Instagram’s Latest Updates Could Help Brands Reach Consumers

Visuals are a powerful way to promote your brand. The right image can capture the soul of a brand and communicate it in an instant. Instagram – the largest image-sharing site in the world – boasts 70 million images and video uploads every day. That’s a lot of users – and a big potential audience for your brand. However, reaching the right audience via Instagram has been a bit tricky – until now.

The photo and video sharing social media powerhouse recently announced two big changes that look to be a boon to brands utilizing the app. Here’s what you need to know:

The Upgraded “Explore” Feature: Spurred in part by the explosion of users posting to Instagram, the company has updated its Explore feature to deliver trending topics in real time. Whether it’s images from the scene of a breaking news story or a nationwide event like #FathersDay, users will be provided with easy access to relevant content. Likewise, brands can gain exposure by posting content relevant to the latest trends and topics. Instagram has also added specific collections curated by an in-house team of editors that include categories like “ancient ruins” and “extreme athletes.”

All New Search: Instagram has improved its search algorithm to make finding people, places and events much easier. The update allows user to search people, places and tags simultaneously. With enough savvy, brands can utilize the search features to make themselves more discoverable to users.

To learn more about the all-new Instagram, check out the company’s blog. If you would like to discuss how your brand could utilize visual media to gain exposure, fill out the form to the right and let’s talk!

Branding by Jacob Tyler

7 Brand Launch Rules For Start Ups

Over the last few of years, San Diego has experienced a significant rise in startup companies. In one six month period last year, 228 companies formed in the area! To those of us who live here in America’s Finest City, this is not a surprise. San Diego’s weather might not be dynamic, but its creative energy most certainly is. Over the last 15 years, Jacob Tyler has helped launch countless brands – many of them startups. We’ve learned a few things along the way. Launching a brand is an exciting endeavor. But like a rocket, you only get one shot. The following seven tips will help you ensure your startup doesn’t crash and burn at launch.

Identify your audience, and find out everything you can about it. Before you launch a brand, it’s important to determine the audience for your product or service. Know who they are, what they want and how to best communicate to them.

If your name doesn’t say what you do, make sure your tagline or logo does. Not every company name is descriptive of its operations – and that’s OK. But a succinct tagline or a descriptive logo can capture a brand’s story and communicate in a glance.

Highlight your differentiation. It’s a simple but too often missed rule. Unless you’ve created something so unique that no one else does it, you have competition in your market. Make sure your branding and marketing efforts highlight what you do differently and why you do it better.

Tell your story. Why does your brand exist? Make sure your brand has a story that defines the motivations for your existence. A brand story will help humanize your brand and create a connection with your audience.

Be clear. Being a new brand means no one has ever heard of you. When you catch the attention of your audience, use it wisely. Have a clean and concise message about what you do and why you do it best. Create messaging that people will share via word of mouth. This form of grassroots marketing is incredibly powerful. Companies like Uber were able to explode and a global level in large part due to word of mouth.

Your launch never stops. There is no defined period for launching a brand. Unless you decide you want to stop attracting customers, consider your launch to be endless – and market accordingly.

Figure out what works, then look at it with fresh eyes. There are very few secrets to creating a successful brand. But that doesn’t mean you have to design a familiar logo or marketing messaging that’s been around the block a few times. Look at what has worked in the past and build on that foundation to create something new that excites and engages your audience.

Want to learn more about the finer points of a brand launch? Contact us using the form to the right!

Jacob Tyler | San Diego’s Best Web Designer

17 Quotes on Design Philosophy From Apple’s Sir Jony Ive

Recently, Apple announced it was “promoting” its lead designer, Jony Ive. The promotion is little more than a title change, as Ive has led Apple’s world-changing product design since joining the company in 1996. “Sir” Jony Ive (he’s been knighted by the Queen of England) is well known across the globe for his innovative designs that made Apple the world’s biggest company and changed the way we interact with technology.

As designers, we draw inspiration from a variety of sources – the word around us, the innovative products and services of our clients and the work of great designers past and present. Ive is certainly one of those greats. The following collection of quotes from Apple’s creative maestro offer an interesting look into the philosophy that drives Apple’s world-changing designs.

“Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that’s a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.”

“There’s no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.”

“Different’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing something that’s genuinely better is very hard.”

