One of the reasons this movie is about inventions is because I plan to make an online ad campaign that resembles ads for the fake products in the film. My hope is when someone sees an ad for a ridiculous product like the Waterproof Blow Dryer, they’d click on it with curiosity and be introduced to the film.

First time out I took a blind stab and created the ad below, which lead the the trailer underneath it on vimeo, which had a link to the MOI page on my site:

The user path would hopefully go:
1) see funny Facebook ad and click on it
2) see the trailer and get introduced to the film
3) click the link to learn more
4) become a Facebook fan / mailing list subscriber / watch videos on vimeo / a combination of these

I’m looking to use these ads to gain more fans and draw more attention to the movie. Success will be measured in the increase of:
- Facebook fans
- Vimeo subscribers
- Video view count
- Email list subscribers

There are so many variables one must consider when using an ad campaign on Facebook or Google. I decided to jump right it. Here were my stats before starting:

Vimeo – 53 contacts
Facebook – 278 fans
Mail Chimp – 143 subscribers
(I didn’t pay attention to views on the videos. I will in the future.)

I put $50 into a 5 day campaign ($10 a day). There’s more details to the campaign, but since it had terrible results I won’t bore you with them. Halfway through the campaign I changed the link to go straight to the MOI splash page, skipping the trailer. The campaigned stopped on the 3rd day for some unknown reason. I’m guessing it’s because I changed it.

After $16.94 I gained 1 new fan on Facebook.

Variables to play with / explore:

The visual make up of the ad:
- Title
- Picture
- Link
- Subhead

The workings of the ad:
- Where the link takes you
- How much you spend per day
- How long is the campaign
- What’s your CPC (cost per click) bid
- What is your target audience
- How many steps until you give your potential fans a chance to act (subscribe, become a fan, etc)

There’s a bunch of things here to figure out, so I’m going to start at the start of the user experience: the ad itself.

I think something as weird as a Waterproof Blow Dryer ad would get people’s attention. My first step is to play with visual combinations of the ad, as well as some other ad visuals, to see which grabs people the most. I’m also going to make ones with pictures of Jeff (the films star) that read ‘Master of inventions’ or ‘Meet the world’s worst inventor’.

MOI fan Rishi has recently used/blogged about a site called PickFu.com. The site puts any question with 2 answers to a 50 person survey for only $5. I will pose the question: Which ad are you more likely to click on? and create 8 ads and pit them against each other to determine the best one.

OK college football fans: how many matches will that be???????

7. At $5 a piece, this experiment will only cost me $35. Ads coming soon!

Joe

I love editing like I love assembling Ikea furniture. Seriously! It’s Legos for adults.

The trick with editing, I find, is to treat it like a sculpture. You keep making passes, over and over and over and over, making corrections here and there. It’s dreadful at first because it’s bulky and doesn’t resemble anything watchable. But soon you get to a point where you’re stressing over one frame staying or going.

After the 1000th watch it becomes white noise. Walk away for a while. Enough time to get out of editing mode. One day is perfect by a couple hours will do. Don’t watch it in your editing software, it’s better to see it in a movie player like QuickTime. The scene will look remarkably fresh and that ‘hard decisions’ over one frame will suddenly be easy.

With all creative endeavors you need periods of intense focus balanced by periods where you completely ignore it. I’m trying very hard to apply this fact to my own life. If you work on something all the time you’ll just stress over it, lose all the joy and become no fun to be around.

For the sake of your sanity and your friendships: Balance that shit out!

Learned this via Rishi Shah:

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