Colonel Sanders' Privacy

I've posted on Google Street View a couple of times, both about introduction of the service to Ireland and also the comic views that turn up sometimes. As I've mentioned several times, the major topic of conversation has always been about people's privacy when it comes to Google roving around taking photos of them in public. To counter this, Google introduced a feature that automatically blurs out people's faces. Interestingly, it's not fussy as to whether they're a real person or not!

A New Irish Agency: Radical

Thursday saw the launch of a new Irish Digital Agency with the merger of Captivate Digital and Interactive Return, to form Radical. The two companies were already both part of Publicis Media. This move is a clear confirmation of the continued increasing market demand for integrated digital marketing solutions.

Radical describes itself as offering client solutions for search engine marketing, online advertising, search engine optimisation, web design & development, web analytics, email marketing, social media marketing, online public relations, usability, and online marketing training.

"This is a very exciting time for us," commented Martin Murray, Managing Director of Radical. "Offline marketing spend is down 30% in 2009. Due to its greater measurability and accountability, online marketing is still showing steady growth in Ireland. Digital marketing is expected to grow to 27% of total advertising spend in the UK in 2009 and we expect Ireland to follow suit over the coming years."

John Dunne, Strategy Director of Radical said, "This merger makes a lot of sense for our clients. Radical will deliver integrated digital marketing solutions across all online channels."

News of the impending changes was first released as a teaser through the Interactive Return twitter account (now rebranded for Radical) with this post:


From here the following news was then tweeted on Thursday morning at the same time as the Captivate Digital and Interactive Return press conference:



Considering the recent Cybercom campaign in conjunction with Gavin Bate, this is yet another example of Social Media being put to the forefront of marketing. I don't think anyone can question the necessity for companies to pull up their socks and get with the Social Media (and Digital) program. It ain't going away, and is going to continue to increase in importance and prominence.

Good luck to the guys in Radical!

BBC's 'The Cut'

The BBC has confirmed the launch of it's latest youth orientated tv programme, 'The Cut'. The show takes the form of 5 minute online episodes with a weekly TV omnibus on BBC Two.

Tapping into the recent trend of online youth programming such as 'Kate Modern', the show has been a collaberative development between BBC Switch and 'EastEnders' writer Al Smith. Interestingly, both Pete Gibson and Sarah Walker, 'KateModern' producer and director respectively, are also involved with the show.

The BBC describes the production system as using "the latest tape-free digital video cameras and edited in house" allowing the show to be "fast and reactive, with an efficient digital production process allowing capture and broadcast to be just a few weeks apart." The main objective from this is that they will use viewer feedback to make decisions on future storylines and to choose new characters. All-in-all it sounds like an exciting idea at least.

Geoffrey Goodwin, head of BBC Switch, said: "This series reflects the way many young people want to consume content. We've united top British writing talent with the freshest and newest interactive ideas to make appointment to view content for soap loving British teens. The story is fast paced and relevant to young audiences, with secret crushes, family dramas and plenty of intrigue. The writing is quick, witty, and knowing, rich with pop culture references and with storylines suggested by teens themselves."

The show currently has an active discussion board to talk about the proposed storytline, as well as a form to drop in your email address to get notified of when it's all starting.

Continuous Digital Strategy

Here is a fantastic article by Gavin over on Servant of Chaos about the concept of a continuous digital strategy. I highly advise all digital professionals to give it a read, and then while you're over at the site, have a good look around. Gavin produces top content and writes one of my favourite blogs on the subject of branding and social media.

1 Million Twitter Followers in Less Then a Month

There has been loads of coverage about the Tweet battle that briefly rages between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to get to the 1 million follower mark. In the news today, however, their exclusive little club now has a third member, and she has managed to gain all her followers in less then a month!

Who is it?

None-other-then the Queen of Talkshow TV, Oprah Winfrey!

A few examples of Oprah's recent tweets:

• "Met Stella McCartney for the first time. Love her fashion. Loooved her even more!"
• "Worked out an hour. And now going to read the Sunday papers and have a skinny cow or 2!"
• Oprah also uses the service to mingle with fellow Twitterati, including Hugh Jackman and Shaquille O'Neal.
• "@RealHughJackman Hugh...I'm countin' the hours. Wanna do dinner the night before. Same booth? Or catch up fresh on the air?"
• "@THE_REAL_SHAQ thanks for being my twitter buddy. this is cool."

Ashton Kutcher now has 1,755,197 followers and CNN have 1,471,498 followers.

Facebook Dollars

I read several articles this morning about Facebook's plans to test a new system of virtual money to let users make purchases within applications. Obviously at the moment Facebook already has its "Facebook Credits" ($1 buys 100) that users can use to purchase virtual gifts. However, according to MediaPost, Facebook will be extending this system to its third-party applications. A move that will surely net millions in revenue.

