Eyes & Ears Entertainment

We Have A Deck!

Austin Mayer — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 18:23:59 +0000

Powerpoint? Pfssssh! Quarterly PDFs? Hell no. We just started using Projeqt for our client deck and couldn’t be happier with it. Check it out and get a glimpse of our best and brightest!

How to create a Topspin Powered HTML Email For Media Widget v2

Austin Mayer — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:46:55 +0000

Since last writing, we noticed a few things on the HTML E4M that could use some improvement. Namely, it didn’t work that great in IE – yikes! So, here is a update, complete with full source download.

The Code

The basic components that make up our HTML E4M:
1. HTML Form
2. jQuery.form.js
3. PHP cURL submit method
4. jQuery

**Note that you still need to create an E4M in your Topspin account. You’ll need specific data to plug in to the form below.

Here is the HTML form. You’ll notice that we’re going to be passing some hidden inputs with this form, so if you want a more in depth understanding of them or would like to change or add inputs, head over to the Topspin E4M REST API documentation and check it out.

Be sure to replace artist_id, fan[source_campaign] and fan[referring_url] with your own. You can grab all of this from the embed code that Topspin spits out when creating an Email For Media Widget. Find the CAMPAIGN ID URL by doing the following:

1. Find the widget_id=”" url in your embed code
2. Paste that into a browser
3. Find the url inside the tag (ex. http://app.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/1051/campaign/10150220)

Next, include jQuery and the jQuery Form Plugin external script files and a short script to initialize the form when the page loads:

...

Lastly, we’ll use a cURL based submission process on the server side with PHP to POST the email to Topspin. If you paid attention to the , you’ll notice this is different than the client side approach we used directly in the form. This method works great and has been tested in all browsers. Below is the makeup of send.php.

urlencode($artist_id),
		'fan[source_campaign]'=>urlencode($fan['source_campaign']),
		'fan[email]'=>urlencode($fan['email']),
		'fan[referring_url]'=>urlencode($fan['referring_url']),
		'fan[confirmation_target]'=>urlencode($fan['confirmation_target'])
	);
 
	//url-ify the data for the POST
	foreach($fields as $key=>$value) { $fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&'; }
	rtrim($fields_string,'&');
 
	$url = $url . '?' . $fields_string;
 
	//open connection
	$ch = curl_init();
 
	//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
	curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
 
	//execute post
	$result = json_decode( curl_exec($ch) );
 
	//close connection
	curl_close($ch);
 
 
	$message = array();
	if($result['success']){
		$message['success'] = true;
	}else{
		$message['error'] = $result['error'];
	}
 
	// and finally return true
	header('Content-type: application/json');
	echo json_encode($message);
?>

When the form is submitted via AJAX, the email will get posted to Topspin. If the server returns a success status then the user will see a “Thanks, Check Your Inbox!” message within the text input field given the use of the Javascript above.

Download Source Files Here

Demo

Feel free to use this code wherever you like! Happy email collecting!

How To Create a Topspin HTML Email For Media Widget

Austin Mayer — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:14:11 +0000

It’s no secret we love working with the Topspin platform. The range of tools the platform supplies is quite adept at handling pretty much any digital marketing requirement you can throw at it. After all, any good digital marketing theme would be remiss without a solid technical foundation.

Topping the list of the most accessible (and crucial) Topspin widgets is the Email For Media widget. In short, it enables fans to enter their email address and receive a piece of digital content all in a simple workflow. As great as this widget is (we use it in pretty much every campaign we run) it has a few shortcomings. Namely in the looks and cross platform / device rendering. And it’s in Flash.

In this post I’m going to show you how to take a stock Topspin E4M and turn it into a completely custom HTML5, jQuery powered beast that can render on anything from your desktop computer to your iPhone. Let’s get started!

Why use an HTML E4M?

You want complete control over the styling
You want the same look and feel across all platforms
Custom yet still interfaces with Topspin

The Code

The basic components that make up our HTML E4M:
1. HTML Form
2. jQuery.form.js
3. A little bit of Javascript

**Note that you still need to create an E4M in your Topspin account. You’ll need specific data to plug in to the form below.

1. Find the widget_id=”" url in your embed code
2. Paste that into a browser
3. Find the url inside the tag (ex. http://app.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/8081/campaign/10158210)

Next, include jQuery and the jQuery Form Plugin external script files and a short script to initialize the form when the page loads:

...

When the form is submitted the email will get posted to Topspin. If the server returns a success status then the user will see a “Thanks, Check Your Inbox!” message within the text input field given the use of the Javascript above.

That’s It

Feel free to use this code wherever you please. All that’s left to do is style it up with some CSS. Check out a few CSS3 form tutorials here.

In The Wild

www.theasteroidsgalaxytour.com

Awareness vs. Data

Brian Schopfel — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:42:44 +0000

There is always the argument over which is better for an emerging artist: acquiring data or increasing awareness. Obviously, in some cases those go hand-in-hand, but for certain genres and artists, one outweighs the other for sure. After the jump is the splash page we designed for the Penguin Prison campaign. For those of you who don’t know, Penguin Prison is an emerging artist, (quickly!) gaining popularity, and is putting out his debut full-length on Downtown Records in October. Using jQuery we allowed fans to draw the Penguin Prison crest in order to reveal a remix of his new single ‘Fair Warning’ (Dirty Vegas remix). Under that, as a secondary call-to-action, fans could also enter their email address for a remix package of the track Multi-Millionaire. Read more below the image.

Now for this campaign, we opted to go the route of increasing awareness at the risk of acquiring a bit less data. Here’s why:

Genre – Penguin Prison’s tunes are in the pop/electronic/funk genre, and there have been a lot of remixes generated surrounding the original songs already released. Fans of this genre, for an emerging artists, typically will not enter their email addresses, and blogs will typically not post Email for Media widgets for a remix, of an emerging artist, unless the remixer is a real heavyweight. The market is clouded with horrible bands in this genre (Penguin Prison NOT being one of them), thus making the fan wary of providing an email address for content.

Breadth of Content - Lots of these remixes were available on his Soundcloud. Some were available on Facebook. Some were available on his website. You get the picture. We needed to streamline how fans got content when they were on the website, and there was a good chance they had already downloaded a lot of other content from a bunch of different points online. Entering an email address would be tedious, especially for remix content that they would probably be able to get somewhere else online within the next week or so.

Enjoyable Discovery – It would have been a completely different story if we just had hosted a download link that fans could click and download content, but we developed a way to increase and refine brand recognition (Penguin Prison crest of arms), and provide fans with content in a fun manner with a low barrier to entry. This makes fans more like to enter an email address after they’ve already spent that much time interacting with the artist and their content.

Had we run a ‘traditional’ Email for Media campaign, I project we would have acquired less emails than we ended up getting, simply from the points listed above.

That said, this campaign has provided great results, been a blast to work on, and Penguin Prison’s new record is going to fuck your day up (in a best way) when it comes out.