Prediction - the buzzword for 2007 will be Amplification

At Isobar we've been working on predictions for digital media in the year ahead. This is one of the most interesting - that Amplification, by which we mean the tapping into of Word of Mouth marketing by brands and increasing the noise around the most interesting stories, will increase. This already happens, for example in a news context with the media coverage of the mobile phone video of the police Tazing a student in the US, but this will become a lot more comm0n in brand communication too.

See this slide and others, and the thinking behind them by clicking through to Lynette Webb's Predictions set in Flickr

Matthew, Who Only Texted

This is a short extract from a poem in Chris Addison's new book Cautionary Tales for Grown Ups.

Chris Addison is best known (to me) for his part as Ollie Reeder, the Junior Policy Advisor to Chris Langham's Minister, Hugh Abbot, in the TV comedy The Thick of It. This book is his first, and is an excellent update on Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children from 1907.

Anyway, this one is very relevant to this blog, and here are the first and last verses:

See this chap? He's Matthew Dawling.
Matthew Dawling loves to text.
This he does instead of calling,
Leaving friends and family vexed.
Call it lazy, call it shrewd,
They all call it bloody rude.



Set upon by local yobbos,
Matthew tries to call for 'Hlp!'
Not a chance - nobody near knows
What it means, this vowelless yelp.
Thus he draws his final breath,
Thn thy kick pr Mtt 2 dth.

As I say, this is just the first and last verse - buy the book to read the whole thing, and 23 others.

Carsten Holler Slides at Tate Modern

This morning I was lucky enough to be able to go on the Carsten Holler slides (think 5 giant helter skelters) at Tate Modern art gallery. I went on the tallest one, from level 5, and it was really enjoyable. The best time to go is at ten, when it opens; I got my ride within about 5 minutes, but at lunchtime the queues are horrendous. It was also good to see a really broad cross section of people enjoying themselves. One of the quintessential London experiences for 2006.

See the Tate's live webcam of the base of the slides here

(The YouTube film wasn't taken by me - I didn't dare risk my camera on it!)

Philips Ambilight Integration on MSN Movies

I have to declare an interest here - this integration with MSN movies was created by my colleagues here at Isobar, working with TribalDDB in Amsterdam. Visitors to the MSN Movies page automatically get to see the HD trailers in Philips Ambilight quality, giving a better picture with less eye strain.

Really well targeted integration!

Update: There's now a similar programme on Yahoo in Europe

Persil 'Happy Feet' Lenticular Poster

This isn't strictly a digital example, but it's very good. A lenticular poster for Persil, advertising the free Happy Feet toys in special boxes of washing powder.

PS - great use of YouTube too!

YouTube Now *Officially* Bigger Than MySpace

Just seen the new global figures from comScore, and YouTube is ahead by millions, and it is growing by >10% month on month. MySpace by contrast has been at a similar level since August.

Wii Vs PS3

This is an interesting chart. Courtesy of Blogpulse, it shows the relative buzz online (as measured by mentions in blog posts) for the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PS3. Sony launched a week earlier, and sold out, but now the buzz that they acheived has been overtaken by the Wii.

Wii have done a number of smart things, not least launching in Toys R Us, rather than a dedicated gamer or electronics store, and also holding family open days to communicate to the more casual (read housewife) audience.

This review from Amazon UK

"Me and my son have just got back from Nintendo's roadshow in Brighton, and I have to say that this remarkable. I don't know much about what goes on inside a console, and to be frank after seeing this I don't really mind. When I played myself I found this to be extremely fun to play aswell as watch (games such as Wario Ware can be quite entertaining!). I feel this is the perfect present for anyone this Christmas, keeping active is a problem for gamers. This console makes you move, and enjoy doing it! The price is also very good, in terms of the new consoles I was very wary about buying any, until I saw this price tag, and that's including a game! It has even persuaded me to put a bit more money than I usually would out because the extra controllers make all the fun!"

(I know - I'm taking it at face value that this is a real 'review')

House Prices

Sometimes you forget how useful the simplest things are...

My colleague Dale is thinking of buying a flat in the block in which he's currently renting. I showed him this site (www.houseprices.co.uk) and he was staggered - all of the transaction prices for all the properties in his postcode, neatly presented, and for free. Data only goes back to 2000, but that's long enough to get an idea.

& they've even added a Google Maps mashup. All giving the home buyer lots of bargaining power.

Putting Southpark on YouTube

Never seen someone do this before: Southpark Series X is a 'Director' level member of YouTube - i.e. a corporate member. He's now posted two complete episodes up, including the World of Warcraft one but with the warning that videos will soon only be able to be seen by friends. So no embedding, or watching by unregistered people.

Great YouTube Example - Will It Blend?

Great example of a small company getting global coverage using YouTube.