Through a little more digging I then discovered that Facebook confirmed the stories, "We're starting a very small alpha test in a few weeks with a handful of developers that explores ways for users to use their Facebook credits with third-party applications on Facebook.com"

I also saw the following estimations here:

• Facebook's third-party apps will garner their developers between $300 million and $500 million in revenue this year
• Facebook itself will earn between $45 million to $55 million from its gift shop

Cursor Takeover Display Ad

This might not be as flash (pardon the pun) as the Cadbury's Breakdancing cursor but it's a great example of a nice simple cursor takeover.

Become the Highest Tweeter in The World!

Following on from my previous post, there are some seriously cool things happening with Cybercom's 10 Year Birthday celebrations in conjunction with Gavin Bate.

Following a number of really cool suggestions, it was decided that Neil Perkin's suggestion was a winner. Neil suggested that Gavin do an online auction to give someone the Tweet from the top of Mount Everest, and in so doing raise money for his Moving Mountains charity. Craic'n idea, which I wish I'd thought of!

So get yourself over to the auction and do some bidding! This is a seriously cool opportunity and all proceeds go to Moving Mountains.

---Update---

Bidding is going crazy! Check this out - http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170331229446

Samuel Beckett Bridge

Some photos I took yesterday of the Samuel Beckett Bridge arriving in Dublin. A more indepth review of the where, how and why can be found here.

Social Media Wine Connoisseur

How does this sound?

• Live rent free in the beautiful heart of Sonoma County along the beautiful northern coast of California
• Learn the intricacies of making the perfect wine from more then 450 wineries
• Get paid $10,000 a month for 6 months

What's the catch?

• You have to capture the whole experience through Twitter and Facebook, sharing your experience with the world.

No seriously, what's the catch? Well it's certainly not that. The catch is that the job has to be won. Murphy-Goode Winery is offering all this to one lucky person according to a San Francisco blog. Kinda sounds a lot like the recent Australian Tourist Board promotion!

So what do you have to do? Well first get yourself over to http://www.AReallyGoodeJob.com, fill out the application and submit a one-minute video showing off yourself and your special skills. Seriously, I really think this is an Australian idea!

The job description describes the responsibilities as follows; “Throughout the course of the job the successful applicant will learn about viticulture, winemaking, Sonoma County and Murphy-Goode wines. He or she will prepare and post dispatches on their experiences though social media tools such as Facebook, blogs, internet videos and Twitter as well as traditional media.”

Ok, so this really is like the Best Job in the World, but is that a bad thing? No, not in my opinion. Lets face it, the campaign worked. The response, globally, was huge and it drove massive ammounts of traffic and publicity. So the real question is, when will it happen here? Does an Irish company have the bottle to do it?

HD Camera Phone Part 2

You may recall my post about the new Samsung camera phone that features a built in HD camera. Samsung created a video that made it seem like the phone disappeared, and posed the question - how did they do it. Finally the answer is revealed...

(watch some of the suggestions - hilarious stuff)

Papermotion

Papermotion is the latest example of an augmented reality technology. The system allows newspaper readers to digitally interact with advertising. Developed by the French company Total Immersion in collaberation with the Australian Dreamscape Group, Papermotion should be the first mass produced augmented reality product that can be utilised on a campaign by campaign basis.

Total Immersion are also currently working on a campaign with 20th Century Fox for the film Night At The Museum 2. This is due to go live on 17 May. "The fact that consumers can literally interact with our print advertisements in a way they never have before was a big selling point for us," said Marc Wooldridge, managing director of 20th Century Fox.

Crazy New Coke Ad

Happiness Factory I get. It's fun, it's got history, there's a story, it develops. Sure it's a little wacky, that crazy world going on inside a coke machine, but at the same time it makes sense - there is some sort of believability in it. Then Coke comes out with this...



I need someone to explain it to me. I really do. Where did it come from and what is it all about exactly? I just don't see how it fits in with anything else Coke are doing.

---UPDATE---

I completely missed that this ad is part of a much larger campaign. The music for this ad was done by the genius Calvin Harris! (interview below) and there's a fantastic microsite too! The funny thing is, after messing around with the site for a while - I totally get this ad, and I'm really starting to love it.

Jane Russell’s Original Irish Handmade Sausages

I had the pleasure yesterday evening to be invited to a little offline digital get-together organised by Jane Russell from Jane Russell’s Original Irish Handmade Sausages. The event was a simple meet, eat and greet by way of a roof top terrace BBQ. Jane has just launched a new range of (fantastically delicious) homemade sausages and wanted to share them with some bloggy types (which apparently I'm one of - who knew?).

Hosted in the always enjoyable Odessa Club, this was a great event. Though don't think for a moment that I'm swayed by the awesome free samples that Jane was kind enough to give us. There was an impromptu interview done by social guru Darragh Doyle (a big thanks to Darragh for the introductions), and as soon as I can get my hands on it I'll pop it up.

