Digital Marketing School

Just over a week ago now (apologies for the delay folks) saw the launch of Ireland's first free, online marketing school. The Digital Marketing School, founded by Niall O’Driscoll and Andrew Jenkinson, has been set up through the vStream marketing company and is aimed at Irish SMEs and start-ups who are looking for an online consultancy resource.

While I would personally disagree with a number of points that are made in the new ventures press release, all in all I think this is a great idea and really well put together. The site already features 7 different tutorials, an interview and a case study, all provided as online videos by the two founders.

Andrew Jenkinson spoke about the reasoning behind the site, saying "From start-up companies to large multi-nationals there is a general lack of knowledge of this space. And it's also very hard to keep up to date, as last year's facebook is this year's twitter, and new technologies such as augmented reality are appearing all the time. It's hard for people to get grounding in this, as it can seem quite complex and confusing. That is why we decided to set up the Digital Marketing School and make it available for free. For Ireland to compete at an international level, digital marketing will be crucial."

Budweiser Lyrics Competition

At the beginning of the month I attended the launch of the new Budweiser ad - Lyrics. Budweiser's latest ad was released to coincide with the 4th July and was based around The Beatles song ‘All together now’. The ad was shot entirely from a moving train around the Chicago L.



Behind the ad there is a larger digital campaign running through the Alltogethernow.ie Website. Users are asked to create their own video or photo of themselves holding up a number, letter or word. This video is without doubt the best example I've seen...



A massive thanks to Darragh for sharing this.

When I first looked at this just after 6pm there were 13 views - an hour later it was on 114!

Display Ads: Video and Rich Media

Twentieth Century Fox are set to launch a serious cool online campaign for the release of the 'Dollhouse' Season One DVD boxset ('Dollhouse' is the latest program from Joss Whedon - he of Buffy and Firefly fame). The campaign utilises a suite of video and rich media display ads that, I hate to say, you would just never get to run in Ireland (publishers would flip a lid over the file size and CPU usage). As well as being able to watch 5 different in-banner video clips, the ads also allow you to follow Eliza Dushku on Twitter and send her messages, all directly through the ad.

Once you rollover the ad, it expands left revealing a panel to watch the videos and read/post from/to Eliza's Twitter feed. All logging-in to your account etc. is done straight through the ad. The banner does use a level of moderation and it is possible that your tweet could end up appearing in the ad.

Unfortunately I couldn't embedd the ad here for you to see, but you can pop over to the EyeWonder site to see a full demo of how it works..

Michael Rosner, senior vice president of global sales at EyeWonder, said: "We've recently seen brands using Twitter in different ways to help promote a product or service, but we wanted to take the technology a step further by giving users the ability to tweet directly in the ad unit.

"Given we wanted to launch this new rich media feature with a premier partner, we used Fox's Dollhouse season one campaign, as the social aspect of it allows people to share their thoughts on the show and drum up excitement about the Blu-ray/DVD release."

A Breif History of the Internet

With Microsoft desperately pushing Internet Explorer 8 in every possible way, they have released a series of videos exploring the internet and its many fads and phases. This is their 'Brief History of the Internet' video - worth a watch...

Nike: IAM1

I try not to post too much about the same brands but sometimes (or quite often with these guys to be honest) a brand has a couple of really good campaigns going at the same time. This is Nike's new work for Air Max 1 - IAM1 Journey. It's based on a journey through five European cities to seek out and discover the unusual urban spaces they have, through the eyes of of designers, artists, musicians and media creatives. A brilliant video.