Ruby Card on Pix.ie

I was out taking photos this morning in Sandymount and I remembered that Pix.ie were running a great competition with Ruby Card. There's €2,500 up for grabs and entering is incredibly simply. Basically all you need to do is either upload your photos directly to the Ruby Card group, or just join the Ruby Card group and tag your photos with "rubycard" and the county that you took the photo in (these will then appear in the group).

The aim of the competition is "to capture the beauty of Ireland for the next Ruby Card". The competition is based across the 26 counties of the Republic or Ireland and is calling on the public to showcase their county. One lucky winner will then get their photo used on the front of the new Ruby Card prepaid credit card, and €2,500.

RightMove.co.uk iPhone App

As readers of my blog will probably already know, there are two technology areas that particularly interest me at the moment: Augmented Reality and Mobile Applications. More importantly, I'm really interested to see how businesses and agencies push these technologies through meaningful and useful application. Obviously it's difficult to refute the popularity of the iPhone Lightsaber application simple through total download, however it's easy to agree that this application doesn't actually serve a useful purpose. One of the most useful iPhone apps I've seen in a long time is the RightMove app.

RightMove, the UK property search and listings website, has just teamed up with Mobile Marketing firm 2ergo, and developed an iPhone app that allows you to use your iPhone's GPS functionality to find properties near your current location that are available to buy or rent. The app is free to download and gives the same full functionality as the website in an easy to use mobile aplication. You can search by address, price, number of rooms etc. and you can view all the uploaded picture as usual. Two additional pieces of functionality that have been added are the the ability to forward the details of properties to other people simply by pressing a button, and a straight forward "Call Me" function that puts you straight through to the letting agent or property owner.

Rightmove already has over 40,000 users accessing its website through the iPhone's, which represents 95% of its mobile traffic.

Miles Shipside of Rightmove, said: "Offering an app was a natural progression and we're delighted to be the first major property company to provide a service of this nature. 2ergo was the natural choice for us due to their mobile marketing and app development expertise."

Non-Branded Branding Activity

I wrote a post last Friday about the new Coca-Cola 'Open Happiness' "adver-tainment" piece that was directed by Alan Ferguson. One of the most unique things about it is that during the entire ad there is no branding what-so-ever except during the final 2 seconds. Considering the ad is 4 minutes and 25 seconds long, that's a bit of a big deal. And although the ad doesn't contain anything in it that says Coca-Cola or utilises the logo or brand iconography, the ad screams Coa-Cola in every way. As a piece of branding work it is definitely an indication of Coca-Cola's security with their own position and brand strength.

Following on from this, I've been keeping an eye out for anyone else doing similar 'non-branded' brand work. Nick Burcher wrote an excellent post on the recent Scandinavian Airlines TV ads. Nick describes how in the latest of the ads, there is no mention of Scandinavian Airlines or display of their logo until the final 4 seconds of a 60 second ad. Created by Wibroe Duckert & Partners, the ad is entirely in French (with English subtitles) and uses "Les deux pigeons" by Charles Aznavour as its soundtrack.

Is this the direction that brands will start to go in general? Is there any correlation between this and the continued growth of Social Media? I have had quite a few people suggest to me that the mind shift that corporate entities have had to undertake to fully realise the intimate and personal nature of Social Media will possibly drive a greater change in how all facets of marketing are approached. I think this is an interesting thought but by no means something that we can yet judge. Though I for one would not be disappointed to see a general move in all corporate communication channels towards a more socially orientated approach.


[click video to play]

Producer: Gitte Saloman
Creative: Peter Boye; Henrik Tvilling
Director: Martin Werner
Production: Bacon
Producer: Malene Dyhring
Director of Photography: Lasse Frank
Post Production: Duckling
Editor: Peter Brandt
Music: Charles Aznavour

A big cheers to Nick for posting this video :)

As You Wish - A Princess Bride Event

Damien mentioned this to me about a month ago and as soon as he said it I thought, awesome! Next Thursday (13th August) is the ‘Princess Bride Twitter evening’. Basically the concept is simple; put on one of the the greatest action/adventure/romance/comedy movies of all time, get a bunch of friends, and tweet the night away in a discussion about the movie on Twitter.

Early reports suggest that much of the Irish Twitter-sphere have not seen the movie (blasphemous!!) so this will be a first for many people. Ah to be able to relive your first time ;)

Damien got the inspiration for the night from Graham Linehan’s Bad Movie night with the major exception that this is of course an awesome movie night.

The hashtag for the event is #asyouwish



The movie is directed by Rob Reiner and stars Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Fred Savage, Peter Falk, Billy Crystal and Mel Smith (among others!).

Check out IAmSteph, Mulley's Blog and Culch.ie (who I also owe a thanks to for the trailer above) for more info on the evening.

Malibu: Radio Maliboom Boom

Malibu is set to launch its latest global digital campaign. Malibu's Radio Maliboom Boom will become a content broadcast platform for all things Malibu during the coming 12 months. Great Works have created an online radio station that will provide 24/7 upbeat music and humorous conversations between DJ Bernhard and MC Wonder Full, Malibu's Caribbean Radio DJs. The site will be continually refreshed with exciting content including exclusive music tracks, music videos and clips as DJ Bernhard and MC Wonder Full’s crusade to spread their Caribbean vibe around the globe.The site essentially provides a streaming music player featuring top Universal music artists, however there are also a number of downloads planned such as e-cards, ringtones and other fun digital applications.

The campaign launched in the US on August 3 and is rolling out to Canada, Spain, the Netherlands and other markets during the coming months. The campaign is supported by television and online advertising, as well as numerous offline activations. There will be four thirty second tv spots: "Maliboom Boom," "Sunshine," "Shake it" and "Social Responsibility." The spots are all based around the radio personalities, DJ Bernhard and MC Wonder Full, who broadcast an upbeat and vibrant music show to the world from the rugged Radio Maliboom Boom studio on a beach in Barbados.

The campaign's opening tv ad, "Sunshine," shows DJ Bernhard and MC Wonder Full giving a worldwide weather report. First MC Wonder Full calls out a city name, then DJ Bernhard exclaims, "Sunshine!" as he throws a magnetic sun symbol over his shoulder to a world map behind him. Unfortunately each time the sun lands on the board, the city can be seen to be covered in rain. Finally, MC Wonder Full asks "Tokyo?", to which DJ Bernhard yells, "Sunshine!" and MC Wonder Full quickly replies, "But it is 1 a.m. in Tokyo, Bernhard." The ad closes out to reveal a rooftop party in Tokyo where people are dancing to upbeat and lively Caribbean music while enjoying Malibu cocktails. Despite the late hour, the sun is shining for the partygoers thanks to Radio Maliboom Boom.

Ozlem Citci, Malibu Global Brand Director, says "Radio Maliboom Boom takes our existing advertising initiative in an exciting new direction. Through a fully integrated experience, we're inviting our consumers to become a part of the 'Get Your Island On' crusade - infusing light-hearted fun and vibrant energy into the every day."

"The new campaign goes beyond the traditional television spots by creating an experience where consumers can connect with the irreverent, vibrant spirit of the Malibu brand through the engaging personalities of the DJs," said Paul Campbell, Vice President of Marketing for Malibu at Pernod Ricard USA. "We want people to be able to embrace the fun of Malibu in their everyday lives and Radio Maliboom Boom is a perfect way to do this."

Keep an eye out on Digitology and I'll let you know as soon as there's live content to explore.

What's Happening With Twitter

It seems so many headlines of late have been about Twitter. Twitter's new homepage. Twittering getting someone sued. The Value of Twitter. So I thought I'd do a little round up of four of the most interesting things happening in the Twitter-sphere.

The Growth of Twitter
Twitter traffic has increased to 44.5m unique users worldwide (in June) - up 19% month-on-month. Users rose from 37.3m in May which represented a jump of over 7m. All-in-all that's an increased of 1,460% from June 2008, when Twitter's worldwide audience was only 2.9m.

An important point to note about these figures is that they only count traffic to the Twitter.com site and don't register traffic to any of the numerous Twitter apps, such as TweetDeck, that are used by many users.

The above data comes from ComScore but Nielsen NetRatings has also released an interesting stat that adults use Twitter twice as much as teenagers do. Only 16% of Twitter users are under 25, and a mere 6.6% of teens have a Twitter account.


Twitter's Skinni Popcorn
MagneticNorth have just launched a really cool movie barometer called Skinni Popcorn. The site provides an insight into real people's opinions about the latest movies within a real-time environment. By analysing Twitter feeds and any comments about films, the site gives a real-time feed on what Twitter users are saying about movies. The site also gives a synopsis of the films, a web link to The New York Times review of the movie, and links to trailers of the movies.

The initial release targets Twitter as a feed but there are already plans to utilise other social media sites and pull in any comments from them to help grow and develop a broader community.


American Footballer Fined For Tweeting
An American Football player has been fined $2,500 for tweeting about his team. Antonio Cromartie was fined by the NFL for commenting about the team's nutrition, saying that "nasty food" was to blame for the Chargers' poor performance last year. His tweet last Friday said "Man we have 2 have the most nasty food of any team. Damn can we upgrade 4 str8 years the same ish maybe that's y we can't we the SB we need."

The NFL is presently formulating a broad policy to ban players from using social media platforms, including Twitter, during games.


Save The Observer, On Twitter
The news is official, The Observer newspaper is facing possible closure by the Guardian Media Group. In a bid to try and boast support for the newspaper a campaign has been launched on Twitter. In just two days the profile has gained over 2,000 followers. The campaign is being spear-headed by opywriter and digital marketer, Callum Saunders. The Savetheobserver Twitter Profile has been posting details of the story.

A Facebook Save the Observer group has also been launched and this has signed up more than 2,300 supporters.

Google in 5 Years

Scott Kurnit, a New York-based tech investor and founder of About.com, talks about the future of Google and his view on how Google stock can triple in the next 5 years. Scott discusses the three major services that he believes will drive this growth:

• Google Voice (GrandCentral)


• Google Wave


• Google Android