Media and Marketing News Headline Updated on August 20, 2020

The headline on 20 Aug 2020

Poly Appoints Dave Shull As President And CEO. Plantronics, Inc., or Poly, has appointed Dave Shull as President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the company’s Board of Directors, effective September 8, 2020.

USAV Announces Partnership With Visionary Solutions. Visionary joins the Preferred Manufacturing Partners (PMPs) as a 2020 Foothills sponsor to offer innovative products that have helped spur a revolutionary convergence of AV and IT.

NAB Show New York Presents 10-Day Virtual Experience For 2020. This year’s NAB Show New York will take place as a 10-day virtual event from October 19 to 29.

Midwich Group, Poly Partner On Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) Program. Midwich Group and Poly have introduced a HaaS program so that new and existing channel partners can offer the latest UC technology to their customers without the requirement for the substantial upfront outlay. The HaaS program officially launching on Sept. 1, 2020, to address the increase in end-user demand for consuming technology as a service and will initially be available in the UK and Ireland, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, with a subsequent roll-out to additional regions planned.

Fighting Coronavirus Over Video: Avera’s Telehealth System Takes Big Strides During Pandemic. Avera eCare’s command centre offers an inside look at the future of telehealth and the impact of video technology on healthcare in a pandemic. Read more at Argus Leader Business Journal > Fighting coronavirus over video: Avera’s telehealth system takes big strides during pandemic

WWE Turning Orlando’s Amway Center Into ‘WWE ThunderDome’. WWE will take residency in the Amway Center for the foreseeable future, transforming the arena into “WWE ThunderDome.” It will feature a state-of-the-art AVL system with virtual fans on LED boards, drone cameras, ceiling projections and more. Read more at Sports Illustrated > WWE Turning Orlando’s Amway Center Into ‘WWE ThunderDome’ for TV Production Going Forward

How The NBA Is Using Virtual Fans To Make Games Feel Normal. Here’s how the NBA is pulling off technical wizardry like virtual fans on LED walls, piped-in crowd noise and interactive fan apps. Read more at QUARTZ > How the NBA is using virtual fans to make games feel normal

Mesmerizing Projections Bring Downtown Bellingham’s Herald Building To Life. Each night, about half an hour after sunset, the south-facing side of the historic building is bathed in a frequently changing dance of light, color and local imagery.

Why does LinkedIn matter? LinkedIn has one quality many social platforms lack: trust. Last year’s Business Insider Intelligence Digital Trust Report ranked LinkedIn number one. This reputation has been further cemented during the global pandemic. The platform added new tools to help people find new roles, shared mental health resources and made a range of LinkedIn Learning courses free.

How is LinkedIn fairing during the pandemic? While LinkedIn has been offering helpful resources to those who need them, the platform itself has been hit by COVID-19. Last month, it announced that 960 staff worldwide would be cut from the organisation, largely due to a drop in global recruiting. This was followed by the sale of SlideShare, which featured 40 million slide decks, to Scribd. These moves aren’t the beginning of the end for LinkedIn (it’s owned by Microsoft), but instead show how the platform is dependent on a strong business economy, which in turn is dependent on strong B2B marketing opportunities.

Targeted VS Contextual Advertising. Generally, digital news publishers are reliant on programmatic advertising where ads target the user profile, not the website content. The problem is these ads are bought through third parties like Google, cutting the revenue stream for publishers. The widely held view is that consumers want relevant ads, but is this really true? After the introduction of GDPR, Dutch public broadcaster, NPO, removed all targeted advertising from its website and saw its revenue rise. Basically, it created an in-house platform where advertisers target not customer profiles but customers who read a certain type of content. More importantly, NPO keeps all the revenue; it doesn’t have to share with Google.

Why is this important? Advertising pays for journalists and a decline in ad revenue means a decline in journalism that holds businesses, governments and people to account. As Google and Facebook take the lion’s share of digital advertising, publishers are suffering financially and journalists are losing jobs. Paywalls have been the publishing industry’s main response and for some, it has been worthwhile. The New York Times now has six million paying subscribers.

Paywalls aren’t the answer. As the global pandemic sees digital ad spend falling, more publishers will try a subscription model. The South China Morning Post and Rolling Stone are the latest to raise a paywall. Financial stability though isn’t guaranteed (this will be SCMP’s second attempt at a paywall). The growing use of ad blockers, especially on mobile, means a bespoke advertising model for news publishers could be the answer.

Fortnite has responded to Apple’s attempt to block the game from its app store by using Apple’s iconic 1984 ad against them. Visit #FreeFortnite and join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming “1984”. #FortniteMac #FortniteiOS #FortniteApple

One thing about being a multinational entertainment conglomerate is customers are unsure what you produce. Sony sets the record straight, with its stories about heroes. Miles Morales. Mr. Rogers. Aloy. You don’t always need a cape to be someone’s hero.

Puffin Books brings one of its children’s titles, Jonathan the Magic Pony, alive with this animated teaser.

Restoring a car is a labour of love, especially if it’s an old Bahama Yellow Porsche 912 owned by your recently deceased father.

Nike uses a combination of animation and real footage to explain the design process behind its latest shoe. No comment on the final design.

The headline on 18 Aug 2020

Why would you change the colour of an object in Photoshop? Because your couch is ugly. Or because the fashion editorial you just shot doesn’t work with that dark blue dress. How-to videos are cool. (Hint: don’t do this for news photos EVER.)

