Eyedea Worx Blog

10 Effective Business Uses For QR Codes

eyedeaworx — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:09:37 +0000

Mobile technology has completely changed the way that corporations interact with consumers. Never before has sharing information been so widespread and instantaneous. QT codes are arguably the fastest growing development in the mobile marketing. They are turning up everywhere–from hair salons to tattoo parlors. Consumers scan the versatile codes with smart phones, accessing an endless variety of content. The codes can be printed on almost any surface imaginable.

1. Business Cards: Standard business cards offer a limited amount of space and information. Give potential clients and customers a wealth of knowledge by including a QR code on your next business card. With one quick scan, your information is delivered to their phone.

2. Posters: Movie posters remain a vital piece of advertising in the film industry, but the poster itself is rather one dimensional. By including a QR code, consumers can link directly to the movie’s trailer. The same goes for concert posters–with QR codes linking to an artist’s music or videos.

3. Invitations: Any experienced event planner can speak to the difficulty of obtaining timely RSVP’s from guests. With a QR Code, an RSVP is as simple as a quick scan.

4. Concerts: Sure there are more attractive pieces of art than a QR code, but what could be more effective? Instead of steering fans to a crowded merchandise table, musicians of all kinds can have QR codes linking to digital downloads for every song on their setlist. Simply project the codes above the stage during songs.

5. Commercials: Move customers from the couch to the point of sale without ever leaving the living room. This advertisement by AXA is an excellent example. We are not as far from Willy Wonka’s candy bar broadcast as we once thought.

6. Food: QR codes are revolutionizing customers’ relationship with the foods they eat. By including a QR code, restaurants and food service industries can provide recipes or even information on where the ingredients were grown and purchased. This concept is a perfect fix for any picky eater, someone with food allergies, or the calorie counter.

7. Maps: Subway systems, airports, convention centers, music festivals and more are making navigation a breeze by placing interactive maps in the palm of visitors’ hands.

8. Direct Mail: QR codes linking to personalized URL (Uniformed Resource Locator) brings direct mail pieces into the 21st century. Offer customers a variety of access points on your next mailer.

9. News articles: Want to steer traffic from the page to the web? By including a QR code beneath articles, readers can instantly comment on posts and interact with other readers.

10. Museums: By placing a QR Code next to exhibit pieces, visitors gain instant access to artist info, the time period and related artists. Rather than steering guests toward the museum shop, simply include a QR code that links to a poster of the painting that they can purchase from the phone and grab effortlessly on their way out.

By wmg

How Flash Drives Are Ideal for Colleges & Universities

eyedeaworx — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:47:10 +0000

How Flash Drives Are Ideal for Colleges & Universities

Whether you call them flash drives, jump drives, thumb drives, USB drives or compact flash memory, one thing is certain – educational institutions of all sizes are increasingly finding unique and innovative ways to leverage the capabilities of these handy little devices.

Flash Drive History

Before we “jump” into the rapidly growing list of benefits flash drives offer, here is a “cliff’s notes” version of their history. The name derives from the use of flash memory – solid state memory chips – rather than the spinning magnetic disk of a hard drive.

These compact memory “drives” plug directly into the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port of your computer and are typically built to store between 64 megabytes and 128 gigabytes of data. These convenient compact flash drives act as reusable, portable hard drives which are about the size of a pack of gum.

USB Flash Drive Functionality at Universities and Colleges

USB flash drive technology has soared at Universities and Colleges in recent years and their uses are countless. Custom logo flash drives can feature the school colors and be stamped with the mascot or logo – for a multitude of uses. As a result, customized flash drives have become the popular “buy” in University and College campus bookstores not only by students, but faculty alike.

Pre-loaded with video, slide shows, music or other promotional content, flash drives are rapidly becoming an effective tool to enhance University or College recruitment campaigns and many other aspects of the educational process. USB flash drives can be programmed to auto-run customized messages or load a specific website when inserted into a computer.

Users can store additional information on the flash drive alongside the preloaded information – and coupled with a custom University logo on your flash memory stick – makes USB flash drive marketing one of the rare occurrences when the target of your promotion can continue to use the marketing “tool” everyday.

Examples of USB Flash Drive Applications for Schools:

Recruitment and Admissions

A custom logo flash drive can be pre-loaded with anything from a video tour of the campus to a presentation of a specific department to enrollment materials. University or College custom USB drives make the perfect gift to students attending a recruitment event and can be sent as incentives to high demand students.

