Audi Crowd Sourcing

Yesterday I wrote about Unilever's move with Peperami towards a full crowd sourcing model. In that case, Unilever went as far as to end a 15 year relationship with Peperami's advertising agency, Lowe. That was perhaps an extreme example of brands/businesses that are moving to a crowdsourcing model but it's certainly not an isolated occurance. Aside from Doritos and Pringles who were also both mentioned yesterday, Audi are the next big brand to step up to the table and call on their fans and customers to drive their coming developments.

The whole campaign has grown off this year’s Los Angeles Design Challenge, which is titled 'Youth Mobile 2030'. Design design studios from all over Southern California have been called on to submit their vision of what a 2030 customer will want.

Audi, who currently have more than 324,000 Facebook fans (making them one of the highest among auto brands), have partnered up with TurnHere, to create a video based campaign asking fans for their input on what features they want to see on future models. TurnHere produced videos profiling Audi's participation in the "Youth Mobile 2030" design challenge for its Facebook fan page. The videos show the overall participation that Audi have had in the design challenge. Essentially, they present a showcase of actual Audi designers sharing their own design philosophies and visions of the future, and describe how Audi wants to consider lifestyle, form and function for future designs.

The campaign will primarily be run through Facebook, and shows a real hands on application of the massive fanbase that the company have developed. This not only shows great use of an extremely valuable resource but also goes to reinforce the ideals of Social Media, as a brand goes back to its users and asks them what they want (ref. Vodafone Mission Red for a current Irish example of this).

“Video is a powerful way to experience the Audi brand and the passion of our design team. We wanted to show our Facebook fans that we’re committed to creating automobiles that fit our changing lifestyles; and having this conversation with them is a critical part of that process,” said Brad Stertz, Manager of Corporate Communications for Audi of America. “TurnHere did a great job of capturing that passion and desire in an authentic way that lets our designers start the conversation online among our fans."

Through the videos, fans are encouraged to participate in Team Audi's efforts by participating in the live discussion, giving feedback, and helping to answer the question 'How will your car play a role in keeping you connected to your digital world in the future?'

"Audi is using social media to excite its community and engage them in their brand and design process. Video is an integral element to showing the human side of any brand and creating a personal connection," said John McWeeny, COO at TurnHere. "Online video production is now very affordable, and more brands are able to use video to engage people on the social web."

Peperami Crowd Sourcing

In what may be seen as one of the biggest ad upsets of recent times, Unilever, the people behind Peperami, have made the decision to drop their Advertising Agency of 15 years, Lowe. Instead of using the traditional model of having an agency create your creative works, Unilever are handing over creative thinking to.... crowd sourcing.

So what is crowd sourcing I hear you ask?

Crowd Sourcing is not a new concept, either to adverting or Unilever, but it is a bold move to remove your agency of 15 years altogether. Crowd Sourcing is the concept of asking your fans / viewers / audience / customers to suggest or create you ads for you. Previous brands to use this approach have been Pringles and Doritos (Doritos Tribe). Both of which did so exceptionally well; both saving money and getting ads that ultimately blew everyone away.

In this instance, Peperami are launching a global search for their nexy big advertising concept through Ideabounty.com. Ideabounty.com is an online creative community, that invites the public to submit ideas for the next press and television ads. In return the brand is putting up $10,000 (£6,000) for the best idea.

Noam Buchalter, marketing manager at Peperami, says: “We believe Peperami is a brand that deserves radical creative solutions and are confident taking our brief out to thousands rather than a small team of creatives will provide us with the best possible idea and take our advertising to the next level. It’s a test to see if it works for the brand with a long-term view to using it in future advertising. We are extremely thankful to Lowe for the brilliant work they achieved over the last two decades and are looking forward to seeing the ideas to take Lowe's legacy forward into the next era of Animal."

The one caveat is that the brand wants to retain their iconic Peperami Animal character. So with that point satisfied, the winning entry will be produced by Smartworks. Going forward Unilever have said that they have no plans to retain a full-time ad agency for the Peperami account in future.

The campaign went live last Friday (28th August) and will close on 23rd October.

Doritos Tribe


This user-created ad was produced by two 25-year-olds for the reported sum of £6.50.

The Pererami Animal

IKEA and Vedana

During the week, what may seem like a seemingly insignificant event, swept across the web creating a huge amount of debate and coverage. IKEA changed their font.

Seriously.

IKEA's signature Futura font has been replaced by the Verdana. For the last 50 years, IKEA have been using IKEA Sans, a customized version of Futura. However, for their new 2010 catalogue, IKEA have made a switch to the Verdana typeface. As it turns out, fans and designers are extremely unhappy with the change. On Wednesday, design consultant Marius Ursache even went as far as to create an online petition to stop IKEA from changing the font. So why did IKEA make the change and why are their such strong feeling over this?

In an interview with the Swedish design magazine Cap & Design, IKEA’s Ivana Hrdlickova said that IKEA's central reason for changing fonts was to allow the company to use the same typeface in all countries it currently operates in. IKEA's previous font Futura did not allow for Asian characters. As Verdana was designed for the web, it allows the company’s image to remain consistent online and in print. Unfortunately, that's also the main reason for the backlash. Verdana was never intended as a print typeface and was created purely for use on screen. Microsoft invented the font for shipping with Internet Explorer 3 in 1996.

Here are a selection of a few comments that have been made:

Simon l'Anson, a creative director in London, said "it has open, wide letterforms with lots of space between characters to aid legibility at small sizes on screen," but "it doesn't exhibit any elegance or visual rhythm when set at large sizes. It's like taking the family sedan off-road. It will sort of work, but ultimately gets bogged down."

Carolyn Fraser, a letterpress printer from Australia, said Verdana is "dumbed down and overused."

"They went cheap," said designer Iancu Barbarasa. "Designers have always thought of Ikea as one of their own, so now, in a way, the design community feels betrayed."

The issue has gained such coverage that Time Magazine have even covered the story. So what do you think? Does this change really make a noticeable difference?

The fonts in question...

VW Dudeism

Volkswagen have just launched a new advertising campaign to highlight their support of independent cinema. Their first ad features a man who has been so inspired by the film 'The Big Lebowski' that he has created a religion around The Dude. He feels that Jeff Bridges character provides a teaching "that is just right for this time and place".



Does it seem strange that there's no VW cars featured anywhere in the ad?

The Sol Revolution

- - - UP DATE - - -

The Sol Revolution venue has changed, it will now be on in The Odeon. Same line-up etc. Start time is 8.30pm.

The summer may be almost over but there's plenty of fun still to be had before you pull your winter coat of off its hibernation. Sol Beer is currently running a great campaign over on its Sunshine Revolution website. Just for the fun of it, Sol are hosting a free gig in Pygmalion and the Powerscourt Centre on the 16th of September. The line will see Super Extra Bonus Party, The Chapters, Kormac Live and Tucan take to the stage in an evening of fun and revelry.

But wait, I hear you cry, did you say free? I did indeed say free. Just pop over to the site and register your details. Hey presto, mission complete.

The Sol Revolution are also busy promoting the whole event over on Twitter and Facebook. So get following and add yourself as a fan. If you're looking for more info on Sol you can check out the International Beers site or Wikipedia.

The Story of Sol
As Sol legend has it, it all began on a brisk, sunny morning way back at the very end of the 19th centuary. The year was 1899, and in an old lost forgotten factory near Mexico City, named “El Salto del Agua”, a German master brewer chanced upon a brewing pot illuminated by a ray of sunlight, falling in through a dusty window. The brewer stopped in his tracks, captivated by golden ray beaming across the room, pulling his attention to the pot. He decided this new beer would be named “El Sol” (The Sun), and so Mexico's most famous beer was born. Since then Sol has become a popular beer sold around the world, served in its distinctive clear flint bottle always with a wedge of lime.

Here's also a funny little video about the classic Mexican cerveza...

Nokia and The Future

Historically Nokia have always been the leader in the mobile phone market. They have nearly always had the largest range of phones, and have catered for everyone's wants and needs from high-tech high-end smartphones to basic call and text handsets. Basically Nokia made a lot of really clever moves early on in the early days of the mobile boom. Not bad for a company who's primary business as rubber and lumber!

Then something happened. Something changed in the mobile market and Nokia started to lose that historic first choice preference and users started looking to other handsets. The best example of this is the US mobile market. The US mobile market is probably the largest mobile market in the west, and certainly the most important.

