Top digital stories this week, incl. Google, motion design & the Pope!

* Featured, Brass digital roundup — By Brass Team on November 18, 2011 11:41 am

It’s time to bring you our pick of some of the digital stories that have caught our eye again! This week we’re talking motion design, Google, LinkedIn groups and Benetton’s controversial Unhate campaign. Have a read and share your thoughts with us using the comments box at the bottom.

I kissed a Pope and I liked it

Leah Kayles, Social Media Editor

United Colours of Benetton’s Unhate campaign has been causing a bit of a stir this week, with its cleverly doctored images of various world leaders getting up close and personal with each other, including President Obama and Hu Jintao of China, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and other unlikely pairs.

The message is clear: love not hate (although what this has got to do with colourful cardies I’m not quite sure), but one image in particular didn’t go down too well among a certain group of people. The Vatican failed to see the funny side of an image showing the Pope appearing to smooch an Egyptian imam and it issued a statement saying it would take legal action to ban use of the photo, so we won’t risk including it here (but Google image search is a pretty handy thing…)

Benetton have since removed the offending photo from the campaign and have issued an apology, although it’s hard to believe that the people behind Benetton’s PR didn’t see this coming a mile off and won’t be just a little bit happy that we’re all talking about them as a result!

What is motion design?

George Hurrell, Digital Designer

If someone asks me what i do for a job, I usually mention one of the increasingly biggest parts; motion graphics/motion design. Quite often I’ll see a blank expression looking back at me. I then have to explain what is involved and how it is used. The actual discipline of motion graphics has been around for some time now and we see it everywhere from TV titles to infographics and data visualisation.

Due to the constant advancement of technology and it being more readily available to Joe Public, this discipline is forging a path in the industry but isn’t always recognised as fully as it should be.

It is also emerging as an art form in itself. From huge installations to beautifully crafted short films.

A pair of French designers, Paola Boileau and Kook Ewo, have set themselves the goal of opening the world of motion design to the public by creating a centre dedicated to the this medium where people can exhibit, meet and learn.

“We think motion design is not considered at its right level now. This art form is creatively exploding. It is very important for us to consider that right now and not wait until all these brilliant artists are dead to be exhibited. ”

They are based in Paris but have set up a website and created a short film that give a nice overview of motion design and a bit of history to give it context.

So if you’re new to digital, want to know how motion design to be used in your next project (to bring it to life or add value to a job) check out the video, and watch this interview with the French duo.

Google Music takes a bite out of Apple

Mark Kelly, Digital Solutions Director

I just saw that Google has released a new music service,  intended to take on Facebook’s Spotify tie-up, but with music linked to your Google + account, and of course to square up to iTunes. The Google Music service has a huge song base already (around 13 million songs) which compares against around 15 Million (according to Wikipedia) for Spotify and 18 Million or more at the end of 2010 for iTunes (so 20+million now maybe).

A couple of things jumped out for me; it’ll be easier for me as an Android user to buy and sync tracks for my phone. Not that its such a hassle now but it’s a two stage process and I use an app called Double Twist which links my iTunes purchases and playlists with my Android  smartphone.

Secondly, it may make Google+ more social. I’m still not Google+ ing much but music can be a real conversation starter so it may oil the wheels of adoption in that space. That said, I don’t always want to know what my mates are listening to on Spotify / Facebook.

With Android now having 52% of the global smartphone OS market (Gartner Nov 2011) bands will be making the most of the band hub feature that Google Music will offer, potentially putting some squeeze on Facebook band pages and impacting on ad revenue in that space. You’ll be able to use Google Music on your desktop browser too of course.

And there may be a great tie in with YouTube , letting you purchase a tune straight from a video that fires you up. I sometimes mooch over at the NeedleDrop review channel and it would be great to click through a review / video to purchase a track that catches my eye.  Maybe that’s planned, although I can’t see anything on the YouTube blog.

Google Music is only just out in the USA so we’ll have to wait to see how it develops in the UK market.

Google Verbatim Search

Jamie McGrath, Senior Search Manager

Google has announced a way to display search results without any personalisation such as pages you’ve visited, spelling corrections and similar searches. This new feature will be welcomed by many SEOs as it allows you to easily see exactly what your search listing looks like and where it ranks without any personalisation.

However, that probably isn’t a good thing for SEOs…. considering most search results ARE personalised and, by default, users’ search results are manipulated by misspellings, synonyms and pages you’ve visited or +1’d. It would be much wiser to check the traffic you’re receiving from your targeted keywords rather than use Verbatim Search as a measurement of how successful your SEO efforts have been.

Looking at the broader SEO landscape and how aspects such as Latent Semantic Indexing (similar terms), misspellings and social metrics effect your visibility in search will form a much more rounded search strategy.

LinkedIn lauches group stats

Claire Robinson, Digital Development Director

Ever wondered how successful LinkedIn groups are?

LinkedIn has now launched stats to answer this question, so you can choose your groups more wisely.

Growth rate, number of members, location, seniority of members and recent activity are all covered, so you can get a idea of which groups are the most active and influential and made up of the most like-minded people,  helping you decide which are worth being a part of.

Tags: benetton, google verbatim, linkedin, motion design, search, seo, unhate campaign