Is 'Trucks' the new 'Gorilla'?

On the face of it, yes, this new 'Trucks' ad for Cadbury's Dairy Milk is the follow up to the 'Gorilla' film.

But to me it just doesn't seem as good. Let's let the audience decide - in the first 24 hours this has had about 10,000 views on YouTube (in different versions) - let's see how many it has had after a couple of weeks.

Also, the timing seems a bit unfortunate, with lots of snide comments about the luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5, as seen in this remix

South Park - Sorry England

Last week South Park put nearly all the episodes up online for free (ad supported) online viewing and download. Hurrah!

But, as with lots of these things (Hulu, films on iTunes etc) it is not yet available outside the US. However I'm almost tempted to forgive them thanks to this picture you get when you try to watch from an English IP address. (Click on 'Watch Full Episodes')

Have they made special ones for Scotland, France, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Hungary etc? I'd love to know!

Update - some other pictures:




Thanks Brett!

CNN with Nokia GPS

I love this innovative sponsorship deal that Nokia has with CNN. To promote the N82 Nokia has provided CNN's journalists with GPS-enabled handsets, so that readers of their blogs on CNN.com can track where they are.

See an example here (right hand side)

More info here

Widgety Badness

Widgets are great. Generally incorporating RSS feeds, widgets are pieces of embeddable code that allow you to see information from companies or sites without visiting their main site. I've got a igoogle account full of feeds, and it makes me much more productive. Or possibly less productive, but anyway...

Because of this I'm anoyed when widgets don't work. For example the Ryanair Bargains widget.

Ryanair Bargains is their version of SouthWest Airlines Ding! It allows users to nominate a departure airport, then up to 5 chosen locatins, and it keeps you up to date with latest fares on the desktop or rss.

Except that it doesn't work. If they've discontinued it then they should stop linking to it on their front page. Very poor!

Harvey Dent - Really Good Fan and UGC Example

The Dark Knight, the new Batman film, is due out in the summer, and there are some really good early grassroots campaigns for it in the US.

One of the characters in the film is Harvey Dent, a Gotham City politician, and the early marketing is revolving around a political campaign for him. Very neat, in this election year.

The campaign includes posters with the slogan 'I Believe in Harvey Dent' (among others) available for download here.

A street campaign begins this week, with a 'Dentmobile' visiting 32 cities around the US (schedule published here). This will presumably produce big crowds, videos on YouTube, photos of Flickr and so on, as well as confusing the hell out of people who are not in on it.

It's all about making the fans feel like they are in on what is happening, like they are helping, and mystifing others, just as in the heyday of comics kids' parents would be totally unaware of these new characters like Batman that their kids started to talk about.

Finally they've already got lots of user generated content here, with people using the posters in lots of creative ways. & if you're short of ideas there are suggestions here.

This is an excellent example of the internet being used to drive a real world campaign - and it looks great fun for all the people involved too. Hats off to Team Dent!

Everyone Loves the Asus EEE

I'm not a techy person really - I've only just updated my phone beyond the 'relatively embarassing' level, and the PC I use at home is now about 8 years old. But I am seriously considering getting one of the Asus EEE mini laptops because it seems that everyone who has one raves about it.

A couple of examples - I saw someone playing with one in the Cafe of the Wellcome Collection at the weekend, and he was very enthusiastic about it when I asked him, and then everywhere I look online it gets great reviews, on places where you would expect, like Amazon, but also on Flickr.

Any brand manager or market researcher would kill for this customer comment from kattebelletje on her Flickr page:

"I can recommend it highly! it is so tiny and cute. it works with wifi, then you have your free stuff pre-installed (firefox, open office, chat, skype etc) and it works really fast!
You can insert the memory card of any camera into a slot of this computer and it will 'read' your pictures. With the special flickr-uploading tool from this EEE's picture viewer it can upload pictures to your account. Great fun!"

(kattebelletje - hope you don't mind me linking to you - if you do let me know and I'll remove the link and quote. Thanks!)

Black Cab Sessions

This is a brilliant example of how simple ideas are often the best.

Black Cab Sessions have made recordings of musicians playing songs in the back of a London taxi. So it's unplugged, without drums, and usually just one of two musicians. A great way to get to the rawness and simplicity of songs. The songs are hosted at their own site, and also on YouTube.

So far they have done 31, including The Kooks, Vincent Vincent & The Villains, Seasick Steve, Lightspeed Champion, and this one from Benjamin Zephaniah, which has had over 200,000 views in just over one month: