For a designer, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of UI principles. UI principles are high-level concepts that serve as guidance when designing a user interface, which is the point at which human-computer interaction occurs. The hierarchy in the UI design is fundamental in determining what the user will take away from their experience when using the interface.
The goal of a UI designer is to anticipate what a user might need to do by producing an interface that naturally encourages exploration and avoids confusion.
For this post, I’ve designed a simple landing page for a fictional learning platform. This landing page design – that in its current state follows all of the UI principles correctly – will be used as a point of reference to demonstrate six key design principles.
I’ve accompanied each section in this blog with a version of the above page that demonstrates how a bad design decision could affect the overall image and the usability of your design.
So, let’s get started…
Typography
Typography is one of the most important principles in user interface design. It’s the technique of arranging text to make it readable and visually appealing. The arrangement of the text includes selecting typefaces, font sizes, line lengths, line-spacing, and letter-spacing, and adjusting the space between pairs of letters.
Good design doesn’t need to feature lots of different typefaces. Unless the typography is a core design element, you simply don’t need to use lots of typefaces to convey a message.
More often than not, simplicity is key, and a strong design might only feature one or two typefaces. The typography principle is there to lead the reader’s eye to the right place at the right moment. It sets the tone of your page and helps to establish a visual hierarchy in your design.
For example, a larger font size and bolder font-weight have a higher chance of being seen by the user, but if we were to compare…
this lightweight text in a bigger font
with
this bolder text in a smaller font
…the chances are the first example would stand out more.
One way to improve a website’s readability is to increase leading (or line-height, in other words). This spacing between the two lines of text has a key impact on legibility; correct line-height helps the reader’s eyes travel from one line to another.
Although the standard leading is 120% the point size of the font, the leading can be set to automatic adjustment and can be modified according to the typeface needs. The body text in the example below illustrates poor use of leading.
The text is clustered which makes it difficult to read. Overall, this page does not give its viewers a sense of flow when reading the material from start to finish. The various alignments and improper use of fonts does not convey a story, nor does it urge users to take an action.
Tip
Select typeface for the headers only after you are confident with a typeface for the body text.
Scale
Scale in design refers to the sizing and the proportion of the elements on a page. Every element, whether a piece of text, a shape, or a line, has a weight.
The weight is created from the size, colour, or texture of an object. A symmetrical, well-balanced design is formed by aligning equally weighted elements on either side of the centre line. With the scale principle in mind, the designer needs to make sure that the page doesn’t look either overcrowded or empty.
One way to achieve this is with the use of padding and white space, or by simply adjusting the scale of an element. Scale can be used to direct viewers’ attention from the most to least important elements.
Objects of a bigger scale tend to attract viewers’ attention more, so the scale principle can be used as a way to rank design elements and influence the order in which users view them.
Below is an example of badly scaled design. The scale principle should help in guiding the users through their experience, but on the page below, the viewer can’t focus on any of the elements. The header is too big, the action buttons are too small, and the social media links (already highlighted enough with colour) are unnecessarily large.
Tip
It’s good practice to apply the golden ratio in your design. The golden ratio can be applied to spacing, composition, and layout; try using a golden ratio template. Plugins such as Font Scale can help establish a typography foundation.
Alignment
Alignment is the arrangement of elements in a straight line or correct relative order and is recognised as one of the core UI principles. Any two connected points are referred to as a line.
When executed correctly, alignment creates a hierarchy within a design and helps direct the user’s attention towards specific information. Arranged content is easier for the user to scan through which increases readability and the viewer’s engagement.
Alignment can be achieved with a clearly defined boundary or a division. A defined boundary can be perceived in a group of elements that share a common area. When the elements are close or proximate to each other they tend to be visually grouped.
In the example below, an excess of misaligned elements strips the viewer of a clear visual path. It’s now unclear where the viewer should start and finish navigating the page.
As the human eye naturally seeks perfection, an intentional misalignment of an object could sometimes be used as a way to attract a user’s attention. One way to do so could be by increasing the y-axis of a navigation bar link of a selected page as a way to highlight the user’s current location on a site.
Tip
Enable a predefined grid or customise one to make sure elements are aligned and visually organised.
White space
For a design to work, it needs to have an adequate amount of space between its objects. In our example below, the area around each object is white space, which also happens to be the negative space and another key UI principle.
Unlike positive space, which is the area of interest on a page, negative space is the background area around the subject of interest. The right amount of white space can simplify and break a design into chunks of information that are easier to comprehend.
A larger white space around the text helps improve readability. A design that has a very minimal use of white space could overwhelm the reader’s eye.
In the example above, it’s obvious that the design lacks white space, making it heavy on the eyes.