“We shouldn’t be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.”

“There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.”

“If something is not good enough, stop doing it.”

“If you are truly innovating, you don’t have a prototype you can refer to.”

“What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive.”

“Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products.”

“True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, ‘Yeah, well, of course.’ Where there’s no rational alternative.”

“What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.”

“A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.”

“When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.”

“Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.”

“Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural – it’s so hard!”

“It’s a very strange thing for a designer to say, but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I’m aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.”

“The best ideas start as conversations.”

San Diego Digital Marketing Agency | Jacob Tyler

Is Anyone Watching This? – Video Ads and Viewability

In the beginning of this millennium, around when the DVR became ubiquitous and the Internet realized its potential as the platform for content delivery, the television ad was pronounced dead. The perpetual march of technology, combined with a growing distrust for traditional advertisements, was implicated in the TV ad’s demise. The death certificate, however, was written far too early. After all, the advertising spend on the 2015 Super Bowl was the largest ever, and shows no signs of slowing down. Sure, less people view ads on televisions these days, but the visual advertisement continues to dominate the media landscape – by way of the Internet. Both advertisers and publishers have increasingly focused on video ads over the last few years, resulting in both more video ads – and more questions about their effectiveness. Advertisers, in short, want to know – “Is anyone watching this?”

Web pages draw a much less captive audience than do TV screens. Visitors move about freely, clicking links and refreshing pages to locate the content they desire, rather than having it fed directly to them. Merely placing a video ad on a page offers no guarantee that the ad will be seen. Rather than base ad costs and effectiveness on delivery metrics, advertisers and publishers are now relying on a metric called “viewability, ” created by the Media Rating Council, which measures the percentage of the time a particular ad is seen. An ad is considered “viewed” when at least 50 percent of its pixels are on screen for more than two seconds. Viewability is an evolving metric, but it represents a shift in the way advertisers are doing business.

Google’s recently released State of Ad Viewability report offers some important insight on ad visibility, including where ads are being seen, how often they’re being seen, and how format and placement affects viewability. The following are a few major takeaways from the report:

Averages

The average video ad viewability across the web (not including YouTube) is 54 percent. With YouTube, it’s 93 percent. The difference between YouTube and non-YouTube ads isn’t quite as striking as it appears, since only the YouTube numbers accounted for viewability on mobile devices.

Heard, Not Seen

Video ads that played in the background (in a separate tab, etc.) but were not technically “viewable” still resulted in a 33 percent increase in ad recall, when compared to those who had no exposure to ad at all. It’s better to bee seen than heard, but better to be heard than nothing!

Going Mobile

The massive shift to mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, is reflected in viewability data. YouTube video viewability is 94 percent on mobile devices – due largely to the fact that videos often utilize the entire screen on these devices.

Why Videos Fail the Viewability Test

The majority (76 percent) of videos not seen were due to the video playing while in a background tab. The remainder (24 percent) was due to visitors scrolling away from or clicking off the ads in less than two seconds.

Size Matters

Unsurprisingly, viewability increased step by step with screen size. The largest format (848 x 477) had an 87 percent viewability rate, while the smallest (300 x 250) had less than 20 percent viewability.

It’s All About Location

Google’s report showed that not only player size, but also location on the page is an important factor in viewability. Ads placed at the top of the page vertically, and in the center of a page horizontally, had far better viewability rates.

What Does it All Mean?

While viewability is an important step in determining where advertisers should focus spending, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Ad content, audience identification and a solid marketing strategy will ultimately determine an ad’s true effectiveness, and move potential customers from viewing to conversion.

 

Jacob Tyler | San Diego’s Best Branding Agency

Are You Ready for Mobilegeddon?

In April, Google officially rolled out its “mobile-friendly” search ranking update. In short, this means that Google will now boost the rankings of what it considers to be “mobile-friendly” pages – and penalize pages that it does not – on its mobile search. The update is intended to reflect the rise of Internet access through mobile devices, which now constitute more than half of all Google searches. The update is expected to negatively affect many websites – popular industry blog TechCrunch found that 44 percent of Fortune 500 companies failed Google’s mobile-friendly test – and could impact revenues for those websites who do not meet the new mobile-friendly standards.

Let’s take a look at the basics of the new search update and what it means for your website.

What will change?