The headline on 14 Aug 2020

Google is turning Android phones into a seismometer, essentially creating a global earthquake detection network. It says smartphone accelerometers are sensitive enough to read P-waves — the first waves to arrive after an earthquake.

Full-year earnings at News Corp painted the full picture of media business in deep turmoil. FY2019/20 results showed a $1.5 billion loss, with deep revenue declines in Australia and the UK.

Oddly, NYT is considering a subscription model for its gadget review blog Wirecutter. This is strange because it assumes that Wirecutter could be a single source of information when it comes to reviews — even though typical buyers would be looking across 2-3 sites before making a purchase decision.

No surprise — people under lockdown have been playing more video games. “We’re seeing an acceleration of pre-existing trends. It’s like we jumped ahead two years.” Check out these numbers.

The headline on 13 Aug 2020

Extron And Poly Partner To Deliver Scalable Meeting Experiences. Extron and Poly are partnering to develop scalable integration options for Extron control systems and audio devices, as well as signal switching for Poly Room Solutions.

A Hidden Gem in Taman Desa selling Nasi Lemak Chicken Chop has gone green! Find out what made Charlie’s Cafe and owner Desonny Tuzan took part in this initiative by GrabForGood.

NAMM Cancels In-Person NAMM Show, Replaces With ‘Believe In Music’ Initiative. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, NAMM has decided to cancel the 2021 NAMM Show, which had been scheduled for January 21 through 24 in Anaheim CA, and will host a digital initiative, “Believe in Music,” in its place.

CEDIA Achieves ANSI-Accredited Standards Developer Designation. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has approved CEDIA as an Accredited Standards Developer.

A film made during Covid-19 quarantine and in collaboration with special-needs enabling organisation and community, Superhero Me.

AVIXA Predicts Americas Pro AV Industry Will Drop In 2020, Recover In 2022. The Americas commercial AV market is set to drop 8 percent to $86 billion in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the new 2020 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA) Americas Summary. However, a strong recovery is expected, with growth resuming in 2021.

SaaS web developer Webflow breaks down the science of online typography, a great example of long-form useful tutorial content.

Avid Names Diversified Global Systems Integration Partner. Avid announced a strategic purchasing agreement with Diversified, through which Diversified has been named an Avid global partner.

The headline on 12 Aug 2020

The Daily Maverick in South Africa is launching a new media product. It’s a newspaper — made of paper. No, this is not 1996. There’s really only one reason to build any kind of product: because it solves a specific problem for a specific set of users. The problem here, according to the Maverick, is that “the most ardent Daily Maverick reader struggles to consume more than 5% of all the great stories we publish, which these days is up to 250 full features a week.” This is a problem that could arguably be solved by publishing fewer stories, but the issue here is not just the amount of content — it’s the form it takes. “A survey of more than 30,000 digital consumers in the 2019 BrandMapp survey revealed that 81% of our readers, (and the country’s largest news website’s readers), still regularly read a newspaper – they just don’t want to pay for products that don’t make the grade.” The user-centric approach to distribution is so cool — their readers have to vote for their nearest store to stock the new newspaper. Made of paper.

Notion just announced it was available in their first new language apart from English. That language is Korean. Why Korean? Users. “For years, we’ve had a huge community of users in South Korea. They’ve written 4 textbooks (!), hosted workshops, made videos, and so much more. We can’t wait to see this community grow, and see what people and companies make with the new Korean version of Notion. We will use the learnings from this launch to make Notion available in more languages, so we can give more people around the world tools for thought, organization, and productivity.”

Animated sci-fi story based on a real-life Craigslist Missed ad about a lost prosthetic arm.

Process can be found here
https://www.behance.net/gallery/101251121/Missed-Connections-Was-that-your-limb-w4m

With narration sourced from a real Craigslist Missed connections ad, and visually wrapped with a fictional narrative—this is a story of a space captain late for his own launch, and the woman who was at the right place but at the wrong time.

This was a project that has been—on and off—2 years in the making, requiring me to learn and develop skills in animation principles, Photoshop, Animate cc, and 3D to complete. The film works as a thesis to showcase my conceptual thinking, as well as my directorial skills. I am thankful to be surrounded by such amazing individuals who have supported me, and who have had their hand in elevating this passion project to the stratosphere and beyond. Without you all, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Patrick Dias – Director
Tiana Asperjan – Voice
Jason Stamatyades – Sound
Adam Henderson – Character + Run cycle animations
Paige Clark – Pommies + Wc Donald’s ad animations
Karolina Ficek – Robots + TV animations
Janet Mac – Happy Jelly Pet ad, Critique + Moral support
Sarah Talunay – Moral support
Patrick Dias – Character + Clean up ani, Story + 2D + 3D design, Compositing

You know the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle. Now meet the man who designed it. The product designer, Kenji Ekuan, also designed the Narita Express shuttle, motorcycles, and postboxes. The talismanic dispenser has been around since 1961, and is registered in various regions around the world as a three-dimensional trademark. Everything about it is user- centric design; it begins with solving a problem: traditional soy sauce dispensers have a flaw: after you pour, they leave a messy little drip behind. The bottle spout uses a seemingly counterintuitive 60 degree reverse-angle cut — the result of testing 100 prototypes — that renders the spout flawlessly drip-free. The bottle itself is flared out from a high waist, and allows for perfect pouring because of its low centre of gravity. So many of us around the world have that little bottle in our fridge — or at least on the table at our local Japanese restaurant. This little icon has transcended culture, geography, and cuisine. “Objects have their own world. Making an object means imbuing it with its own spirit.”