Ashton Kutcher's Chase game for Nikon at SXSW

Nikon's "The Chase, Powered by Ashton Kutcher" from Nikon SXSW on Vimeo.

Starting tomorrow, if you're at SXSW (which I'm not...) you can play this interactive treasure hunt to win tickets to go to an exclusive Nikon event, and win some free stuff.

To get involved follow AplusK, Nikon USA, Ashton on Facebook, and Nikon USA on Foursquare.  It will use the hashtag #SXSWNikon

It looks like it could be fun, and follow the gaming mechanics of either Jimmy Choo, or VW Fox (see posts on both of these here and here).

Well done by Nikon for getting Ashton Kutcher involved - he's pretty credible within the tech community, having been involved in the VOIP company Ooma, and also investing in Flipboard.

Update - Monday 14th - it looks like it was a bit of a 'Catch Me If You Can' - AK posted the following tweets with pictures; people had to guess where he was, then go there and check in.

Gareth Bale vs. Inter Milan

From the match in October 2010

An animation by Richard Swarbrick @RikkiLeaks. The music is available as a royalty free download from: http://istockpho.to/foSnJ7

Who's going to be the first brand to 'be influenced' by this..?

Update - it's Sky Sports, although they did commission the original artist, Richard Swarbrick to make this video of Barcelona vs. Real Madrid for them.

Bid for celebs to follow you for Comic Relief

To raise money for this year's Comic Relief several British celebrities are offering to follow you on twitter, re-tweet you, and mention you, plus some special items.

"The ‘Super-Follow’ means that the celebirty will do ALL of these things...
1.    Follow you on Twitter for 90 days
2.    Retweet one of your tweets 
3.    Send out a tweet including your Twitter @username"

Bidding is through Ebay.  So far Emma Freud has the highest bid at over £1,500, but her offer also includes a walk on part in her partner Richard Curtis' new film.  (Richard Curtis is also available, and will join twitter especially, and follow just you...)


As part of their deals Miranda Hart is also offering a signed script, Nick Frost is offering both a poster of his film Paul, signed by the cast, and a 5 minute phone call, and Christian O'Connell is offering to have you as a guest on his breakfast show.

It's easy to be cynical about Comic Relief, but I really like this.  It's fun, and it's far more involving & engaging for fans than last year's fund raiser where fans had to give money to get celebs to end their twitter silence (which was a bit of a flop, according to Popbitch).

The Telegraph launch their own Groupon

British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has launched its own daily deals; today you can book a 3 course meal at L'Escargot for two for £60, in a programme it's calling 'Selected'

It's a pretty good idea.  It leverages their database, can be tailored to the tastes that they know their readers have, and also extends the whole 'reader offer' idea.

As far as I know this isn't a deal with Groupon, as some newspapers have done in the States, but simply copying the very-easy-to-copy model.

I expect the other papers to follow suit.  The Times already does Times Plus, and The Guardian also have lots of premium services and courses ('Masterclasses') for readers.

Newspapers are great at defining who their readers are.  As a Guardian reader I follow lots of the expected patters in my cultural tastes, (Alexei Sayle once said "You can tell what TV programmes I watch by looking at my furniture") so why not find new ways to sell things to me?

I currently spend about £100 a year on The Guardian (the Saturday edition, 52 times a year), but they'd more out of me by selling me things that they already know that I like, as I argued here.

DaftCoke

The latest brand and music collaboration - Coke in bottles designed by Daft Punk.

Only available in France, I think.

Sampling through Facebook

You can now buy a new variant of Heinz Tomato Ketchup through Facebook in the UK.  You need to Like the page, then you can purchase a limited edition bottle of Balsamic Vinegar Ketchup for £1.49.

The process is pretty painful (not being able to use Paypal, having to take all the spaces out of the phone number etc), but I've bought it now 'in the interests of research'.