  • The mobile-friendly update will impact web page search rankings based on accessibility and usability on mobile devices.
  • The change affects only search ranking on mobile devices.
  • The update applies to individual pages, not entire websites.

What makes a website mobile-friendly?

According to Google’s blog, the following basic criteria will be used to determine “mobile friendliness” in search results:

  • Websites that avoid software that is not common on mobile devices – like Flash.
  • Websites that use text that is readable without zooming.
  • Websites that size content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
  • Websites that place links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

Is my website mobile-friendly?

If your website features responsive design or adaptive design, or has been configured specifically for use on mobile devices, it may not be affected by the new search algorithm. Older, more “static” websites, however, will likely suffer a loss of ranking under the new search rules.

To determine if your website is mobile-friendly, simply paste your URL into Google’s quick and easy mobile-friendly test.

How can I optimize my website for mobile?

Google recommends responsive web design as the best way to ensure sites remain relevant across all platforms. According to Google’s blog, responsive design:

  • Makes it easier for users to share and link to your content with a single URL.
  • Helps Google’s algorithms accurately assign indexing properties to the page rather than needing to signal the existence of corresponding desktop/mobile pages.
  • Requires less engineering time to maintain multiple pages for the same content.
  • Reduces the possibility of the common mistakes that affect mobile sites.
  • Requires no redirection for users to have a device-optimized view, which reduces load time.
  • Saves resources when Googlebot crawls your site.

In a nutshell –

The new mobile search ranking is an undeniable shakeup of the status quo, but should eventually optimize the search experience for both consumers and businesses. If your website lost rank status on April 21, it can regain that status once it is optimized and becomes mobile-friendly, as Google will reclassify the newly updated site.

If you would like to learn more about how to optimize your website for mobile, fill out the form to the right and let’s chat!

Jacob Tyler | San Diego’s Best Web Design Agency

Jacob Tyler Has a New Home – And it Might be Haunted

After a few months of “camping out” with our good friends at Solekai Systems while waiting for our new office to be built out, I’m happy to announce we’re finally home. Actually, we’ve been in our new space for a month or so – but hey, we wanted to decorate before we invited anyone over! Our new office, located at 6863 Friars Road in Mission Valley, retains much of the style of our former office downtown – open spaces, exposed ceilings, lots of red – and of course my love of Howard Stern memorabilia. But we now have more space to work, play (pinball anyone?) and most importantly – create.

At Jacob Tyler, we’re always looking forward – we look for what’s “next” in branding. We look for emerging technologies that will help connect our clients with their customers. We look for innovations in marketing, and look to create our own. We anticipate changes that will affect our clients, and adjust accordingly.

As I walk around our new spaces, however, I feel myself looking back as well. There’s an air of history in this building. The ghosts of advertising past, you might call it. This building was once home to one of San Diego’s oldest and most respected advertising agencies, Phillips Ramsey. Founded in 1928, the agency’s clients included the San Diego Zoo, First National Bank, WD-40 and others. In Advertising’s heyday in the 1950s and 60s – the era so deftly and unflinchingly portrayed in AMC’s Mad Men – Phillips Ramsey was the epicenter of creative thought.

The era of smoke-filled offices, three-piece suits and lunchtime martinis is long gone. But the creative energy that flowed through this building during that era remains today. Maybe it’s my imagination running wild, but sometimes I feel like those ghosts of advertising past are looking over our shoulders, and nodding approvingly.

Whether you’re a friend, client (past present or future) or partner, our doors are always open. Drop by and see our new home anytime, and together we’ll create some history of our own!

Digital Marketing in San Diego

How Design Consistency Builds Brand Recognition.

There are many factors that go into creating a widely recognized brand. Without design consistency however, this can never be achieved.  On a recent trip to visit family in Cincinnati, Ohio, my then two-and-a-half-year-old son, Teigan, crafted a perfect case study on the matter.

A few days into our trip, my father-in-law came home with a new car. Not just any car, a white, 2015 Porsche Boxster S. Being one of the most stylized car brands in the world, the new Porsche quickly became one of Teigan’s favorite rides. What I thought was simple excitement of something new showing up, and the fascination of seeing a car with, “no-roof” as he proclaimed, turned out to be much more than that. Little did we know, Teigan was building brand recognition and becoming a fan of the Porsche brand.

porscheboxster

A week or so had gone by since the new car arrived, and my wife and I had taken the kids to visit the local Aquarium. Just as any major attraction, we arrived to a packed parking lot, filled with cars of all makes, sizes, and colors. While pushing the kids through the lot in their stroller, my son yells out, “daddy look, this car same like Tim’s.” Yes, he calls both of his Grandpa’s by their first names. As I started to look around for what caught his eye, I initially looked for a white car, maybe a two-door sports car, or a convertible. Something with what I would classify as obvious similarities to the white Porsche Boxster. After seeing no cars with any of these qualities, I asked Teigan to point out the car that sparked his interest. To my surprise he points directly at a dark blue Porsche Panamera. For anyone not familiar with the Porsche lineup, the Panamera is considered a full-size, four-door luxury sedan. A completely different class then Tim’s white convertible roadster. Being caught off guard to my son’s brand recognition, I had to clarify if there was something to this or if it was just a random coincidence. I asked him why the car looked like Grandpa Tim’s. His answer, “same logo daddy.” Wow, a two-year-old with a small but growing vocabulary was already speaking a visual language and experiencing brand recognition through of the Porsche logo.

porschepanamera

Porsche_logo

Considering the car’s were complete opposite in size, color and class, I figured the my son’s recognition of Porsche rested solely with the logo. Sure, I can distinguish the design consistency across the Porsche lineup, but could a toddler? Back home in San Diego, I was out on an evening run with Teigan in-tow when he shouts yet again, “daddy look, this car same like Tim’s.” Seeing his little finger pointing towards the road and the car that was flying by us, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Not a Boxster, not a Panamera, but a Porsche Cayenne, their SUV! Keep in mind the Cayenne was zooming by at about 50mph, so clearly it was not the Porsche logo that caught his eye, but the Porsche styling. I was stunned, and immediately sent a text to Grandpa Tim sharing the news that Teigan was officially a Porsche enthusiast.

porschecayenne

TeiganBoxster

Without design consistency across the Porsche brand, the Boxster, Panamera, and Cayenne would have been just any old cars to Teigan. But because of the unique, highly stylized design qualities that Porsche carriers across their model line up, Teigan was able to build a strong brand recognition and a particular liking to Porsche. What started with an interest in a single model, the Boxster S, lead to his appreciation of the Porsche logo, and ultimately to his attraction and understanding of the visual qualities across the Porsche lineup. Thus creating brand recognition based solely on design consistency alone.

So, what does this mean to brands and designers looking to create a widely recognized brand? It’s rather simple. Create a style, a look-and-feel, and apply it with strict guidelines across all touch points. And if a toddler can distinguish your products as part of the same family, there’s no doubt your target audience will as well.

Jacob Tyler | San Diego Advertising Agency

Design For The Internet of Things

Technology continues to march on, and the world continues to become more connected. The next great wave of technology is expected to be the “Internet of Things.” What is the Internet of Things, you ask? Basically, it refers to anything connected to the Internet – a list that grows longer by the day. Soon, our appliances, cars, furniture and– who knows – maybe even our pets will join the endless potential of the Internet of Things. The best contemporary example of this phenomenon is wearables, like the Apple Watch. Wearables are a logical next step in technology. After all, why pull a phone out of your pocket to check your email when you can just look at your wrist! More than email though, wearables have the potential to house multiple applications. A restaurant, for instance, could alert guests that their table is ready, or their takeout order is prepared. A washing machine could be started remotely, or a lawnmower could automatically perform its duties with a tap on one’s wrist. Already, wearables like the Fitbit track your activity and monitor your sleep. Undoubtedly, the uses of wearables will continue to evolve.

Wearables pose a new challenge for web designers. While responsive web design will optimize websites for wearables like the Apple watch, designers must make additional considerations when creating designs and user experience for the “small screen,” including:

Device Utilization

An important consideration for design is determining the utilization of the wearable platform. For instance, a business that delivers pizza may have a large portion of its customers interacting with them through the wearable device, whereas a B2B construction company might only require its phone number to be easily accessible through the device. Designers should set priorities based on the portion of expected use of each type of device.

Text-Heavy Simplicity

 Small screens – the Apple watch clocks in at about 1.5” – require very basic, simple and easy to use designs. Text is key, as even those with 20/20 eagle vision will have a difficult time reading text on such a tiny screen. The utilization of large text and readable fonts should be design priorities.