BlendTec make a blender that will blend anyhing,and have posted up a series of films of the blender in action on marbles (above), golf balls, a full can of coke and so on.

So far they have a total of >1m views of their films, and 1,500 subscribers.

Borat Buzz Update

You thought the last chart was impressive? This is the picture 3 days after release - up to 3,000 posts per day.

Sponsored User Generated Content - Coke + Mentos + Eepybird

Google put the pieces together to get this video made. They hooked video makers EepyBird with Coke and Mentos to make this incredibly ambitious 'Domino Effect' video, shown exclusively on Google Video. Straight after the video there's an ad for an official Coke competition to make an even better video, to be judged by EepyBird, and the prize includes being in their next video.

Borat Buzz on Technorati

Amazing chart showing the level of buzz for the Borat movie peaking just at the point of release. The earlier spikes of nearly 500 posts per day were (I believe) from the advanced screenings

Full chart here

Moleskine - A Brand Online

Moleskine is a good example of a brand that lives well online.

Moleskine notebooks were used in the past by writers like Ernest Hemmingway and Bruce Chatwin, but ceased production in 1986. The brand was revived in 1998, and now has a very loyal, niche set of customers.

This love is very well expressed online.

The official website
(including this great 'stories' section, and a link to this exhibition of Moleskine notebooks)

Fan Blog Moleskinerie (one of many)

Moleskine Hacks - how to use your Moleskine more effectively

>11,000 photos on Flickr

A MySpace group

& 20 videos on MySpace

& an average of 40 blog posts a day recorded by Technorati

The power of a brand with dedicated fans

(More here, in a blog post from Mike Stopforth)

New Sony Bravia Ad - Paint

Did they add the clown at the halfway simply to give the ad an iconic image on YouTube?

See the ad officially at www.bravia-advert.com

Sony Super Balls - My New Favourite UGC Example

This is my new favourite example of user-generated advertising. Great re-make of the Sony Bravia Balls ad, just posted to YouTube.

Great compliment to Sony and their advertising.

South Park Does World of Warcraft

This is possibly the best use of video gaming in a comedy programme since... well, ever, probably.

Full version on Google Video

Full version on MySpace

Shorter taster on YouTube

Walkit - London Walking Route Finder

This is excellent - Walkit.com have produced a route finder for walkers (or indeed runners) in London wanting to find the best route between two points.

Try it here

MSN Emoticons from Capri Sun

These are really great - I particularly like the 'Cool' and the exclamationb mark.

Get your own here!

Save Your 20% & Good Energy

Great idea this - a site for the Energy Saving Trust that asks people to commit to saving 20% of the energy we use, and to illustrate it with a picture of a beauty spot from Flickr.

But - Arghh! - they don't allow you to deep-link beyond the main url. So I can't link to the page where people have posted their pledges.

By coincidence today I also took my first steps towards changing my electricity supplier to Good Energy, a UK company who generate electricilty from 100% renewable sources. Wind stations to you and me. They're also after people to sign up to become microgenerators - more info here

It's more expensive than coal and gas powered provision, but clearly better in other ways.

My idea to do it came from this article written by Robert Newman in the Guardian

& in it he makes the very astute observation regarding financial offsetting schemes:

"I decided not to avail myself of British Airways' hook-up with Climate Care - which has created a scheme where the passenger pays money to offset the flight's carbon emissions - as this may have more to do with offsetting the danger of regulation and full-cost accounting being imposed on BA. And anyway, there is not enough money in the world to offset the emissions from flying.

How much, for example, will it cost to put Bangladesh on stilts? What day-rate were you thinking of paying workers to carry ice and snow to the top of Kilimanjaro?

Fossil fuels have to stay in the ground. Carbon offset schemes flatter the fallacy that we can continue pretty much as we are."

MySpace Black Carpet Screening - Borat

Last night I managed to get into the London screening of the new Borat movie, about 2 months before the official opening, courtesy of MySpace.

This is how it works: You have to be a member of MySpace, and add both BlackCarpet and Borat as a friend, and then put them in your top eight friends. then print your profile page out to prove this, and go along to the cinema with this as your ticket. It's all first come, first served.

I'd expected a big queue, so I turned up about 15 mins before the doors were due to open at 8pm. They let me in straight away - and I'd estimate of the 300 seats in the cinema 200 were already taken.

I sat down and expected the film to begin a bit after eight, but no - the rumour then went round that it wouldn't start until nine.

