Dell Overlay by OMD

Here

For the Dj Ditty MP3 Player

Kate Moss/Virgin Mobile Video Ad

Click here to view

From Start Creative

Other links, and more at Adrants

Tampax - Create Your Own Ringtone

Site here

Via Adverblog

Virgin Mobile 'Jason Donovan' Stunt

Virgin Mobile has just revealed that they were behind a media frenzy in Australia, relating to the mobile number of Jason Donovan becomeing public. This is a very clever, multi-layered stunt, and it's impressive that Vodafone are comfortable with coming clean about their involvement.

Full case study here (online presentation)

Adrants article here

Mini 'Minimise Banner'

Before

After

The ad minimises (geddit) the browser window. A nice twist on expandable banners!

See it here, if it's still live

Bus Shelter Ad For Nokia

Harking back to my post in September, the new advertiser on the bus shelter around the corner from the office is Nokia, with this very impressive video placement. There's a screen embedded into the bus shelter, with a video playing on a loop. There are also buttons for you to select other videos and features.

Nike Viral - How Did They Do That?

Here

Film Homages for Motorola

Takes an age to download, but well worth it.

From Steamboat Willie to Lost in Translation - How many films can you spot?

Browser Stats from AdTech AG - Firefox Users click Less than Explorer Users

Some new browser stats from AdTech AG (not to be confused with the Ad:Tech conference etc)

Only 0.23 per cent of Internet Explorer users click on online advertisement. However, this is still twice as much as Firefox users (0.12 per cent).


Nearly 12.5 per cent (12.41 %) of the European users go online with Firefox - an increase of nearly 40 per cent compared to march this year.

The data shown was gathered from 2,000 websites, from August to October 2005. Several billion banner requests were evaluated, which were transferred from the users' browsers to the adserver and then evaluated from this for banner delivery.

New AOL Resource for Agencies

"UK Mediaspace is your daily resource for digital media"

Adtags - A Community for Traffickers

Here

MSN Office - Live Meetings

Business travel stops here:

Great films

Australian Site for Hyundai

Get More Zip - here

Good driving simulations

Dancing Doughboy for Pillsbury

Select your moves, choose your music - here

Philips Viral - Quintippio

Supposedly an ad for a new 15 blade razor

Here

Flights Blog from Cheapflights.com

Cheapflights.com are using this blog on their site to list any offers.

The advantages are:

1 - It'll boost their organic search listings

2 - People can take an RSS feed from it.

Snickers Bowl - winner of Best Use of Rich Media, IMA Awards (UK) 2005

Glue won this award with this Snickers work for Masterfoods.

Details of the award here

See the ads here

Another Takeover Example - Long's Jewellers Takes Over Boston Herald.com

They even put a jewel in the 'dot' of .com

Info at LostRemote

Spoof nano Ad

Here

New Ad Format - Page Background

On New York Times here (but possibly only for this week

Details on adrants

BSB - I Want it That Way

Currently racing around the world - the first huge google video sensation?

Online Treasure Hunt For Budget Rent A Car

I love these things!

A year or so ago Jeep did an online GeoCaching competition - effectively a high tech treasure hunt.

Now Budget Rent a Car have done one - and you don't need a GPS machine.

Here's how it works: Video clues for four new cities per week, for four weeks, can be found at the Up Your Budget site (developed by Design 4 Results). There will be a new video clue there each day of the week for each city (but the name of the city isn't shared - treasure hunters are left with only a region and must discover the city themselves). (Via MarketingVox)

Up your Budget Site is here

Daily clues here

New Virals for Indesit - Jack The Cuckoo

For Italy and Spain - Jack is a very lazy cuckoo...

www.jackthecuckoo.com

Behavioural Targeting Example - Eyeblaster

This example is very good.

Load this page, click on 'reset' (top right hand corner) and reload the page

Mouse over the ad at the top, and select a genre of music to sample - Rock, Country or Hip Hop.

Then click on 'next ad' (top right hand corner) and you get an ad specific to the genre that you selected.

You Can Even Buy Conkers on Ebay

Twenty Conkers (picked up off the ground) for £1.99, plus P&P

Brands Taking Over The World - Photoshopped Logos

Contest entries here

100 Oldest Domain Names

Here

It also shows which companies found out about the internet first - DEC was there before HP, which was there before IBM and Sun...

Mini - Create Your Own Roof

Innovative site from mini, allowing users to select a roof pattern - Roof Studio

Then print it, and put it onto your own roof. Also upload your own designs.

Via Adrants

New Burger King Micro Site - Power Sitting

Here. Very odd, and even more so for starring Harry Enfield, lookin glike a cross between Tim Nice But Dim and the vicar from Dick Emery. Will be lost on the American target audience, of course.

Impossibly Cute - iPod nano Clothing

The ultimate unofficial brand extension

Home Makeover Viral by Glue

Very good take on 'Changing Rooms' etc, and very interactive. Lots to do and see.

For Up My Street

French PSP Site

Very cool.