Update (9th June) - this has clearly worked for Heinz - the variant is now available in my local Sainsbury's:

Elsewhere, Kleenex are allowing American Facebook users to send their friends virtual and actual packets of tissues, and you can even track the spread of the giving across the states.  So far one million packages have been sent.  More info here.

Facebook have told us that (in the UK at least) FMCG is their largest advertising sector, and I think we're going to see A LOT of this sort of thing in the future!

Update - 14th March - my ketchup has arrived!

Update - October 2012 - We Are Social have shared a case study on the Heinz campaign

Heinz Limited Edition Balsamic Ketchup case study from We Are Social

Looking at old magazines

I love magazines.  Less so than I used to, but I still have lots of old copies of Neon (when it existed), Private Eye, Monocle, Q (when it was good), and Viz (ditto) lying around at home.

It seems that I'm not the only one, and I've recently seen scans of the archives of several magazines online, an activity a bit like putting old performances from shows like The Tube onto video sites (for example...)

Here we have...

Neon, the best British film magazine

Select, a really good document of the 1990s in music

Smash Hits, whcih should need no introduction

& finally, Glamour (UK) have scanned their first issue on Facebook, to help mark their tenth anniversary.

(With the defunct magazines, you wonder who owns the rights, and how hard it would be for a brand to offer to take the archive on)

Twitter game for VW Fox in Brazil

Excellent case study on a location-specific twitter game / campaign for Volkswagen in Sao Paulo.

The Fox is a car aimed at young people, so they organised a treasure hunt to win tickets for the PlanetaTerra festival; the more tweets, the more they revealed about the hidden tickets.



It's a great example of using twitter as a technology and mechanism, rather than a media owner.

Tipping my hat to m'colleague Andy Kinsella

Peroni Italian film Tumblr

Monica Bellucci in a scene from Malena by Giuseppe Tornatore.  (Source)

Here - a really good use of tumblr by Peroni UK.

Similar to one of my recent favourites, ThisIsNotPorn, rare and unusual celebrity photos.

What is The Clear Pill?

Ads have been appearing for The Clear Pill in British newspapers for the past couple of weeks, and also in this short film, released in December.



Want to know what it's all about?

Visit this site, and input the code Limit2

Build it!

One of the things that brands are encouraged to do these days is to build useful tools - brand utility and that sort of thing.  Don't just send messages to people, give them something that they can use to make their lives easier or more interesting.  Nike Plus, Nike's collaboration with Apple is always held up ad a great example.

A perfect non-brand example is Churnalism.com.  Churnalism.com is a site that lets you input the text of a press release, and it then finds where this has appeared in the British press (& BBC websites), and the extent to which the journalist just cut and paste from the press release.

(The phrase churnalism was coined by Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News, to describe things that appeared in newspapers but were just regurgitated press releases)

Two great examples from the site:

A pretty spurious research study by a polling company, over 90% repeated word for word in the Daily Mail.  (See them side by side here)

A press release from the NHS, churned to a greater or lesser extent by 14 different news organisations.

Churnalism was created by the British charity the Media Standards Trust, and really brings their work and aims to life.

Far better to promote themselves and explain their values by building something like this, than produce an advertising campaign.

Crowdfunding the new Rainbow Warrior

I like this plan to finance the purchase of a new ship for Greenpeace.

Pick an item, and buy it for them, rather than just selecting the random donation level that most charities ask for.  Once an item is bought, it appears in the catalogue as Sold Out.  It's a bit like a wedding list in that there are lots of small pieces (cutlery, pens), and also some bigger pieces.  So far most of the small pieces have gone, but very few of the big pieces, which might be a problem with this approach.

(Horrible, horrible site though - why can't I turn off the music, for example?)

In a similar vein, The Girl Store for The Mahindra Foundation asks you to fund schooling for girls in Africa, with pictures of the children who are being funded, and the items they need.  Once the money has been raised the girl is labelled 'Off To School'

Both of these approaches show that it's often more of an incentive to give if you can see the change you create in a practical way.