Celebrating The White Album

Last September (dunno how I missed it), Mojo did a really cool UGC style microsite celebrating the anniversary of The Beatles White Album. The site lets users place their own message into a "homemade" video recording of the Beatles and send it to friends. Basically it plays through as if it were a normal recording of the Fab Four, back in the day, but at the end you can catch a glimpse of John's notebook with your words in it. Really well done.

Sorry, no musicians

No doubt you've all seen the (extremely annoying) Iggy Pop ads for Swiftcover.com car insurance. Well funny thing, as it turns out, Swiftcover don't actually cover musicians. So looks like there might be a bit of bother for them. According to the Advertising Standards Authority, there have been 12 complaints from musicians who have been refused cover, while all their ads feature on of the most recognisable musicians in the world.

Someone somewhere screwed up. It does beg the question though - how often do your marketing people talk to your product or legal people? I'd hope all the time to be honest. I for one know that all the clients I deal with have strict policies on how, where, when and what can be used to advertise their products/services, and that's aside from the individual clauses, disclaimers and exceptions that any given product or service may have.

Anyway, like I said, someone somewhere screwed up. Now Swiftcover will have to live with a raft of these videos popping up (and remember, nothing dies on the net!)...

Is this a sign of hard times...

I just saw a tv ad for Mindshare on 3e. I'm fairly sure I've never seen an ad on Irish tv for any high profile marketing or media agency. Actually, correction, for any marketing or media agency. Is this a signal of particular hard times for Mindshare? Or perhaps they're ahead of the game and next week Ogilvy will have a spot during Champions League half time? Doubtful.

Let everyone's eyebrows dance!

In an exciting add-on to the already hugely successful 'Eyebrows' campaign, from Cadbury, users have been invited to participate in a communal event on the MSN Homepage called JiveBrow09. Using webcams, users can record their own 'Eyebrow Jive' and stream it straight onto the MSN Homepage. The main event, The JiveBrow Dance, will take place this Friday (27th February), alongside a host of other activity created by Hyper, Cadbury's Digital Agency. Users can also utilise a new 'Eyebrowser' application to put some dancing eveybrows on any page on the web.

All-in-all there is a major drive to capitalise and leaverage the initial success of the eyebrows video (which recieved over 4 million views in its first two weeks live) created by Fallon. Dairy Milk brand manager, Sandie Dilger, has said, "We really wanted our online activity to allow people to get involved with the ‘eyebrows' campaign themselves."

42 Below Vodka Numa Numa

Shocking viral video from 42 Below Vodka...



Not only must you question the age of the guys in the video (and it's an alcoholic beverage lets not forget) but for such a low budget production, it unfortunately looks, well very low production. Media Consultant Martin Thomas has said that the creative cost was a mere NZ$500. I question how it even cost that much. The New Zealand vodka brand usually do some really nice work, this is not some of it.