Helps if you know French...

Vanishinjg Point

Vanishing Point consists of a map of the world connected to a database fed by news coming from several international newspapers. The visibility of each country on the map results from the quantity of media coverage the country receives, so those countries that do not make the news disappear progressively.

Via GianPaolo

New British Guinness TV Ad

All about Evolution

Nike Ad Example from Eyeblaster

Made by AvenueA

Video on the page

Absolut Metropolis

Cool site and ad campaign for Absolut vodka.

Ad on the right hand side of this site

Clicks through to here

Thanks to Elin for the tip!

Glam.com - New Fashion Portal

Here

"Love fashion magazines?
Love to shop?
Not enough time?
Introducing Glam.com, a spectacular new way to indulge in the guilty pleasure of shopping. Browse top looks, beautifully displayed. Easily find a great mix of must-haves that express your style."

Very American, and very girly!

More info here

Million Dollar Homepage

Here

Apparently created by someone to clear his student debt, people pay $1 per pixel, in blocks of 100.

More background via CNET

Subservient Stewie - Family Guy Viral

Here

Details at Adrants

iPod Nano Problems

It seems that some Nanos already have problems with their screens.

People power here: FlawedMusicPlayer.com

Echos of the controvery behind: iPod'sDirtySecret.com

Bus Shelter Ad For Sony Ericsson

A very impressive ad for the Sony Ericsson Walkman phone has appeared round the corner from the office.

It's a huge model phone embedded in a bus shelter that actually plays allows you to play a number of different videos on the screen and. I'm afraid my photo doesn't really do it justice!

3 Micro Sites for Corpse's Bride Film

Postmortem - ask questions of the dead

Bonymail - messages from the dead

Sept 23 - trailer, amateur style. Takes ages to load!

Via Adrants

Saab UK Game

Race Against Time

Adrants love it!

French Virals for Renault Clio

3 films here

Via Adverblog (where else?)

UK Anti Smoking Sites

Boys - Stayinghard.co.uk

Girls - Uglysmoking.com

Millions of Games

An online database of all the games produced -

From the email to ViralMonitor:

Hello,If you've ever used del.icio.us then this should be a familiar concept: http://www.millionsofgames.com

Millionsofgames.com is a community based website that aims to becomethe best place to find all the latest casual and online games. It'sfree to join and members get access to our growing list of games aswell as their own member home page where you can bookmark and rateall the games you play regularly. Best of all, any member can add agame to MOG.

Millionsofgames.com was originally developed by 3RD sense as awebsite for us to keep track of all the good viral games on the web.

All the best,duncan
duncan@3rdsense.com

Site For Apple/Motorola Phone

Here

Make a character dance!

New Banner Format - Chat Banner

I found out about this from a posting to the UKNM discussion list:

Subject: Start Creative: Chat Banner.
From: Alastair Cox
Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:25:01 +0100
X-Message-Number: 8

Hello,

Thought I'd share up a new banner format with you that we have developed
with Creative Virtual (Lingubot(tm) technology) and Eyeblaster (rich media
ad-serving, tracking and reporting).

In short, we have put lingubot and ad-serving technology together so that
customers can pull product and service information into a banner within the
context of a running conversation.

As a proof of concept we have built a 'travel concierge' that will answer
basic questions on planning and booking a holiday which you can try here:
http://www.creativevirtual.com/chatbanner/xpandableBanner.html
(Try asking questions about passports, visas, the weather, booking a
holiday, car hire, skiing etc.)

Caveats:

It's a prototype so the knowledge base is limited.
Think this is cool / worth sharing because it's an advertising format based
on customer pull rather than marketing push.
Good scope for real word application - so happy to supply details on
request.

Alastair

Business Development Manager
Start Creative, 2 Sheraton Street, Soho, London, W1F 8BH.
T: 020 7269 0185 F: 020 7269 0102 M: 078 1332 4240
www.startcreative.co.uk

See the banner here

The Onion Does Hurricane Katrina

It's up there with the post-911 coverage.

God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again

Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq

Government Relief Workers Mosey In To Help

Refugees Moved From Sewage-Contaminated Superdome To Hellhole Of Houston

White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters

Another Saints Season Ruined Before It Begins

Shrimp Joint Now Shrimp Habitat

Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance

Hotel You for Diet Coke

A site to 'lighten your mood and brighten your day'

Via Adverblog

Dutch Viral - Man Reading Newspaper

Here

Apparently this seems to be all the rage...

All The Marketing blogs You Can Shake A Stick At

General Motors - Fastlane Corporate blog:

General Motors - Blog to celebrate 50 years of their Smallblock engine:

HP - Blog on the making of a Nat Geographic Channel documentary, sponsored by HP

Vespa Blog - on all things related to Scootering:

A Tour De France blog, sponsored by Subaru

Boeing Blog for their new 777 plane, currently in development

Nike - Art of Speed - Nike commissioned a professional blog publishing company to produce a blog on the 'art of speed' as a short term project

P&G - Sparkle Body Spray

Collated from

Adverblog
Adrants

Kia Campaign - Auto Bill of Rights

Integrated US campaign with TV, press and online.

