Ben & Jerry's on Facebook Connect

An example of how Facebook Connect is slowly spreading around the web.

Facebook Connect is a way of integrating sites with Facebook. In a way it's a direct reversal of Facebook Applications, where a site would effectively appear in mini form on Facebook; with Facebook Connect, Facebook functionality appears on other sites.

In this case people can use their Facebook details to log into the flavours section of Ben & Jerry's site (what - no Phish Food?), choose their favourite flavour, then post it to their Facebook profile. Two years ago this would have been a Facebook App, now it uses Facebook Connect.

See the screenshots below; visit Facebook for more details:

Log in through Facebook Connect:


Post your favourite flavour to Facebook:


Taken from Facebook's new 'Marketing' page, where they are sharing case studies.

Iron Maiden - Flight 666

A new widget to promote the Iron Maiden documentary Flight 666, with videos, photos etc. OK, producing a widget is not rocket science, but at least this one works, unlike the U2 360 widget, which I spent ages playing with before giving up.

The Iron Maiden film will play in cinemas for one day only, on 21st April 2009.

Easter Egg builder for Ice Age 3

A nice bit of topical opportunism to promote the third Ice Age film.


Decorate an Easter Egg in Ice Age style, and send it as an Easter card.

See also: Pumpkin templates for They Came From Upstairs

It's amazing how little musicians get paid

Two examples of how little YouTube pays in royalties, from the PRS supported website FairPlayForCreators.com:

Pete Waterman, record producer, writes:
"I co-wrote 'Never Gonna Give You Up', which Rick Astley performed in the eighties, and which must have been played more than 100 million times on YouTube - owner Google. My PRS for Music income in the year ended September 2008 was £11."

Mark Kelly, keyboard player for Marillion writes:
"In my last quarterly PRS for Music statement I received 0.6p from YouTube. With over 10,000,000 views for Marillion's videos I'm wondering if there's more to come. Like many musicians, I rely in part on my PRS for Music income to live. If we are not going to be earning as much from traditional CD sales because people choose to get their music in other ways then it's only fair that the likes of Google share some of the fantastic profits they are making at our expense."

It puts the current dispute between the PRS and YouTube/Google into context. It's exactly what the PRS should be doing - using real examples to illustrate their point and counter the idea that everyone in music is rich.

But remember, YouTube loses a lot of money. Losses are projected at $470m in 2009.

city-lit Paris

One problem with traditional guide books is that they're often out of date before the ink is dry. When I was travelling in Australia in 2002 I ended up ditching my massive copy of Let's Go because it was too big and heavy, too out of date, and it was far easier to go online and search for hostel Darwin or whatever as I went around.

While I was throwing out Let's Go I was buying lots of other books about Australia, including the brilliant Town Like Alice, and several other Neville Shutes, a couple of Peter Careys, a Thomas Keneally, and even - um - Stark by Ben Elton. These were far more illuminating than the guide book. Since then I've got into the habit of going to Daunt Books in London to shop for books before travelling, because they arrange their fiction by destination, not by author.

Oxygen Books have done a similar thing in producing a series of city guides focussing on the literature associated with the city, and they very kindly sent me a copy of citylitParis version to review.

It's really good. Each extract is between half a page and two pages, and the book is split into different sections to cover first thoughts on arriving, food, different areas, famous Parisians, and others.

Writers featured include Julian Barnes, George Orwell, Colette, Jean Rhys, Hans Christian Andersen, Alex from Franz Ferdinand, and Catherine Sanderson, the blogger known as Petite Anglaise. The selection of extracts is really imaginative, and covers old and new, high brow and low brow.

I'm going to Paris in a few weeks for a short break, and its given me lots of new ideas for places to go, even though I know Paris really well. There are other cities in the series including Dublin, but what I'm really looking forward to is the Berlin one out later this year.

They're promoting it through outreach to bloggers as well as though traditional channels, and even through twitter - @citylitParis

Is this your luggage?

A very strange site, but brilliant in it's simplicity:

"I COLLECT LOST LUGGAGE, PHOTOGRAPH IT, AND THEN TRY TO FIND THE OWNERS.
IT’S A LITTLE ODD BUT NOT AS ODD AS STAMP COLLECTING, JUST A LITTLE HARDER TO FIND STORAGE SPACE.
When A BAG GETS LOST THE AIRPORT OR AIRLINE WILL STORE IT FOR A WHILE AND TRY TO FIND THE OWNER.
If they can’t identify the OWNER OF THE case THEY SEND IT TO BE AUCTIONED OFF WITH THE PROFIT GOING TO CHARITY.
I GO TO THESE AUCTIONS AND BUY THE CASES SO I CAN PHOTOGRAPH THEM FOR MY WEIRD VOYEURISTIC PASSION.
The reason for the web site? i would really like to try to find the people who own my suitcases, so if you HAVE ANY FRIENDS WHO HAVE LOST A CASE PLEASE GET THEM TO HAVE A LOOK."

Currently 5 suitcases are shown, with the contents. Have a look to see if any of them are yours.

Please tell me that this isn't a viral for a suitcase company, an insurance company, or an airline...

(I would love to go to one of these auctions. Greasby's seem to have the contract for BA in the UK. Click on the 'catalogue' link to see details of the next auction. Auctions are held every Tuesday. That would be a very surreal day out.)

Related: Help Charlie to find the owners of this photo set.

Subservient Chicken is now 5 years old

Subservient Chicken, a viral site for Burger King in the US, is now 5 years old. This is still one of the most famous online marketing activities, and was instrumental in getting people to think beyond banners and buttons. It was a site that made you enjoy spending time with the brand; it was the essence of the idea of using digital media to create time with the audience. It was produced by The Barbarian Group and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, and still sets the mark against which other online ideas are judged.

(In writing this I had a look to see if it was still live, and it is. Hats off to BK for keeping this live 5 years after it first launched. They do the same thing with Simpsonize Me)

This post gives you all the details from the idea to the reality, the viral spread, its cultural impact, and beyond.

Also, crucially, it looks at the effectiveness, with these two quotes:

"About a month after the sandwich debuted, BK reported that sales had steadily increased an average of 9% a week. Since then the company has seen “double-digit” growth of awareness of the TenderCrisp sandwich and “significantly increased” chicken sandwich sales. And the TenderCrisp does sell better than the original sandwich. – Adweek"

"You’re standing in the middle of the street, and there’s a Burger King on one corner, and a McDonald’s on the other. You gotta eat something and those are pretty much the only choices. What do you do? You go to the one who brightened your day a little bit, who did something funny. Who spoke to you. – Benjamin Palmer, CEO, Barbarian Group"

The Boat That Rocked playlists on Spotify

This is a great illustration of how bands can use Spotify in their marketing. The Boat That Rocked, the new British film about pirate radio in the 1960s, has used Spotify to create playlists for each of the 9 DJs featured in the film. For example Dave, played by Nick Frost, has tracks from The Who, spencer Davis Group, The Kinks, The Troggs, and others.

Just go to the site, select a DJ, see their playist, and then click on one link to add it to your playlists on Spofity (Spotify is now available for free download here).

I'm really impressed by how well this works - it just takes one click and you've got the playlist.

The Boat That Rocks has also got a soundtrack album, and some of the DJs have playlists to buy on iTunes, but for my money this is the best use of music in promoting the film.

See also - Share Spotify Playlists

Bruno on MeinSpace

The trailer for the new Sacha Baron Cohen film Bruno has exploded all over the internet today (see below). Here on the right is the US site for the movie, done exclusively with MySpace (re-directing from www.MeinSpace.com/Bruno). It's blocked in the UK, so all I've got is a screenshot from an ex-colleague. They've done a great job; for example:

Favourite music:
Snap
Destiny's Kinder
Milli (from Milli Und Vanilli)
Chris Martin von ze band Caltspiel
U Zvei
Ze rapper Funfzig Pfennig

Click to expand

There's also a twitter account @brunovassup

I'm expecting all sorts of great stuff from both the movie and the marketing. Borat had what is still the single most engaging use of MySpace that I've seen - a fan would post a comment on Borat's wall and then 'he' would post back on theirs, usually something totally inappropriate. See the screen grabs below to see what I mean.

Megan writes on Borat's wall
Borat writes on Megan's wall

Bruno Trailer below (with age verification)

MuZoid twitter music application

More twitter usefulness - the MuZoid app, created by music industry analysis firm MusicMetric.

Send a tweet to MuZoid, and they reply instantly with a page on the artist, detailing their releases (with links to buy from Amazon), a list of any upcoming gigs, a list of similar artists, and similar gigs. Simple, and it works.

For example:

Lily Allen
Ladytron
Elvis Presley

BakerTweet

This is a fantastic use of twitter: London agency Poke have produced a piece of hardware for their local bakery, Albion, which lets the bakers tell people what has just finished baking. There is a twitter account that you can follow @AlbionsOven (typical tweet: Lovely, layered bloomers, french baguettes, sourdough, traditional bridge, and many more breads, still steaming), while the bakers just need to turn the dial to the appropriate pre-set tweet.

See a video of it in action:

BakerTweet from BakerTweet on Vimeo.

I love this so much, because it's so simple, but also because it's a nod to the Trojan Room coffee pot webcam, set up at the Cambridge University Computer Department in 1991, so that the techies could see how much coffee there was left in the pot without leaving their desks.

One small thing though - why don't they mention this on the Albion website?

Aggregated tweets

Two examples of twitter monetisation.

ExecTweets - tweets from senior business execs / interesting people, paid for by Microsoft


MarchTweetness - tweets relating to March Madness, paid for by AT&T

More info at MarketingVox

I wrote earlier about possible ways to monetise twitter - some of these now seem to be happening.