Vodafone Italy Domino Effect

A fantastic ad from Vodafone Italy to show their latest 'Smart' tariffs. Using a very elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine mechanic, the ad uses a brilliant domino effect to show a variety of cool apps interacting to bring the campaign tagline to life - 'piu smart conVodafone' (Smarter with Vodafone).

Calvin Klein & Chatroulette

Chatroulette, the online chat platform developped by Russian student Andrey Ternovskiy, has spurred a number of high profile 'virals', all equally hilarious. however, the platform is also widely seen to be bursting with sex and nudity. So in a fun advertising campaign Calvin Klein now offers a small program that scans for nudity on Chatroulette and then hides it with Calvin Klein underwear. Brilliant!

Lonely Planet Offers Free iPhone Guides

Every now and then a company does something really cool. This is very much one of those times. With so many travellers stuck in foreign locations due to the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, the Lonely Planet has made 13 of its city guides available on the App Store for free. The move has been made so that these unfortunate folk might be able to make the most of their “unexpected” holiday.

Tom Hall, Lonely Planet Travel Editor, commented on the Lonely Planet "Volcano Relief Sale", saying:

“Travellers stuck in unfamiliar places need access to practical information as well as suggestions on what to do while stranded.”

These iPhone apps are usually priced between €10 and €15 but have been made available for free for the next four days (until 11:59pm GMT Thursday 22/04). The 13 free Apps are: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London,Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Vienna.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand, and appreciate, the marketing here - 4 days of free downloads could potentially generate huge later sales as users come to realise the quality and value of the Lonely Planet Apps, as well as generating public positive sentiment through the campaign. All that said, I still think this is a great initiative and something that other companies could learn from. I don't advocate profit from misfortune, but I certainly think that temporary goodwill gestures (whether they could have future positive sales impacts or not) are a very good thing.

Fair play Lonely Planet.

Nike Free Run+ & DJ Daito Manabe and co.

It seems that I've posted a lot of videos etc. all stemming from shoe and clothing companies. The truth is though, that's simply because it seems to be fashion labels that are pushing digital. It's fashion brands that are using digital as their primary and key communications channel. And so here we have yet another genius piece of marketing from a fashion label, this time Nike.

This is the new Japanese campaign for Nike's Free Run+ shoes. This is a smart and stunning collaboration with DJ Daito Manabe and co., and sees the crew pumping out the 'chunes' in the oddest of ways. Using specially outfitted runners equipped with the newest flex sensors (the new sensors change resistance when bent), the pair achieve awesome effects controls. Check this out, and try not to be imptressed!

(via Gav via Engadget)

52 Weeks, 52 Girls, A Whole Lot of Burritos!

A little while ago my mate Richie moved to London to a new job with We Are Social. I was lucky enough to be over in London back in February and I can safely say that London suits Richie perfectly. He clearly loves the place and I have a sneaking suspicion that London loves Richie. You see back on the 25th March Richie attended the London Twestival. Not anything too strange or exciting about this, so did 464 other people. So who showed Richie the love?

At the twestival the nice people of Chilango, the Mexican food chain, donated a super prize for a giveaway in aid of Concern. The prize was a year’s worth of free burrito meals. I presume you can guess where this is going. Richie was the lucky winner! It being a Twitter event the news was out on the web pretty fast, and as you can imagine Richie's initial plan to selfishly stuff his face with burritos was soon dashed. So in a moment, of what Richie described as equal measures weakness and greatness, the decision was made to share the prize. Of course the question remained, how best to share out 52 weeks of burrito meals?

Being a young, good-looking, marketing professional, Richie came up with the genius (whichever way you want to look at it) idea to take out 52 different girls for burrito meals - 1 girl every week for a whole year! And so was born the story of the 52 Burrito Dates…

I won't spoil the story here by sharing any of the amusing tweets that Richie has already received but you should pop over and check them out. I'll be posting regular updates as the story unfolds (including how his first date with @photogirluk goes!) but for all the good bits you really will need to get to Richie's blog.

Enjoy :)