Here are a few reasons why this is happening. First, although the CTA buttons are emphasised with boxes, the text inside of them lacks padding and subsequently looks too big. The visuals on the right side of the page are too large and too close to the top navigation bar and the text on the left side of the page.
Elements on the left-hand side don’t have enough space to breathe and are overwhelmed by the size of the visual element. Header one and header two seem to be too far apart – despite them being part of the same group, they seem isolated from one another. The same issue can be seen with the CTA buttons, which once again are too far apart.
Tip
Button borders usually work well when the padding ratio is 1:3 for the top and bottom, and 3:3 for the right and left.
Colour
Users often perceive an aesthetically pleasing design as a more usable design, and they’re technically not wrong. More and more brutalist-inspired websites are receiving recognition among younger users. Their ruggedness and complete lack of usability is what makes them unique and memorable.
Sometimes the simplest, most intuitive, and most accessible user interface is not as popular as a modern design that has scarce consideration for usability. By and large though, if a website lacks aesthetics, it will most likely drive away visitors too.
Colour is another hugely important UI principle. Colour can establish the right tone, whether it acts as the main standalone component or is used as an oomph in other design elements. Colour can set boundaries, define shapes, and give emphasis to an area of a page.
In the example above, the colour selected for the design doesn’t reflect the brand nor enhances usability. The colour combination looks tacky and lacks contrast, creating difficulty when reading the page and identifying the navigation elements.
Tip
Apply the 60-30-10 rule. That’s 60% to the dominant colour, 30% to the secondary colour, and 10% to the accent colour. Consider using colour palette plugins, as these are predefined colour sets that can speed up the process of choosing the right colours for a design project.
Contrast
Contrast is the state of something being different from something else. For elements to contrast, there should be an evident difference between the two. Colour, scale, or a combination of both can be used to contrast two or more elements and create space.
RGB, hexadecimal, and HSL all have an impact on whether a colour will have enough contrast. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 – the international standard for designing for accessibility – is a good way you can learn more about the specifics. WCAG 2 expresses the brightness differences between colours in a form of a ratio, which ranges from 1:1 (e.g. white on white) to 21:1 (e.g. black on white). If we were to check the contrast of RGB values on white background, the ratios would look like this:
Red = 4:1
Green = 1.4:1
Blue = 8.6:1
(*the ration value will remain the same even if the text colour is reversed with background colour)
According to WCAG 2, the minimal requirement of the AA level of contrast ratio is 4.5:1, though this ratio requirement drops to 3:1 if a large-scale text is used. This requirement can be avoided altogether when referring to the contrast in decorative text and text in logos, as these do not affect the accessibility of an interface.
It is important to note that there are many colour hues and shades out there and the ratios cannot be rounded. If the colour contrast is 4.2:1, it automatically does not meet the minimal contrast requirement.
Below is an instance of how contrast should not be used:
The above design is an example of ineffective contrast use because the elements are difficult to read and identify. Lack of contrast strains the viewer’s eyes and can result in users experiencing frustration.
Tip
Using images as backgrounds can reduce text visibility. To make sure the text is adequately readable and meets WCAG 2 contrast requirements, use a coloured overlay on the image before placing the text on top.
Final thoughts
The different elements of a design should all work together as a team to tell a story and guide viewers through their user journey.
To all budding designers, I would strongly recommend familiarising yourself with UI principles before taking on a design project. The proper use of these principles will contribute to the flow and the outcome of your design, and significantly enhance the accessibility of the page.
Take a look at some of our previous campaigns to see how the design team at Verve Search have used design principles in their award-winning work.
Interested in our content marketing and digital PR services? Get in touch.
outREACH Online Conference: Q&A’s from Mark Johnstone
In the next part of series of speaker follow ups, we asked Mark Johnstone to answer the questions we were unable to cover at the outREACH Online Conference. If you were unable to make the conference, you’ll be pleased to know we recorded all of the sessions, including talks from Rand Fishkin, Shannon McGuirk and Lisa Myers. Take a look at them today!
Since leaving Distilled in 2016, Mark Johnstone has helped a plethora of teams and people create better content through his consultancy work. Now he has set up Content Hubble; a new site focussed entirely on generating and inspiring awesome content idea. Check out the website or twitter feed for more resources and information on training opportunities.
In the meantime, Mark has kindly taken the time to answer your questions…be ready to be inspired to create great content!
What did you learn from your biggest marketing mistake?
I have 2 answers to this. The first is that I’ve created checklists & frameworks to make sure I learn from the mistakes and remember not to make them again. I have checklists of criteria for ideas, QA checklists for production, and more.
