The Google homepage today features a cartoon homage to a range of famous films, including “Spartacus,” “West Side Story,” “Man With the Golden Arm,” and the immortal Hitchcock thriller “Vertigo.” What do all those movies have in common? They all feature the work of the pioneering designer and artist Saul Bass, who did for the opening credit montage what Rodin (another recent Google doodle honoree) did for sculpture.

Mr. Bass was born in 1920 in the Bronx and educated at the Art Students League and Brooklyn College. Initially, he worked as a graphic designer – he established his own firm, Saul Bass Associates, in 1946 – but in 1954, he was contacted by the director Otto Preminger, who wanted Bass to help him design the opening credits for the movie The Man With the Golden Arm.

As the New York Times notes, before Bass arrived on the scene, opening credits were “little more than perfunctory afterthoughts rarely more creative than having the names of the movie’s stars and production staff revealed by the turning pages of the book.” Bass changed all that, creating for The Man With the Golden arm a heavily-stylized (and immediately memorable) opening montage.

A string of high-profile gigs followed. Bass did the wild, hypnotic opening sequence for Vertigo; and the funky, frenetic, LED-inspired lead-in for Ocean’s 11. He was also called upon to provide on-set advice – Bass helped design the final battle scene in Stanley Kubrick‘s epic Spartacus and the terrifying shower scene in Psycho.

By the 1980s, Bass was spending less time in Hollywood and more time in the world of corporate advertising. Among his most prominent clients were Minolta, Quaker Oats, Warner Communications, and AT&T. Interestingly, his design work in this period was just as iconic as his film work – consider his memorable reworking of the old AT&T bell logo.

“The fact of the matter is, I want everything we do – that I do personally, that our office does – to be beautiful,” Bass told an interviewer in 1986. “I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks that it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.”

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Bass had something of a late-period revival. He handled, for instance, the opening credits for Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, and Casino – all movies directed by Martin Scorsese. Indeed, Mr. Scorcese, who penned the forward to a 2011 book on Bass, has remembered being “equally astonished” with each new piece of art that Bass produced.

“Before I ever met Saul Bass, before we worked together, he was a legend in my eyes,” Scorcesewrote. “His designs, for film titles and company logos and record albums and posters, defined an era. In essence, they found and distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialised world. They gave us a series of crystallised images, expressions of who and where we were and of the future ahead of us. They were images you could dream on. They still are.”

Bass, whom the New York Times later hailed as a “minimalist auteur,” died in Los Angeles, in 1996, at the age of 75. Wednesday would have been his 93rd birthday.

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

Moms Favor Brand Web Sites Over Social Media Facebook Pages

Master List of Testing Tools

by Allison Howen

Regardless of how talented your digital design team may be, it is always important to leverage testing tools to guarantee that your website is running at peak performance.

Luckily, there is a plethora of testing tools available, which can help Web workers examine everything from site speed and capabilities to conversion funnels and customer emotions.

However, before committing to a testing platform, it will serve you well to research the available options, as a tool that works for one business, may not for another. To get started, check out this diverse list of testing tools:

Quick Testing Tools

FiveSecondTest – This testing tool’s name is pretty self-explanatory, because FiveSecondTest enables users to quickly build and launch tests and review results. For example, once a user uploads a screenshot or mock-up, they simply need to set up questions and then launch the test. Then, test takers have five seconds to view the mock-up and answer the questions. FiveSecondTest collects responses and extracts the most frequent keywords so that test administrators can easily review results.

UserTesting.com – This on-demand usability testing tool enables Web workers to create tests and then either select participants from the company’s user panel or run tests with the user’s live site visitors. Typically, users receive test feedback within an hour, which includes videos of participants taking the test and written answers from a personalized questionnaire. Additionally, test administrators can interact with test takers by asking follow-up questions after the test has been completed.

Pingdom – This quick and easy-to-use tool enables Web workers to test the speed of their websites. It identifies and rates aspects of a website that are fast, slow and too big. Users can then analyze this information to optimize site speed and performance.

Load Impact – Website owners can find out how much traffic their site can handle with the Load Impact tool. This testing tool is based in the cloud, and provides users with large scale load tests with up to 50,000 simulated users, the ability to emulate multiple user type scenarios and real-time testing. The platform also generates reports that include multiple charts and measurement metrics.

Usabilla – The Usabilla platform provides Web workers with live feedback so that websites can be optimized based on the feedback of real-time customers. Unlike other solutions, Usabilla actually measures customer emotions through an interactive tab. When site visitors click on this tab they can rate any part of a website by selecting one of five different emotions. Furthermore, site visitors can also add tags or comments to provide more details about their experience.

Traditional Website Testing Tools

Maxymiser – Maxymiser’s MaxTEST solution provides website owners with A/B and Multivariate testing tools, which can help optimize the customer experience. The feedback is derived from live online traffic, which provides users with metrics that can be leveraged to enhance the brand experience in order to increase conversion rates and the number of repeat customers.

Monetate – The TestLab solution from Monetate enables users to create advanced A/B and multivariate tests. Users simply need to fill in the solution’s sentence-based test builder by answering Who, What, When and Why. Furthermore, TestLab offers multi-page testing campaign functionality, which allows users to build tests around various page types or conversion funnels in order to analyze customer experiences that span multiple website pages.

Sitecore – This testing solution is the best of both worlds because it is robust, yet easy to use. The solution helps users create A/B and multivariate tests to analyze page components or entire site items. Moreover, users don’t need a team of programmers to create tests because Sitecore offers easy-to-use building tools, including check boxes, sliders and wizards.

SiteSpect – SiteSpect offers testing tools for both A/B testing and multivariate testing. The company’s wizard-driven interface enables users to build and run tests quickly, as well as evaluate metrics both during and after each campaign. Additionally, users can conduct serial testing to optimize site performance even further.

Vertster – This multivariate testing software enables users to test features, such as logos, copy, conversion funnels, forms, messages price points and customer service messages. The platform is built around a point-and-click WYSIWYG test editor, which enables users to quickly create and launch tests. Vertster offers five different versions of its platform, which can be used to help anyone from entrepreneurs to enterprises.

LiveBall – Web workers can leverage the LiveBall platform to create and conduct both A/B and multivariate tests. It is important to note that this platform enables users to build tests without codes or developers. Tests can be created to analyze website items such as content, forms, messaging and offers.

Google Analytics Content Experiments – Website owners can test elements of their site with this testing tool that is integrated into Google Analytics. With Content Experiments, users can set goals inside of their Google Analytics account and then tweak site elements, such as page design, layout and content, to meet those goals.

Multi-Channel Testing Tools

Autonomy – This company’s multivariate testing solution enables users to test specific site elements, full-page structures, email, keywords and online advertisements. The platform also integrates with most Web content management systems and offers users customizable dashboards and robust reports so that they can make data-based decisions for better performance across channels.

Webtrends – The Webtrends online testing platform helps users optimize key performance indicators, such as conversion rates, form completions, lead captures and time spent on site. The platform’s team of testing experts help businesses plan, deploy and analyze testing results within months so that Web workers can improve engagement across all channels.

Adobe – Web workers can use the Adobe Test&Target tool to execute A/B or multivariate tests across all channels. The tests can be set up to target specific audience segments so that marketers are able to measure content’s effectiveness and relevance. Furthermore, the platform’s automated campaign management allows users to use self-optimizing campaigns to ensure that the most effective targeting scenarios are shown more often.

Have we left your favorite testing tool off this list? If so, please add it in the comment section below.

OMMA’s Agency of the Year Awards celebrate the agencies that were able to rise above the rest over the past year, the shops that represented the best of class in the online advertising community. Gold and silver awards will be presented to the top two overall agencies, as well as awards recognizing the agencies responsible for the year’s best media planning and buying, search campaigns, Web design and site development, and creative.

If you’re a CMO and you can’t explain your digital advertising metrics strategy in a paragraph or less, you’re in trouble.

In the early “wild west” days of digital, metrics and measurement were sketchy at best, and going with your gut was not at all unusual.  But gone are the days of guessing … of planning a campaign based on assumptions and hoping it will achieve your marketing goals.

It is to provide clear, actionable results to justify the dollars you are spending, especially in the still relatively uncharted and fast-changing waters of digital media.  There are three hard and fast rules every CMO or marketer should be following when considering digital advertising.
1. Establish Solid Goals
Are you building or supporting a brand? Driving traffic to a Web site?  Working on costumer conversion?
Pick one objective and stick to it.  Defining your objective at the outset will help benchmark performance later. Introducing a product, for example, is a goal.  Squeezing the most product sales out of a media buy is also a goal, but it is a different goal.

The metrics that define your success in reaching them also must be different. Performance measurement naturally depends on observing the metrics at the end.  But don’t forget to look at the metrics at the start. so you have the correct apples-to-apples reference point for your back-end metrics.
2. Measure The Right Metrics
Identify the correct Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for the goals you’ve set.  If you use the wrong metrics to measure success, you could see numbers that have little relation to achieving your desired goals, meaning you’ve lost both precious time and dollars.

If, for example, you have a media buy that is strategically planned to support a broad brand awareness goal, you need to be looking at the right metrics. In today’s Web-based world, everyone is obsessed with clicks.Ghey serve as a metric of response, not branding.

Branding metrics, on the other hand, are all about impression counts, interaction rates, frequency data, and placement performance. Before you reach any conclusions about the impact of your message outreach, be sure you’re measuring the right metrics.

When establishing the metrics you’ll be using, remember how quickly technology is moving.  Be careful that the metrics you establish today will still be relevant six months from now.

3. Measure Twice, Decide Once
Trying to obtain a solid performance sample? Don’t measure five times a day and change your campaign each time. Conversely, don’t wait until the campaign has been fully implemented before you begin the measuring process. Quantitative and qualitative research, supplemented with a solid metrics package reporting on your online buy, will provide all the data you need to make educated optimizing decisions throughout your branding campaign.

If you list your goals, then find the KPIs that report on those goals, you’ll be much better positioned to make the periodic, informed decisions necessary to optimize all of your campaign elements. But beware! Data is data. Don’t let it make the final decisions for you. Data, of course, needs to be factored into the overall decision-making process, but there is no substitute for expertise and experience, or your gut. Or a really savvy agency partner.

 

]]> http://grapevinestar.com/brands/2012/10/27/new-media-alert-digital-advertising-metrics-3-basics-for-cmos/feed/ 0 http://grapevinestar.com/brands/2012/10/20/tex-dunright-worlds-favorite-cowboy-mourns-the-death-by-public-burning-of-texas-state-fair-character-brand-big-tex-a-dallas-cowboy/ http://grapevinestar.com/brands/2012/10/20/tex-dunright-worlds-favorite-cowboy-mourns-the-death-by-public-burning-of-texas-state-fair-character-brand-big-tex-a-dallas-cowboy/#comments Sat, 20 Oct 2012 02:29:20 +0000 Jacob Miles http://grapevinestar.com/brands/?p=784

Tex DunRight - World Favorites Cowboy at MIPCOM & MIP JR

Grapevine, Texas’ Tex DunRight, world’s favorite cowboy is in mourning today due to the public burning of Big Tex at the the Texas State Fair.

Tex DunRight, born in Historic Grapevine, Texas and currently housed at the Dallas Puppet Theatre asks everyone to leave flowers at the place of Big Tex’s burning, Big Tex’s favorite flower is Texas Sun flowers. We all look forward to the return or rebirth of Tex DunRight next year.

Message from State Fair president Errol McKoy

State Fair president Errol McKoy wants fair goers to know that he appreciates your kind words and messages.  He sends his appreciation to the Dallas Fire Department and the City of Dallas Police Department for their quick response.   Mayor Rawlins took time from his busy schedule to appear in person.  It is testament to the importance that our icon,Big Tex, has on the city, its citizens, and Texas.   For 60 years, Big Tex has served the State Fair of Texas as its official host.  He’ll be in place next year for the opening of the 2013 season

Big Tex was a 52-foot tall statue and marketing icon of the annual State Fair of Texas held at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas. The figure has become a cultural icon of Dallas and Texas. Since 1952 Big Tex has served as a cultural ambassador to visitors, and the prime location in the fairgrounds serves as a traditional meeting point.

Background History on Tex DunRight’s best friend Big Texas

On October 19, 2012, the last weekend of the 2012 State Fair of Texas, Big Tex was destroyed by fire.

History, Big Tex, 1956

Origins

Kerens, Texas is known as the “Birthplace of Big Tex,” although his original incarnation was as a 49 foot (15 m) tall Santa Claus constructed from iron drill casing, papier mache, and unraveled rope in 1949.^[1] The statue was an idea of Howell Brister, manager of the Chamber of Commerce, to encourage holiday sales in the town, and the “World’s Largest Santa Claus” (a claim later disputed) stood over Colket Avenue for two holiday seasons — drawing press attention from as far away as Iran and Australia.^[2][3][4] Modeled after Kerens residents Ottis Franklin Spurlock and Hardy Mayo, the figure was built by members of the community who welded the frame, fabricated the body and sewed the clothing.^[5]

After two seasons excitement around the statue faded, and Kerns offered it up for sale. In 1951, State Fair president R. L. Thornton purchased Santa’s components for $750 and had artist Jack Bridges transform them into a cowboy, giving birth to big “Tex”.

