Calvin Flakes

Last week Calvin Harris tweeted about a gift that arrived for him from Kellogg’s.

Basically Harris had been doing a lot of tweeting recently about his breakfast preferences, about his choice of cereal. Picking up on this, Kellogg's sent Harris his very own breakfast cereal with the strapline ‘50% cornflakes, 50% branflakes – the perfect mix’. This is superb marketing. Simple, low cost, and yet highly, highly effective. Instant Brand Ambassador!

The Web In 5 Years, According To Google

Revolution Magazine carried a great article last Friday about an interview that Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, gave at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.

While the interview is initially about Google, where it's come from and where it's going, Eric Schmidt also gives an overview of how Google sees the web changing in the next five years time. Schmidt outlines a 'radically different' internet that will be dominated by the Chinese language and Social Media content, and delivered to us by super-fast broadband.

By far one of the most interesting points that Schmidt raises is that brands should be listening to youth consumers when planning their marketing strategies. He simply points out, "Talk to a teenager about how they consume media and remember in five years they'll be your employee".

This is an overview of Schmidt's vision compiled by ReadWriteWeb:

1. Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
2. Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
3. Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
4. "We're starting to make significant money off of Youtube", content will move towards more video.
5. "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
6. "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"
7. It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

This is the interview:

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

Last Thursday saw the trailer go live for the new Capcom "Resident Evil" game. Essentially this is the lastest in the popular zombie killing series of games, featuring all the blood, guts and gore that would be expected.

What wasn't expected was the takeover video ad that turned an otherwise normal webpage into a zombie rampaged mess. Allowing users to both watch and play the new game. This is seriously cool...



Mona Hamilton, VP-marketing at Capcom, said "This is the first time users can interact and actually play the game inside the trailer, it really allows people to experience that surprise horror and fear. ... It was designed to take the experience to the next level."

GameTrailers.com, part of the MTV Networks entertainment unit inside Spike Digital, and JVST, San Francisco, worked with Capcom to create the interactive trailer. Unfortunately the interactive nature of the trailer means that it is only available on the GameTrailers site, however, there is an impressive advertising suite backing up this element of the campaign across the US market. Unusually, all this advertising is driving users to GameTrailers.com rather then a dedicated campaign microsite.

Brad Winters, general manager for GameTrailers.com, said "It's a captive audience with people coming to the site for nothing other than to watch game videos. ... This engages the audience more than just watching a video and if you can get them involved in the content, it's going to make more of an impression."

This is the first interactive trailer that GameTrailers.com has hosted, and while Winters doesn't see it taking over the traditional trailer, he did say "I think we'll see this kind of interactivity more and more as part of marketing plans. ... And not just for video games and movies, but it's an opportunity for anyone creating video content [for their brand]."

Augmented Reality: Esquire Magazine

Last Monday Esquire revealed that they would once again be pushing the boundaries of print. As I'm sure everyone will remember, Esquire's first foray into enhanced print was with their ePaper 75th Anniversary issue, and following that they did their brilliant split cover. This time, however, it's Augmented Reality that is their enhancement of choice.

For their December issue Esquire have developed an Augmented Reality cover featuring none other then Robert Downey Jr.. Downey introduces the issue and does a brief plug for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. The real fun comes in with a host of bonus content that is accessed and controlled on the Esquire website by installing an app and interacting with the Augmented Reality marker.

In the following video, Editor-in-Chief, David Granger, runs through the features. An example given is for the issue’s fashion features, which, by tilting the magazine in different directions, allows you to adjust the the weather in the shots with the model's changing to suit the new conditions.

Facebook & Sports

For most Irish (and indeed French) people, there is only one thing to think about today - where will I watch the match? Of course if you were lucky enough to grab yourself a ticket to Croke Park your question is already answered, but what about the rest of us?

Perhaps Facebook is the answer?

Seriously!

Let me back track to late October. On the 22nd October, Nike did something really cool. They invited Arsenal midfielder Cesc Fàbregas to take over the Nike Facebook page for an interactive Q&A session with fans from around the world. For 90 minutes Cesc answered questions about Arsenal's Champions League match against AZ Alkmaar. The event also featured behind-the-scenes photos from the game that were posted to the Facebook page.

With 3 days to go before the event even took place, over 800 people had signed-up to participate, with a further 400 plus questions lined up for Cesc to answer. So even though Cesc is a Nike football ambassador and is regularly featured on TV spots and advertising campaigns (see the video below for the recent Total Control campaign), this was without question a new move for Nike and AKQA, who worked on the project for them.



But what does any of this have to do with today's World Cup Qualifier play-off between Ireland and France?

Well, as I said: Facebook.

Nike aren't the only brand to be pushing the boundary on what Facebook can do, and what it can provide for its users. Carlsberg are doing an A1 job on providing engagement and interactivity in a way that is absolutely brilliant.

For today's match, the Carlsberg Facebook Page is giving fans the ability to follow the match live, give their views and opinions through a live match chat and opinion polls, and give real-time reviews of each players performance through an interactive rating card. This is seriously cool, and aside from being a great example of what Facebook as a platform can do, this is a clear indication of how the public's viewing habits have changed in the last 12 to 24 months.

People crave interaction. No one wants to be a spectator, they want to be a participant. They want to share their opinion, become part of the event, and feel like they are actually involved. Social Media is allowing that. Social Media is giving everyone, everywhere, all the time, the ability to take part. In many ways it's the perfect tagline or brand ident - 'Take Part'. And lets face it, it's only going to get better.