Jane has taken the bold (though increasingly sensible) option of engaging the digital and social media community to help get her brand out there. So don't be surprised as, over the coming months, you start to see Jane moving into the digital social media world. I for one can't wait - everyone needs to try their scrumptious sausages.

Pop down to Listons, Morton's in Ranelagh or Donneybrook Fair, in either Donneybrook or Greystones, to pick up some now.

Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead

This is yet another fantastic TED video that I have to share. Here Seth Godin talks about the way in which the internet has moved from being a tool of mass communication and gone full circle to restoring the age-old human dendancy of forming tribes. Essentially being driven by the Social Media boom, Seth argues that the drive to share ideas and values, creates tribes that allow ordinary people to lead and create change. As a massive advocate of this movement, Seth rges everyone to become part of a tribe, or multiple tribes, and make changes happen.



In case you don't know who Seth Godin is (perhaps because you've been living in outer space for several years?); TED describe Seth as "an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age". For everything you'd like to know just visit http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/.

For other TED video that I like see here and here.

27Letters

GettyImages have just released a really sweet application to allow you to keep up with current visual trends from across the interweb. 27Letters will display the 27 most talked about, referenced and reproduced images for the month. Getty say it covers everything from “advertising to art, through to politics and celebrity.”

If you like, there's also a facebook group that you can join.

Chrome's Viral Goes To TV

I posted last week about Google's 11 short films that had been produced in a bid to push the Chrome browser. In a follow up, Google wanted to see if they could take a recently produced Japanese Google short and release it to a larger audience to promote Chrome. After speaking to their TV Ads team, on Friday Google announced that they'd be using Google TV Ads to run the "Chrome TV ad" on a number of TV networks from this weekend. Unfortunately this is all US based, but stay tuned, I wouldn't be too surprised if we saw it on our screens in the near future. For everyone who can't wait, here you go...

Our Rock Stars

Maybe it's because I'm a geek, but this is totally hilarious...

An Expression of Joy

BMW have just launched their latest marketing campaign for the BMW Z4 Roadster - “An Expression of Joy”

The ambitious campaign centres around a massive and very unique art project, bringing together video, outdoor, print, mobile and digital elements. The campaign features a painting two football fields in size created by artist Robin Rhode and filmmaker Jake Scott.

Utilising 160 litres of paint and 45 cameras, the pair filmed two Roadsters fitted with paint jets mounted behind their wheels, drifting and racing around the immense canvas, to create both a 30-second ad and a 30-minute documentary.

The documentary will be shown in the US on Discovery HD today, May 10 at 8:00pm. Repeats are scheduled throughout May and June, as well as a transition cross the water for airing on the European Discovery network. The 30-second ad will be used both on TV and onlin through MSN’s expandable video unit. This is the first time the unit will be used for a digital marketing campaign, allowing users to see the ads in full-screen mode.

In addition to MSN, video banners will also run on a number of high profile sites including CNN and Yahoo. Print ads are set to include an eight-page insert in Vanity Fair’s June issue, and coverage in several top end art and interior magazines. Outdoor will center on 10 international airports around the US.

However, beyond all this activity, the most interesting element of the campaign is the campaign microsite - “An Expression of Joy” which shows the filming process through a dynamic video interface, and features the mobile game, “BMW Z4 – An Expression of Joy”. The game has been developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch and has been available for download since March. An impressive 500,000 downloads have already been recorded. times.

Monster Waves

I absolutely love nature - I love the outdoors and everything about being outside. Living in Ringsend I spent quite a bit of time down around Sandymount. Sometimes just walking or maybe taking photographs. I have always dreamed about living beside the sea - there's something about the ocean that draws me in, and completely inspires me.

I just stumbledupon this article on BBC about Bali Strickland (seriously renowned cameraman) and Huw Cordey (top producer and director), and their mission to film big waves. Definitely worth a read, but also check out the video too...

Top Brands on Twitter

Brand Republic have a list of the top 100 brands mention on Twitter, and whether or not they have an active Twitter presence. Interesting to see just how many of the top 100 don't actually Tweet themselves. Especially companies like Apple, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Sony.

Be Careful What You Do With Your Old Hard Drive

The British Telecom's Security Research Centre recently carried out a joint security study with the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US. They bought 300 hard drives on eBay, originating from the US, UK, Germany, France and Australia. A proportion of the drives were formatted, but none were done with a destructive format and many contained easily recovered files.

100 of the drives turned out to contain extremely confidential information such as building blueprints and launch procedures for the Lockheed Martin's surface-to-air missile defense system. Other drives included everything from medical records, x-ray images, patient photos, confidential letters and confidential corporate information detailing a 50 billion currency exchange.

So the moral of the story is that if you're selling or throwing out your old hard drive, you better remember to perform a destructive, all-zeroes format.

via Daily Mail

Your Blog - Top of the World!

I have three simple questions:

1. Are you a Blogger or Tweeter?
2. Would you like to see yourself at the roof of the world?
3. What would you say if I told you all you had to do was suggest a cool digitasl strategy for a charity?

No brainers, right?

Well here it is, the simplest, most easy, and only, way to get your Blog or Tweet to the roof of the world, Mount Everest!

I work for Cybercom and we have been lucky enough to be given the chance to work with Gavin Bate, one of the most inspirational people on the planet. What do we have to do? All we have to do is the stuff we love doing - blog, tweet, code, optimise and market. What is Gavin doing? Well aside from running www.movingmountains.org.uk (an absolutely incredible charity), aside from making his 5th attempt to reach the highest peak on earth, aside from doing just about everything humanily possible to make the lives of those less fortunate just a little bit better, aside from all that, he's giving one lucky Blogger or Tweeter the chance to send him a message with their name and their Blog/Twitter URL where he will photo them on top of the world!

Seriously, how cool is that!

Get the full story here, but in a nut shell it goes like this...

Gavin is an expert mountaineer but he isn't a digital marketer, cyber guru or online addict. So Gavin needs help and has asked for ideas from the Irish digital community to promote his current summit bid (eventful). Why would you want to do that though? Well as Gavin said himself, "Unlike many of the climbers out here I don't really need to stand on a bit of real estate over 5 miles up in the sky. My sole reason for doing this is to raise money and the profile of my Charity www.movingmountains.org.uk "

So what do you need to do?

Gavin wants killer ideas that will help him promote his website (and donation page). In return Gavin will promote you from the top of Mount Everest by way of a picture with your blog's name on it or via an audio blog mentioning both your name and your blog's name.

Just send a link to your blog post of promotional ideas by Tweet (@gavinbate or @cybercom using #cyb10) and may the best blogger win!

Download a Car

The good people at Mitsubishi are offering you the chance to download a car. Seriously. Well kinda.

Basically the marketing folks over at Mitsubishi HQ have realised that downloading movies, tv programs etc. is now fairly mainstream and not restricted to über geeks. So for their latest promotion Mitsubishi have hidden 30 different parts of its new Colt car throughout a selection of torrent sites, P2P-networks and some non-torrent sites. Basically the first person to find all the parts and put them together, gets a free brand new Mitsubishi Colt - in assembled form thankfully.

The promotion is being launched at today's Barcelona Motor Show. If you want to take part just pop over and register at Bajateuncoltgratis.com. Of course you'll need to tell them you're Spanish.



Apologies if you're Spanish is rusty.

I got this via my mate Gav - cheers dude

Malibu's "Island Melon"

I got an email from Francois in Great Works today about the new Malibu Rum campaign for their "Island Melon" flavour. Definitely worth checking out - two great ads and a fantastic microsite. Make sure you have a (few) goes of the free mobile bowling game that they've created to celebrate the new bottle.

This is the first of the new ads:



And you can check out the second here.

An Post DMAs

Just a quick post to say congratulations to everyone who got shortlisted for tonight's An Post Direct Marketing Awards. Especially all the guys who I have the pleasure to work with. A fair batch of Cybercom entries in there...

Best Alcoholic Drink Category
Carlsberg Live It - Euro 2008

Best FMCG Category
Powerade - Never Give Up

Best Direct Digital Category
Vodafone Pass The Pressie
Powerade - Never Give Up

Best Integrated Campaign Category
Powerade - Never Give Up
Carlsberg Live It - Euro 2008 (joint nomination with Strategem, Initiative Media and Irish International)

---Update---

Results just in, straight from the Mansion House...

Best Alcoholic Drink Category
Carlsberg Live It - Euro 2008 >>> Silver Award

Best FMCG Category
Powerade - Never Give Up >>> Gold Award

Best Integrated Campaign Category
Powerade - Never Give Up >>> Silver Award
Carlsberg Live It - Euro 2008 >>> Bronze Award

WWF Augmented Reality

This is so cool, and for such a good cause. I wish we saw more of this type of application being developed.

Wolfram Alpha Unveiled

Back at the end of March I posted about Wolfram Alpha. Last week Dr. Stephen Wolfram, the inventor and creator of Wolfram Alpha, unveiled the first working demo of what is being heralded as possibly the most important technological invention of the the last decade.

At the Harvard University showcase, the renowned Particle Physicist showed the scientific community what is refereed to as an "answer engine" or "knowledge engine", rather than a search engine. It provides users with the function of typing a question and being given an answer. Bare in mind, that's an answer and not a list of websites. As such Wolfram Alpha is not what is being termed a Google-killer. It really isn't in direct competition with Google at all.

Part of the demonstration saw Dr. Wolfram enter various questions or queries, each to complete success. For example, when he entered 'Weather Oakland, California' the knowledge engine immediately came back with a full breakdown of weather patterns for the region over the previous 10 years.



After the showcase Tom Simpson, noted Digital Marketer, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."

Wolfram Alpha is perched on the crest of a wave with the potential to wash across the world changing the way we access and search information. Foremost the system's potential is its ability to compute answers "on the fly" (according to Dr. Wolfram), giving it the ability to tackle new questions that it has never seen before. This in turn gives it the ability to 'learn', producing faster results the next time that question, or one similar, is asked. The knock-on effect of how Wolfram Alpha 'learns' could be the first real steps towards artificial intelligence.

A key differentiator between the way in which Wolfram Alpha accesses information, how Google does it and how Wikipedia does it, is in the way the information is managed. Wikipedia is based on a user generated system that is moderated, edited and compiled by the public itself. In theory the information is correct due to collective input, however on niche topics it is not always the most reliable source. Google on the other hand uses bots and spiders to crawl the web and determine what it is that is on a webpage. This system is limited in that any information stored in exotic formats or within images is inaccessible to Google and it relies heavily on what the creator has 'tagged' the information as. Wolfram Alpha on the other hand will operate as a 'curated' system. It will rely on a team of up to 1,000 experts to assess if the information Wolfram Alpha is drawing on is indeed correct. Beyond this, the system is heavily based on Dr. Wolfram's award-winning Mathematica software, which is used everyday by scientists, engineers and mathematicians around the world.

Interestingly, Dr. Wolfram hasn't however ruled out any strategic alliances with these or other internet businesses, saying, "We're working to partner with all possible organisations that make sense; Search, narrative, news are complementary to what we have. Hopefully there will be some great synergies." He also confirmed that the system will utilise Wikipedia's popularity index to determine what users are likely to be referring to, when it comes to pop culture based questions.

Aussies Ban Sexist Ad (Shocker)

Don't get me wrong - I love Australia. I loved the time I spent out there (I presume there's a wiki article somewhere about how every Irish person must spend a year in Oz??) and I enjoy so much about Australian culture - beers, surf, the vast and expansive countryside, the skyscraper dotted cities, and the people.

But I'm not going to pretend that the Aussies are the most PC people I've ever spent time around.

So when I read that a Coke Zero ad had been pulled because it was deemed too sexist by their Advertising Standards Bureau, I was interested to say the least. Funny thing is, I don't think it's all that bad. Is this really any more demeaning to women then the Diet Coke Man was to men? Well, judge for yourself...

500 Posts

Having just realised that I had posted 499 posts I couldn't help myself from dropping in something fun for the 500th.

11 Essential Skills for Digital Marketing

I was sent a link to Ian Lurie's post, 11 Internet Marketing Skills That Must Be Second Nature, yesterday by a friend. Not only do I agree with everything Ian says, but he made me laugh. So I thought that I should share his insights with you.

1. XHTML and CSS. You don't have to be a god(dess) of web programming. But so help me God the next 'internet marketer' who gives me a blank stare when I mention CSS gets an atomic wedgie. And by the way, web standards have nothing to do with the metric system.
2. Search engine optimization. Search engine results are the starting point for at least 70% of all online behavior. How on earth will you help someone market themselves online if you don't even know what moves a site up and down in the rankings? Quick hint: Saying "SEO? Oh, we optimize your meta tags" is the same as saying "I am a severely impaired nubwit".
3. Pay per click marketing. Nothing sucks money out of a marketing budget faster than undisciplined PPC marketing. Assuming you care about your clients, you need to know a lot about PPC. Knowing where PPC ads show up doesn't count, by the way. You need to know and understand concepts like negative keywords, quality scoring, dynamic keywords and content networks. Another hint: "Negative keyword" doesn't mean "Keywords that make you feel bad".
4. Analysis. Let me make this clear: A bar chart is not analytics. If I ask for analysis and you e-mail me a bar chart I will so kick your behind. Analysis/analytics is the practice of turning data (the bar chart) into action steps and conclusions like "Wow, our ROI on this keyword is great. We need to build a landing page."
5. Usability. Please, please read Don't Make Me Think. Just for starters. Then start keeping an eye on Jakob Nielsen's site and other resources. Usability is a non-stop learning process. So get going.
6. Complete sentences. Write every day. Every day. I don't care what you write about. But you need to be able to write a post like this in 30-40 minutes, and it needs to be readable.
   
7. RSS and feeds. I shouldn't even have to say this. But you do know how to use Google Reader, right? Right?!
8. Blogging and social media. Write at least one blog. See 'Complete Sentences', above. And know what people mean when they say 'social media'. They really mean media. Understand what makes it all tick, and how you can help someone interact with their audience in a meaningful way.
9. E-mail marketing. Learn to build a house e-mail list. Learn why most rental e-mail lists suck eggs. Know what makes an e-mail work or fail.
10. Statistics 101. If you don't know what a rolling average is, don't even talk to me.
11. Marketing. Oh, did I mention? You need to be good at, you know, making people understand why something is The Product For Them.