1952 to 2012

Big Tex made his debut at the 1952 fair, dressed in denim jeans and a plaid shirt donated by the H. D. Lee Company of Shawnee Mission, Kansas.^[6] Mr. Artist Bridges used a photograph of his own face, a photograph of rancher Doc Simmons and a photograph of Will Rogers to create the new look.^[7] After the fair, his appearance was slightly altered to straighten his nose and correct an odd wink. It was in 1953 that Big Tex also began speaking. Using a custom-built recipromotor and a 75-watt speaker system housed in the figure’s head, Jack Bridges devised a way to create the illusion of natural speech with a swinging jaw.^[8] He also attended a convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota that year.^[9]

In 1955 Big Tex received his first new change of clothes, again fabricated by the H. D. Lee Company.^[10] After that year’s fair, he traveled to West Texas to participate in Abilene Christian College‘s 50th annual homecoming celebration.^[11] A 12-foot-tall, 19-foot long plastic model of a Hereford steer (called “The Champ”) accompanied Big Tex for the 1956 fair, but Big Tex was primarily displayed alone. During the 1950s Big Tex underwent further re-design, replacing the papier mache “skin” with fiberglass. The original head was put into storage and later sold at auction in 1993 to a Dallas collector. ^[12]

Big Tex, 2006

The State Fair of Texas announced the construction of a permanent, year-round statue of Big Tex in 1961, but the figure remained a seasonal feature appearing only during the fair.^[13] Instead, the Big Tex Circle display area was redesigned in 1966 with a larger mound.^[14]

Big Tex traveled to his hometown of Kerens, Texas in 1981 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the city.^[15] The figure continued to travel to various promotional events until the mid 1980s.

In 1997, Big Tex was given a skeletal makeover consisting of 4,200 feet of steel rods weighing 6,000 pounds. The new skeleton adjusted the posture and allowed for a new hand that waved to passersby, but kept the original head.^[16] Three years later his neck was animated, allowing it to turn; his mechanical mouth was also upgraded with a new system.^[17]

Big Tex celebrated his 50th birthday in 2002, receiving a giant birthday cake and an AARP card. Shades of gray were added to the hair and wrinkles were added the figure’s hands and face as Big Tex continued to “age.” ^[18] In 2012 the State Fair of Texas celebrated Big Tex’s 60th birthday.

Destruction

On the morning of October 19, 2012 (the final weekend of the 2012 State Fair of Texas, and on Big Tex’s 60th birthday) a fire started inside the framework of Big Tex. The figure’s clothing, face and hat were completely destroyed in minutes as onlookers watched. While an official investigation has not yet taken place, state fair officials believe that the fire was due to an electrical short.^[19][20]

News of the fire received national attention, and fair officials have committed to rebuilding Big Tex “bigger and better” in time for the 2013 fair.

Clothing

Big Tex generally receives a new shirt and jeans every 3 seasons, currently designed and fabricated by the Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company.

He wears size 70 boots, a 75 gallon hat, a size 100 180/181 shirt made from nylon awning fabric and 284W/185L XXXXXL pair of Dickies jeans. The pants alone require 72 yards of denim and weighe in at 65 pounds. Over the years the outfit has been accessorized with other articles associated with that year’s State Fair of Texas theme. Big Tex has suffered a few garment mishaps over the years. In 1961, Hurricane Carla’s winds tore his clothes. In 1970, his huge shirt was stolen from a pickup truck and received much publicity.^[21]

Voices of Big Tex

Big Tex welcomes fairgoers with his friendly drawl of “Hoooowwwdeee, fooolllllks!” and makes regular announcements throughout the duration of the State Fair of Texas. His booming voice has been played by only a few men over six decades, who perform every day of the fair from a booth known as the “doghouse.”

Former disc jockey Al Jones was the first voice of Big Tex, filling the role for only one season in 1953. Radio announcer Jim Lowe, the most well-known voice of Big Tex, performed for 39 continuous years until 1998. Dan Alexander stepped up for the next two years. In 2001 a statewide competition and contest, held live at the Cotton Bowl, announced Sonny Ray Stolz as the next voice of Big Tex. But after only one season he was replaced with runner-up Bill Bragg in 2002. ^[22]

Depictions

Centennial Liquor sign in Dallas, Texas referencing Big Tex

• In an episode of the FOX-TV animated series of King Of The Hill, Big Tex is the focus of the 8th Season episode titled “Girl, You’ll Be a Giant Soon,” which first aired April 25, 2004, Hank Hill is upset that the State Fair of Texas will not allow propane Bar-B-Que grills to be used. Luanne Platter, Hill’s niece, decides to protest this by climbing inside Big Tex and staging a sit-in protest.
• The image of Big Tex and the statue’s iconic stance is commonly used in regional advertising campaigns.
• The State Fair of Texas uses Big Tex in all marketing material, including the fair’s website domain name (www.bigtex.com).
• In 2005 the State Fair of Texas created the Big Tex Choice Awards, an annual food competition between vendors of the fair. The trophy merges the Academy Award’s Oscar body with an oversized Big Tex head.
• Big Tex is featured on the cover of the 1983 comic “The Uncanny X-Men at the State Fair of Texas.”^[23]