The second one is there have been periods where I rested on my laurels. I thought I was good at what I did (which I was) and I stopped learning. In retrospect, this became a period of stagnation, and I’m disappointed that I succumbed to arrogance and wasted time when I could have been growing. One of my favourite lines from Mad Men is when Don says to Peggy “You’re good, get better.”
I hear a lot about brainstorming with, bouncing ideas off your team etc. What if you are a one man band like me?
It’s always valuable to find someone to soundboard ideas off of. Just saying them out loud to someone, you’ll notice which ones you’re not even convinced of yourself. And you’ll see how they respond. Do they look intrigued or do they look confused or indifferent. Don’t listen to what they say. Look at how they respond. I would try to find someone to chat to – your partner, a friend in the pub, a colleague in another team, an industry associate. I’m sure you can manage something. You can do it overtly or covertly, just dropping it into conversation and seeing how they respond.
I’d love to know how people stay on top of news, trends, campaigns etc. e.g. 30 min solo research, team scrums etc. Any recommendations or thoughts?
In the beginning, I set up RSS feeds and Twitter feeds and went through them every day for 30 minutes or so, first thing. It’s good for inspiration. I then save them in a swipe file, e.g. on Pinterest (I prefer a visual swipe file).
As a team, we also used to share anything anyone in the company found on a channel in Slack (not my favourite platform, but if it’s the one everyone’s using, it has the least barrier to entry). I would save anything I liked in there into my own personal swipe file.
As I’ve progressed, I don’t do it every day now, but I do sit down every month or two for half a day, or even more, and go back through the sites I like to see what I’ve missed. If you’re starting out, I’d recommend doing it regularly, i.e. daily. You can maybe switch to less regular once you’ve really absorbed a lot of reference points that spontaneously come to mind while you’re generating ideas.
I’m pretty new in the digital PR space and absolutely amazed with all the brilliant creative campaigns. How much time do you set a side from research and ideas phase to finalising a campaign like this?
There are really 2 parts to this. There’s the project duration (over how many weeks) and the hours you put into it. The campaigns, goals and budgets vary greatly, so it’s very difficult to answer specifically and succinctly.
In terms of duration, I like to set aside a minimum of 2 weeks for ideation, otherwise I find there’s a tendency to rush half-baked ideas through without allowing a cooling period to see if you still like them. For production, it really depends on the complexity of the data and the design, and whether there’s interactivity. It could be anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks, so it depends on what you’re creating. You could feasibly produce something simple in a week too.
In terms of hours, I like to encourage people to put more hours into ideation than they might be used to. I find it continually frustrating that people will happily allow days or even weeks worth of time and budget for design and development, but not for ideas. That’s simply because they can’t see the work that went into it. But if you don’t spend time getting a good idea, you could be wasting all that money on design and dev.
At the very, very least, I’d want half a day on ideation, but realistically, I like to take a couple of days just researching and generating ideas, and a couple more developing them. Spread out over a couple of weeks.
For data, it can vary from half a day to 2 weeks (or even more) depending on what you have to do to get the data (does it come in a nice table, or do you have to scrape it and tidy it up, etc).
If you’re starting out, try to allow at least a day for data and 2 days for design. I know plenty of people doing closer to half a day on data, half a day on copy and 1 day on design, but personally, I think 1 day on design is a little tight. Even 2 is short, but you can get something decent for 2 days. If you’re starting out and budgets are tight, avoid interactivity for now.
Loved all of these campaign examples: Working for an office supplies company, sometimes it is hard to come up with outside the box campaign ideas as it is related to a somewhat boring topic. What’s a good way to expand the idea brainstorming for “boring” topics like office supplies?
Here are 3 cool content campaigns off the top of my head for stationery companies – Emma the office worker, a paper dragon and the Staples speed reading test.
And it’s useful to notice that a lot of the examples that are shared widely in our industry are not for exciting sectors, e.g. there are quite a few for insurance companies and there are a few great recent examples for bingo. Bingo itself is fun, but it’s not a great topic for content creation.
The main thing to do here is shift your thinking away from the product. Now, it doesn’t have to go too far away from the product. But think more about what people do in offices. What challenges and frustrations do they have? What are they trying to achieve? You could tap into productivity, creativity, employee engagement, communication, anything that makes sense for what you do and what your customers care about in that context.
Think about what people use your product to do, what it does for them, as opposed to what it is. That’s what most advertising campaigns focus on. Dove don’t make campaigns about moisturising cream, they make campaigns about feeling beautiful in your own skin. Red Bull don’t make content about caffeine, they make campaigns about pushing life to the limits.
Stationery content doesn’t need to be about index cards. It could be about office life, productivity, business innovation, business communication, business presentations, whatever you decide. A bit of strategy work to set a clear direction could help here.
When you think of a creative campaign but then find yourself constricted by budget – would you scale down design first or do you think that’s the most important aspect?