It’s All About U/X

When it comes to designing for wearables, user experience is by far the most important aspect. Creating a good user experience requires a deep understanding of both the intended functionality of the site/device and the preferences of its intended users. Users should be able to easily navigate and inherently understand how a design works. Optimally, there should be zero learning curve.

Have you considered utilizing wearables in your business? If you’d like to discuss, drop us a line!

Website Design in San Diego | Jacob Tyler

Google to Penalize Non-Mobile Friendly Websites in Search

If you’ve been putting off upgrading your existing website to a responsive web design, it’s officially time to reconsider. Starting on April 21, 2015, Google will begin penalizing non-“mobile-friendly”(read, non-responsive websites) by downgrading those websites’ rank on Google searches. In short, this means that non-responsive sites will essentially lose hard-won SEO rankings with the flip of a switch. Imagine standing in line for a ride at Disneyland for two hours, and just as you reach the front, a trap door opens. It’s kind of like that.

Google stated:

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

Like it or not, the Internet is Google’s domain, and we’re all just living in it. Google may be our overlord, but it’s not necessarily a vengeful one. The new search rankings are designed to reflect the undeniable trend of people accessing the Internet via mobile devices – smartphones, tablets, etc. Mobile access has reached a tipping point, quickly outpacing desktop access, and Google’s new search algorithm reflects this reality. The news isn’t a surprise. Web developers and SEO experts have been expecting this development for the last couple of years as mobile devices exploded. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know exactly when. Now we do. And it’s not bad news – it’s an opportunity. Not just to upgrade your website, but to rethink it altogether.

The rise of mobile hasn’t just changed the devices we use to access the web, it’s changed the way we consume content. Our information consumption tastes have veered from buffet to à la carte. We expect singular information on demand – where’s the closest restaurant, what’s the current temp in Boise, how much do beach cruiser bicycles cost, etc. Of course, not every business deals in singular information. But the best websites are constructed as if they do. Upgrading to a responsive website will not only improve your search rankings, it will give you a chance to rearrange your information architecture. By applying an “inverted pyramid” information flow, you can ensure you most important information – your contact info, your basic services, etc. – turn up first in mobile searches, allowing you to then guide your audience through a linear, user-friendly information discovery.

The digital landscape is shifting once again. But it’s not a hindrance. It’s a chance to get ahead of the curve. Contact Les Kollegian at Jacob Tyler Brand Communications if you want more information about Responsive Design or how we can help convert your current Website.

SEO by Jacob Tyler in San Diego

Get the Grease

The old adage “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” is most often used to describe the value of complaining. It conjures images of a cranky old man demanding a new bowl of soup because the temperature is a tad off. But I’ve never thought of it that way. I think it’s the perfect idiom for standing out in a crowd – in a positive way. For brands looking to stand out in a crowded market, – and just about every market is crowded these days – the squeaky wheel is your marketing, and the grease is your profit. How do you make your marketing squeak?

Start with these six tips:

Be Bold: Know what you want to say and say it. The best campaigns aren’t afraid to take chances. Exude confidence in your brand, and you’ll win the confidence of your audience. Boldness is leadership. Be the leader in your market.

Be Relevant: If you want your marketing to resonate with its intended audience, provide that audience with content relevant to them, and to your brand. Know your audience demographically, geographically and emotionally. Know their needs and desires – and provide them with a solution. Without relevant content, your efforts will disappear faster than free donuts in the office.

Be in the Right Place at the Right Time: Go to your audience; don’t wait for them to come to you. Determine your audience’s pain points and provide them with a solution at the right time. If your product is a snow shovel, don’t advertise in July. Develop a timeline for your campaign and try to anticipate events that would trigger a need for your product or service.

Be Creative: Creativity is the soul of individualism. There will never be another Steve Jobs, another James Brown or another Andy Warhol. Great creative separates you from the masses. Be different. Stand out from the crowd. Create something beautiful and compelling.

Be Available: Marketing is a conversation. In the digital age, brands can interact in real time with their audiences. Utilize technology and be present and timely. Start a conversation; you might just win some new evangelists for your brand!

Go forth, and get the grease!

For more marketing tips, contact us. (Look right!)

Marketing by Jacob Tyler in San Diego