"Everyone has the right to a great car..."

MarketingVox has the story

Site is here

Lego Builder - Build Anything With Virtual Bricks

Here

MSN Profiler - Find Where To Find Your Audience on MSN

Here

Uses Comscore data, and available for most European markets.

Silas & Maria - US Clothing Retailer Site

Here

Wonderful to navigate around

Beastie Boys Free Downloads

Free Downloads of a cappella versions of Beastie Boys songs for remixers.

Really good idea - obviously if any of these become popular enough to become released, the Beasties will get royalties, but in any case it is very good PR.

One new song will be added each week.

Wot - no Sabotage?

Nike Soccer USA Viral

Lots of Americans playing *football* on the street, in tennis courts etc. So does this mean Nike are going to own the US team as well as the Brazillian team in the next world cup?

UK Road Safety Ad - Shot on Mobiles

This ad for UK road safety, aimed at kids, was shot by kids using mobile phones.

Very authentic, and like the other recent road safety ads, it mugs you into thinking it is an ad for something else, before someone gets run over by a car at the end.

Download the ad here

MTV Europe Does site for NL and BE in English

Kabuki site here

Looks like my worst nightmare!

Via Adverblog

Viral for Ring 2 - Good Mix of Online & Mobile

This is very neat - put in your friends' email addresses and mobile number, and once they are in the viral their phone rings. Very well thought out!

Produced by NewMediaMaze

See it here

French Promos for Nike

By Courir, a French retailer (competitor to Foot Locker)

New adidas Y3 Site

Here

Download Subway Maps to Your Photo iPod

This is a fabulous idea!

Looks a bit fiddly to load them up though

Fifa Street Football - Amazing Viral

Takes a while to download, but definitely worth it. Full marks for whoever thought of the bit with the recycle bin

Sony Ericsson Moblog - Memorable Movie Moments

Good example of a commercial Mobile Blog - re-create famous movie scenes using your campera phone, then send them to a blog.

The blog is here

Dolby Sound Site - Sound Experiences Online

Two executions - Lightning and Nervous Vs. Relaxed.

Top Ten Lists from CNET

Top 10 Dot Com Flops

Top 10 Technogies They Miss

Snickers Satisfies - A New Game Every Day

Here

Catching up with Adverblog - Lots of Creative Examples

Thanks to Adverblog!

New Mini site in the UK - Make sure It's a Mini

Spanish Advergame for Lastminute.es

Webisodes for Unilever - Sprays of Her Life

Garage Goals for adidas

New Mouse - From Apple

A new, $49 mouse. Watch this one take off!

Flash Game - Avoider

Keep your cursor safe from this guy...

Top Ten Internet Fads

Shown here

1 - HamsterDance
2 - Mahir
3 - All Your Base Are Belong To Us (great days...)
4 - Dancing Baby
5 - Hot or Not
6 - Friendster
7 - Ellen Feiss (completely passed me by)
8 - Star Wars Kid
9 - Blogger
10 - JibJab

Most are from the 2000s - but we've got nothing yet for 2005.

European Chevrolet Game

Based on 5 European cites - London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid and Lisbon - you have to find hidden Chevy Matiz cars on city maps.

Produced by Skive

Great Amateur Video Example

Giving a Harry Potter spoiler outside Barnes & Noble at 1am

Vauxhall Go Yoof in The UK

Vauxhall Tribes - Urban events like Skateboarding, Parkour (free running) and urban music.

This worked well in the US for Scion - will it work here?

Creative by Magnetic North

The Canary Wharf Shooting Rumour

This rumour is still going around, even though the police catagorically denied it a week ago.

The main elements:

The police shot one or two suicide bombers on Thursday morning
It took place at Canary wharf, but the precise location varies
It was witnessed 'by a friend' - never by the person telling the story
It has been covered up - we are not supposed to know about it.

The best coverage I've found is in The Wharf - the weekly CW paper

Google News has 6 reports, including this one in the New Zealand Herald

The thing is that it's hard to disprove. Other rumours, like the explosion in Leicester Square, and the one at Marble Arch can be easily dispelled - but this one looks like staying around for longer.

Fiendish Visual Puzzle

Here

New Saab Microsite in the US

MaintainYourIdentity.net

"You're different - so is Saab"

Users can submit their own pics or videos, for other people to rate.

The site is currently being advertised on The Onion

Google Maps Blog - All the Google Maps Applications As They Happen

Very useful - hopefully whoever is doing this will keep it updated

Strip Poker for Victoria's Secrets in the US

Pink Panty Poker

Destined to be responsible for many hours of lost productivity

Via Adverblog (again!)

Reebok G Unit/50 Cent Site

Featuring a Stickball Game

More on Adverblog

Ford Uses Flashmobs in US

Urban marketing for Ford Fusion - although it's really little more than telling people about gigs at short notice.

