Archive for the ‘Ecards’ category

Newer Entries »

50,000 Beer Drinking Canadians say Cheers to a Dead Man on Facebook

September 29th, 2009

Canadian beer drinkers are responding to the TV campaign to join in the celebration of Alexander Keith’s birthday by going to Facebook and signing one of his free ecards. As of this morning, the Keith’s facebook page had picked up over 50,000 fans, with over 12,000 signatures on 3,000 birthday cards. It is one of the most successful marketing campaigns of the year, and a great example of a cross media campaign that uses social media to connect with people online.

The marketing teams for Keith’s and its parent firm Labatt’s have hit a home run by engaging beer fans to interact with their brand, and to enable a viral campaign as they share news of the contest with their online friends.

The Alexander Keith’s brand has long been steeped in tradition, and the maritime beer drinking spirit of good times. A few lucky winners of the contest get invited to travel to a big party, and thousands more dream of winning a prize.

Some marketers are looking for even more engaging campaigns where fans not only type in their comments, but also add in their pictures and videos – perhaps even mashing up their personal content with the brand contest content. The recently released Mashup Arts application for videos cards and social cards, or the Animoto application with its pro image effects can backstop these campaigns.

Expect to see many more variations of these cross media campaigns as first movers take advantage of these social media techniques to connect with their customers.

No comments »

Posted in Birthday Cards, Ecards, Facebook

Tags:

Video Ecards from “All of Us” this Grandparent’s Day

September 8th, 2009

Last year John and Vivian DeVries received quite a few heartfelt calls on Grandparent’s Day. They have 7 grandchildren, and like the other 500 million grandparents’ out there, they like to stay in touch and share laughs with their families.

We believe that John and Vivian would just love to receive a family video ecard with clips and photo’s of their children and grandchildren, but is there enough time for someone to pull it all together? Could you do it on time, and organize it all?

We had this in mind when we developed our free Social Card and online greeting cards engine. No need to do everything from scratch, just search and grab popular community images from Flickr that have been shared by artists under their Creative Commons program. Of course you will add your own pics directly from Facebook, or upload them from your computer. Sprinkle humor by pimping the pictures with bubbles and comments – yes silly comments and insults can make for funny ecards.

You can search and add comical video clips from YouTube, or use their built-in webcam application and create a short and sweet video greeting to embed in your card. Maybe you just want to add a clip that you uploaded from your phone or camcorder. Either way, by integrating with the YouTube application, you can be comfortable that your clips will play properly anywhere on the web.

Now that you have started a Video ecard, you can invite the rest of the family to join in the toast, and set the deadline for them to contribute to “this Saturday night.”

You do not have to organize everyone’s stuff, nor worry about their different picture formatting and email types; the application enables them to add and preview the content they want, when they want. Everyone who collaborates will have their avatar shown on the card, and all the artists receive attribution for their work.

So Sunday morning you can go back, make any last minute revisions or appropriate edits, and send the Family video ecard. The application will automatically mark everything private so your sharing stays in the family, but if you like, you can post it to Facebook and other sites to share the stories.

A video ecard from All of Us – we think that would make John and Vivian’s day, and be cherished for a long, long time.

No comments »

Posted in Ecards, Grandparents Day

Tags:

Making Occasions Social

June 10th, 2009

Building Social Cards together with friends at Mashup Arts:

Have you ever received a greeting card from ‘All of Us’?  You know, the ones where every one passes around a pen and frantically signs it before you come through the door to the choir yelling ‘surprise’?

You’ve probably also seen some of your friend’s photos or videos posted to their Facebook or Myspace page and scrolled through the litany of comments about someone’s fashion choice, silly expression or compromising position.

Whether it’s offline or on, friends converge to share well wishes, opinions and to add their two cents to a story.

Online it’s easy to send around photos or get messages to people, but we noticed there really isn’t a place where friends can come together to add photos, videos and comments to create collaborative graphical stories.  We created Social Cards so friends can work together on a birthday card, to commemorate a great vacation, or simply to create graphical stories everyone can contribute to.

What is always so surprising is the creativity of our users.  We’ve seen people bring their friends together to make a touching get well Mashup Card, a detailed ‘birthday times’ newspaper card that chronicles all the famous people born on the same day, and others sharing content to celebrate Britney Spears’ rollercoaster career.

Take any Mashup Card you create and click on ‘Social Card’ to start inviting your friends to contribute. You can set the timeframe you want your friends to contribute their content by, and even preset a date and time the final Social Card will be sent to the recipient. Once your friends receivetheir invitation to contribute email they can start adding photos, slideshows, videos and even comment on other content that has already been posted.  As the creator of the Social Card, you’ll be able to make the final edits and send it off to its destination.  After the card is sent, the conversation continues, because the recipient can view the card, and add their own comments.  Also, anyone can share a Social Card on theirFacebook page.

We hope you like our Social Cards. If you have any questions or feedback, please drop us a note at feedback@mashuparts.com

No comments »

Posted in Ecards, Mashup Arts, Mashups

Tags: