Low-tech promo
I saw this clever little animation posted on Facebook today and was interested enough to Google the book's title to see if it actually existed.
Sure enough there's a website that is nothing more than a larger, clickable version of the animation.
Your final click takes you to a screen where you can click to buy the book at one of four retailers, or click to share the animation via one of six social media sites.
Since I saw this today on Facebook I'd say that this simple promo campaign is already starting to pay off. I'm betting that you'll run across it soon if you frequent any of the major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg).
Oh, and actually the book looks pretty good.
Animated GIF
The most impressive part of this is how the designers have used an old (in Internet terms) technology, the animated GIF, to create the animation. Nice to see something creative done with this almost-forgotten format.
I'm sure you've seen animated GIFs before, usually on cheesy sites made by 13-year-olds who've downloaded some of the thousands of animated GIFs available free on the web. Like this one.
If by now the constant animation has caused you to start banging your head on your keyboard, blame it on thoughtless designers. The animated GIF format allows you to specify how many times the animation will loop before stopping.
I advise setting it to loop 3 or 4 times, enough for people to enjoy the animation but not enough to make them crazy. Not enough people follow my advice.