The House That Ogilvy Built

Great document by Kennth Roman, about David Ogilvy and his timeless understanding of business and advertising. Worth a read by anyone who has ever worked a job!

Male Copywriter

There are very few people not effected by the current global economic situation. Whatever sector you work in, you probably know people who have been laid off. But what if you are one of those people. What if, following 15 years of hard grift, you find yourself 'let go'?

Hope and pray that it all gets better? Pretend you know anything about coffee other then how to drink it and become a barista in the local Starbucks?

As Carlsberg would have us think, it's not always A or B, there's probably a C. And sure enough, if you're Lawson Clarke, there definitely is. It might be a little 'out there' but at the very least, it's a way to get known.

After his 15 years of copywriting for clients like Ocean Spray, Carnival and Strongbow, Lawson was another casualty of 'uncertain times' and found himself without work. Not willing to let his unemployment stop him, he created his site: Male Copywriter.

This is essential viewing.

In some sort of crazy cross between Ron Burgandy and Dirk Diggler, Lawson demonstrates him impressive work profile against a backdrop of 70's style porn shoot, with Lawson atop a bear skin rug, hair cheast cascading down his front, and the Star Spangled Banner belting through your speakers. Hopefully the tongue is firmly in the cheek, as if this is anything other then SNL style humour we should all be very scared. None-the-less, this is still must see digital and a potential 'how-to' for anyone else out of work with a bit of creative ability.

T-Moblie Trafalgar Square Event

Here's a great look behind the scenes of the recent T-Moblie Trafalgar Square Event, by Campaign.tv. The event, produced by Saatchi and Saatchi, is the latest T-Moblie ad and features a mass karaoke in Trafalgar Square of over 13k people.

i-Mashup Vodafone

It's become fairly regular to see individuals or even small companies posting blogs or Tweeting to find developers to work on iPhone apps (or java etc.), but this has to be one of the largest companies I've seen to date using a competition mechanic to drive development.

Vodafone Malta have just launched their i-Mashup competition, which calls on developers to submit innovative and useable applications that offer real customer value. Although the prize structure isn't huge (1st place €2,500, 2nd place €1,000 and 3rd place €500) it's bound to drive interest. Considering the current economic climate, I'm sure there are plenty of developers who'd be willing to spend a bit of their own time to try and win two and a half grand. Of course on Vodafone's end, they spent €4,000 on prizes and perhaps another €500/€1,00 on admin and advertising, and they potentially have hundreds of mobile apps at their disposal.

Will it be long before we see similar here in Ireland?

VW Jetta: Too Fast?

I posted recently about a great ad featuring an in-banner slider. You just don't see people using this functionality to great effect. So when I saw this VW ad I thought it was worth sharing as another example of how a simple interaction can make an ad.

Digital Round-Up

Congratulations to the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) who took second place at Elsevier Grand Challenge. The international competition pushes the development of new and innovative tools to deal with the increasing amounts of life sciences information online. Competing against over 65 groups from research companies and universities, from around the world, DERI's project, 'CORAAL - Dive into Publications, Bathe in the Knowledge', is a prototype system to bring together information representation and artificial reasoning technologies in life science publications to allow better integration, search and retrieval of life sciences information. DERI is a research organisation based at NUI Galway who focus on developing semantic web technologies.

During the week Facebook was hit by a major phishing scam. Through the use of a very convincing fake log-in page, users were tricked into revealing their facebook passwords. The people behind the scam then used this information to access profuiles and trick further numbers of people to the fake log-in page. Facebook has said that the link at the center of the scam is now blocked and that there will be an increase of the security services provided by MarkMonitor to prevent future scams of this nature.

Twitter announced that every public update sent to Twitter is now instantly indexed and made searchable through their new real-time search. Further to this, if you search for the same word or phrase regularly, you can now save your search with the "save this search" tickbox. This will then place those keywords as links into your home page just under the search box, giving you one-click access to your regular searches.

SEO Consultant Ireland

Check out this great article on everything Google, by Jonathan Darling.

Google's "iTunes for Books"

In an article in the Guardian it has been announced that Google is facing accusations of anti-competitive behaviour. The US Justice Department is reported to be currently investigating Google's dealings with the book industry. The investigation surrounds a $125m settlement that Google made with authors. Google have been trying for some time to create an "iTunes for books". Last September Google made significant progress with a deal that would allow the company to digitise millions of books in the US.

The deal followed two years of negotiations and was called a "great leap" by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. However the deal caused a lot of concern in a number of camps due to the exclusive rights that Google would gain to digitise "orphan works" (books that are still under copyright, but without any clear owner).

"There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google's ability to solely commercialise this content," said Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based organisation that documents millions of web pages and digitises out-of-copyright books.

In a move that pleased campaigners, a New York judge granted a four-month extension allowing those affected by the deal to examine the details and decide whether to opt out of it or not.

"We now have time to really sink our teeth into what this agreement will mean," said Gail Knight Steinbeck, chair of the Creative Property Rights Alliance and daughter-in-law of late author John Steinbeck.

The outcome remains to be seen, but I for one think that this is a pivitol case, and the result will have serious implications for all online and offline publications going forward.

Chrome Goes Viral

In his AdAge article, Michael Learmonth describes Google as having "ambled into the Safari-Explorer-Firefox derby" with the introduction of their browser Chrome last year, and to be fair it would be very hard to argue differently. Internet Explorer, the often controversial and always-included option, has been around forever and still holds as favourite for many web explorers. Safari, the streamlined mac browser, is without doubt the Apple users favourite. Firefox, the new kid on the block, has come out of no where to totally dominate many demographics of net users. So why try and take on these goliaths, and not do it with gusto and determination?

Well, they may not have done anything spectacular to date, but that has just changed. The global-hyper-mega-corp that is the world's search leader has releasing 11 short films to promote their offering in the browser wars. That's a lot of weight in this and it's sure to drive a serious amount of traffic and interest. But is it really likely to drive any downloads?

When I recently reviewed my site visitor stats, I was some what surprised to see just how big a percentage of them were Firefox users. Understandably this may be slanted by my content but still, it's a huge proportion.

Take a look and see what you think...

Tweenbots

This is just about one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

Kacie Kinzer (a student at Tisch ITP in New York) set out to explore the nature of movement and people's preoccupation with getting from one place to another. Kacie raises the question, "Could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it?" An extremely bold question in my opinion, and one that I wouldn't think was easily answered. To make things even more complicated, Kacie takes it a step further, asking, "How could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself?"

Where to start? What to do?

Simple (in Kacie's mind at least) - build a robot.

To answer these questions, Kacie conceived the Tweenbots. Human-dependent robots that navigate through the help of the pedestrians they encounter. The robot itslef will move at a constant speed and in a straight line. The only indication of their mission is a flag baring their destination. After that it's up to those around to help them.

Would you trust strangers minding their own business to stop and help a robot? Considering the dangers that the robot would face it's seems impossible that it would get more then 15m (imho). Never-the-less Kacie placed the Tweenbot down on the path, walked away and set it on it's journey.

Surprisingly as it turned out, over the course of several months and numerous journeys, the Tweenbots successfully got from their starting point to their designated destinations. Although there were instances of a bots getting caught under park benchs, stuck against a curb, or trapped in a pothole, there was always a random passerby who would rescue it and send it toward its destination.

Not a single Tweenbot was lost or damaged. Brilliant stuff - perhaps even a sign that human nature isn't that bad?

What's In The Box? (ARG)

Following my post yesterday I was excited to see an article by Hashem Bajwa on Augmented Reality over on AdAge today. Hashem discusses some recent AR campaigns, including General Electric's Smart Grid technology (also here) and the Topps' 3-D baseball cards system. He also goes into detail on the Mobilizy app that I've previously posted about. All this even further reinforced my belief that ARG or AR apps/games are the way forward.

Low and behold I then received an email asking for my help with a Flash file and an image. Two guys I know were trying to crack an ARG that they had been sent a link to.

Have you seen this:



Do a Google Search for 'what's in the box?' and you'll see a lot of online chatter. Admittedly this video first appeared online about 4 weeks ago but the microsite didn't arrive until a week or so later, and it's only in the last 2 weeks that most of the really interesting stuff has come to light. Most probably this is an ARG for the next Half Life episode (based on the sound effects and audio used). There are also a lot of clues pointing to J.J. Abrams, which immediately brings to mind his 'Magic Box' outlook on storytelling (see his TED presentation).

I really want to go into the details about what I was able to work out so far but what's the fun in that. Go check it out and see if you can get anywhere. But be warned, I quickly discovered that whoever is behind this definitely sees their target audience as being very familiar with Flash, Java, Photoshop, HTML and CSS. Perhaps the modern gamer is far more educated then we were back in my day?

Watch and Read

I was hoping to get a post written this evening following on from this morning but I'm totally wrecked and have decided to share some cool articles and what-not that I've been reading/viewing today. Enjoy.

Fortune 500 List Demonstrates the Power of Blogging

Business in the cloud

Web Trends Visualization: 2009 - 2007 “Web Trend Maps”

Why You Need a Social Media Champion

Facebook Opens Homepage Stream to Devs; Seesmic, TweetDeck Bite

Honda's Road Music (via Seventy Seven)

Alternate Reality Interface

A friend was asking me about Trent Reznor's Year Zero on Saturday, and whether I knew of any other big ARG successes and how they worked. Other examples were Audi's 'The Art of the Heist', the Nokia Game (which ran for 6 years), and perhaps the most famous after Year Zero, The Beast. The Nokia Game was the first ARG to use an extremely diverse range of communication channels, with The Beast and Year Zero both pushing those even further. So what next I wondered? What other interfaces could be used for an ARG?