What was good about it -

1 - The film is pretty good. Borat follows the Jerry Sadowitz model of 'offend everyone' rather than the usual model of 'pick on the minorities'. Most targets were hit, and it was very gag-heavy for the 80 minutes

2 - It was free, and there was a goodie bag

3 - On a professional level, Fox got a lot of good buzz out of it. MySpace users like to blog, and when I got in this morning there were >100 new blog posts about the film. & lots of people would recommend the film to their friends, increasing the word of mouth for when it does finally come out

What was bad about it -

1 - We had to surrender our mobile phones when we went in, as persumably scared of us bootlegging the film. On a Nokia 6310i? But... they didn't search my bag thoroughly, and they missed my digital camera in that. It was a pain getting the phone back at the end, and as they don't exactly body search people I'll just deny I have a phone next time

2 - There was too long a wait before the film. It's not a gig - making people wait for an hour (or more) doesn't increase the anticipation, it just makes you bored and fed up. If I'd seen the film 10 mins after I'd gone in I would have enjoyed it more. It would have been a 'very good', not a 'pretty good'

3 - The whole thing was a bit shambolic in other ways too. Too heavy security, long queues to get phones back, no trailers (huh?), no end credits... There are lots of negative comments on MySpace from users in the US who had to queue outside for hours with even more shaky organisation


But... if they sort out the negatives, it'll be great next time. The concept is great.

The Value of a Paid Placement on YouTube

Here's an interesting thing.

The new trailer for Casino Royale appeared on YouTube on 7th September various times by fans.

This version has been seen 26,000 times in one week.

Today, Sony put up exactly the same trailer, and so far it's been seen 417,000 times so far. & linked to by users (including presumably posted into blogs) an incredible 192,000 times. Shows the difference the prominence of the home page placement makes!

Dancing Matt & the Numa Numa Kid

This week I saw two examples of online stars who’d been persuaded to repeat their tricks for commercial ends.

First is Matt Harding, and American who made a video of himself on his world tour in 2003-4. He did a silly dance in lots of different places, like a video version of the people who have photos of themselves taken wearing a football shirt all around the world, and edited them together into a very snappy video:
This was seen by Stride gum, who paid him to re-create the film, and post it up with their logo in the corner. Matt is a very self-effacing bloke, and did an even better job the second time round. See the new version here – currently 2.5m views on YouTube.

The second example is of the Numa Numa guy, Gary Brolsma, who made a video of himself lip-synching to a song by the band O-Zone.
Here’s the Original (sorry - bad Youtube copy):
& now this too has been turned into an ad, in this case for Arnet Internet Providers in Argentina.

BBC Radio 4 Feature on YouTube

From PM, Friday 25th August 2006. Looks at the impact of YouTube on the TV and advertising industries, with one sentence from me.

Desktop Radio Ad

Great demo ad for a downloadable desktop radio here

Thanks to Sam Tait for the link!

MySpace Vs. YouTube in Europe

A few weeks ago I wrote that Alexa data said that YouTube had greater global reach than MySpace.

No other source has yet confirmed this, but theComScore data for July (see chart) shows that in all major markets in the UK YouTube now has more reach than MySpace. It is most extreme in Spain, where YouTube has nearly 4 times the reach.

Incidentally the global figures from ComScore still put MySpace significantly ahead, but a) ComScore does not track in all Asian markets, and b) YouTube is likely to overtake in any case in the next month or two.

Goggles - Google Maps Flight Simulator Game

Use your arrow buttons to control this small plane as it flies over Google's satellite maps. Choose your city, and chocks away!

Play now!

Tom Has 100m Friends

Today MySpace hit a major milestone - 100m members.

Every joiner to MySpace gets Tom as their first friend - Tom Anderson, one of the founders.

This means that the number of friends Tom has is also the number of members MySpace has.

MySpace was founded in July 2003, and hit it's last major milestone of 90m members at about the start of July 2006, so the last 10m has taken just over a month to recruit.

Of course this does not mean people - members are also bands, films, and other brands trying to connect with teens and young adults.

Also, crucially, this still includes profiles that have been deleted - that is if a profile is deleted - say no. 15,552,437 - that number does not get re-allocated to a new joiner.

Today at 8.38 PST, Tom hit the magic 100 million mark of all-time friends.

Who was the 100 millionth friend? Apparently (see the comment below) the profile's already been deleted, but this one is no 100,000,002, and that's about as close as it gets. This woman is no 99,999,996.

YouTube Getting Commercial - Ad for The Pulse

Signs that YouTube is getting more commercial - there's a trailer for The Pulse, a new film from dimension Films, part of The Weinstein Company, on the homepage this morning.

So far, at 10.30 UK time, it's had 57,000 views, and 190 comments.

Most of users don't seem to notice that this is an ad, and most of the comments are positive, but there are a few negative posts about the trailer, this being typical: "WTF? get this sh!t off of my front page, taking up too much room."

Other commenters, trextor for example, point out that this is far better than putting ads on the the videos - a move that I certainly don't agree with given that none of the content is screened, and advertisers don't really want their ads appearing on Crawley Kids in Tilgate Park (or far worse).

UPDATE - Ten hours later the trailer had been viewed 195,000 times, and had 350 comments. This made it the 4th most viewed video on YouTube today - how much would a brand pay for that?

Landor Quiz

One of my friends - oh go on then, it's me - runs the monthly quiz at the Landor, a pub in South London, near to Clapham North tube.

The next one is this Sunday - visit the dedicated Landor Quiz blog (including questions from previous quizzes) here

YouTube Overtakes MySpace

YouTube has overtaken MySpace in worldwide daily reach, according to stats from Alexa.

An amazing chart, and an amazing story. I have to say that I visit YouTube far more than I visit MySpace, and ultimately YouTube has a far more universal appeal, being pure entertainment with a global appeal. MySpace's levels have been moving within the same range since April, but over in the far right hand side of the chart YouTube seems to be climbing more steeply than ever.

Link here

Time Trumpet, Armando Iannucci's New Show

Clips posted online for TimeTrumpet, the new Armando Iannucci show, here

I particularly like this one - No News

This one is obviously a very close relation of this film on YouTube.

More about the show here

New Vimto Site

New site for the very British drink Vimto here. Lots for kids to see and do, including this X-Factor style competition to find the best young joke teller, with regional heats.

Popularity of the Volvo Hunt

In the past few weeks I've seen a lot of traffic to this blog thanks to being in the search rankings for Volvo Hunt, the competition with the buried Volvo as treasure.

This chart in Technorati shows the number of bloggers who have picked up on the compeition - it peaked about a month ago, but there are still between 5 and ten posts a day on the subject.


Posts that contain Volvo AND Hunt per day for the last 90 days.

Get your own chart!

Note that unforunately this chart will keep on updating ad infinitum.

Carlsberg - When you can't tell if an ad is real (pt 2)

Another example of when you can't tell whether an ad is real is this email.

England had just been unceremoniously (& very predicably) dumped out of the World Cup by Portugal, and many thought that Ronaldo had deliberately conspired to get Rooney sent off.

So this email started doing the rounds:


Subject: Fw: BREAKING NEWS Sky Sports - Latest Football News


Live News.......Fifa in doubt over Portugal world cup win against England It's alleged that one of the Portuguese football players failed a drugs test after the match. If this is confirmed as positive, under World Football Federation rules, paragraph 6 sub section 2e, Portugal will forfeit the quarter final match and England will play France in a Semi Final match played at a later date. (scroll down for the full transcript of this report).














...Carlsberg do not send emails, but if they did they would probably be the best emails in the world.


Again... was this ever sent out by Carlsberg (there are other versions this year, including a text, and there were similar examples in 2002 and 2004), or is it user-generated?

Scampi Fries - When you can't tell if an ad is real (pt 1)

User-generated content and spoof ads have made it so that you really can't tell if an ad is 'real' - officially made for a brand any more.

Case one - this piece of film for Scampi Fries.

Here

Woah! Gross! Is this a real ad? Really?

The Best Targeted Ad in The World?

This massive pop up appeared on the homepage of Virgilio.it yesterday (8.8m monthly unique visitors, according to ComScore MediaMetrix).

An animated flash ad, it said 'Azzurren - Campione del Mondo' paid for by Volkswagen.

I'm pretty sure that this is one pop up that none of the visitors would have complained about.

& did you know that VW was the official car of the Italian team? No, neither did I - but I do now!

Help FarFar Find Their Lost Lion

FarFar, a Swedish new media agency, won a Gold Cyber Lion at this year's Cannes Advertising Festival, for this campaign for the Swedish Tourist Office.

And then one of them thought it would be a good laugh to bury it in the sand. But like squirrels with their nuts, Tom Eriksen was unable to find it when he went back for it. It's still buried on the vast expanse of the beach of the Palm Beach Casino in Cannes.

Now he's offering $1,000 to get it back. Read the full sorry tale, and see the film they've made about it here. Even though this might sound like it, this is not a scam - it's genuinely lost and they want it back!

Isobar Sponsor GroupPhoto Exhibition at Central Saint Martin's College

Isobar are sponsoring this year's photography graduate show at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design.

As part of this we are helping to promote the photographers and their work globally through the GroupPhoto website here.

Artists featured include: Justina Burnett, Fiona Clague, Umberta Genta, Katherine Green, Sally Haworth, Kelly Hill, Emma Horn, Candida Jones, James Kerr, Helen King, Russell Kleyn, Christina Lange, Allan Pollok-Morris, Alessandro Quisi, Johanna Ruebel, Sybil Roskill, Eva Sauret, Tessa Shaw, Rebecca Sherman, Harry Sheward, Sarah Shoughi, Helena Smith, Paddy Sutton, Slawomira Walczak

Visit the site and help to support them!

