Marketing In A Mobile Digital World

Between the last event in December of 2012, and October 2013 I decided to take a little break from photography and focus more on online marketing. I did do some photography but I figured that since everything is becoming so digital, I might as well learn more about online marketing because I one day want to open a business, so I need to be prepared. I don't want to end up behind not knowing how to operate a device like how my parents are always calling me up to ask how to put a new phone number in. And speaking of phones, they're becoming more and more powerful by the second becoming a lot of people's companion they can't do without.

 I remember getting excited when I seen the new Motorola RAZR come out with it's "razor" thin form factor and it's beautiful 176x220 display. This phone didn't play, but if you look at that now it's basically a child's toy that children at the age of 5 get as a hand me down, because phone are shooting 4k video like that new Samsung Galaxy S5. 4k was taken from the professional format for filming of 4096x2160 pixels, and it refers to it being roughly 4000 pixels across a screen where 1080 and 720 have 1080 and 720 lines respectively.

Why am I talking about powerful phones? Because I believe that mobile devices are the best way to get any message across to your target audiences, assuming of course that your communicating to them about something relevant or you run the risk of just pissing that person off.

With social media, faster data transfer rates from mobile telecommunication technology, and more powerful phones, people are shopping, booking events, paying bills, watching movies, making movies, playing MMORPG's, and more all on their handheld devices. Smartphones, or what I like to call it, mobile computers, are taking up a lot of people's attention and this is where marketers focus are now shifting towards. But not only are mobile computers important but just being able to see the Internet as a whole shape shift into something so involved in everyday lives to the point where people can't live without it. Kinda scary but it's the truth. Some of the largest companies run solely on the net and would obviously be nothing without it, but it's not like the top dogs having anything to be worried though... but still... it would be bad.

I learned quite a bit in that time that I even got myself a Digital Analytics Fundamentals certificate when the course was made available. Photography is still my passion though but like I said before, I trying to become some sort of marketing machine where I know a large amount of the disciplines involved in marketing and can do a lot on my own. 

Kool-Aid's Finished Video

SHAZAAM!!! We FINALLY completed mr. Kool-Aid's music video. It took a lot of hours of strict coaching from Kelz but we finally managed to get it completed. One of Kelz main concerns though was that I blurred the shots way too much, but I thought it would've been a cool effect but I was completely wrong. Instead I should've kept most of the shots focused and maybe some blurred rather than the other way around.

We used Apple's video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. It all seems so intimidating at first with all the functions and options to choose from but once you get the hang of it (and actually learn how to use the bloody thing) then you begin to realize how much of a great tool it really is. It gives you a lot of freedom to do what you like and get the final product that you want, come to life. But of course, we had many issues that we ran into but I'll only go through a few, I don't want my hands to cramp up typing it all up.

Our issues began with trying to find a good concept to base the video on using the clips that we have. Now, due to time constraints of last week, we couldn't get many shots as we liked so we had a limited pile of clips to work with. But after careul analysis and planning we finally came up with one but then came another problem which was trying to sync the music with the video properly. Finding the right clip to go with the right lip sync was a difficult task, especially when you have a concept of how you would like the video to look but don't have many good shots to work with because most of them were... blurred... The final issue I'm going to mention is where we lost a good chuck of edits that was really good but lost by accidental deletion. It was a whole minute of video, just before the hook kicks in that I accidently messed up on. We had an amazing intro to the music video, one that I was proud to call my own, one that took many hours to do, and I fiddled around too much and lost it when the computer froze. We still managed to make another intro, but the magic couldn't be recaptured. I don't want to dwell on it too much but it hurt when we couldn't retrieve it due to us setting it on "save every 30 seconds", but oh well, lesson learned.

I learned quite a bit in the video editing department but only a fraction of what can be done. I do plan on getting a deeper understanding of how to do it and I surely will. You will one day see a commercial, or even maybe a music video created by me. Now I want to see what I can do with photography. One would think that film and photography go hand in hand, and in some cases thats true, but upon further investigation, they seem to be woooooorlds apart. Now I need to find a coach to help me get started on this, and I think I have a pretty good idea on who to contact. But as for now, enjoy this clip of the music video that I managed to sneak away with my Blackberry. Kool-Aid didn't want me to put his video out but consider this to be a "leak". I refuse to come here empty handed ;)