You may not remember the following video, it first appeared doing the rounds in July 2007. It's a promo released by HP to show off their Mscape geolocation platform, which was developed by their labs in Bristol, UK. The video shows “Roku’s Reward” - HP's idea of how game development could utilise the platform. Admittedly you need to over look the terrible stereotypes of who gamers are, but their vision was certainly ground breaking for the time.



The most interesting thing isn't necessarily the video itself or the vision that HP had. HP were in many ways right on the ball. The most interesting thing was the online reaction to the video. Virtually everyone agreed that the concept was fantastic, and that the platform had a lot of potential. However, they also all agreed that HP's prediction was crazy that the technology for this type of game play would be available on hand-held mobile devices within two years. Of course we can now all agree that this technology was very much only two years away (demonstrated recently by the Mobilizy landscape system and Dutch Bank ING's ATM finder).

So why haven't we seen more games/apps appearing that utilise the Mscape platform (or similar). Why has no one looked to use this type of platform for an ARG style marketing campaign? There are a huge amount of GPS enabled hand-held devices now on the market, and for those that aren't surely there is a cell-tower based alternative?

There is a limitation with the platform in that it needs to be based on a specific real-world location, or ‘anchored’ in Mscape’s terminology, but there are many large cities around the world that could sustain a user base within their population that would make it commercially viable. In fact if you think about it there are many cities that would have a transient tourist population that could benefit from some sort of GPS-based interactive system like this; museums, galleries, theme parks etc.

In my opinion, this is where we will see the next 'big thing'. The newest Nintendo DS is already equipped with a camera; a GPS unit could easily be added as a component or built-in to the next gen. The Sony PSP is in the same boat (with a camera and GPS unit already available). So who's going to do it? I wager it'll be Japanese and it will sit on one of these platforms, with customised versions for a dozen or so of the largest cities in the world (mostly US with Toyko, London, Paris and Berlin).

Heineken Walk-in Fridge 2

I got an email this morning from Roger van Zijl with a link to the new Heineken ad. The ad is a follow up to the previous Walk-in Fridge ad. Funny stuff - definitely worth a look.

Tic Tac Micha

There's nothing better then a well planned and executed gorilla marketing campaign, and Tic Tac Micha is a great example of a gorilla campaign that also pulls in a strong digital aspect.

On a slightly rainy day in Copenhagen, an unassuming geeky looking chap set up what would become the first part of a hugely successful Danish marketing campaign for Tic Tacs. The campaign utilised a viral online video based on the street performance, a campaign microsite and an aggressive ATL campaign. All in all the idea is simple, but as I've said many times before, you don't need something to be complicated to be good.

Lambient Marketing - Are Ewe Serious?

The guys over at Seventy Seven have done some really unique work for thetrainline.com with their new Lambient Marketing campaign, using sheep to advertise. Seriously. Check out this video for all the details:

Peugeot 308: 'Nude In A Scarf'

A friend of mine living in London texted me last Wednesday morning with the very odd txt that there were naked people all over the place. I then got an even more bazaar txt saying it was ok, they weren't naked, they were wearing skin-colour onesy's. Unfortunately I was busy at the time and had to let it go, but a bit of research this morning has shed some light on what was happening.

On Wednesday, London commuters were joined by 308 naked people during the rush hour commute. Initially it appeared that they were totally nude except for blue scarves to cover up their naughty bits. Closer examination however would show that these people weren't actually naked but were wearing specially made bodysuits.

The 'naked' people were roaming around to promote the launch of the new Peugeot 308 CC. Apparently the scarves were to highlight the 308's new Airwave Neck Heating System. Full details are available at the campaign microsite, there are more photos on the 'Nude In A Scarf' Flickr page, and here's a YouTube video of some of what went on:



Cheers to Nick for this video. Nick also makes out an interesting point; this is an example of how product launches are increasingly using covert, unpublicised, mysterious 'events' to create conversation and chatter.

Mini: Chameleon

A number of sources have revealed that Mini plans to début its first colour-morphing car in Singapore in June. The newest car in their range, which will be called the Mini Chameleon, will change colour according to weather conditions. So when it's raining the car will brighten up to improve visibility, but on a sunny day it turns to a light colour that can reflect heat and cool down the vehicle.

The Spanish company Payola Forlids are the people behind the 'FeintPaint' colour-morphing technology. The technology utilises tiny magnetic iron oxide particles that interact with a low grade magnetic field causing the space between the particles to change, and in turn causing the colour to adjust. According to the Payola Forlids site, the colour change will only take a seconds to occur.

No Pants Day

No Pants Day, via Rick; sounds like a larf - why not?