COLUMBUS (July 22, 2010) — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the browser customization specialists, announced its first entry into the video game market with the launch of the IGN interactive browser themes for Firefox and Internet Explorer.  IGN, the premiere online media outlet for videogame reviews, news, trailers and videos, will provide content previews, links to its site and its visual style through the browser themes.  The free downloads are available at http://pages.brandthunder.com/ign/download?ref=anc.

The browser theme tightly integrates with IGN’s web presence.  Users will find full navigation to the gaming platform of their choice, like PS3 and Xbox, or to other IGN site categories including movies, TV, comics and video.  The themes also feature quick links to IGN’s pages and channels on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

In addition, both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 users will have information previews at their fingertips.  Firefox includes a sidebar with Top Stories and Reviews, making it easy to scan the latest features while visiting other web sites.  Internet Explorer 8 theme users will get some of their content delivered in web slices, the new preview feature in the latest version of Internet Explorer.

“The IGN community is constantly looking for the latest news and information on upcoming game releases and the games they’re playing,” said Scott Moe, Director of Online Marketing.  “Brand Thunder’s browser themes deliver that news quickly and conveniently, so we know we’re meeting those needs even better.”

“We’re proud to launch the IGN browser themes simultaneously on Firefox and Internet Explorer,” says founder Patrick Murphy.  “Each browser offers unique capabilities to showcase IGN’s premiere content and we think the IGN community will love it.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Internet browser.  They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Brand Thunder
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser.  Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue.  Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site.  The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.
Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

About IGN Entertainment
IGN Entertainment, a unit of News Corporation, is the leading Internet media and services provider focused on the video game and entertainment enthusiast markets. Collectively, IGN’s properties reached more than 36.6 million unique users worldwide May 2010, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore Media Metrix. IGN’s network of video game-related properties (IGN.com, GameSpy, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, Direct2Drive and others) is one of the Web’s leading video game information destinations.  IGN also owns the leading men’s lifestyle website AskMen.com, and provides technology for online game play in video games.  IGN is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices across North America, Europe and Australia.

CONTACT:

Kris Sharbaugh
IGN Entertainment
415.519.6526 (cell)
ksharbaugh@ign.com

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Reposted from Mike’s Musings

So you may wonder why we called it Personas Interactive.

If you were go to the Brand Thunder Gallery, you would see what we specialize in – creating customized browser experiences for different sports teams, websites, musicians and more.

These browser experiences have evolved over the years in their design, their technology and even their name. But regardless of the technology change, these browser experiences always required the installation of a Firefox add-on and the restart of the browser for every one that you wanted to install.

One of the reasons we created Personas Interactive was to address this issue. With the advent of Personas in Firefox 3.6, we saw the opportunity to take our browser experience to the next level. So one of the core features of Personas Interactive is Interactive Themes.

Interactives Themes take the Enhanced Personas we talked about last time and add interactivity like clickable logos, sidebars, toolbars, feedreaders and more. So instead of just providing people with a picture of your website or brand, you can provide a way for them to connect with you in the browser.

Before we continue, I have to make a disclaimer. Up to this point, we’ve talked about things that anyone can do (set up their own Personas gallery, create Enhanced Personas) but at this point in time, an Interactive Theme can only be created by Brand Thunder. We’re working on expanding the technology so it is available to anyone. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have an Interactive Theme, though. Brand Thunder would love to work with your band, sports team, website or company to create an Interactive Theme. Just send an email to info@brandthunder.com.

So let’s look at a diagram that shows the differences between Personas, Enhanced Personas and Interactive Themes.

So what does this mean in practice?

If you were to go to the Personas Interactive page with Personas Interactive installed, you would see some of our Interactive Themes in action.

Are you a fan of the Goblins Web Comic? There’s an Interactive theme that keeps your favorite web comic close at hand. If you need your daily fix of The Daily Beast, you can install an Interactive Theme that gives you links and news from The Daily Beast as well as the top story of the day updated in your browser. Is your team the Indianapolis Colts? You can connect with them right in your browser. Or maybe you like movies? The Movie Premiere Interactive Theme is updated with a new movie poster every 15 minutes. Can’t get enough of CollegeHumor? Install the Interactive Theme and your favorite links will be one click away.

And we’ve got over a hundred more Interactive Themes coming in the next few months. Besides porting our existing themes over to Personas Interactive, we’re working with great brands like the CBS Sports College Network to bring your favorite college sports teams to the browser.

So what should you do? Install Personas Interactive. Setup your own Personas gallery. Create an Enhanced Persona. And stay tuned, because we’ve got some great stuff coming your way.

Reposted from Mike’s Musings

In explaining exactly what a Persona was in my last post, I mentioned that a Persona contains two images – a header and a footer. I also indicated that these images are very large – 3000 pixels wide. You may wonder why that is. Personas is designed to do one thing; take an image and put it in the upper right corner of the browser. It doesn’t resize or scale the image. If you resize your browser very wide, you just see more of the image on the left hand side. That 3000 pixels number is a completely arbitrary number that is designed to be the maximum you will resize your browser.

This architecture creates problems.

• The file sizes of the images can be very large.
• If you have a repetitive image, you have to cut and paste it to make it 3000 pixels wide.
• If you want to use an existing image, you’ll have to do something to convert it to 3000 pixels wide.
• You can’t guarantee that anything appears in the upper left corner.
• You can’t have more than one background image.

All of these problems have already been solved by CSS, but none of the CSS to do anything to background images is available in Personas. That’s where the Enhanced Personas feature of Personas Interactive comes in.

Enhanced Personas adds additional attributes to the Personas JSON that gives you all the things that CSS backgrounds have to offer. This includes multiple background images! Here are the attributes we’ve added:

backgroundImage

Specifies the URL of an image or multiple images that will be used for the background. Multiple images are separated by a comma. The images are drawn from right to left, so the left most image appears on top. We aren’t using the actual CSS syntax here, so don’t put url(‘…’) around the images.

backgroundPosition

Specifies the position of the images in backgroundImage using standard CSS rules. These rules are separated by a comma.

backgroundSize

Dpecifies the size of the images in backgroundImage using standard CSS rules. These rules are separated by a comma.

backgroundColor

Whereas accentcolor in the original Personas specification is used for both the titlebar and the background of the browser, we allow you to specify just the background color. It is never used for the titlebar. If you specify both a backgroundColor and an accentcolor, accentcolor is used for the titlebar, and backgroundColor is used for the background of the browser.

textShadow

One of the other areas that causes problems with Personas is the area of text shadows. We’ve provided an additional attribute to let you control the text shadow. Personas determines the color of the text shadow to use for your Persona by computing the luminance of the textcolor specified in your Persona.

let luminance = 0.2126 * r + 0.7152 * g + 0.0722 * b;

If the luminance is less than or equal to 110, it makes your text shadow light, otherwise it makes your text shadow dark. We’ve made textShadow an attribute that you can specify, and you can give it three values: dark, bright or none. You can experiment with these three values to see which one makes your text look good on your Persona.

Summing it all up

So what does all this give us? The ability to create a Persona that takes full advantage of CSS. If you hover over the preview images below with Personas Interactive installed, you’ll see examples of Enhanced Personas in action. Each of these Enhanced Personas has an image on the left, an image on the right and a repeating image for the background. If you install them, you can resize the browser and see that the images stay in both corners of the browser. I’ve deliberately placed breaks in the background image so you can see the repeat. You’ll also notice that I’ve used a different text shadow option for each of the Personas. See if you can figure out which value I used.  (NOTE: Visit the original post to see the samples in action: http://kaply.com/weblog/2010/07/09/enhanced-personas/)

Here are some other things to keep in mind with Enhanced Personas.

backgroundImage is a required attribute. This means that even if you use the other attributes, if backgroundImage isn’t specified, they won’t be honored. The only exception to this is textShadow.

You can create an Enhanced Persona that works with Firefox out of the box. Just specify both a headerURL and a backgroundImage. Personas Interactive users will get the Enhanced Persona.

For our next installment, we’re going to talk about the hallmark of Personas Interactive, Interactive Themes and Interactive Personas.

This is part three in my series about Personas Interactive from Brand Thunder. If you missed the first two, they are Introduction to Personas Interactive and What is a Persona?

If you’re a startup or a small business, celebrate your own independence along with that of the U.S.A.’s.  If it helps, do like me and run Brand Thunder’s Independence Day browser theme to help get you in the spirit.

I’ve had a diverse career with a range of companies from big to small.  None of them gave the sense of independence that working for Brand Thunder does.  The difference this time, I think, is that I’m all in.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t committed or dedicated to my previous jobs, it’s just there’s more riding on this venture from the standpoint of what I can contribute and affect.

Because my efforts can have that direct affect, that leads to the potential of making Brand Thunder work all encompassing as well.  It may be pretty close to that.  There are steady worries and a lot of time trying to work out the current puzzle.  “If I can just solve for this…” is usually how the internal conversation goes.

Yet, there’s never enough time and always more to do.  So, we’re forced to look through a lens that focuses on what’s important and most material.  That lens, however, isn’t just applied to the business.  It’s applied to the personal life as well.  When so much is this important, then all the important things must be considered.  The result has been more and better time spent with the family.

Knowing that the things needing attention the most are getting it is tremendously liberating.  I don’t know if this makes much sense to you, but it does for me.  With the three days this weekend, my time will be split between family, friends, celebrations and Brand Thunder, and I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate independence.  Hope you find your own independence as well.

COLUMBUS (June 21, 2010) — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the browser customization specialists, announced its first entry into the Indian market with the launch of the Sanjeev Kapoor interactive browser theme for Firefox.  The best of Chef Kapoor’s vast library Indian cuisine knowledge is now rolled into a free download available at http://pages.brandthunder.com/sanjeevkapoor/download/.

The browser theme is tightly integrated with Chef Kapoor’s web site (http://sanjeevkapoor.com) and offers a full range of videos and links to proven recipes and a host of information on the art and craft of cooking.  User’s install an add-on for their existing Firefox browser to have fast access to new and favorite recipes from Chef Kapoor, plus seasonal suggestions, monthly features, shopping and more.  The video sidebar offers an abundance of cooking presentations including both vegetarian and non-vegetarian selections.

“We wanted to offer our users something that would strengthen their relationship with Chef Kapoor.” said Mr. Adarsh Nigam, VP-Marketing (www.sanjeevkapoor.com).  “This interactive browser theme has brought together the right experience and content for our fans to enjoy.”

“Sanjeev Kapoor has an avid fan base in India and across the globe,” says founder Patrick Murphy.  “We feel the browser theme is a great opportunity to reach his widespread audience and share his inspiring explorations of Indian cuisine.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Internet browser.  They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Sanjeev Kapoor:

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor is the most celebrated face of Indian cuisine today. Chef extraordinaire, TV show host, author of best-selling cookbooks, restaurant consultant, architect of a unique range of food products and winner of numerous culinary awards, Chef Kapoor is living his dream of making Indian cuisine the number one cuisine in the world. He hosts Khana Khazana the popular Cookery Show on Zee TV which has won the ‘Best Cookery Show’ award given by the Indian Television Academy year after year ever since its inception in the year 2000. The show has completed more than 700 episodes being telecast non stop for 15 years – the longest running TV show in any category on any channel. His website www.sanjeevkapoor.com is a complete cookery manual with a compendium of tried and tested recipes and a wealth of information on the art and craft of cooking. As a restaurant consultant he has granted his franchise to a number of restaurants abroad and in various cities of India.

Contact:         enquiry@sanjeevkapoor.com

About Brand Thunder:

Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser.  Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue.  Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site.  The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:

Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

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The kick off of the World Cup got me thinking about the marketing opportunity for companies trying to reach a multi-national audience with their product, and my own global expectations for Brand Thunder’s interactive browser themes when we were starting out.

For companies that can afford it, the mega sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup offer a reach not found everyday.  I’m sure it makes sense for the larger companies to maintain their presence.  For smaller companies, we need to think more creatively.

Find Your Extended Sales Force

Brand Thunder leverages a distribution strategy that it began using in the U.S. – working with agencies and organizations that had the new media expertise and the brand relationships to extend the reach of our product.  It’s working well.  Our partner in the UK, KAM Sports International, brought the Scottish Premier League champion Glasgow Rangers into the Brand Thunder client fold.  We’re also about to launch product in Hong Kong through our partner HOTMEDIA, in India through our representative Kevin Jacobs, and are about to announce another large international market partnership.  Is there a sales channel that you can leverage beyond your own?

Leverage Your Product’s Natural Reach

With Firefox being built for the global community, we were prepared to act local for any global opportunity that presented itself at day one.  While we’re making strides in this area as mentioned above, it’s interesting to see that the users are adopting faster than the brands.  Our traffic trends show more than half of users coming from outside the U.S.  We have product categories where U.S. usage is only a third of the user base, and it’s not just in the obvious products like our Euro Football theme.  It’s some of the more general interest themes and it’s interesting to see where and what users find appealing in our gallery of products.  Needless to say, this extended audience wouldn’t be possible if the platform on which we work wasn’t international to begin with.  Is there an international opportunity with your product that you’ve overlooked?

Discover New Distribution Channels

Our clients and their reach to their audience have always been a critical part of our business.  But it’s not been our sole channel to market.  Part of the value add for partners and driver of our growth has been our own distribution efforts.  This includes making sure we’re available on the add-on galleries for the browsers we serve – Addons.Mozilla.org for Firefox and IEAddons.com for Internet Explorer.  We’ve also seen considerable success delivering our browser themes through freeware and shareware download sites.  This is made easier through the use of PAD files.  It has also allowed us to reach users through the sites that serve the product they use (the browser) and the sites that serve their market (download sites across the globe).  Where can you put your product in the hands of new users (more than just an international question)?

None of these suggestions are ground breaking.  However, if we were totally focused on a narrow definition of what our business is and how we do it, any of them could have easily been overlooked.  What are you doing that could easily be extended and expand your market giving you world class appeal at less than World Cup prices?  And what else should we be considering?

COLUMBUS (June 9, 2010) — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the browser customization specialists, announced the launch of its add-on themes for Windows Internet Explorer on the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery. Some of these themes have been featured on the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery homepage at http://ieaddons.com.