Promotion of School Departments, Student Organizations and Event Schedules

Pre-loaded, custom flash drives offer more impact as a promotional tool than flyers, brochures and handbooks.

Donor and Alumni Gifts

Custom logo USB flash drives are a fun and useful gift – and the perfect way to show your donors how important they are to you. The USB drive can be preloaded with a video “Thank You from the President”, a school event calendar or donation and tax benefit materials.

Faculty and Student Handbooks

University faculty and student handbooks or other manuals can be preloaded onto a flash drive with hyperlinks to important websites.

Bye Bye Blue Book

With the prevalence of laptops, campuses are increasingly incorporating flash drive technology into the examination and homework process. For example, a USB drive can be customized with the department, teacher or course information and preloaded with exams. The flash drives are handed in upon completion

Lectures and Presentations

No need to lug around the briefcase… a USB flash drive can easily hold your lectures for the entire year. Multiple flash drives can be used to organize by class or topic

Graduation Day

Who better to send out into the world with your brand than the bright-eyed graduates? These flash drives can be preloaded with information to help keep the graduate involved in your University, such as event schedules, donation information and links to your alumni website.

Community Outreach

There’s always a need to exemplify the many ways in which students and faculty are working to create a bridge between the campus and the community. Flash drives preloaded with a video or a slide show can be sold at local businesses to help promote the image of the school.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is as a stand alone technology device, USB flash drives offer several benefits to the University or College environment. However, with the addition of your school brand and pre-loaded messaging, custom flash drives serve as a valuable and functional marketing tool that will command the attention needed to strengthen the enrollment numbers and the educational process.

info@eyedeaworx.com | 1401 Wewatta St. #103 | Denver, CO 80202
t 800.973.9383 x101 | f 303.292.2478 | www.eyedeaworx.com

How Web Video Marketing Grows Your Business

eyedeaworx — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:51:25 +0000

If you are new to web video marketing, it’s time for you to pay attention. It is no longer a secret that having an online presence can boost your sales. Indeed, newspaper advertising is not yet dead. However, note this hard fact. The newspaper industry is on the decline. Newspaper sales are plummeting in this modern era of internet. The current recession has exposed this fact. More and more people are doing their business online than ever before. Online classified agencies like Craigslist have performed better than offline printing gurus.

The advent of internet marketing has seen the rise of many video hosting companies. Internet marketing is a new trend. Popular giants like YouTube have taken advantage of this trend. YouTube has gained a lot visitors, with registered members exceeding 20 million. Small businesses have equally gained. It was the small companies and individuals who pioneered internet marketing. A decade ago, it was easy to make money online.The same cannot be said of today because of increased competition.

Paid web video marketing and hosting is good for an established business. The advantages of paid hosting are that the hoster will provide reliable service and technical support. Some hosters will also provide complimentary services like SEO video tagging, free directory submission and link building. With paid hosting, your video will generate high traffic hits within a short period.

Resources for video web marketing can be found on the internet. As with hosting, there are free and paid resources. A computer, web cam and access to the internet are essential for any online entrepreneur. Tools for video marketing include slide show software, video converters, video editors, sound amplifiers and photo editors. With the exception of a computer and web cam, most of these tools can be downloaded from the internet.

Success in web video marketing also requires the entrepreneur to join web marketing clubs for web masters and affiliates. Most web masters run online marketing schools which offer tutorials and secrets to members. Again; there are free and paid memberships to these clubs. Attending a web masters forum or club will reduce your learning curve.

If you still don’t know about social marketing, your web video marketing plan will hit a wall. A clever online marketer should know that it is no longer an option to advertise on social networks. Social networks attract a large portion of web surfers. Indeed, Facebook and MySpace have a population larger than EBay. It is easy to sell on EBay but difficult to sell on social networks like Facebook. A lot of experimenting is being done to tap this market. A web marketer who penetrates this market is likely to find gold.

Sited by Alexis Jameson/smithtelevision.com

What does “Video Marketing” really mean?

eyedeaworx — Fri, 27 May 2011 17:33:53 +0000

Marketing With Video

The people in the “Marketing With Video” camp are usually selling a product or service and using video to better explain that product or service. This typically takes the form of incorporating video into a direct marketing campaign like a newsletter or promotion. The simplest example of “Marketing WITH Video” is a company adding video to its website to summarize its product. Other examples of “Marketing With Video” include:

Gathering actionable data on user engagement to help optimize a purchase funnel

Incorporating video into e-mail marketing campaigns to understand which prospects are particularly interested

Using recorded webinars as a source of lead generation.