Most articles I've read lately would have you believe that Nokia's single major failing has nothing to do with handsets or technology. As a provider Nokia has a huge suite of mobile devices. Nokia is falling down in the US due to a failure to partner with the US mobile networks, and to be honest Nokia's relationship with US mobile networks is well documented. But there's more to it then that. People want smaller, smarter, faster and completely integrated devices. They don't want to have to carry a laptop, a phone, a music player, a camera, an organiser etc. They want to have a device that offers all of these things. Nokia, however, are still approaching their devices from the position of building phones.

The most exciting thing to come to the mobile market in some time, is with out doubt the iPhone. The most important thing to realise about the iPhone is that, contrary to what its name would have you believe, it is not in fact a phone at all. The iPhone is a mobile mini computer that offers the ability to make phone calls, among a host of features.

Building phones is what is truly holding Nokia back. So how will Nokia effect such a change? How will Nokia achieve their goal of becoming "the largest interactive media network in the world."

Nokia's campaigns over the last year have all aimed to grow social media presence, facilitated by conversation. Nokia want people to use their technology to express and broadcast themselves. To support this, Nokia launched a web service called Ovi. Ovi allows Nokia users to get apps like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo for their Nokia phone. While this is far more expansive for smartphones such as the Nokia N97, there are options for even the simplest handset. Nokia have also made major inroads to developing their music offering. Fast Company's article Nokia Rocks the World: The Phone King's Plan to Redefine Its Business gives an overview of Nokia's recent musical advance and the following interview...



So mission accomplished? An app platform in place, partnerships established, advertising ready, and a strategy thought out - Nokia stand poised to take over the world once and for all?

Well not quite. Unfortunately there is a lot of fine tuning still to do for Nokia to accomplish their goal. Nokia's platform, Ovi, is far from brilliant. It is unintuitive and lacks any sort of dynamicism. Coupled with this, the efforts that Nokia are making "to counter music piracy and offer an easy music access service", don't actually address the fact that people want to listen to music on a music player, not on a phone. This brings me back to the point that Nokia are failing to recognise exactly what their competition is really offering.

Once Nokia realise that they need to make more then just phones, they may stand a chance of regaining the premier position they once held for mobile devices.

In The Twittersphere

Two interesting things popped up in the news yesterday involving Twitter. The first is news of the confirmed launch of a new book entitled 'Twitter Wit'. 'Twitter Wit' is a compilation of the funniest tweets posted to the service - essentailly a round-up of all the daft things that have been Tweeted since the sites launch. This of course includes Tweets written by a number of famous Tweeters such as comedian Stephen Fry. One of Fry's featured Tweets "London city airport. Where form meets function. AND THEY HAVE A FIGHT", gives a good insight into the comic yet clever messages that the site has delivered.

The book, which has been written by Nick Douglas (founding editor of Valleywag.com), has been fully endorsed by Twitter and even carries a foreword by the Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone. Stone commented that there was no financial arrangement with the publisher Harper Collins, but that they did love the book so much they bought copies for all their San Francisco employees.

Stone wrote on the company's blog: "The tweets [in 'Twitter Wit'] are irreverent, inappropriate, geeky, and pretty much hilarious. If you don't like one, you'll like the next."

As part of the books launch, Harper Collins have created a competition that challenges readers to perform one of five tweets featured in the book. Entrants will need to create a short video of their performance, with a winner being selected by Douglas. The prize is an iPod touch and a copy of the book.

In other news, another new publication (this time a website) pays tribute to Twitter. Woofer, which describes itself as a 'macroblogging' site allows users to boost their usual 140-character Tweets to gigantic 1,400-characters Woofs. Although Woofer is just a novelty site and openly bills itself as a homage to Twitter in the form of a Social Media experiment, it does already have 9,000 users.

The site itself looks almost identical to the Twitter homepage, with the exception of the huge 1,400 character countdown for your Woofs. Woofers (users) can send messages attributed to their Twitter names. Unlike Tweets, the site asks that Woofers "Be eloquent, use adverbs and DEA (don't ever abbreviate)."

The site does distinctly distance itself from Twitter, confirming a number of time that it has nothing to do with Twitter and even goes as far as to feature a link in the top navigation 'Is this Twitter?'. Clicking on this leads users to page that simply reads "No" in giant letters.

The site has been created by digital agency Join the Company.