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Content Marketing & Web Design Lessons from HBO's Westworld

Content Marketing & Web Design Lessons from HBO's Westworld | Must Design | Scoop.it

Web Design Lessons from Westworld

This Curagami post shares Five Content Marketing Lessons from HBO's Westworld such as:

  • Show Don't Tell
  • Tease Never Bore
  • Beauty is half the Battle
  • Believe and MOVE
  • Create Another Loop


http://www.curagami.com/content-marketing-five-lessons-from-hbo-westworld/ 

Lessons don't end there. HBO's Westworld uses design in ways web developers and designers should steal including: 

  • Design should speak to and deepen your story lines
  • There is not half measures in design, all in or nothing
  • Create space around your designs, don't overwhelm
  • A few little things done very well often work better than many things done poorly

 

Design & Web Stories

Websites must tell stories, stories consistent with and supporting brands represented. Look at the examples in our YouTube video (https://youtu.be/IC4KHAIZKWM ) and particularly REI.com for ways to blend your brand's message and site design. 

No Half Measures

You either believe in your designs, copy, website and brand or you don't. There are no half measures online. Half measures are like fear. Visitors can smell fear and know when they are being manipulated. Every webpage is s statement and you either believe in what you are doing or you don't. See the Red Bull example in the video for the impact BELIEF can have on marketing and movement creation. 

Space
Great Designs need SPACE to breathe. White space may be the most important part of web design few think about. In our rush to crowd everything in we violate HBO's brilliant use of space, time and an unhurried process. HBO isn't trying to overwhelm or flood us into submission.

 

HBO would rather create one incomplete thread after another and leave them and us hanging. Space is confidence. When you're confident in your product, brand or site you do what you believe and learn from every interaction. When you keep throwing things at customers hoping they will comply, they never do btw, your marketing looks chaotic and confusing. Confused customers do many things buying and advocating are rarely among them. 

Brilliant Little Things
Have you noticed how DARK the Westworld lab is? If you're wondering why Westworld's titles are so amazing look no further than the dark lab. Creating the CGI needed to have a cool lab is expensive. Better to create a great title sequence and leave the lab a little seedy and rundown since doing so saves money and helps the plot. 

Websites can't look "seedy" so much these days, but they can do a few things brilliantly and let the credit spread. When asked how teams I've managed made over $30M in online sales I often explain it was what we DIDN'T do that mattered most. 

The list of things we needed to do was always infinite, so we were strict in the very few things we did and could do. HBO proves the point. Spending millions on the lab would rob the show of it's seedy underbelly. Better to create a great title sequence with a few brilliant pieces like the robot dipper and the "world overview" than try and do it all. 

Find our Content Marketing tips from Westworld on Curagami:

 

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Design Revolutions Arrives At Curagami Thanks To Scoopit Bus

Design Revolutions Arrives At Curagami Thanks To Scoopit Bus | Must Design | Scoop.it

Design Revolutions Now On Curagami
Finally decided to use @Scoop.it's easy to use embed tool. The tool makes it easy to add content curation to a blog. Simply copy the embed code and your Scoops appear inside your blog. 

Why would you want Scoops on a blog? Content curation has more reach and costs less than content creation. Content curation is or can become a big help to content creation.  

The "4th Estate" for Scoop.it is finding ways to bring the easy content curation Scoop.it creates with a company's content marketing. Scoop.it's easy to use embed (you embed the feed) bridges the 4th estate of content marketing. Well done! 

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5 Holiday Website Design Tips - A Haiku Deck by Martin Smith & Team Curagami

5 Holiday Website Design Tips - A Haiku Deck by Martin Smith & Team Curagami | Must Design | Scoop.it
This holiday selling season (2014) will happen as close to real time as any thanks to the social / mobile web. Listening and curating are going to be important, but so is tapping the nostalgia and spirit of the season in creative and collaborative ways.

Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

add your insight...

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Designing For Community: Master Blasters & Galleries - Curagami

Designing For Community: Master Blasters & Galleries - Curagami | Must Design | Scoop.it

Master Blasters
When everything is social community rules. Curagami our Triangle Startup Factory funded startup is working on helping ecommerce merchants and content marketers validate the ROI of social and content marketing. Community is a CSF, Critical Success Factor, because community is what creates an army of advocates.

This post is about how to win the hearts and minds of your most important customers - those willing to advocate your products, services and web content.

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Adding Flipboard to Curagami Was Easy, Here's How

Adding Flipboard to Curagami Was Easy, Here's How | Must Design | Scoop.it

"Adding Flipboard to Curagami.com Was Easy
Adding Flipboard to our blo was easy. Grab the embed code, put the code into a page and you generate the small linked chip in the post. We decided to create a large image and link that too. 

We wish the flipping experience was on WP, but there are plugins that provide a flipping experience. 

Read More"

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Wiki-ization Of Marketing: Here, There, Everywhere A Wiki

Wiki-ization Of Marketing: Here, There, Everywhere A Wiki | Must Design | Scoop.it

Here A Wiki, There A Wiki, Everywhere A Wiki
What is a Wiki if not an invitation to create online community. The "open source" like collaboration Wiki's provide is a blueprint for creation of online community. After months working on http://www.Curagmai.com we've discovered how close Wikis are to...well everything.

Wiki Ideas To Steal Include:


* Open Source Like Content Collaboration.

* Use community to steer and de-spam ecosystem.
* Depend mostly on social reward.
* A healthy and competitive contest never hurts.

* Feature and thank contributors.
* Provide ways for contributors to know where they stand vis-à-vis other contributors.
* Create ways contributors can follow and communicate with each other.
* Include ways for contributors to create mini-tribes.

* Make sure "rules of the road" are understood and published.

* Communication with sponsoring agents must be easy too.
* Normalize greatness by sharing across ecosystem.
* Role of sponsors becomes more curators than creators.
* Ask for help.
* Provide social rewards (such as features) to contributors.
* Create ways to identify contributors in the world (t-shirts, stickers).
* Appreciate, be nice and thankful (always no matter what).

Following a few simple rules will dramatically increase the most important content you can't buy (User Generated Content or #UGC) and build sustainable online community. Sustainable online community means costs go DOWN even as other material rewards (UGC, followers, traffic, money) go UP.

This Haiku Deck is about why we are all in the Wiki business whether we realize it or not AND how to design for the Wiki-ization of marketing, brands and online community.

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Design For Lists: Use List.ly To Blow Up Your Blog Traffic via @Mike_Allton

Design For Lists: Use List.ly To Blow Up Your Blog Traffic via @Mike_Allton | Must Design | Scoop.it
The first major struggle for business owners who want to use a blog for content marketing is creating content. With the dearth of content being created daily, it's certainly a challenge to come up with anything helpful and interesting to say. The second major struggle for business owners is getting people to actually visit their site and read their blog posts. The most brilliant writing in the world won't do you much good if no one reads it.
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Great post by my friend Mike Allton on a tool I'm convinced is a secret web in the right designer's hands - List.ly. I'm working on embedded a Top 10 Summer Website Designs list now in Curagami (http://www.Curagami.com) so stay tuned.

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Web and Graphic Design Trends 2014 – Infographic via istock (Midyear Check)

Web and Graphic Design Trends 2014 – Infographic via istock (Midyear Check) | Must Design | Scoop.it

This is the most shared, visited and viewed post on Design Revolution. December is always HOT for trend predictions.  Interesting to look over December's predictions to see if they are coming true:

1 & 2 Diverse Women & Hands Dirty Dads
Gladly we are seeing both of these trends. Loved Dove's What Dad's Really Do campaign
http://adweek.it/1kYVCwI

3. Beards
Yes beards on on the rise thanks to sports stars and Hollywood.

4. Lens Flare
We are seeing LESS stock art (thankfully) and more "real" photos and videos. Marketers are starting to realize sharing warts and all helps create authenticity and a sense of immediacy.

5. Human as Robot
Not sure this trend is happening any more or less than it already was.

6. Cameras we wear
I think Google Glass is sucking up much of this "wearable" trend at the moment, but  GoPro hasn't done badly (lol).

7. Multi-racial Models (was STRONG going into the year, stronger now).

8. World Cup
Was huge and America STILL doesn't get soccer :).

9. Witches and bye bye vampires (end of True Blood signals this trend is right on and about time).

10. Handcrafted Vectors
This is another "break down the perfection" trend and seeing it too (like the lens flare or nonperfect but more real photo).

11. Instagrammy FOODies - this is BLOWING UP almost as fast as "selfies".

12. Experiences over Things = Team Curagami (http://www.curagami.com ) is placing a HUGE bet on this one as we see the future of ecommerce being about the quality of interactions instead of their quantity.

13. Creative Collaboration - another one team Curagmai is betting on HUGE and we are seeing demand grow. Think about your life. I like to say I don't "passively consume anything" anymore. If I can't bend, shape and spin the content I go somewhere else. If the content isn't fascinating, cool and fun I go somewhere else. Curagami makes this "ambassador" interaction easy so your customers can advocate and share your brand.

TRIBES are the key going forward.

I would say IStock got way more RIGHT than wrong with their December design predictions. What do you think?

Amanda Groover's curator insight, December 15, 2013 10:43 PM

Marketing in this decade not only needs but REQUIRES the ability to think outside of the box!  Look at some of the trends appearing in a marketing campaign near you  in the next year!

Jakarta Web Developer's curator insight, August 11, 2014 5:15 PM

Web and Graphic Design Trends 2014 – Infographic via istock (Midyear Check)

Alfredo Corell's curator insight, August 12, 2014 3:06 PM

Interactive infographic:
http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=1619#.Uq1MuI0hZjF