More at MediaBuyerPlanner

London Bombs

Bombs today in London - and it emphasises that, no matter how quickly news like winning the Olympic bid can travel, serious, developing stories are still muddled and confused by online media.

An example: The first bomb went off on the tube at 8.50am, by all accounts. Sitting in the office, news started filtering through, from people arriving at work late who had had disrupted journeys, but also from people getting phone calls from friends and relatives.

However none of the news sites I went to had any news on this before about 10.20 - it was still reported as 'Explosions in the tube caused by power surges'. Both the BBC and the Guardian had this, despite TV and radio reporting bombs on the tube, and shortly afterwards the bus bombing.

So we all went to a conference room and watched BBC news.

Gradually online sources have caught up - but whether on the Guardian NewsBlog, or even on the Popbitch message board it's just a case of people reporting what they're seeing on TV.

In fact the Guardian deserves special praise - rather than to keep updating their main story with small alterations (although they're doing that as well), they're devoting their blog to it, and publishing new bits of information as they some in. Perfect example:

"1212 There are now reports from the London Ambulance Service of an explosion in Leicester Square. Update Reader Rod Stanley emails in - he works near Leicester Square, and all is calm there. Thanks for that, Rod."

In comparison to 911, fewer sites have crashed - although Reuters did (Server Too Busy), but the others have stayed up. CNN seems to be doing a very good job.

Edit - 3pm London

But... the online sources have now caught up, and are providing unique insights as well as concise summaries of the situation. This wikipedia coverage is excellent

New Nike Cycling Site

Here

Background at Adrants

AOL Beta Home Page

For the AOL Portal

Includes video search

New Site - mediabuyerplanner.com

From the owner of MarketingVox, a resource for media planners and buyers

New Vespa Blog

Written by two enthusiasts in the US All about scooter events and related items in the US.

More at Adrants

It is Impossible to Watch this and Not Yawn!

Just pictures of Emilie yawning!

THE TRUTH IS that we don’t completely understand why people, or animals for that matter, yawn.

Putfile - Video Hosting

My Example - GoKarts

Durex Dickorations

Cut 'em out and put them on your old chap...

New Nike Women's Site

Here - for Scandinavia, and Benelux

We took sport, and added music

Allows women to find gyms, but also instructors.

More at Adverblog

iFeeder - Like a Video Flickr

iFeeder - A free video upload site, using tags.

Here's the unofficial Tiger Woods Nike ad

Here's one I uploaded

King Kong Trailer - Sponsored by Volkswagen

Here

Background on LostRemote - 14 corporate entities are involved in the rollout

Cannes CyberLions

Marketing Vox reports

Winners included ComeClean, for Method (CP&B), and DDB in Brazil for Henkel's Super Bonder Instand Glue

Also covered by Revolution

Census Data & Google Maps

Here

In it's infancy, but will soon be great

yubnub - An Applications Portal

End 'going to google, then yahoo, then cnn' misery through yubnub - one page that allows you to search via lots of other sites

Don't Click It

A new way of navigating on a site

UK Targetting by Weather

A new campaign for Yell (local directory) in the UK changes the creative according to the weather.

More at Adverblog

Google Guide

Google Guide is a site created independently of Google, giving advice on how to use search in the most productive way.

For example, the quick reference guide for advanced users

Jones soda - Another FMCG community site

Jones Soda

Fake P0rn Site for Young Guns International Advertising Awards

Would love to see the site stats...

Use the password 'comeinside'

Altoids Competition - Best Use of an Altoids Tin

Great idea - sadly no online entry gallery

Man Gets $100k p.a. to Blog About Dukes of Hazzard

Easy life!

To promote their re-runs of Dukes of Hazzard, Country Music Television (CMT) , are paying Christopher Nelson to be VP of their Dukes of Hazzard Institute, and write a daily blog about the show.

Nutella Site in Italy Launches Photo Competition

How to engage as an FMCG brand.

Nutella-lovers community site

Photo competition - sponsored by FujiFilm

Album of submitted photos and photoshopping

All via Adverblog

Boeing 777 Blog

Flight Test Journal - good example of a commercial blog

The Boeing 777 is the new range of airliners. As the BBC reports "The 777-200LR will be capable of flying almost 11,000 miles non-stop, linking cities such as London and Sydney."

More on Doctor Who

Further to the last post about Doctor Who:

The BBC have created three more sites over the course of the series, to intrigue fans online:

UNIT - the UN force against Aliens featured in some episodes

GeoComTex - From the company featured in the Last Dalek (ep. 6)

BadWolf - the words Bad Wolf have, in some form, appeared in every episode. This site shows the different appearances (some incredibly obscure) and teases towards the final episode of the series

(The login for the UNIT site is 'badwolf'....)

Examples of BadWolf discussions online

MSN Awards - First European Emmessennys

Showcase, broken down by category

Overall winner - Nike MSN Messenger football game

Automotive - No overall winner

FMCG - Guardian Newspapers

Entertainment - Nike MSN Messenger Football Game

Financial Services - No winners, despite 168 entries

BA Ads - Interaction Between Banner & Skyscraper

Very impactful!

Very Addictive Game

Breakit

The Latest Controversial Viral - Olympus Red Eye Baby

the story goes that this went live on a special Olympus site in Europe - www.redeyedbaby.com - for about a week, before someone got cold feet and had it removed.

It's now been archived, with a fuller story, on Adland.

Like quite a few 'controversial' films, it's not actually that great...

Blog Search Engine - Blogdigger

Blogdigger - can also search by location of blog

Book Authors Use Blogs to Self-Promote

Fittingly the book is about online marketing

Story via Adrants

League of Gentlemen Film Flashmob

Advert here

New VW Gold Game

To celebrate the sale of 100m VWs

Very tricky!

Via Adverblog

French Viral Marketing Scam - TransAtlantys

A site supposedly promoting a new transatlantic train service between Paris and New York - an eight hour under-sea journey.

More details at Adrants

Amazing Deoderant Ad

Shame it's not a global brand

Another New iPod Ad

This time to DaftPunk

Darth Vader Plays Animal, Vegetable, Mineral for Burger King

Very clever!

By Crispin, Porter & Bogusky

He guessed Guinea Pig in exactly 20!

Find Cheap Gas - A Mash-Up of Google Maps and Gasbuddy

Just the latest great amateur Google Maps application - combining it with GasBuddy

Anyone fancy sponsoring an annual award for the best Google Maps application? Monthly award even?

[Edit]

& one of Google's own - track taxis via GPS

Another Great Open source App - Chicago Crime

Crimes listed in Chicago, linked through to Google Maps.

Homepage here

Mapping example here. Can someone do this for London, please?

Wired Article - the Beeb Shall Inherit The Earth

Making reference to BBC Backstage, this article lauds the BBC and it's work allowing open source access it it's information & archives.

As much of the BBC's content is free, this will create serious conpetition for other online media organisation, including ones who rely on advertising, but particularly those that rely on subscription fees.

New Mazda Viral

New Mazda Viral

Search Engine Relevancy Challenge

John Battelle's Searchblog points to a test being done to measure the relevancy of search results on 4 different search engines - Yahoo, Google, MSN and AskJeeves

Initial results are here - initial ranking on the 5 criteria is Yahoo, Google, AJ, and MSN.

Here is the tool - try for yourself!

New Levi's Virals

Action Men confused by the modern world

Dog gets anxiety

Via Adverblog

Another Great Open source App - Flickr Graph

This application, again built by hobbyists, allows people to map Flickr users, and how they share their photos.

Very impressive!

Dodegeball (now part of Google) Social Networking by Phone

Nice site

This service allows you to hook up easily with friends and friends of friends by phone. Described as 'like Friendster over the phone' it also includes geographical information, to allow you to find out who is near to you at any time.

New iPod Ad

This is a TV ad, so not strictly on-topic here. However...

1 - it's stunningly brilliant
2 - these ads work in any visual medium - TV, online, print & outdoor
3 - Apple know what they're doing when they put the ads online - and if you produce ads as great as this for your products, why not archive them for people to see

Virals for Firefox

This is how virals should be done. Engaging, funny, original films, which somehow manage to be interesting about something as (outwardly) dull as a new browser.

They even load quickly - would they load even quicker if I had Firefox..?

Banner Campaign Leads to More Searches

A very interesting study conducted by Yahoo and HarrisDirect.

Harris Direct, a financial advertiser ran a banner campaign and search test, using an exposed and a contraol panel, to see if the presence of a banner campaign would affect the number of searches for a brand.

What they found was:
- Number of relevant searches was 61% higher among those exposed to the campaign
- Clicks on sponsored results leading to theHarris.com site were 249% higher
- As a result of both, the exposed panel clicked on 139% more links (PPC & SEO combined) than the unexposed sample.

Clearly more reserach needs to be done. This is very encouraging however, in terms of backing up what we have always argued as the indirect effect of banner campaigns, and the need to track effects using post impression as well as post click metrics.

More on:
Marketing Vox
DM News

Yahoo BWM Ad Integration - Going too Far?

An ad for BMW 3 Series on the US Yahoo finance site shows some interesting integration - all of the 'E's on the page have been turned into '3's. Neat idea - but is it going to alienate site users?

Via PaidContent

Google WebAccelerator in Beta

Google WebAccelerator works by connecting users (who have a fast connection and first have to download software) to special Google servers that hold cached versions of the most popular pages.

Therefore you will get a faster search result than by searching normally.

& this is the FAQ

Yoof UK Election Virals

3 Election Virals - from Dan and Lee of VW Polo notoriety.

Labour - woman wakes up to realise she's stuck with a guy for 4 years

Conservative - all the things wrong with Britain

LibDem - Someone actually gets things done while two others argue

Webby Award Winners

The 9th Annual Webby Awards were announced yesterday, giving prizes to the best sites in more than 30 categores from Activitism (World Citizen's Guide) to Youth (ChannelOne.com), via Auto, Blog, Games, Restaurant, Travel, and um - Weird.

This is pretty much the definitive list of current great site design. For example if you're asked to give an example of how a national tourism site shold look, you can immediately refer to the ones in the Tourism category.

Webby Award winners & nominees - Full list

Three Applications Using Databases

Like the earlier example of the property search using Craigslist and Google Maps, here are three examples of what can be done with Google Images and Amazon:

Montage-a-Google - creates a montage of Google images around a search term

Guess The Google - a quiz again using the Google image search, where you have to guess which search word delivered all of the different pictures

Both via Protein Feed

What's This Song? - this game uses Amazon's 'listen before you buy' music clips to create a quiz where you have to recognise songs. You can even create your own game around specific bands

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley on The Internet

Where we are, and where we're going

Very good presentation, given to Ad:Tech - and uses an iProspect chart on page 32.

Interesting to see how the investment community see the internet, and the possiblities. Sadly alsmost all of the stats are American.

Via Colin Crawford's blog

Nike - Run 4 Cesare

Run4Cesare - funky new site

For Italy - therefore only in Italian... However, from what I can work out, it is a site to promote an event on 15th May, similar to Run London.

Shopping.com - Consumer Demand Zeitgeist

There are more and more of the 'Zeitgeist' pages.

Following on from Google's Zeitgeist we've had the Yahoo Buzz index, Blogpulse, and now the Shopping.com Consumer Demand Index.

It's very interesting, but only up to a point.

What would make it much better would be the ability to:

- Put your own queries in,

- Show actual numbers of searches (a 791% increase in shredder queries is pretty meaningless)

- Show actual sales, rather than searches

BlogPulse

BlogPulse is a service that scans blogs, to see trends in what people are writing about.

one application allows you to see how a new thought or trend becomes popular by how many people are writing about it in their blogs. Remember that there are now >9m blogs in the world, and that the largest blog hosting service, Blogger, gets more daily page views than the New York Times online. Inclusion in a blog is a very valid way of seeing people, ideas, and brands rise and fall in society.

Some examples -

Joseph Ratzinger

The Long Tail

adidas Vs. Nike Vs. Reebok

Thanks to Scott for the tip

This is a free service at the moment, but I'm guessing it won't be for long!

DoubleClick Report on Ten Years of Online Advertising

Our friends at Doubleclick have produced a good summary of the last ten years of online advertising - 1994 - 2004

It's well worth taking the time to read. There are lots of good stats and figures in the report - mostly from the US - and a couple that I hadn't heard before:

1 - The internet in the US has seen the fastest growth of any medium since black and white TV - from zero to 50% penetration in 8 years (counting from the launch of Mosaic in 1993). Also brings into play the idea of dial up being like black and white TV, but broadband is like colour (my analogy) [Page 3]

2 - In the US (sorry!) Yahoo, the largest site, account for 12% of all page views. Domains 2-10 account for 25%, Domains 11-100 for 21%, Domains 101-500 for 17%, and 501-16,000 for a final 25% [Page 17, Figure 14]

Great Google Maps Application

This is a wonderful application of Google Maps - localised, visual property search.

Google Maps allows you to search for locations, in the same way as other mapping services.

Now people are starting to combine this data with other databases, and here is a (presumably amateur) application - search for property by area and price band, and see locations on a map.

Again, like a lot of these things, this is only available for the US. The potential is enormous though - cars, hotels, bars... Who knows where we will be in the next few months?

PS - Google maps now available in the UK, although without the satellite pictures so far.

Via Matt McAlister

Run World Run, by Brooks

Great little (well - 90 secs) film from Brooks.

Shows that you don't need to take the 'young' route to promote running shoes.

MSN Search Supremo

Fiendish new quiz from MSN in the UK to promote their new search services

The quiz consists of ten randomly generated questions (e.g. which animal has fingerprints that closely resemble those of humans? or what year was Citizen Kane made), which you have to answer against the clock using MSN search.

The winner gets £500 of Lastminute.com vouchers, so it's worth the effort.

A very compelling way of promoting MSN.

adidas 35s Treasure Hunt

All traces to this event, held on 1st April, have now been removed from the adidas site, but there is still a summary of it here.

5 cites (London, Berlin, New York, LA, Hong Kong), with 50 golden ticket given away in total to people following clues, taking photos, and redeeming them at the adidas originals shop by answering a 35s-related question.

One nice touch was that the maps had no street names on them - you had to recognise the grid pattern.

Excelleint work - very guerilla!

Search For Doctor Who

The BBC is supporting the new series of Doctor Who with some agressive keyword marketing.

For example, if you search on Google for the co-star Billie Piper you find a paid link to the official BBC Doctor Who site

The BBC has also built a spoof site to support the show, which was featured on screen in the first episode - www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk

Searches on Doctor Who, Rose Tyler (Billie's character's name), Tardis, and Dalek show paid listings for the site.

