What’s different from year’s past is it’s no longer acceptable to have that blue E pull up a boring gray browser. Internet Explorer skins for your browser give you the ability to personalize your Internet experience and enjoy a little style when you’re online. Whether you enjoy professional sports, the hottest music artists, your college alma mater, the latest in news or just nice elements of style – the following is a sampling of some of the IE Skins you will find in Brand Thunder’s Theme Gallery.

Alabama Crimson Tide 2012 BCS National Champions Skin

Regardless of what you think of the BCS Bowl Championship Series, you can appreciate a classic theme from a storied college team that has returned to top form. When you surf the Net, you should also Roll Tide with an IE Skin.

Jacob Latimore Skin

No need to wait for his next appearance on 106 & Park, with Sony Music’s Jacob Latimore browser theme – he’s with you whenever you’re on the Internet. We asked Jacob for his thoughts on browser skins. No surprise that he “Like ‘Em All.”

NFL San Francisco 49ers Skin

The 2011 49ers team is full of surprises with first-year coach, Jim Harbaugh, and their first playoff appearance since 2002 – and their first official browser skin. Get your IE browser on the 49er bandwagon this NFL Playoff season.

NHL Western Central St. Louis Blues Skin

We’ve got a long way to go in the NHL season, but the Blues at the top the standings of their division. And they can sit on top of your IE browser when you get this theme.

Huffington Post Skin

With the election year finally upon us, we know the news and political spin is going to be flying fast. There’s no better place to keep up with the latest and to engage in the discussion than on The Huffington Post. If you’ve got skin in the political game, get this Internet Explorer skin.

Blue Nebula

The ever productive MaDonnas Personas will astonish you with her productivity and her consistently outstanding portfolio of work. Here’s a space inspired skin that will make your Internet Explorer look out of this world.

Dragon

Arya Mathur used Brand Thunder’s BT:Engage to create this astral vision of a Dragon, and then kindly published it to the Brand Thunder Gallery to share with everyone.

And remember, if you don’t find what you want in the Gallery, you can always design and build your own browser skin with Brand Thunder’s BT:Engage. You can choose images from the catalog of images or upload, then drag and drop your own into the browser design. It’s 100%  free to build, share and download your own browser skin.

Related articles

• Internet Explorer 8 Themes (brandthunder.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I talk a lot about using BT:Engage for helping sites and communities deepen their engagement with their online audience. It’s also extremely easy (and fun!) to create browser themes for your own use and pleasure.

In the following post and accompanying video tutorial, I’m going to show you how to spin a browser theme that includes news from your favorite news site.This occurred to me recently as I looked at the Huffington Post browser theme my wife’s been using for years. She would not part with the news ticker in the browser theme’s toolbar. I’m just happy she’s using a Brand Thunder theme. But, I realized I could give her a fresh look grabbing the RSS feed link from the HuffPo site and inserting it into the RSS/Atom reader under the Widgets tab.

This 90 second video tutorial will show you how I did it. The typed out steps follow.

Here are the quick steps to take to build your own news browser theme:

• Go to Brand Thunder’s web site and click the Try it Now button for the Design, Build and Share your own browser themes promotion. When you’re in BT:Engage, click Get Started.
• Design the theme any way you want, using the background and logo library of images or upload your own under My Images.
• To add the news feed, click the Widgets tab. Then drag the RSS/Atom reader button up to the toolbar.
• The properties box will have a place to type or paste an RSS Feed URL. Click Validate, and then Save.
• Click Finish to publish your browser theme and go to your sharing page Preview, where you can download your new theme.

How to find the news feed for a site:

• Most of your main stream news sites like CNN, Fox News, The Huffington Post, MSNBC or NPR offer RSS feeds. You’ll usually find the link in the footer, or near the very bottom, of their web page.
• Otherwise look for the RSS icon, pictured at the top of the blog. This is the universal identifier of RSS feeds and you can often find it in the left or right hand sides of web sites.

I hope this helps and I hope you discover a new way to enjoy your browser theme.

Enough with the endless coverage of the Old Spice viral videos.  Marketing is a simple game – you break through the clutter, you build awareness, you make a sale.  Just like baseball is a simple game – you hit the ball, you catch the ball, you throw the ball.

There’s been so much attention given to the success of the campaign, it seems like nobody believed this Internet marketing thing really works.  It does and it’s a solid part of the overall marketing plan.  Just as the description of marketing and baseball above grossly simplify the games, credit should be given to P&G for the overall execution of the Old Spice campaign.  It’s been hard to miss Old Spice lately, whether its online videos, coupons or in-store promotions.  They had an abundance of presence, not a single good tool.  That presence helped break through the clutter and ultimately drive sales.

This is just another example of a well executed marketing plan.  We’re in the midst of relaunching the Huffington Post browser themes.  HuffPost isn’t successful because it rolls out one cool tool for their community.  HuffPost is aggressively building its content, Arianna is everywhere, and they continue to offer community tools like their interactive browser theme.  It’s an ongoing promotional and growth campaign that keeps gathering attention for them.

The same can be seen with The Daily Beast.  It’s another good news site with their own interactive browser theme.  Yet, you’ll also find Tina Brown across the media, whether it’s on Good Morning America or NPR, representing the Daily Beast and its excellent editorial staff.  You can find an example of her brand building for The Daily Beast as well as a list of excellent reads at her Must Reads at NPR.

It’s this hustle on multiple fronts that pays off.  Kudos to the Old Spice marketing team for a big hit.  A nice work across the board to build that success.

Do you feel safe downloading a program from the Internet? Do you give more thought to visiting a web site or installing a piece of software? It’s questions like these that create challenges for web applications. If you’re offering a software download, you’re already operating at a disadvantage in the mind of the consumer — whether it’s conscious or not.

It’s an act of trust when a consumer downloads and installs your product. You’ve been invited into their life. That invitation is a powerful opportunity to connect with that user over a potentially long period of time. Don’t blow it. Here are some of the things we do and have learned to encourage adoption of our interactive browser themes.

1. Full Frontal Disclosure

In the connected world, it doesn’t pay to try to hide information. You will be found out. Just ask John Edwards. That’s why we put our disclosures upfront and prior to install. We include a default search engine with our product. Even though users can change it any time they like, we tell them up front that it’s coming.

It’s the proper protocol for software distribution on the web. Your user can then make an informed decision about everything they are receiving. It won’t protect you from negative comments, there are always dissenters. At least you’ve been open and can avoid greater negative fallout.

2. If You Love It, Let It Go

The best move we made was to change our product and allow consumers to switch between any theme they want. In the web 1.0 world, you got your hooks into the consumer and you didn’t let go. That doesn’t cut it anymore. Your fans are going to go wherever they want, whenever they want. If you’re doing right by them, they’ll be back.

Our themes help create return visits to our client site, and it’s powerful. Having messaging capability in the browser means you can reach them whenever they’re online. So, making it easy for your fans to change the theme and step away from a client’s experience can be a hard thing for clients to favor. It’s shown to be the right thing.

Our sports teams have a steady core of users that stay with the theme throughout the year. There’s also a large number that return each pre-season or join as the season rolls along. Recognizing your fans may have other interests and welcoming them back each season makes for a much stronger relationship. Giving the ability to switch between themes means you keep a foot in the door instead of creating a complete uninstall scenario.

3. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

We all wish we could remove the barriers to entry. We try to minimize them by making the call to action clearly visible to the user, reduce clutter on the page, sell the sizzle and so on. Showing the graphics included in our themes is a big boost for us.

With Firefox at roughly 25% of the browser market, offering a Firefox-only theme would generally be perceived as a huge barrier to entry. Fortunately, the visual strength of our product and the affinity to the brands we work with has greatly reduced this obstacle. We’ve had clients double their Firefox penetration – outpacing Firefox’s own overall market share. We’ve also had clients get 30% of their total audience using their custom theme. Quite astounding numbers.

4. You Don’t Have to Shout

Our browser themes are an affinity marketing tool. We build them to help brands connect to their fans. And let’s face it, brands and the companies behind them are out to make money. If you’re sending stuff out into the market, it’s eventually got to make you some money or you’re out of luck.

As much as our product offers new sponsor and ad inventory, and there’s a persistent communication channel available to them, I think it’s great that the product owners tread lightly in this area. This is not the place for the hard sell. To coin the phrase of social media, this is for joining the conversation – you’ve got to be a part of the dialogue. Ongoing, timely and useful information will make the long-term connection where the marketing appeals are accepted. We’ve seen this respect around communication rewarded with an average of 10% click through to commerce offers from within our themes.