Brand Thunder, is rapidly bringing its interactive browser themes to Internet Explorer users. Each add-on blends a custom theme and interactive content and functionality to Internet Explorer. If multiple Brand Thunder add-ons are installed, the user enjoys real-time switching between any of them. The complete experience changes with the theme, buttons, feeds and sidebar content all changing to match the selected theme.

The initial launch of Internet Explorer themes includes a broad offering of brands and topics like Baseball, CollegeHumor, the MLS’s Columbus Crew, the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, NASCAR Nationwide Series, Vancouver Canucks, Washington Capitals, Weather powered by WeatherBug among others. Brand Thunder will continue to roll out themes for its client list that spans entertainment, news, sports and colleges and universities.

“Brand Thunder brings a good set of technologies, user experiences and recognized companies that we felt the Internet Explorer audience would enjoy,” said Rob Pulciani, Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft. “We wanted to help build the awareness of these offerings and highlight the fun and value this can bring to someone’s online experience.”
“Our clients and users have consistently asked for the ability to theme their Internet Explorer browsers,” says founder Patrick Murphy. “We’re thrilled to make this launch event encompassing of our clients and leverage the power of the Internet Explorer community.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Internet browser. They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser. Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

###

Interactive browser themes are like an extreme makeover for the web browser. With an easy-to-install browser add-on, end users transform their drab web-browser into an immersive experience. Where many Brand Thunder themes feature official logos, content and functionality like video, music players or other Internet widgets, the Expressions line limits functionality to popular sites like Facebook and Twitter and a sidebar with headline news videos.

“Many of our themes leverage the affinity relationship between a brand and its fans,” says founder Patrick Murphy. “We heard from our users that we were under serving an audience who prefers to change the style of their browser more frequently. Expressions were designed for more visual focus than our average interactive browser theme.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers. They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser. Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

###

COLUMBUS (April 26, 2010) — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the browser customization specialists, announced today its browser themes for major league baseball. With the beginning of the baseball season underway, fans of the sport can enhance both Firefox and Internet Explorer with the feel of the ballpark. The free downloads are available from Brand Thunder at http://pages.brandthunder.com/baseball/download or the Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery at http://www.ieaddons.com/us/Details.aspx?Id=8125.

These are interactive browser themes so baseball fans will get more than just a visual upgrade to Firefox or Internet Explorer. They will enjoy the latest league headlines and scores in the news ticker, quick links to the Major League Baseball site, tickets, and more. The theme features a multimedia sidebar that includes videos and a video news player. Plus, the theme has a customizable button, which fans can set to their favorite team’s homepage.

The theme is delivered through an easy-to-install browser add-on allowing baseball fans to transform their drab web-browser into an immersive experience that delivers the ballpark to the browser.

“We have a great portfolio of interactive themes on Firefox,” says founder Patrick Murphy. “As we extend this new theme capability to Internet Explorer, the Baseball theme offers a balance of design and functionality, and with spring here seemed a natural to release.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Internet browser. They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser. Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

###

Last week I was directed to a blog post about the power of having fans of your brand. Teddy Anderson, the author, and I had just met and he mentioned the post and that he’d referenced Brand Thunder in it. How could I not read it?

Some valid points are made about the difference between fans and customers, and why the power is in getting more fans. He even lists resources to help with this. In the brief post, the emphasis is on illustrating why customers are not the goal, but fans are. The point that is alluded to, but not detailed, is that the two are not mutually exclusive.

You should approach your customer development like a baseball farm system. You’ve got your prospecting and recruiting to get new players into the minor leagues, then you move them from single A up to triple A until you can land them in the majors. Not everyone is going to make the jump to the next level, but doesn’t mean they don’t serve a purpose at the level they attain. Think of your customer acquisition in the same light. Once you’ve made a sale or acquired a new customer, are you done? Not likely. You’re just at the next stage of a growing relationship. It started when the first connection was made with a prospect, it’s grown into a customer relationship and they may yet evolve into fans. They won’t all become fans, but at least the growth potential is there at every stage.

The tools available to companies to encourage that ongoing relationship are plentiful, and that’s the strength of the Internet. As I’ve said in this space before, communication is a key element to building that relationship. And it’s not just open communication, it’s early. You need these customers to feel they’ve got the inside track if they’re ever to move from feeling like a client to feeling like they’re valued.

Yes, Brand Thunder’s browser themes do this, and part of why we’re including the “interactive” moniker with them. This communication potential is also the compelling nature behind Facebook and Twitter, and the fans and followers of brands. Information is powerful, and to give it freely, openly and early (as in making your fans the first to know when news is happening) stands to create a powerful connection.

So, I agree that if you’re only focused on getting customers, you’re missing the boat. You need to look at the entire customer relation process to make sure the methods are in place to make sure the relationship can grow.