There are two things we’re usually doing with content campaigns when you boil it right down. We’re either presenting new information or presenting information in new ways, or both, e.g. Profanity on Film presented new information. The Future Gamer presented information (that already existed) in a new way. So I’d figure out what your idea is bringing that’s new.
Then figure out what information is essential to gather and analyse, and how much time that needs.
Then think about the simplest way you can present the information. It could be as simple as a table, and there are plenty of examples of tables getting coverage. Or it could be a very simple chart. Whatever is the easiest way for people to ‘see’ the information and understand the point. Depending on the idea, you could potentially get something done for one day of research/data/analysis/copy and one day of design.
I’d do what you can to increase those budgets over time, or over-invest your own personal time if you believe in the idea and its success will open doors for you in the future. That’s kind of how I started out.
Also, when gathering a swipe file, find examples of content that could be done within your budget. And for more expensive pieces, ask yourself, how could this have been done more simply. There will often be an answer.
How do you manage the budget for such campaigns most efficiently?
Get very specific about the idea before you start. What data will it need? How will you get it? What needs to be done to it? How do you intend to design it? What interactivity will it likely contain? What’s the nearest thing that exists to this online already? Discuss it with your team and find out how long they think they’ll need (in days) for each part.
There is always a tension between project management & creative direction. Project managers want everything on time and budget, creative directors want the idea to be as good as it can be, and will discover challenges and opportunities along the way that they need/want to respond to.
Even if project management and creative direction is controlled by the same person, you’ll probably lean one way or another. I obviously lean towards creative direction. I suspect, by the question, I can guess which way you lean, although I may be wrong. There is value in both approaches, and a middle ground needs to be found.
But if you don’t have much success at creating content at the moment, be prepared to over-deliver on time on at least a few projects in order to start making them successful. That’s how I made my breakthrough, and I know others did similarly. That’s also how you get case studies that retain clients and attract more business.
There’s no point having a very efficiently delivered content project that doesn’t work.
Do you have a morning routine that helps sparking creativity?
Ha! No, I’m not much of a morning person whatsoever! Okay, a more serious answer! if I do have some creative work to do in the morning, I’ll do some research around it the night before, write down the different components of what I’m discovering on post-its, and play around with them. Look at them, brainstorm off of them, and think about the question that I want to answer the next day.
I get my desk (digital & physical) ready to start work straight away in the morning (with all the documents open that I need). I write the question down on my desk. And then, in the morning, I try to get to work as quickly as possible, without any other distraction and without opening anything else, even my phone.
I also like listening to music, and I dance about a little bit as I’m working. I like to have a pen and pad to hand, as somehow, at times, I find the physical act of writing seems to aid creativity more than typing on a computer.
The key is to stay free from distraction, focus for a good length of time, and loosen up. You’re just playing at this point in time. You are not committing to anything you write down, so get it all down, no matter how ridiculous or unlikely. You can filter through it all in a different session later. For now, lighten up….
Psst! did you know work is allowed to be fun?
Thanks again to Mark for his time during and after the conference. The next in our series of Q&A follow ups will come from the absolutely fabulous Shannon McGuirk, with more to come beyond that!
It might not feel like it, but coverage of coronavirus in the UK is reducing and has been reducing for over a month. With less than a quarter of all stories now being COVID focussed (down from a high of nearly 40%), journalists are desperate for positive, feel-good news. We took a look at what that means for outreach in exceptional times.
Our data
At the start of March, we heard from a lot of companies concerned that there was no room for brands in newspapers clamouring to cover the coronavirus. We were asked, frequently, whether it made sense to just stop outreaching entirely rather than trying to cut through the noise.
For the last 9 or so months, we’ve had a project underway where we’ve been scraping the major newspapers around the world. This data, now including over a million articles, provides us with unique insight into quite what’s being written about.
We decided to mine the data to see how many articles are being written about COVID. For this exercise, we defined an article as being about COVID if it mentioned ‘COVID’, ‘coronavirus’, ‘pandemic’, ‘furlough’, ‘quarantine’ or ‘lockdown’ in its title. This was to avoid including any articles that mentioned coronavirus but weren’t about coronavirus. We also limited this particular analysis to UK newspapers; I’m sure there’s a great piece of analysis to be done on how much coronavirus is being discussed in different countries, but that’s for another post.
What we found
Coronavirus stories were a very small part of the media landscape early this year. It wasn’t until 25th February that COVID stories made up more than 5% of the news cycle. It would take 3 days for this figure to double and less than two weeks more for it to double again to just over 20%. Just after the lockdown was implemented, on the 24th March, coverage of coronavirus in the UK peaked, with 39% of all articles being COVID focussed. That has been dropping, relatively consistently, ever since. Last Thursday, as the nation prepared itself for a long weekend and VE day celebrations, coronavirus stories dipped to just 17%; the lowest it had been since early March.
