Ballygowan Pink - B Part Of It - Update

Just eight days ago, Ballygowan launched their 'B Part of it' campaign to help raise funds for breast cancer awareness across Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland the campaign supports the Marie Keating Foundation, and in Northern Ireland it supports Action Cancer. The first phase of the campaign has seen the launch of a range of new pink bottles of Ballygowen, a campaign microsite and Facebook page and a number of offline activations. Ultimately each bottle of of the new Ballygowan Pink that is sold makes a contribution directly to the foundations.

So eight days later and what's happening witht he campaign?

In my honest opinion, the campaign is doing absolutely brilliantly. The Facebook page now has over 6,000 Fans, 30 Fan Photos and over 120 Fan Comments (and that doesn't include any conversation under those comments!). This is a massive amount of interaction and engagement for a Brand that has otherwise not had a strong Facebook presence. Bare in mind this Facebook page was only set up eight days ago when the campaign started - it has actually driven all this engagement in eight days! Beyond the great charity element to the new Ballygowan campaign, what has really captured my attention here has been the public support. The comments and interaction from Fans of the campaign on the Facebook page has just been brilliant. If there was ever a case study for the use of Facebook by a charity, this is it. Serious hat tips to the team behind the Facebook page!

Check out the latest video showing some of the campaigns high profile supporters...

Touchless Interfaces

With all the recent hype around the iPad and the emergence of touchscreen tablet computing I decided to look into what else was on the horizon. I may well be showing my age here but the truth is that it hasn't been very long that touchscreen interfaces have become practically the norm and almost everyone carries at least one touchscreen device in their pocket. So perhaps it's too early to be considering what will come next? Oddly enough, no.

While Sci-fi writers may have long ago dreamt off touchless interfaces, the reality has been a lot less forthcoming. However, it may be close at hand. The latest step toward touchless interfaces comes from John Underkoffler. John was working at the MIT Media Lab when the producers of Minority Report called looking for ideas for their movie. Unsurprisingly, they hired John and his idea. Now, following a long hard slog of development and testing, John and his company, Oblong, brought their new interface to the TED conference. What may surprise you is that this was a year ago, and in the following year the system is said to be close to implementation.

This is an actual spatial operating system.

Something else that this got me thinking about was the massive explosion of the adaptation and use of Augmented Reality. In my mind the two systems are inherently linked - while AR uses coded image identifiers to render interactives and otherwise unseen media within an artificial 3D environment, the spatial operating system recognises your hands as manipulators of objects with an artificial 3D environment. If you also consider the various laser light artificial keyboards that are on the market, I expect the next 24 months of interface development to see some huge changes.

Give A Day, Get A Disney Day

Disney's latest campaign, 'Give A Day, Get A Disney Day', is the latest example of a growing trend of major businesses driving community support through a volunteer programme. The campaign is aiming to inspire one million people to volunteer a day of service to one of the campaign partner businesses in their communities. By volunteering for a day, participants will each receive a 1-day, 1-theme park ticket to Disneyland or Walt Disney World for free.

The nicest element to the campaign is an absolutely brilliant personalised video creative presented as the redesigned campaign microsite. Just pop in your name and date of birth year and hit play for a hilarious muppet escapade. I won't ruin it by telling you any more, just go and do it!

The campaign also has the following personalised video for sharing through blogs or Social Networks...

Lyons Tea - 'All Talk'

Following on from my post two weeks ago about the new ‘The Master Blender’ TV ad campaign from Lyons Tea, I was really looking forward to the second offering in the campaign. The ad continues the story of the Lyons Master Tea blender and his apprentice. This time we see the two characters adding 'All Talk' to their tea, for people who are.... all talk.

This is the second of three tv executions for the campaign and continues with support from three radio ads and a 48-sheet element. The campaign has been created by Rothco with the tv ad directed by Stephen St. Leger and production by H2 Films. Post-produced is by Windmill Lane Pictures.

A Special Message From Francois Pienaar

I was due to give Darragh a hand on Friday afternoon with his interview with Francois Pienaar for Boards.ie. Unfortunately a number of other interviews ran over and I had to dash before the Boards.ie interview could be done. As a long time rugby fan and South African by birth I was really looking forward to the opportunity to meet one of the greatest rugby players of all time, and a fellow South African.

Thankfully though, Darragh did something totally awesome and got Francois to record this message for me...