A video is designed to better inform a web visitor about some elements of a product once they’re on our site. It wouldn’t be nearly as useful if viewed on YouTube.

The common thread of “Marketing With Video” is that the video is designed to better market things to someone who is already engaging with your company because they’re on your website, signed up for your newsletter, downloaded a whitepaper, or perhaps registered with you at a trade show.

Marketing A Video

Businesses who think of Video Marketing as “Marketing A Video” are generally trying to build brand awareness for their company/products. This is done by giving viewers a taste of the brand or concept in a concise package that can travel anywhere and that is designed to be shared. Taken to its extreme a video will be so compelling that it will market itself and you have created the elusive viral video. For this reason, these types of videos are generally more about entertainment and less about explanation.

Once the video has been created, it is often pushed out to as many of the consumer video sharing sites as possible. These videos are often accompanied by a social media campaign, reaching out to bloggers and posting on Twitter, to try and generate buzz (and views) for the company’s video. For companies in this camp, they can manually manage the whole process of marketing their video.

So, why does this matter?

These differentiations are important because understanding them can be the difference between solving your problems quickly and being lost in the mire of marketing-speak website after marketing-speak website. Do you find this differentiation important? How would you improve upon these definitio?

sited by Musing

USB Flash Drives – Effectiveness of Branded Promotional Products

eyedeaworx — Sat, 14 May 2011 20:37:49 +0000

For many years free branded products have been hits at tradeshows, public promotional events, festivals, fairs, and any other large gatherings of both current and potential customers.

Branded products provide customers with a useful product while at the same time providing advertisers a way to get their brand name “out there” and recognized.

Unlike typical forms of media advertising which are seen once and often disregarded; branded products are kept, used, and most importantly seen over and over by the person who receives it, who is simultaneously the potential customer.

Think of the typical life cycle of a flyer or newspaper ad. It is seen once or not at all, read or ignored, and then thrown out in the garbage. It “lives” for minutes or hours, if it “lives” at all.

Now think of the typical life cycle of a branded item such as a pen, stapler, stress ball, business card holder, etc… It is received, looked at, and the brand or company giving it away is acknowledged. Then it is kept for days, weeks, months, years, or longer at someone’s house, in their car, in their office, or elsewhere. It is repeatedly seen over and over by the potential customer, which helps build the strong brand awareness that any company NEEDS to succeed.

So what are the only downfalls of giving out free branded products?

They are expensive when compared to typical advertisements such as flyers and newspaper ads
They are not always received by your target market. For example: you want to target 18-25 year olds, but all your branded items end up being given to 5 and 6 year old children who kept coming to your booth for the free branded product.

How does our solution overcome these downfalls?

We reduce cost by offering you the lowest price in the industry for our products.
When your potential customers request a free beer mug we collect demographic information such as age, sex, and location, so that you can target only those customers you wish to target.
In other words, if you want to market your new hat to males aged 15-25, we will only send products branded with “Your Hat Name” to men aged 15-25 years.

Lady Gaga Telephone Parody

eyedeaworx — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:28:33 +0000

Homeless Man Entertains and Inspires with Kermits – performs Under Pressure

eyedeaworx — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:17:01 +0000

Epic Rap Battle!