Whilst 39% is undoubtedly a lot – thousands of articles each week on a single subject – it’s probably much less than you’d think if I’d asked you to guess. As you’ll have found out if you’re currently outreaching though, whilst coronavirus stole the frontpages and the headlines the newspaper industry has still been pushing out stories. Even at its highest, the majority of stories were not about coronavirus – and we’re now far from that peak.
Journalists’ stories follow public interest. This has never been more true than with coronavirus. If we look at UK Google trends data, we see both search volume and articles practically in lock-step with each other; articles following the previous couple of days search-demand:
At Verve, we use LinkScore to value the links that we build in a way that’s consistent, objective and takes into account a whole plethora of key factors (relevance, site authority, no-follow status, whether it’s syndicated etc), which allows us to easily compare our outreach output year on year. When we did, we saw a picture that mirrors the above up until this last month:
Considering that, since February, we’ve had some clients on hold and some of the team is furloughed, May’s data represents more than a return to the previous form. Even with the reduction in coronavirus stories, there’s more going on. So, you might wonder, why are we seeing such results recently?
What’s Working?
1. Keeping a positive mental attitude
Lisa’s talked previously about how a lot of outreach success can be attributed to attitude and grit. Finding yourself unexpectedly working from home, with strict government measures imposed and every newspaper headline seemingly dedicated to coronavirus can knock your confidence. Here are a few ways to keep it high:
(a) Share your wins
As a result, sharing wins (something we were already doing) became even more important. We have a Slack channel, we call Linkbell, dedicated to new links as they go live:
We also share, across a couple of other channels, TV, radio and print coverage:
(b) Realise there’s now less competition
According to ONS figures, 27% of the UK workforce has now been furloughed. If we assume that the figures as roughly equal for the PR and SEO sectors, this would have a substantial effect on the level of competition when emailing journalists…so we decided to look at two different metrics to estimate the effect of furloughing on these industries:
1. Back at the end of April, PR Week reported that 35% of PR firms reported having furlough around a quarter of their team, with a further 25% having furloughed some, but less than 25% of their team. If we assume an even distribution on that 25%, we can estimate that, in total, around 12% of the PR workforce in the UK is currently furloughed.
2. We investigated this by looking at the number of press releases that had been published on PRNewswire this year. Now, we know that news wires are decidedly old-hat, but that was as true in January as it is now, so any change in the last few months can be considered meaningful.
If we assume that the rate of press releases being published would have continued at the rate it was at in late February, press releases are down 21%.
Based on these two measures, journalists should currently be receiving 12%-21% fewer pitches; that’s less noise to cut through and that makes it ‘easier’ to achieve coverage.
Take the time to also Google the brand names of your competitors. It’s possible they chose to pause their link building and, if they did, know that each link you build is either extending your lead or working towards catching them up.
(c) Stay connected
One of the things a lot of us love about SEO is the community so, now, more than ever, it’s important to be a part of it. I find value in the BigSEO Slack group and can often be found lurking in the outREACH Community Slack. Meanwhile, there are virtual conferences galore; not least SMX Next and outREACH Online.
2. Positive news
Lots has been written on this, not least by Verve’s own Sean, but when the news turns bleak people seek out the uplifting and irreverent. That’s partly why we’ve seen stories about:
A pensioner pacing his garden – and raising £33 million in doing so.
Chance the Rapper handing out an award to a rapping teacher.
Those didn’t just sneak under the radar; journalists have been actively calling out for positive news:
OK Yorkshire, here’s my challenge. I want as much non-coronavirus-related news as I can find. PR teams, big opportunity here for you to showcase interesting and genuine activity with your clients. Our readers don’t just want to read Covid-19 stuff. Now is your chance to shine.
Looking for original travel feature ideas – not just UK-focused. Need inspiring, bucketlist, planning for future, retrospective and funny feature ideas. Have budget. Help! #journorequest
Hello #PR friends! We can’t write a whole paper about Coronavirus. We don’t want to. We need your non-CV themed stories more than ever. Fun stuff especially. Email in my bio! #journorequest
It’s no surprise to say that if you are in a position to talk authoritatively about coronavirus then there’s a lot of link opportunities. There are more subtle opportunities though. That’s because several industries just don’t have much going on because of social distancing. Film, sport and travel journalists, for example, have all had the big events that typically punctuate their calendars either cancelled or paired down. Whilst this also means that some campaigns, and headlines, just don’t make sense at the moment (e.g. cheap holiday deals in travel) a great headline could do better than ever.
There are also opportunities to craft content and campaigns around areas that people are searching for more of because of being stuck at home including:
Topic
YoY Change
Working from home
+614%
Online lessons
+378%
Virtual tour
+342%
Cocktail recipes
+321%
Pogo stick
+209%
Classic movies
+208%
Baking
+190%
Adoption
+138%
DIY
+87%
We’ve seen this in action with a few different movie-themed campaigns, but we’re also seeing gains on nostalgic content (as ‘classic movies’ implies). You can read about one of those campaigns here.
In Summary
Consumer behaviour is changing, and journalists are changing their coverage with it. With articles on coronavirus reducing every day and many companies yet to return their marketing teams from furlough, we’re now seeing over-sized returns from link building again. If you can put together a headline that touches people and creates discussion you’ll find high relevancy, high authority links follow.
outREACH Workshop Video 1 – Creativity & Collaboration
This is the first video in a three part series from our free outREACH workshop. This was a series of workshops teaching actionable tips and techniques that will enhance your creative content and link-building strategy.
In this first video, Lisa Myers, the CEO and Founder of Verve Search, goes through the concept and ideation process of creative campaigns.
Lisa also discusses collaboration, research and project management and how they are also crucial to a successful campaign. You’ll learn how the right people with the right attitude can change results.
The next video in this series will be released next week.
Join us for our next event. In June, we are hosting outREACH Online Conference which is a fantastic opportunity for you, or members of your team to hear from the best SEO’s, link-developers, content creators and marketers in the industry including marketing wizard Rand Fishkin, Shannon McGuirk (Aira), Carrie Rose (Rise at Seven), our very own Lisa Myers and many many more. We hope that you’ll be able to join us for this event.
If you have any questions about this content or outREACH Online please contact us at [email protected].
Campaign Spotlight – Movie Mortality
We may all be working from home because of the coronavirus outbreak, but our spirits at Verve Search are still high. We recently celebrated the success of our second consecutive viral campaign, weeks after the success of Insta Wealth. It was a tough act to follow, but Movie Mortality for Buzz Bingo managed over 200 links AND caught the attention of one of the campaign’s stars.
Some actors have a reputation for their frequent on-screen deaths. Sean Bean for example is renowned by his fan-base for being killed in many of his movies. However, we wanted to add to the debate by finding out which actors die the most in their movies, and which most likely to be killed in a movie role.
We have had success with movie campaigns in the past. Director’s Cut, On Location and Remake My Day all proved popular with journalists. We know that the topic has potential for lots of coverage if we have a strong methodology and eye-catching headlines.
Movie Mortality was created with a simple methodology that journalists can easily explain, and a database with all the answers. We started with a seed list of 1,500 of the world’s top actors, taken from the most popular actors on IMDb. The total count of their on-screen deaths was found using Cinemorgue, a fan-created database with over 7,000 movie fatalities.
We cross-referenced each actor’s deaths with their total filmography to determine the actors with the greatest likelihood of dying on-screen. To find out which years saw the most movie deaths, we found the top 50 highest-grossing films for every year between 1980 and 2018 using IMDb, and then each film on the list was searched on Cinemorgue to determine the death count.
The design of the splash page and the campaign’s look-and-feel were inspired by the iconic movie poster for ‘Pulp Fiction’. The style embodies the spirit of carnage that plagues the unfortunate actors featured in the campaign. We included a gender breakdown of movie deaths, a top 10 overall list, a top 10 ‘most likely to die’ list, and a chart featuring the deadliest years in film.
Our initial outreach focused on Kit Harrington’s 62.5% chance of death in films. The headline provided some interesting opportunities for coverage, especially as Harrington’s character Jon Snow was killed and resurrected in ‘Game of Thrones’. Metro were the first to link speculating on Harrington’s next film role in Marvel’s ‘The Eternals’.
This angle alone would have made Movie Mortality a hit campaign. However, it became viral thanks to the mortality of Hollywood stalwart Danny Trejo, who was killed in 65 of his roles. Stuart Heritage of the Guardian, who initially covered the Kit Harrington angle, wrote up second article explaining why Trejo dies in so many movies, and how he beat out Christopher Lee as Hollywood’s most-killed actor.
Other sites, including the Independent, covered the story as a Top 10 list, but it still produced enticing headlines for readers.
Movie Mortality proved to be a hugely successful outreach campaign, with 211 links and a total of 10,581 Link Score (Verve’s own tool using a combination of metrics to measure the value of links). We got coverage from a range of top-tier sites including GQ, Fox News, Guardian, Lad Bible, MSN, Huffington Post, Observer, Daily Express, Metro and Yahoo.
