Hasta La Gadget!

As the web morphs to a more visual medium, creative storytelling is moving front and center as way for brands to build engagement and virality.

GoPro is leading the way, which you would expect with a lifestyle product used to record every conceivable type of physical activity anywhere and anytime.

They’ve done a wonderful job with “GoPro: Lions The New Endangered Species” featuring Kevin Richardson a South African Zookeeper and naturalist along the lines of Jane Goodal.

GoPro Fast Forwards Brand Immersion

Think brand immersion redefined – GoPro is not just recording the story but jumping in and helping to make the story come to life! Their cameras were used to not only film the story with humans and animals but, embedded in the actual video.

GoPro is morphing to a lifestyle brand. Redefining the boundaries for how athletic pursuits are recorded and shared in today’s always on social world.

And, becoming the de rigueur equipment for everyone from aging week-end warriors to awe-inspiring young athletes.

GoPro Got Out of the Way of the Story

This just under fifteen minute all GoPro filmed vignette grabs and keeps your attention. not in a cheap “twerking selfie” way; but, showing how a human and animals have bonded in a shape-shifting manner that redefines your expectations.

Something has resonated with the broad web community. This YouTube video has been viewed 5.7 million times, has 50K likes, generating a Huff Po article and USA Today and countless blog posts, Tweets, shares across the broad social web.

It’s a meaningful story with just a touch of commercial “interruption” at the start and at the end. GoPro wisely opted to minimize their brand’s embedded commercial. Not in your face, as some would expect for this aggressive lifestyle brand.

Taking a Page from Patagonia’s Pioneering Eco Friendly Brand Building

Did GoPro consciously choose a video with an environmental theme to broaden their reach with a demographic that is environmentally aware?

It’s difficult to know; but, if they did, it’s a masterful way to get their cameras and brand in front of an audience that up till now may only have minimal awareness.

The may have borrowed a page from Patagonia’s emphasis on long and short form story to drive brand – nothing wrong with this, all marketing is to a certain extent derivative.

Why this Long Form Content Rocks & What it Teaches us About Content Marketing

High quality story is the foundation of any long form content. This video grabs you within thirty seconds (“lions hugging a human”) and then keeps your attention, blending jaw dropping shots of Kevin Richardson with lions and hyenas, with am embedded message about the environment.

There is minimal video production and authoring – part of the visual appeal is the natural look and feel of the video – it’s not slickly produced, with 20-something models lounging around and posing for the camera. See any number of high end designers for this kind of content.

GoPro stayed out of the way of the story. The “commercial” components are again subtle and minimal. No cheesy voice-over: “shot with a GoPro………”

The product (Go Pro’s Heroe2+) is part of the story. It’s used and embedded in the filming and takes product placement to a new level, while demonstrating (subtly) how sturdy the cameras are. Can your camera stand up to a lion chewing on it?

As a viewer, there’s an immediate connection with this story that draws you into the video – who doesn’t like animals, especially top of the food chain lions hugging a human and hyenas making Kevin Richardson part of the pack hierarchy.

This environmental themed (if you will) story connects GoPro’s brand with legacy content arching back to Jacque Costeau – helping GoPro reach a broader demographic.

It’s cool but tasteful curated content – the story, subject matter and filming process done via human or animal mounted cameras and one crew safe & sound in an enclosure all reflect an awareness of good content marketing precepts.

Takeaways for business brands. You may not have the content marketing resources of a GoPro.

Regardless, tell a story with your content (text or video), be creative, takes risks and inform and engage your audience.

Consumers want to engage with brands that get their attention, which is the real currency of today’s tech drenched world.

Related Posts on Strategic and Tactical Marketing

“How Content Heroes and Heroines are Made Not Born”

“What I Learned About Social Media from Andy Warhol”

“How to Generate More Revenue and Lower Costs with the Cloud”

“Why Every Marketing Campaign Lives or Dies on this Foundation”

“Four Critical Marketing Strategies to Stand out in Today’s Noisy World”

“Why so Many Web Sites are Lipstick on a Pig”

“How to Win Your Darwinian Digital Battles”

“The Ten Second Race to Content Nirvana”

Aretha said it in 1967 (scroll down to watch her sing it)

The conversation around Internet safety has moved a long way since the 1990s when it focused mostly on porn and predators and we’ve even evolved since 2009 when ConnectSafely published Online Safety 3.0: Empowering and Protecting Youth.

Along with colleagues, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to position online safety messaging and how to integrate it with offline risks (the overlap is pretty major) and with youth rights — an important part of the discussion that is often missing.

I realize that something as complex as the way we interact with connected technology can’t really be reduced to a soundbite or even an acronym, but that didn’t stop me from trying. So, to make things simple, I’m paying homage to Aretha Franklin, whose classic song “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” sets the tone for how I think we should be talking about youth online safety and rights.

Read on to “find out what it means to me.” And when you’re done, click on the image below to listen to Aretha sing it out.

Rights and Responsibility:

Human rights for young people are essential to their safety. And that not only includes their right to be safe, but their right of free speech and assembly. These rights are guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and they apply online as well as off. Blocking access to social media, for example, violates their rights and, I would argue, their safety as well. Rights also tie into privacy, such as student rights to the privacy of their personal data on their own devices and school servers.

And to help safeguard our rights and the rights of others, it’s important to be Responsible for our actions online and off.

Emotional literacy (AKA ‘Social Emotional Learning’):

No matter how hard we try, adults can’t possibly stomp out all bullying and cruelty, But there is research to show that we can help head it off at the pass by teaching emotional literacy, also known as Social Emotional Learning, from kindergarten on. Helping young people learn compassion, empathy and kindness will go a long way toward creating the kind of world that we all want to live in.

Security:

You can’t be safe or free if you’re not secure. We need to not only get industry and government to help secure our devices and infrastructure, but teach everyone — starting with children — how to protect their devices and their data against unauthorized intrusion.

Privacy and Protection:

We all have a right to privacy. Whether it’s government, companies or even prying educators and parents, kids have a right to keep their information private. Sure there are exceptions when it comes to some parents’ need to monitor and guide their children but, as a general rule, children should be treated RESPECTfully, which includes respecting their privacy.

Young people do have the right to be protected from harm, but it’s impossible to shield them from all potential harms, which is why resiliency is so important.

Education and digital literacy:

Digital literacy can go a long way toward protecting us online. And it’s not just knowing how to operate computers and mobile devices. It’s developing the critical thinking skills and internal compass to help make good decisions in our digital lives, including making good media choices.

Consideration:

Being considerate of others means not just treating them with respect and kindness but also respecting their privacy and their rights. It’s about taking the time to think about how our actions will affect others and doing the right thing.

Thoughtfulness and Tolerance:

“Think before you click” is just one of many sound bites that come under the general category of thoughtfulness. It doesn’t take long to think about the implications and consequences of what you’re about to do, especially in a medium like the Internet where there really is no such thing as an “eraser button.”

Tolerance means accepting and celebrating our differences and giving ourselves and each other a break now and then. Embracing the notion that it’s OK to be different goes a long way towards reducing bullying and meanness.

This post first appeared on SafeKids.com

Microsoft’s virtual assistant comes in handy for lots of things — especially reminders. Now, thanks to a hand from SeatGeek’s ticket engine, Cortana will alert you when bands you listen to on the regular have a tour stop close by. As you might…

When it comes to the Six Million Dollar Man fictional character that we have come to know of in the past, that was a huge sum of money back then – and pretty believable too, at least for a starry eyed 7 year old. However, the constant threat of inflation as well as the different kinds of comic book superheroes we have been exposed to over the years would make such a bionic man a “meh” character in most people’s books. Still, to have a bionic part in our body does sound cool – and this particular bionic arm that you see on the right is said to be on the verge of being real, as it works on a basic pulley system that will be implanted in one’s hand to pave the way for a more natural grasping function without having to expend too much muscle energy.

Ravi Balasubramanian, an expert in robotics, biomechanics and human control systems, as well as assistant professor in the OSU College of Engineering, is the one researching this particular project. To date, the pulley system has been implanted in cadaver arms, where studies and experiments point to a force reduction of 45% required when it comes to closing all four fingers around an object, while the grasp improvement on an object reduced slippage by more than half.

Theoretically speaking, it sounds good – the big challenge would be to discover new materials that will be accepted by the body as an implant, similar to the kinds used in hip implants and bone screws. Also, we hope that this would not mean having to oil the pulley system in our bodies after being implanted! [Press Release]

Pulley System Incorporated In Bionic Arm

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.