7-Eleven uses the Election to Engage Customers

7-Eleven are engaging their customers this election season. by letting you show your support with....... a coffee cup. Seariously, a coffee cup.

Whenever you buy a cup of coffee at any 7-Eleven, you choose either a blue Obama cup or a red McCain cup. With every cup counted as a vote, you just pop along to the microsite and check out who's winning. Bare in mind that that 7-Eleven sells one million cups of coffee a day.

This isn't a new campaign idea however. 7-Eleven have used the system to fairly accurately guage the election results.

Web Surfing Stimulates Your Brain

A survey by the University of California has revealed that the effects of Googling, on brain activity, are extremely positive. Aimed at dismissing the idea that Internet use leads to shorter attention spans, the survey tested twenty-four volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76, giving them various Web searching tasks and book reading tasks. The users were also broken down according to their level of web experience. The subjects were given MRI scans while participating in the activities, to determin the level of, and extent, of brain activity.

The results clearly indicated that both groups showed similar levels of brain activity during activities such as book reading tasks, but it was the experienced Googlers who showed significantly higher levels of brain activity while performing Internet searches. Interestingly, their brain activity was also much higher when searching the web, then when reading a book.

So what can we garner from these results? Well, there is certainly an implication that use of the web, and in particular serch, triggers brain centers that control decision making and complex reasoning, which can actually help older people fight senility. "Just a simple, everyday computer task seems to be activating neural circuits," said study author Dr. Gary W. Small, director of the University of California, Los Angeles, Center on Aging. "It's possible that this is something that strengthens our brains as we do it."

All-in-all, extremely interesting stuff. Hopefully in years to come, the 6 to 8 hours a day I spent on a computer will pay off!

Cybercom win Best Digital Promotion in the World!

Fantastic news yesterday morning - Cybercom's Powerade 'Never Give Up' campaign has won the Best Digital Promotion in the World at the 2008 MAA Globes in Toronto. Against tough competition from Vietnam and Australia, this may be the crowning achievement in an already merit studded piece of marketing. The MAA award makes a total of seven awards to date for the campaign, icluding a Coca-Cola Worldwide Marketing Award, Grand Prix at the APMC and Best Digital Campaign at the DMAs.

Congratulation to all the folks in the office who worked on the campaign. A very, very well done!

Everyone has a bad day sometimes...

YouTube Premieres Full-Length Film

The internet may have just seen one of the most pivitol moves in content sharing yet. For the first time ever YouTube will feature the full-length, feature work of established filmmaker. On top of this, the film is completely avoiding an official cinema premiere; last Friday, director Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska had its public debut on YouTube's Screening Room.

The film has since received over 150,000 views.

Unfortunately folks, it isn't viewable in Ireland. For those in authorised countries, the film can be found here.