5. We Interrupt This Program

As mentioned above, timely and useful information is vital. The power of putting a message up front and visible to the user has resulted in phenomenal return visits to our partner sites. Most sites have feeds that are great tools to reach your fans when they’re not on your site. The question is “Are you offering enticing news?”

There are two items to consider. One, a killer headline gets attention. The Huffington Post is a master at this. You can also look to leaders in your industry to find out how they write to engage their readers. Two, inside information is a powerful way to build a relationship. Relationships get tighter when you share personal information about yourself. This can apply to businesses as well. You can get a good feel of this if you look at how Toyota mishandled their PR crisis. Take a page from the Tylenol scare years ago – open and immediate information sharing goes a long way to shoring up your consumer’s trust.

These are some of the things that are working for us, and why. What would you add to the list?

This is the type of information our prospects continually request, but our clients are inclined to protect. It’s a competitive environment and any advantage a company can find is guarded. Also, at a time when resources and revenue seem to be scarce, it’s understandably hard for prospects to take our word for performance potential.

As a result, we greatly appreciate when a client allows us to share information that provides this kind of insight. You can get it anytime via our Case Study link on the Brand Thunder homepage, or click here now. If you considering an Internet program that can drive up the connection between you and your consumer, please request yours today.

“Brand Thunder was built on the premise of allowing users to personalize their browser experience,” said Patrick Murphy, founder and CEO of Brand Thunder. “Today, with Canvas, we radically redefine what that means. There’s no other tool that’s as easy to use and gives this amount of visual control over the user’s existing browser.”

With Canvas installed, users may instantaneously wrap the browser with images or photos found on sites like Flickr and Facebook, even animated gifs by right-clicking the image and selecting “Add to Image Canvas.” Any image added to Canvas becomes part of the “MyPix” button, the equivalent of a browser photo album where the user can switch browser themes any time they wish. Clicking the Manage button allows the user to add and remove images, or to modify the look by changing image position, background color and tiling.

“The browser theme offers one of the most visible customizations for the computer,” Murphy said. “Wallpapers and screensavers have been available for a long time, but once software is opened the wallpaper is hidden. The screensaver is primarily on when you’re not at your computer, so you don’t get to enjoy it much. We’ve put the same kind of personalization and ease of use into an application that is open for hours at a time, the browser.”

Brand Thunder’s browser Booms are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. With a Boom!, users can switch real-time between any of the browser looks they created without restarting their browser. Canvas works with Brand Thunder’s other Booms! offering a custom browser experience as often as users like.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates custom-browser experiences. Brands enjoy a more persistent connection to their Internet consumer through the custom browser Boom!, which increases website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The custom browser Booms! feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NHL, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

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

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For a young company, early success can define you as much as it can ensure your immediate survival. The question is whether staying with that success is good, in the long run, for the company.

Brand Thunder has been fortunate selling its custom branded browsers early on to major teams in major sports leagues. It wasn’t a surprise as sports teams regularly encourage the connection between the team “brand” and the fan. What was a surprise is how slow certain verticals, like TV and Movies with equally avid fan bases, have been to get on board and how quickly the comment of “oh, you do that sports-browser thing” came up despite having strong clients like the Huffington Post, HowStuffWorks.com and Universal Music Group.

As a start up, anything that moves you toward profitability in a significant way is vital to pursue, but equally vital is continuing to do the hard work of building the full market potential of the product. It’s still early in our company’s life to predict its outcome, but it feels right to keep pushing toward the broader market. I credit our business-development lead, Ryan, for bringing sales discipline and structure to the company. We did the formal planning of which markets would be a priority and how we’d go about approaching them. It was painful at the time, as it felt like we should be selling – sending emails, making calls. Those came in time and we’re hopeful we’ve chosen the right priorities. While sports is among them, it’s not the only one and we’re making our in roads.

Check out our Gallery, there’s lots of progress. You’ll see the latest cool launches for the Chicago Blackhawks as well as a special-addition Playoff Boom! for the Canucks. You’ll also find lots of other new Booms! for brands like the leading pet community sites Dogster and Catster, Hard Music Magazine, How Stuff Works, FLW’s Fantasy Fishing game (good fun, btw). There’s even a few of our own offerings like our holiday spin for Mother’s Day and a Boom for fans of The Office.

And when we hear “oh, you do those cool Boom! browser things” we’ll know we’re really on our way.

Brand Thunder reworks the visual style of the browser to match the colors and logos of leading brands, entertainers and sports teams while also adding content and functionality to the browser. The branded browser provides marketers with a persistent means to keep their brand presence with their customer and fans whenever they are connected to the Internet.

The growing list of company’s extending their brand to the browser includes the NASCAR Nationwide Series, internet news blog site The Huffington Post, several National Hockey League teams, NCAA schools, entertainment news site Starpulse, HowStuffWorks.com and more. The full list of active custom browser themes can be found at http://www.brandthunder.com/gallery.

“For a startup company trying to achieve critical mass, it’s a race to reach that state before funds run out,” explained Patrick Murphy, CEO and founder of Brand Thunder. “The investment gives us the necessary financial and intellectual support to become a thriving company.”

About Brand Thunder

Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates a more persistent presence between corporate brands and their Internet consumer through its branded-browser customization, which leads to increased website visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or internet site. The customized browsers feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, NASCAR, NCAA, NHL, Starpulse.com, Universal Music and Yahoo!. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact

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

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We’ve wrestled with this considerably. Our current business model is based on a browser with 20% market share. Sure, we can exceed that for our partners (request our Case Study here), but that’s still a question mark for some prospects. Here are a series of questions we ask ourselves in an effort to improve the ease with which people get our product.

1. Have you identified any immediate barriers?
For us, our users need to have the Firefox browser. If they don’t have it, we give them a link to get it for free – but there’s a cost to sending that user away before they can get what they want.

2. Do you understand the waterfall of user adoption?
If you’re in the software business, you know it’s not unusual to see a 30% drop off at each step of a software download (yes, that’s a 30% drop each time you present a screen where a user must click “next”). That’s why companies work so hard at keeping the installation process simple and streamlined, and why it’s important to know the number of people who start one step and the number who start the next.

3. Have you identified how to minimize the entire number of steps for a user to get your product?
When we launched our Huffington Post branded browser, we offered both the Firefox customizations as well as a “full build” of the browser plus customizations – removing the obstacle of sending a user to get Firefox first. (The hidden cost here was we couldn’t call the browser Firefox, even though it was the same code base. Officially, it’s the Mozilla browser. So, no free lunch here.)

4. Have you listened to your clients, prospects and end users?
If you’re listening to sales objections, noting casual observations and reading user comments – you’ll get invaluable information. As a result, we’ve included a Lite version of each branded browser shipped, changed our Privacy Policy to more accurately reflect the data captured (we were over reaching with what rights we were reserving, but not using – and turning away users), launched our BOOMS to allow users to move seamlessly between our customizations and we’re continuing with some significant development efforts (more to come on this point).

Now, what are we still missing?

If an opportunity for your start-up is:

1. An extension of your current work
2. Improves product or process
3. Boosts your cash flow

Go for it.

For us, the launch of a browser theme focused on Barack Obama’s inauguration (see it here) was a yes to all of those points.

Here’s the back-story.

Our product focus has always been to deliver custom browser themes for leading brands. NASCAR, Huffington Post, you name it. After all, we create a persistent presence with online consumers, which is a great value proposition. What we didn’t focus on was event-driven versions — until recently.

We figured the long-term relationship a fan has with their favorite sports team or music artist, and our ability to reinforce that, was the real business opportunity. It’s good, but it’s not the only opportunity. There’s also a big demand for event-driven browser themes as well.

We started the non-branded work with sports (baseball, football, basketball and so on), but when we launched Christmas, we saw a real nice spike in users. That was quickly followed by an “Oh, shoot!” moment (word choice edited to maintain our PG rating). The Christmas user base would evaporate after the holiday.

So, we scrambled to get a special “Make Merry or Make History” offering in place, which presented a product for New Year’s and one for the inauguration.

The entire effort was beneficial on several fronts. The non-branded and event-based browsers allow us to maintain our build cycles in between client builds (point #1 above). The need to keep these more transient users inspired our BOOM product platform (see related post here) allowing users to seamlessly move between our themes rather than work to get from one to another (point #2). These products have the same business model as our branded versions, so we continue to build a user base that generates revenue (point #3).

By looking beyond our original product focus, we’ve given our business a lift and hopefully more runway – a plus for any startup. And by delivering an Inauguration theme, we’ve given ourselves until the end of January to build our next event-based BOOM.