Lynette Webb's Amazing Charts

My colleague Lynette Webb, also at Isobar in London, creates incredibly powerful charts.

Her latest set is a series of cool quotes, each over an appropriate photo. There are 123 so far, but ever growing.

Subjects include:

Online Advertising
Mobile
Gaming
Social Networking
UserGenerated Content
Blogging
& generally the future of all media.

See her set, called 'Online Developments' on Flickr here

Or watch it as a slide show for a real treat!

Set Stalking - the New Scourge of Hollywood

I love YouTube, and visit it most days, either for work-related research, or for entertainment.

I've recently noticed a new typle of video appearing, highlighting a natural combination of blogging and online video - set stalking, or filming movies in production.

Spiderman 3 is a classic case in point.

A month or so ago this clip, of Spiderman flying, complete with wires that would be CGI-ed out, got 790,000 views.

I've now discovered that other peole are doing this, with slightly less impressive results.

This one has about 200 views so far

& this guy has posted 27 videos so far - does this mean he could be official?

More on Michael Owen's World Cup Blog

It's impressive that he's keeping it up now that he's not playing any more.

"I am absolutely devastated to have been ruled out of the world cup, but I think England can still win the competition and I’ll be their number one fan from now on.
I had a scan on my knee on the morning after the game against Sweden and it confirmed my worst fears. When I fell to the turf the pain in my knee was so bad that I knew that it was something serious.
The tests have shown that I have ruptured my cruciate ligament and it looks like I could be out of action for the rest of the year, not just the world cup."

JWT and The Huffington Post

For one week only - although hopefully they'll be archived - JWT is roadblocking the landing page of The Huffington Post blog site with video ads for various clients, including Ford and Levi's.

See them all here

The one for Scruffs is pretty full-on

They take an age to load though...

World Cup Player Diaries on MSN

As part of it's World Cup coverage, MSN is hosting player diaries/blogs within MSN Spaces.

Here's Michael Owen's

Our aim is of course to win the world cup and I think we have a group of players who can achieve that at last, but let's not get carried away with us, us, us. I'm sure Italy, Spain and Portugal wonder why they haven't been winning it either. There's only one winner every four years. We're right in thinking we have a chance, but so are eight or nine other teams. A lot of people think we've got a divine right to win because this is our best team for years, but football doesn't work like that. We need to change the perception that we are serial losers.

& here's Ronaldinho's

Now writing about Germany.
The city of Konigstein (I had to look at the program to see how it’s spelled), he-he-he.
We flew in last night. It was a quick flight. It was late when we got to the hotel. I only had time to have a snack and jump in bed. I slept like a log. Today is a day off and we have to check in at 22:00 h.
I’ll use this time to rest because we’ll be training tomorrow, in the morning and in the afternoon.
They say the field is perfect, I’m looking forward to trying it.

& finally, Edgar Davids

Imagine a child running and a smile comes to your face. Same with a group of children and that’s the way its supposed to be. Nothing but positive thoughts go through your head ‘cause it represents fun, freedom and not a worry in the world.

Volvo Hunt - Find Buried Treasure

Volvo UK are running a competition to tie in with Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest.

They've buried a car (presumably in the UK), and will be releasing new clues up to the final date of 12th July.

The first clue involves people going to their local dealership to pick up a map. Very good!

See it here - and good luck!

Football Compendium

A digest of World Cup virals:

Emirates

BBC FiveLive

BoffBoff

Fingertime
GMTV

Sky Sports

Swiftcover

King of Shaves

Win-Gerland

Playaholics

Philips

HYPtv

Nike Football Chain

Another part of the Joga Benito campaign.

Starts off with Ronaldinho... then users have created their own videos showing their ball skills, before passing the ball on, out of screen right.

So far only 105 players from 26 countries, and 9mins 11 seconds, but it will grow.

Watch it here

FatBoySlim Competition on MySpace

There's a new FatBoySilm single, That Old Pair of Jeans, with a video featuring some amazing juggling from Chris Bliss.

On FBS's MySpace page they're promoting the video with a competition to make another juggling video to go with the single. Very nice idea, because too may of these competitions only focus on skills like editing, rather than actual manual dexterity. Will be interesting to see the results.

Superman Returns Trailers - Compare and Contrast

Earlier this week the fourth Superman Returns trailer was shown on TV in the US.

Unlike The Da Vinci Code, (or even RV) where trailers show different characters or segments of the film, barring the initial teaser these are all variations on a theme.

Compare and contrast:

Teaser

2nd Trailer

3rd Trailer

4th Trailer

(They take a while to load, by the way - be patient)

iDont - Anti iPod Campaign

iDont

I saw a poster for this on the tube (London Underground, not YouTube...) last night.

It purports to be a campaign to get people to stop being iSheep - to realise that there are alternatives to the iPod.

What it really is is a site for the Sansa e200 MP3 player, which looks remarkably like a you know what.

Interesting idea, but the site takes an age to load, and doesn't allow deep linking - whichever page you go to you get the same URL.

88Slide - Daily Online Video Quizzes

88Slide

A great use of the medium. A daily one minute quiz that you play by text or email. Has Director status on YouTube.

Philips World Cup Game

Great new World Cup game for Philps - win tickets to games!

Google Trends - New Tool

See how search trends are changing with this new tool from Google Labs

E.g. how did the volume of searches for "Da Vinci Code" change over the last year?

MINI Viral

New viral for Mini

Still live here

glue London say:

glue London create personalised video viral campaign for MINI.

glue London have created a viral campaign for MINI to tie in with thelaunch of the new MINI Cooper S JCW GP Kit. Using video applicationcombined with a remarkable level of personalised content, the viral hasbeen created to showcase the new model.With tongue firmly in cheek the concept for the viral centres around theidea that men aren't real men anymore due to the rise of themetrosexual.

Users are asked to visit the website where they can nominate friends who may bedemonstrating unmanly characteristics. The unsuspecting friend then receives a personalised email from their friend advising them that'someone wants to ave a little word'. At the website they get a personalvideo message from a character who seems to know a lot about themincluding their job, girlfriend's name and most importantly their worstcrimes against mankind.

They are encouraged to 'sort themselves out' andare encouraged to enjoy the visual feast of the MINI Cooper S JCW GP Kitmodel for inspiration.

Parody of Sony Bravia by Tango

Neat

Note the fake controversy Aren't we all a bit tired of this? Can't they just present the ad normally? It stands up on its own.

(Original Sony ad here)

Pepsi Game From Japan

This is hard!

Click at the right time to smash through the ice walls

Colman's Mustard Viral - Meatylicious March

FMCG viral stunt - prove you love meat

Firefox Flicks - UserGenerated Ads

I know - this is very old, but it's a great example of UserGenerated content as ads.

All managed and hosted by Firefox

Here

Winners here

Apple Vs. PC Ads

Wonderfully done. Especially love the Network one.

The Raconteurs

Great site - perfect for retro rock

Proof That YouTube Has Lots of British Users

Boris Johnson Vs Germany now at nearly 100,000 views in a day

Holland For England

Some kind of crazy viral...

As Gijs in our Dutch offices says "Those guys are dead..."

Edit (8th May) - this is all for Heineken, and there are about ten sites in total including:

Holland for Australia

Holland for USA

& Holland for Germany

Adverlicio.us

Adverlicious - an archive of ads.

Find it at http://adverlicio.us

It's not great - yet. But it'll get better, as more ads are archived. I'm assuming that once on there ads won't get taken down.

American Dad Vs. Family Guy

New game to promote DVD launches

Choose between arcade mode and 2 player mode

Pimp My Gran - for Capri Sun

Here

Nice names - Mrs Elliot, Hip Op, Big Smalls and P Biddy

Come on guys - how could you miss Notorious OAP?

New T-Mobile Game by Glue

The Flext Challenge

Orbit - Friends of Bright

Very strange! Site here

Info here

Two Great Video Examples

Two great video examples that are new to me, but not new-new.

Mortal Kombat Dance - created by an agency to promote the game

Safety Dance BK - commissioned by Burger King's agency in the US, and made by The Fine Bros - www.ravenstake.com Apparently the agency found the Fine Bros through other stuff they'd made, and then gave them licence (and masks) to make what they wanted for BK.

Other films made by Ravenstake are here, including 2 others for BK

New Viral for Vespa - The Kama Scooter

To celebrate 60 years of the Vespa LX - models in different sexual positions, on a Vespa

See it here

Not as risque as it might have been...

Product Demo Examples - PSP and Sky+

Here are a couple of examples I found for colleagues who wanted to show how you could demonstrate products and capabilities online:

PSP - Click on the link to interact

Sky+ - Click on the 'try this feature' buttons

Recipe Search in Google Base

Search by main ingredients, course, cuisine, and cooking time.

Here

Rezzzzepppeeees!

DaveTheChameleon

The heights to which the level of political debate in the UK have risen... A site by Labour ridiculing David Cameron.

It even accuses him of flip-flopping - an obvious steal from the Bush 2004 campaign.

See the site and video here

Plus - Labour are buying keywords to support the site - e.g.

David Cameron

Chameleon

Even Conservatives

Update (28th April)

A knocking version of the same film has appeared on the BackingBlair website. It's the same film, with additional commentary, positing that Mr Tony Blair is also guilty of many of the charges aimed at Dave...

See it here

Foodoku Sandwich Game for Hellmann's

New game for Hellmann's mayonaise - a variant on Sudoku

Plus - win £10,000 by submitting a sandwich recipe

Carlsberg World Cup Ad

Carlsberg don't do pub football teams...

Full 3 minute version. Excellent use of the medium!

New Virals for Nokia N90

All filmed on a Nokia N90. How cool is that?

Here

Here

Here

Amazon Wire - Amazon's New Podcast

Here

Monthly, and covering all the areas that Amazon specialise in. On the .com site only so far - will they bring in local versions of it?

Chevy Tahoe - UserGenerated Gone Wrong?

Chevy decided to allow users to create their own ads for the Tahoe, editing bits of film together into their own order, and adding their own captions.

But...

The environmentalists, and later the pranksters jumped on board, and created some of their own:

For example:

Here

Here

Here (C word at the end)

Here

Here (A bit surreal)

Here (Anti Bush)

Here (Very rude)

I'm not expecting these links to be live for long, but I suspect that some will get mirrored elsewhere on the net.

Update -

& they are - AlaskaAction.org has set up a section of it's site to host it's own competition to make the best film (from their point of view). The page here features all of the entries to date, loaded into YouTube to make it harder to Chevy to get rid of them.

(With thanks to Simon Alexander)

Further Update (6th April)

The rudest seem to have been removed, but the environmental ones remain. The policy still seems to be that they are happy to have encouraged debate.

My erstwhile colleague Cory is very impressed with their attitude in his blog.

"First of all, i love that Chevy is allowing these ads to stay on the site. They are recognizing that the brand needs to be fair to all points of view and I commend them for it.

I also think they are being very smart in identifying that the audience is in control and they are trusting them. Now, if they react the correct way, we'll start to see them championing a new line of eco-friendly SUV's."

Also, MarketingVox has some stats:

"Users have submitted more than 21,000 ads and have emailed ads over 40,000 times; the site has generated 2.4 million pageviews; and the average visit to the site lasts more than 9 minutes"

Another update -
Some are now on YouTube

You are being watched

This morning I installed Google Analytics on this blog. It's been a long wait; I first registered for it in mid November, and they've only just sent me the validation code.

It'll tell me how many visitors, where they come from, and lots of other bits of information.

I'll report back in a month or so with some stats and charts.

Platial - Social Mapping

This is a great new site. Using Google Maps, it allows you to mark your own favourite places, with the aim of building up a map of the world based on recommendations.

You can see my recommendations based around Clapham - zoom in.

However... I may be being petty here, but too many other people are just marking places where they live, places where they got stoned, and so on, which isn't of much use to others. Ideally when I go on holiday in a year's time I'll be able to use this instead of a guide book.

Skinner & Baddiel Times Podcast

Announced last week - 10 special podcasts for the World Cup

Excellent idea, no doubt to be promoted through TV ads. David Baddiel is of course a regular Times columnist these days.

"I see Dave and me as two, on-the-spot comedy-reporters, sending home the whole World Cup experience in regular podcast-sized packages," said Frank Skinner.

"I'm really looking forward to it; especially the 'We-just-won-the-World-Cup Special'."

Welcome to Sligo

This site and everything around it is amazing.

Supposedly entirely the creation of Aine Chambers, it is one woman's mission to tell the world about the joys of Sligo in Ireland.

It's all very bizarre. For example her videos.

So -

1 - is it completely real? If so why does it look so wonderfully amateurish, but actually work really well? & has she created something completely compelling purely by accident?

2 - is it a front for a commercial organisation? If so, how much would they have to pay someone to make this much of a spectacle of herself?

It's certainly the most entertaining site I've seen for months.

Update - I'm beginning to suspect it is 'real' - especially after seeing this Geocities version of the site. So - hats off to Aine - & let's all go to Sligo!

Nike RunLondon Route Planner

Nike has used Google Maps to create this running route planner for London as a promo for their annual Run London event.

Users can create their own routes, or browse other people's according location and length.

Very good idea, well executed

UPDATE - this is now available globally at NikePlus

More at Adrants

See also - Walkscore

User Generated Film Extolling Innocent Smoothies

A film about Innocent Smoothies, supposedly made by a fan

By this guy - see his MySpace page

It's more likely that he's just a shameless self-publicist!

Renault Clio Real Life in NL

A campaign for Renault Clio in the Netherlands running on MSN.

Lots of film clips to watch and answer questions on, and the chance to win a Clio.

Through Isobar in the Netherlands - managed by Desmond Hillebrand, with Yvonne de Jager, Danny Oomen, Edwin Rietberg, Gijs Barends, and Andy Chen at Carat International in London

Viral Trailer for Revolver

"Fuck the critics - what do they know?"

A bold strategy for the DVD release of Guy Ritchie's film. But what else could they do? Critics hated it and it was only on for a few weeks in the cinemas.

See the viral here

BlogCode - Love Who You Read

BlogCode is a new site that compares blogs based on content.

Users code their favourite blogs based on 27 different criteria (words Vs. pictures, serious Vs. funny etc), and then the tool spews out a list of similar blogs.

For this site, the closest linking blog is Brandopia - which I'd say is pretty accurate.

See my other matches here

My quiz blog Landor Quiz seems to have them a bit foxed though...

Matches for Landor Quiz

New Nike Viral - Play Beautiful

From South America, the first of eight planned films to be released before the World Cup. That is, of course, Eric Cantona.

By Box1824 / Live Ad, a South-American BuzzMarketing Agency

See it here

"We Are Sinking"

Great Viral!

Via RobForshaw

Landrover G4 Challenge

Here

"The Land Rover G4 Challenge is the ultimate global adventure. Following the success of the very first Challenge in 2003, the adventure continues in 2006. The Land Rover G4 Challenge offers men and women from 18 nations the opportunity to match strategy, stamina and skill in an awesome 4x4 driving and multi-sport challenge. Working in bi-national teams, competitors are matched against each other across four consecutive stages, spanning Southeast Asia and South America."

More info at Adverblog

New Audi RS4 Site

Sinister Beauty

In conjuction with the current 'Spider' TV ads in the UK

Here

Miller Auditions by Spike Jonze

Animals auditioned online - all films over 3 mins, and never intended for TV

e-Flyer for SanchPanza

Here

Shame it was last Saturday!

Via ProteinFeed

adidas in Australia - +10 Playoffs using Google Earth

A pretty amazing game. A general knowledge quiz on 11 players, using Google Earth to home in on their home towns, cities they play in and so on. Very good experience, once you can get Google Earth to work.

Info here (Via Adverblog)

New adidas Site and Campaign - Step Inside KG

adidas has launched a new site and ad in the US featuring NBA star Kevin Garnett.

The campaign focuses on KG's different personas - the Warrior, the Kid, the Hero, the Leader, and the Comedian. Each persona features a short vignette, with an insight into KG and the new KG3 shoe.

The site also allows users to view and download (to PSP) the film, and even see a 'making of'.

Mary Woodbridge's Mount Everest Expedition

This viral site is currently spreading like wildfire

Wonder who it's for?

Currently showing 11,000 users, as at 3pm on Monday 16th January

User-Generated Content

My colleague Cory Treffilitti, at Carat Fusion, has developed an passion for User Generated content - that is anything (video, pictures, podcasts) created by consumers that promote brands.

Perhaps it can be best shown through this drive by Firefox to get it's users to create their own ads for the browser, with the best winning a prize - Spread Firefox

Cory's created a blog to document examples of the form, and capture the movement in what will surely be a pivotal year.

Read his UserGenerated blog to stay up to date!

US Christmas Sales Figures Compared

Study by Performics.

Sadly not figures for the market as a whole, but 'sales per relationship', based on 300 advertisers tracked by Performics - effectively performance-driven advertisers, using affiliate marketing.

Update on Google Image Results Post

I now have some answers from Google:

It seems that they've been doing this for a while, on limited search results. Another example is Fido Dido, which seems to work on any variety of Google, but is a low volume search term. They've been experimenting to see how it looks, how it works in terms of response etc.

Another way of doing a low volume test is using a common word (e.g. laptop) but in restricted way - for example users from Denmark searching on google.co.uk - see the screen grabs below.

They say that this is similar to what they're doing with the 'One Box' - non-web search results at the top of the page. An example of this is to search on 'King Kong', which, if you are logged into Google local with your postcode will give you film results at the top.

I'm guessing that they're at the data gathering stage on this, and that it will be fully integrated - perhaps with options to turn it off - later this year.

Update - it also works on UK Map

Google Integrating Image Results into Web Search?

Here's an odd thing that my colleague Jackie Junker Frandsen noticed a few minutes ago.

Jackie is based in Denmark, and when he did a search for 'Laptop' on google.co.uk he got the usual results, with three image results shown under the top three paid listings (see pic).

I've tried to replicate this from the UK - but all I get is the standard Google results.

We had two theories -

1 - they are the top image results - except that they aren't - they don't appear in the top 5 pages of image results

2 - that they're ads - except that they don't bill themselves as ads, and whle two of them click through to merchant pages, the third goes through to a student's page

On reflection I think that they're examples of image integration - but the images have been chosen by Google - they're not the top results for the page. Which leads me to think that this is an engineering test. Also, this only works on 'laptop' - nothing else we can think of gives any picture results.

For the record the pictures click through to:

Computercare.ca

A page at University of Michigan &

Abcom.uk.com

7Up in the Netherlands

A new site for 7Up in the Netherlands. Type a thought into the box, and see someone walk past the screen thinking it. They don't seem to be screening rude words - not in English anyway...

See it here

Created by Qi Ideas