However they are now being challenged by a commercial site, www.comtactclive.co.uk which takes it's name from the fictional owner of the whoisdoctorwho site, and is selling merchandise. The words that he's buying include Christopher Eccleston, and Doctor Who (again).

YaGoohoo!gle

A site showing the search results from Yahoo and Google (.com only) side by side.

Very good idea and - while I'm not an expert on these things - probably pretty easy to do.

Can Yahoo and Google make them take it down? It does infringe both copyrights.

Launch Site for Sony PSP

New US site for PSP, Sony's all singing, all dancing, propspective iPod killer and final nail in the coffin of the Gameboy.

Dyson Ball Game

Almost like an old school Galaxian or something...

Looks easy, but is very hard. To promote the new 'Ball' vacuum cleaner

e-Park - SMS Parking Payment System

A new pilot scheme in Antwerp

As they put it themselves:

Caught in the rain - digging for change...Here is your ticket to the world's easiest and most convenient parking payment system. No more hassles with ticket dispensers, broken parking meters or finding change. No more worry about parking tickets, because your parking time ran out. It only takes a bit of time to register and then you can enjoy the convenience of hassle free parking with your mobile phone.

Yahoo Tech Buzz Game

Yahoo have hit on a good way to promote their new Buzz Index - the Tech Buzz Game.

The Buzz Index is a score of how many searches a particular term gets on Yahoo over time - which acts as an indicator of things coming into, and going out of fashion. It's just like Google's Zeitgeist, but updated more regularly.

When you sign up to the game you have to predict which trends will soon become more popular, and bet virtual money on it.

For example:

- You're bullish on podcasting; you buy shares of PODCAST stock
- Britney announces her next single will be delivered exclusively via podcast
- Curious tweens everywhere flood Yahoo! with searches about podcasting
- Your shares skyrocket; you make a bundle

Obviously very similar to Celebdaq and Popex but a great idea to promote the Buzz index. For the record I think that the iPod still has a lot of life left in it...

Personalisable Ad

Great example of a personalisable ad - send a unique message by email:

Type in your details, a friend's details, and a message, and it gets incorporated into the short film, which is emailed off.

Via Adverblog

Movies & Videos - Napoleon Vs Fender

Fox use this site to promote their new film Robots (from the makers of IceAge) and the DVD of Napoleon Dynamite. It's clever to tie together a dance sequence from a new film into one from an already successful cult film from the same stable, but having seen IceAge, I do wonder whether the target audiences are too different.

Classic Fake Site Example - National Job Rejection Database

National Job Rejection Database

Very good fake site - the National Job Rejection Database. Initially convincing - well done on getting the gov.org.uk URL - although closer examination shows that it's -gov.org.uk which must have been a lot easier to organise.

A very nice piece of work for the UK Central Office of Information.

Produced by Mook

Yahoo! Is! Now! Ten! Years! Old!

Yahoo Ten Years

It seems like only yesterday etc...

Lovely little retrospective here

I've just noticed that they call it a 'Netrospective'... Take a way a few cool points for that!

Great Article on Search

Good Review of Recent Study

Buy a Viral Concept

Viral idea on Ebay

This is a great idea.
Viral agency AsaBailey have thought up a very daft, but clearly popular viral story idea (Posh goes shoplifting, is knocked over by a bus when she tries to escape), and are selling the concept on Ebay to anyone who is wants it to be a film for their product. The offer includes the URL being shown thoughout the film.
As they put it:

Your logo will be displayed at the start of our film and at the end providing excellent exposure for your brand. Your web address will be shown across the bottom of the film, making it highly visible throughout the entire film. This will drive awareness of your online offering and brand increasing traffic to your web site, while building further brand awareness and possibly direct online sales.
As well as your web address and logo being shown around our next film, your brand and company details will be included in our efforts to promote the film though online media and blogs, and offline press and media. This will build a buzz about your brands involvement with the film driving yet more brand awareness your way.

At the time of writing the page has been seen by just over a thousand people, and the bid is currently at £235 (reserve not met). Expect lots of tabloid coverage, spoof bids etc, and then an incredibly successful viral.

Tagging

43 Things - What do you want to do?

Tagging is effectively a human version of the section on shopping sites where they say 'people who bought Snoop Dogg also bought The Kills' or whatever. Except that tagging relates people by their interests.
Currently making waves in this area is 43 things , a site owned by/funded by Amazon.
One you join, you list your goals in life. It then allows you to look up who has the same goals as you. Pretty pointless if what you want to do is buy a new hat, but if you want to visit Japan, or do something political you can easily find people who are likeminded. You can also look for aims related to yours, for inspiration.
It's a neat idea, and the site allows you to see a Zeitgeist of what the most popular aims are that day.
It's obviously very much in it's infancy (10,000 registered users worldwide) - but the potential in terms of creating a global community (or, arguably, re-claimin the internet for sad geeks) is enormous.

Those Virals Keep Getting Weirder...

Who Ordered Room Service?

Virals keep getting weirder, keep pushing the boundaries of taste and crassness, to try to get people to take an interest.

Watch this one

Then ask yourself:
- Who was it for?
- Did that surprise me?
- Will I remember it?
- Does it increase my likelihood to buy the product?
- Does it make me have more respect for the product?
- How would the traditional target market respond to the ad?
- Or is is a hoax - can we tell any more?

I'll take it as a given that you will think about the product in a new way.

Google Maps

Google Maps Search

Recently I wrote about A9, the local search engine from Amazon.

Now here comes Google, with Google Maps. Sadly you don't get photos of the streets with this, but you do get to see exactly where your search result is on the map (sadly US only), then zoom in and out, drag the map in all directions, and get route details from other points.

Again, try to have a play using 'Pizza' and the Zip code 90210

Honda FR-V Homepage

FR-V Homepage

W&K have created a new site for Honda's FR-V. One of the quirks about the FR-V is that it allows 3 passengers to sit side-by-side on the bench seats. This forms the basis of the site - mum, dad, and the child are shown as different coloured circles, and they are seen doing different things together, in and out of their car in tis cutesy way. The dog is a brown rectangle. Have a play - try taking them to the beach. You can also order a free sing-along CD.

This is a really creative, well-thought-out site, and vaguely reminds me of the Vauxhall Miriva concept from last year. Both great fun, and both allow kids (of all ages) to try painting the cars.

Site created by Midas Collective

Nike Soccer - Brazilian Team

New Nike Football Site - every Brazillian cliche you've ever seen...

A9 - Virtual Yellow Pages

Big Mama's & Papa's Pizzeria


This is very cool.
A9, the search engine owned by Amazon, is now offering a virtual yellow pageas service. What this means is that you can do a search for a local service, and then see it's position on a map *see photos of the store, and virtually 'walk' up and down the street*
Try it for yourself:
Go here
Sign in, using your amazon login.
Search for a service (e.g. Pizza) in a location (the Zip code 90210 always works)
Click on the top rating result, Big Mama's & Papa's Pizzeria.
On the 'Block View' navigate round using the left and right arrows. Sunset Psychic Gallery is to the left, an intersecting street is to the right.
Amazon do this by driving vans round the streets of certain US towns with digital cameras and GPS macines, so the information should be always kept up to date.
Can't wait for it to come to the UK!

Polo - It All Gets Legal

Volkswagen Polo Ad: The Explosion

The Guardian - VW to Sue Lee and Dan - meanwhile L&D get a PR man...

Volkswagen Polo - A Selection of Views

Whethere it was officially sanctioned or not, the Polo viral certainly seems to have got a lot of coverage.

In roughly chronological order:

New York Post - first off the blocks

The Guardian - first major UK paper to feature the story

Digital Bulletin - UK trade press

The Observer - moves the story on a bit

The Mirror - gets lots of the details wrong

Mediapost - puts it into a marketing context

Jerusalem Post - very in depth semiotic analysis

Great idea, but...

Here's a great idea.
General Motors are launching a new service, with a US teaser campaign.
They are revealing their message, hangman-like one part at a time, on billboards all across the US.
Every day a different billboard is revealed, and all revealed words so far are shown on their site:

They've even created a forum for people to report new billboards, and brainstorm what the whole sentence could be:

Except...

They cocked up. It's possible to read the full sentence in the flash source of the page, so it took precisely no time at all for the answer to be cracked.

More at Adrants

New Polo Ad - Allegedly...

Surely VW wouldn't ever have seriously commissioned this?

(Original link has been removed - but film is still available here)

If so, it's a very risky strategy to get 'edgy' PR. My oney is on a couple of chancers making a fake film to try to get a name for themselves

EDIT - 3rd November 2005 - the film has moved location - it is now here

French Online Awards - Clic D'Or

Winners Here

Of particular interest should be:

Renault Modus ad campaign by Publicis (Bronze in launch campaign)

Renault Modus microsite, also by Publicis (Silver in brand sites category)

Durex Mix by Chewing.com (Bronze in the Interagir category)

Orange 3G by Euro RSCG (Gold in the brand sites catagory)

New GM Blog - Fastlane

A new corporate blog from General Motors - Fastlane

More at Adrants

Volvo XC90 V8 Site - Online Competitive Comparison

Volvo have launched a new site to promote their new XC90 V8 SUV, prior to a full TV campaign etc.
The site itself is not all that innovative, but one area allows you to make a direct comparison with other SUVs.

This is something I have also seen on another US auto site - Saturn also allows you to compare with other marques.

Interesting examples of manufacturer sites impinging on the territory of the 3rd party sites (Autotrader etc)

Google Zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist is the Google's end of year summary of the most popular search terms for the year. It makes fascinating reading, not least because they have included Froogle, the price comparison site, this year. So we can see that iPod was the most commonly searched for item on Froogle over the year, followed by digital camera, and that Ugg Boots beat both adidas and Nike in the footwear section.

But there's more - we also get a chance to see the Zeitgeist around the world, broken down for 16 markets.