January 27, 2008

Internet Wrap-Up for Dance and the Arts: Marketing, Mobile, Video, Music, Games and Funding

- Review with photos of New York City Ballet new branding and advertising campaign - also read comments [via Danciti]. Promotional write-up about City Ballet campaign here. City Ballet website updated with new logo, color scheme and videos.

- What does rise of creative cultural consumers mean for the arts? When Internet users, especially Generation Y, create online content reflecting their artistic and entertainment interests, should marketers be considering new approaches to engaging these more involved and influential audiences? My answer is obviously yes. Read post in The Cultural Consumer.

- Apple ad campaign breaks borders. Read about and view latest anti-PC banner campaign from home of the Macs. The idea seems so simple upon reflection but captivating in execution. Write-up on Lost Remote and 360 Digital Influence. See screen shot on 360 Digital Influence - seeing actual Flash-based video ad is more effective, but campaign doesn't seem to be on Yahoo any longer.

- Mobile game in Madrid, called QR-Kill, consists of players using cell phones with cameras, and each player wearing a QR Code (two-dimensional bar code) on his or her back. Objective of game is to take picture of competitor's QR Code, which includes the person's name and SMS address, and then texting them. Once you text person, they are "dead" and out of game. That's it. These urban, mobile games are increasing in popularity. Any possibilities for dance? [via Smart Mobs]

- Toyota and Arthur Murray have teamed-up to create a reality-type dance competition as part of the car manufacturer's exhibition at this past week's auto show in Washington, DC. Contestants were partnered with ballroom instructors from the dance studio chain in an effort to win a Toyota. You can watch Arthur Murray ads and dance competition videos. [via Free to Dance]

- Add hotspots with links and text to your videos with Asterpix. Watch video of how this works here. Then, you can embed video or specific section of video on your site or blog. These types of video annotation tools have range of applications for dance, especially in dance writing and education. Also, take a look at Overlay.tv. [via Mashable]

- Qik and Livecastr are new applications for live video broadcasting from mobile devices and camcorders. [via TechCrunch]

- YouTube ramps-up mobile offerings making large percentage of videos available for high-end mobile devices--visit YouTube mobile page. While this development will accelerate delivery of video content to small screens, there are still limitations and roadblocks as pointed out by Last100.

- ReadWriteWeb on latest news from popular Last.fm music site, which will be streaming large number of full-length tracks. Since music sites get much more traffic than dance website, why aren't all types of dancers doing more music videos that are then featured on these (and other) sites? Here's Last.fm profile of neo-tango group Gotan Project and their video page.

- TechCrunch on the "YouTube" room at Davos conference. It would be easy to set-up something comparable at dance and arts events and a good way to encourage bloggers and amateur/professional media creators to conduct video interviews, take pictures and write about performances.

- Through Beth Kanter's blog, How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, I came across America's Giving Challenge. This fundraising program gives $50,000 to good causes based-upon online voting. It seems that dance companies and especially their outreach efforts would be good candidates for such programs. America's Giving Challenge only has five days left, but I'm sure there are other similar upcoming programs.

- Is digital sharing of creative content legal or illegal? Or should it be legal or illegal? A huge question. Do artists and arts organizations work to protect their creative work from unauthorized YouTube distribution or do they work on premise that the more video that is out there the better? A video posted to Creative Commons blog that takes position that copying is fair. I think answer is more challenging than video portrays.

- I'm intrigued by experimentations and diverse approaches to funding the arts and creative endeavors. Adam Forest Huttler on Fractured Atlas blog writes about San Francisco-based "The Thing." Essentially, you pay annual subscription of $120 to receive 4 artworks from contemporary artists.

- New report, "Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life" (PDF), by Rik Panganiban. Read about report.

- Robin Good's Internet Video Publishing: A Beginner's Guide offers comprehensive overview of creating, editing, publishing and monetizing video.

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