eyedeaworx — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:15:06 +0000

How to Archive a Project

eyedeaworx — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 01:24:34 +0000

One of the most overlooked aspects in the production process is the final step… archiving and storing a project. If you haven’t yet, then you will in the future need to make a change to a project you were certain was all done. Here, I’ll walk you through a thorough process for archiving your footage and project files so that you always have to option to go back and make changes. One of the most overlooked aspects in the production process is the final step… archiving and storing a project. If you haven’t yet, then you will in the future need to make a change to a project you were certain was all done. Here, I’ll walk you through a thorough process for archiving your footage and project files so that you always have to option to go back and make changes. For this example we will list the ways to archive a video with music and dialogue, still graphics, and a fully authored DVD menu. First you should always try and retain 2 copies of the final project in its delivered format. For our example, we will make a master DVD that we will put into storage and a DVD copy that can be put onto a spindle with your other projects and kept near by. The next step is laying all of your video elements from your timeline to tape. I would suggest a more reliable tape format than MiniDV. If you can, try and master tapes to DVCAM, DVCPro, or another digital format. MiniDV will work, but it is more likely to have ‘dropout’ or some sort of digital glitch (so it might serve you well to watch the segments once they are layed to tape, to make sure they are clean). An important step, if possible, is to utilize both channels of audio (left and right) on your tape to separate both your music and your dialogue. If you put music on the left channel and dialogue on the right channel, it will be much easier to replace a Voice-Over, or change a cut of music in the future because the VO and music won’t be mixed together. At this point your completed video elements are saved, so now we must archive the elements used to build the project. From here you’ll need a CD (or in some cases a DVD) to burn the rest of your data. We will call this an Elements Disc. The first thing you’ll want to make sure you keep copies of is all of the paperwork involved with the project. Emails, contracts, invoices, notes and other important items should be kept on a disc that you can easily access. Another folder on your “Elements Disc” should contain all of the still graphics or pictures imported into the project. As you’ll see in a bit, the reason we do this is so if you ever need to rebuild your entire project, you will have all the media that the project files will try to refrence. It is also wise to put any music tracks on to your disc, so that you have access to the full unedited files. The final folder include all of the program project files from whatever editor you use. If you used Avid or FCP, there should be a neatly organized folder with your “Project Files” clearly labeled. Basically, any non-media files from your editor should be saved. This is essential if you ever try and rebuild the project within the editor. When you go back to make changes the following will happen: you will click on your project file and all of your media will be offline (obviously!), your project files include the most important data that includes notes about what media went where. The file won’t actually have the media in it (that would take up too much space), but it will know where it referenced those files. Then you will start reconnecting the still graphics and music from your Elements Disc. If titles were built within the editor, your editor should be able to regenerate them. If you labeled your tapes correctly and used timecode while digitizing, then re-digitizing the video should not be difficult. Your editor will ask for your to reconnect the media by importing a tape with a given name (this is why you should name each new tape you put into your deck or else they will all say “new tape”) into the deck. From here the editor should be able to digitize the original files and reconnect the media. So your set for editing, but you still have a few steps in the archiving process. If you use a third party compression program, you’ll want to make sure you save a copy with the correct settings. Also, you’ll want to save the program files from whatever DVD authoring program you use and any associated artwork for menus, etc. Do not save an .m2v files or large media. The point to save project files and not all of the media is that you can save yourself a lot of space and it is not difficult to regenerate or recompress files, it just takes a little time to finish. If you follow these steps, you will have a thorough way to archive your projects and put them to bed. You will be able to sleep soundly, knowing that when a client comes calling with unforseen changes, or a drive crashes you can go back and recreate your work.

MiniDV vs DVCAM vs HDV tapes

eyedeaworx — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 01:22:43 +0000

This is a report on a test ran at our production facility recently. We had read the articles and heard from fellow producers that MiniDV, DVCAM and HDV tapes were essentially interchangeable. We decided to actually test this theory on are Sony HV1U Camera which supports all three formats.

This is a report on a quick and not too thorough test ran at our production facility recently. We had read the reports and heard from fellow producers that MiniDV, DVCAM and HDV tapes were essentially interchangeable. We decided to actually test this theory on are Sony HV1U Camera which supports all three formats. I’ll cut to the chase… all three formats performed wonderfully as you would expect them too on MiniDV tapes. We shot DVCAM and HDV with our standard MiniDV tape and the result was perfect.

Another reason we were most interested in seeing if MiniDV tapes could be swapped for DVCAM/HDV is price. DVCAM tapes are expensive and HDV are ridiculous, upwards of $25 from some retailers, but MiniDV tapes can be found anywhere for about $5. So for those of you who are in a pinch for cash (or just can’t get your hands on any of the higher grade formats), MiniDV is a viable substitute.

However, there is a downside you should all be aware about. DVCAM and HDV tapes are more expensive for a reason, they are higher quality. And I don’t mean visual quality of the image, but the amount of drop our and errors when recording to tape is lower with these higher grade tapes.

In the end using MiniDV as an HDV or DVCAM substitute might fit your needs from both a technological and economical standpoint. But remember if its piece of mind you want, staying with the tape format that you’re recording at might make you feel better during those live events.