more, and more people communicate using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Although early adopters were the pioneers of this technology the general public has now converted, and is using emerging media in all aspects of their daily life.

A true convert for the technology cannot live without their emerging media devices and society is taking notice. The urban dictionary describes a person with “iPhone syndrome” as one who mentions or uses their iPhone in every situation. Do you know anyone who could be classified with the syndrome? How about when someone converts from any old phone to a new iPhone? Do they seem to feel their life has now changed because of this device? Most likely the answer is yes to both questions.

Emerging media has a strong hold over users, and with new Apple platforms like Siri, which is a voice activated assistant, it seems communication is indeed responsive and changing everyday.

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Urban Dictionary
Responsive Layouts