The Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines In Animated Type

As far as using the medium to your advantage goes, this one really does a brilliant job. Last week the Magazine Publishers of America – the industry association for consumer magazines – launched a campaign to support their mission to advance the interests of magazine publishers with the advertising community, the government, the press and the public. The campaign expertly combines two social media channels that famously cause messages to go viral: Twitter and YouTube. It comes in the form of a motion graphics video with animated typography spelling out twenty myth-busting facts that showcase magazine vitality, tweetable in 140 characters or less. Even better, the dedicated page on the MPA website lists the twenty "thruths" with handy "Tweet this" buttons next to each quote.

Originally used to kick off the Magazine Innovation Summit two weeks ago, it gave a sense of hope about the struggling industry facing tough times. The video is well executed, simple and effective. The almost exclusively typographic piece features Gotham caps – in black or reversed out – on flat colour backgrounds. It cleverly plays with juxtapositions of size and colour, and the quotes move on the screen at a pleasantly nimble pace. Although I am generally a bit wary whenever anyone professes certain stamements to be "thruths", the sources for the quotes do look pretty solid, so I'm incline to believe what is being said. Amanda Ernst remarks in her entry on FishbowlNY that:

A lot of the magazine news that we report here is not positive, so it's encouraging to see 20 real facts that are upbeat. But they only tell part of the story — although admittedly its the part that the MPA wants to emphasize. The video made us excited, but then we thought, "If all this is true, why are so many magazines closing? Why are so many people losing their jobs?"

Food for thought indeed.