The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator

The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator is an online story cum game cum comic cum interactive experience, created by Edgar Wright and paid for by Microsoft to promote Internet Explorer.



You can see it here, but what is most interesting is that it took over all (I think) of the ad breaks for Joe Cornish's Attack The Block on Channel 4 at the weekend.

That's a really good example of media creativity - put a film within a film - but make sure that it's related. Fan's of Joe's work are likely to be fans of Edgar's too.

Full story here

John Mayer 'Draw Something' Fan Video

Great fun.  I'm surprised it's taken someone so long to do this.  Note that it isn't official, but I imagine someone will use Draw Something in this way before long, as they have with Instagram.

Justin Bieber's Augmented Reality Album Cover

A good way to boost adoption of a technology - in this case blippar:



You can win stuff and make purchases through the app.

Blur release two new songs live on Twitter

Blur have written two new songs, The Puritan and Under The Westway, for their Olympic finale concert in Hyde Park.  So that the audience can hear the songs before the show, and to generate a bit of buzz, they are releasing them on Twitter next Monday, 2nd July.

They will play each song live, at 6.15pm and 7.15pm.

Follow BlurOfficial (amazingly less than 30,000 followers so far) for more

Update - the videos:




Buy the both here - it's an A side and B side

Paypal's in-store mobile payments

Paypal demonstrates how you don't necessarily need expensive new terminals and NFC readers to take mobile payments.


PayPal PoS Trade Show Final Cut from Newspepper on Vimeo.

Brand Sarcasm

as brands are getting more used to using Twitter, they've started to get more sarcastic, and - um - lippy.

Two examples:

Smart Car responded to this comment about birds crapping on one of their cars:

(The response was written by Razorfish, apparently)

Sainsbury responded to this comment about one of its sandwiches:

It's worth noting that in each case the original comment was clearly humorous, but even so, well done!

Update - Irony from Visit England

Update - this from P&G's Charmin

Jordan Knight sings the Old Navy Catalogue

This is like something out of a Spitting Image sketch, but it also works surprisingly well, and has 'virla hit' written all over it:  Jordan Knight from New Kids on The Block sings the Old Navy Catalogue.



Facebook page here

You can even download a megamix.

PS - an example of Spitting Image doing a similar gag:

3 Doors Down let you pre-buy the gig on USB wristband

American rock band 3 Doors Down, currently on tour with ZZ Top, are offering a great deal to fans.  Most nights they'll be recording the show, and you can pre-buy the recording of the actual show you go to on a collectable USB wristband, and pick it up on the night, after the gig.

OK Go have done this before, but I've not heard of other people doing it.  At $25 a time it's not cheap, but it's a great thing to be able to get at the gig you go to!

Madagascar 3 YouTube Takeover

These keep getting better.  This YouTube video (which won't do the magic embedded) turns into a game and all sorts of fun.

see it in full here

P&G's 'Food Trucks'

This is a great piece of lateral thinking.  P&G has partnered with Walmart to launch some mobile stores in New York and Chicago.  Talking inspiration from the food truck movement (which is very big in some US cities), the trucks tour the city, tweeting their location, and even take requests to visit offices.

The trucks have some product to give away as samples, but also have QR codes that people can scan to order online.  Orders over $45 come with free postage.

I really like this, and can see lots of variants of this popping up over the next few years.  It's comparatively cheap (compared to opening new premises), and it's very flexible.

Earlier - Nike uses a food truck for location-based promotions, the 'item of the month club', and Tesco's F&F store.

More info in AdAge

What was the first record you bought?

This question, a staple of newspaper and magazine interviews, may be becoming irrelevant, as fewer young people buy music.

Take this answer from Misha B, ex of the X Factor, who is 20, in today's Metro:

"What was the first record you bought? 
Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah [released in 2008]. I grew up with music always being in the house so didn’t need to buy it but Alex really inspired me. I was so into her, I bought the single. I really admired her drive and ambition to always do better."

Misha B herself doesn't seem that fussed with copyright - to promote her solo career she's produced this  mixtape, including her songs but also songs by other artists like Beyonce and Drake, and is available for download if you submit your email address.

It's getting easier and easier to download music for free.  For example, this new site clip.dj - just put in a YouTube url and it lets you download the audio as an MP3.

Update - a couple of articles posted on Metafilter address this:  First, a young woman who has 11,000 songs, but has only ever bought about 15 CDs.  Second, a musician responds.

#LGTicketHunter

#LGTicketHunter is a new competition from LG, to promote their L-Series smartphones by giving away VIP tickets to shows at their venue, the LG Arena in Birmingham, including One Direction, Kanye West & Jay Z, and The Voice live tour.  It's today's promoted trend in the UK.

The more tweets the hashtag gets, the more the map zooms in, until it reveals the location.  Then, the first person to get to the location and tweet with the hashtag will get the tickets.

As you can see from the screen graphic, they are currently seeing about between 1,500 and 2,500 tweets per hour.

Full info here

Update - as a keen-eyed reader has pointed out, this is very similar to the game for VW Fox in Brazil, back in 2011

Things I Love - Tuesday 5th June

Google's latest Easter Egg, using the right hand side search boxes.  Search for Lionel Richie.  Google are very good at these!

The parody of Social Media Revolution.



The 'clay cat' version of The Raid (the real film is excellent too!)



Of Monsters & Men's Little Talks.  Great album.



& the Phenomenal Handclap Band

2012 Olympics Ad Examples

Some examples of ads Olympic sponsors are running:

adidas



adidas



adidas



 BMW



Coca Cola



OMEGA



P&G



P&G

  

P&G (Gillette)



Visa



MINI



BBC



Samsung



EDF



BT

 

Visa - ads turned around very quickly to include that day's Olympic footage

 

Let me know what I've missed.  I'm only interested in the main ones though - I know that there are lots of things for Cadbury's but none have had many views yet.