In addition, the campaign findings were referenced in 159 pieces of additional unlinked coverage. The campaign has also been covered several times in print including features in the US edition of The Guardian (twice) as well as featuring in TV and Radio. Articles mentioning our campaign were shared 161,850 times from some relevant high-profile social media accounts, including Danny Trejo himself!
Following the success of a campaign like Insta Wealth was a challenge, but Movie Mortality proved to be a worthy successor thanks to an effective concept idea with a large database behind it, eye-catching headlines and a veteran actor who was more than happy to be named Hollywood’s most-killed actor.
How brands are helping people in need during the pandemic
You don’t need to look far to find another alarming statistic or piece of bad news about the current pandemic.
But not all news needs to be negative, particularly at a time like this.
In recent weeks, social media has platformed its fair share of positivity, including Italians hosting gigs on balconies, and help and assistance being offered around the UK and Ireland to those in self-isolation via the hashtag #SelfIsolationHelp.
Good news is on the agenda
Digital PRs will be spending the next few weeks figuring out how best to approach journalists with stories during this sensitive time.
Like any topic, readers will only consume so much bad news about the coronavirus, before looking elsewhere. There have already been calls from editors and reporters at The Yorkshire Post and BBC News to remind us that “uplifting distractions and inspiration” are definitely in demand.
Which is why it isn’t surprising to see that many positive initiatives announced in the past few days have gone on to attract national press coverage.
It’s worth thinking about what positive stories your brand can tell over the next few months, which could go on to support and inspire people who need it, or at least provide them with a welcome distraction.
Positive initiatives from big brands
We have already started to see brands recognise and react to the problems that the coronavirus outbreak is causing to certain groups of people. Below we have highlighted some of these examples, which illustrate how companies can utilise their products and services as forces for good.
Acknowledging the tireless work that NHS staff are facing during the pandemic, Pret has announced that it will give all frontline staff free hot drinks and a 50% discount on food products, such as cakes and sandwiches.
The coffee and food chain has also closed off most of the seating areas in its UK restaurants, which will reduce crowding and cater more towards those who are self-isolating, thanks to a greater focus on takeaways.
A similar initiative is being followed by McDonald’s. The fast food restaurant is offering free drinks to NHS staff, social workers and emergency services.
Domino’s Pizza is offering free pizza in selected stores to NHS workers on Friday 20th March.
Something as simple as a trip to the hairdressers can really rejuvenate a person after a stressful day. In this second example of support being offered to NHS staff, RUSH is offering them a complimentary wash, blow-dry & style throughout what is expected to be the virus’s peak months of March, April and May.
Gigs, exhibitions and public gatherings of all kinds are being cancelled in many countries for the foreseeable future, meaning those who work within the arts and entertainment industries, especially those who rely on it as their main source of income, will be severely affected.
To support musicians during Covid-19, we’re waiving our revenue share on all sales this Friday, April 2nd, from midnight to midnight Pacific Time.
In response to this, Bandcamp announced that 100% of the profits made from purchases on their site on Friday 20th March will go directly to artists and labels. Considering that Spotify pays out less than $0.009 per stream, the amount that an artist can instead earn from unwavered fees on Bandcamp for just one day could make a considerable difference to their personal finances.
Working from home for more than a day or two is something most of us aren’t used to. Recognising that people will need plenty of tips on everything this entails, from staying productive, to managing the wellbeing of themselves and other team members, LinkedIn announced that 16 of its educational videos (equivalent to more than 13 hours of content) are now freely available to watch and learn from.
These are challenging times, and we’d like to do what we can to help. This month, we’re offering a completely free one-year subscription to Balance to anyone who wants it.
Coping with self-isolation will be challenging, and there is no telling the extent to which the pandemic may negatively impact on people’s mental health. As a helping hand, Meditation app Balance is giving people the chance to sign up to their app for a year’s free subscription, the offer is open for the duration of March.
Anyone who has ventured into a supermarket this month will know that hand sanitiser is at a premium. In recognition of the issue, Brewdog has announced that it will turn its attention to producing hand sanitiser in its Scotland distillery, saying it will be freely available to those in need of it.
Natural spaces will be an essential outlet for people who are self-isolating. The National Trust has promised to open many of its parks and gardens around the country for people to get out of their homes and “use open spaces to relax and refresh”.
We're aiming to open many of our gardens and parks for free during this difficult time, so the nation can use open spaces to relax and refresh, while following the government’s social distancing guidance. We will be closing our houses, cafés and shops this week. pic.twitter.com/ETY1oEo8VZ
Stockpiling from some shoppers has meant many people in the UK have recently been missing out on everyday essentials. In response to this, Tesco announced a number of changes to how their stores will operate, so that they can “provide more of what people need in a clean and safe environment”.
The changes include: designated hours of the week for the elderly and vulnerable to complete their shopping, a limit of 3 items per shopper on every product line, and new closing hours of 10pm to ensure that stocks can be replenished and its employees can properly rest.
With pubs and clubs continuing to empty or close down entirely due to safety concerns about the coronavirus, bartending is another profession at-risk of unemployment and losing out on a regular pay packet. In the US, Jameson Whiskey has pledged a $500,000 donation to the United States Bartender’s Guild, an organisation that helps empower and foster collaboration between bartenders throughout their careers.
The whisky brand will also match every dollar donated by the public (up to $100,000) to the Bartender Emergency Assistance Programme, which has been established to aid service industry personnel who are experiencing financial difficulties as a result of the outbreak.
Further reading:
Outside of current events, there are plenty of companies that maintain strong ethical standards by giving something back to their communities and workers all year round. If you’d like to read more about them, check out the B Corps directory.
Adage is constantly updating this article with information on how big brands are responding to the Coronavirus outbreak.
This column from the NYTimes dissects how the coronavirus has quickly infected the content that we consume online.
Campaign Spotlight – Insta Wealth
Everyone in digital PR wants to work on a ‘viral’ campaign, content that doesn’t just generate links, but also high-profile TV, radio, print and social media coverage. We want these campaigns to create a story that resonates and gets people talking, with a headline that readers would immediately click through to read. If your campaign can achieve this while talking about some of the most recognisable faces on the planet, then it has every chance of being successful.
This is what we were able to achieve with our best-performing creative campaign to date, Insta Wealth.
Insta Wealth, created for Buzz Bingo, looks at which celebrities and influencers make the most money from sponsored posts on Instagram. Brands realise the social media reach of high-profile accounts with tens of millions of followers and will pay 6-figure sums to have their product featured.
By looking at influencer activity on Instagram we felt positive that we would create something that would produce lots of interesting angles, appealing to a wide range of journalists including lifestyle, celebrity and sports. Instagram rich lists are often widely covered by the press, but analysing sponsored posts enabled us to add something new to the discussion.
To find out how much money each person has earned from their account from these posts, we used Hopper HQ’s Instagram Rich List database, which estimates a ‘cost per post’ figure. For example, Kylie Jenner can earn $1.2m per post to her 139 million followers.
We multiplied the ‘cost per post’ figure by the quantity of sponsored posts appearing on their account. To find out which Instagram user has the most ‘valuable’ followers, we divided their cost per post by their number of followers.
We then categorised each celebrity and influencer to see where they rank compared to their peers. For example, we found that Kendall Jenner makes 4x more from sponsored posts than her sister Kylie.
Our research gave us quite a surprising top story, Cristiano Ronaldo is Instagram’s highest earner, bringing in $47.8m from his sponsored posts. This in itself is a strong headline for outreach, but it becomes even more newsworthy when we found this to be higher than his yearly salary at Juventus ($31m). This stat gave us a headline that we knew journalists would want to cover. You can see below how it was received by Business Insider:
We were also able to frame the story as a comparison between Ronaldo and his Barcelona rival Lionel Messi. Though Messi is second on our list with $23m earned from Instagram, we were able to say that Ronaldo earned twice as much from his sponsored posts. The Sun ran with this headline:
The majority of Insta Wealth’s coverage came from variations of the Ronaldo story. However, many publications also covered the secondary angle focusing on the Jenner sisters. Metro’s entertainment section ran with the $16m figure in their headline:
The volume of newsworthy headlines in Insta Wealth gave it the potential to generate hundreds of links, and to date, it has 582 pieces of linked coverage with a total of 22,158 Link Score (Verve’s own tool using a combination of metrics to measure the value of links).
In addition to this, the research was also referenced in 978 pieces of additional unlinked coverage and has been shared 293,780 times from some relevant high-profile social media accounts. It has also been covered 34 times in print including features in the Daily Star, Irish Times and The Sunday Times (Australia) as well as featuring in TV and Radio including Le Figaro.
Insta Wealth is truly a viral campaign, having received coverage in 91 different countries (we even made a map!)
The success in this campaign comes from its simplicity. It is a new approach to a widely covered topic, using a straight-forward methodology from a credible secondary source. It was able to generate lots of interesting headlines for our outreach team to sell to journalists, with the knowledge that editors are constantly looking for stories around fame and social media.
Insta Wealth did it all. It gave journalists great headlines, and readers something to share. It added a new dimension to the decade-old Ronaldo v Messi debate, a new dimension to the Jenner-Kardashian sibling rivalry and most importantly for us, delivered a campaign which performed six times above our client target.
Tip
We also share, across a couple of other channels, TV, radio and print coverage:
