A TV ad made entirely from animated gifs

I'm amazed no one's done this before!  (If they have I'm @dancall on Twitter)



Fox Searchlight have made a 15 second TV ad for their film Stoker from animated gifs that they created on a dedicated site, Letters to India.  Some of the pics on the site have clearly been made with Cinemagram, for example this one

I'm sure we're going to see lots more of these.

Via Mashable

Audi Paintball

Like something out of Top Gear- two cars play paintball in a large warehouse.



Very well done!

Update - Adrants is less impressed

Workarounds

Workarounds was one of the trends I wrote about in this presentation back in December.  The idea was that people were finding new ways of doing things, specifically when technology didn't let them.

Examples include taking screenshots on Instagram to re-share pics, and lots of the slightly complicated by low tech mobile payments that are emerging, as a workaround for people being unable or unwilling to use NFC and more advanced technologies.

Lots of companies look at the frustrating things that we all do as sources of inspiration for new products, and I've seen two very good examples in the last couple of weeks.

Meet Mailbox from Mailbox on Vimeo.

First, Mailbox.  Mailbox is an app that lets you sort your email.  Who knew we needed a dedicated app to help us sort out our existing email accounts?  Well, Mailbox did, and in retrospect it seems pretty obvious.  & looks petty essential too - wonder when it's coming out for Android?



Second, Sunrise.  Sunrise is an app that sorts out your calendar, merging both your personal calendar with your contacts (& Facebook) to give you a daily digest.  Again a great workaround for something that had become too complex (& again iOS only).

The World's Biggest Social Media Team

Well done to Tourism Australia for sharing these fantastic examples of social media and user generated content in travel

The World's Biggest Social Media Team from TourismAustralia

Cracking Pistachios, Gangnam Style

I wonder how much Psy got paid for this Super Bowl ad...


(& also how it's caused so little fuss, and had so little views - 3m in 2 weeks)

Coca Cola's Happiness ATM

Coca Cola are continuing to do variations on a theme with their Happiness Machines - this one is from Spain from last year, where they set up an ATM that would give out €100 for free if people agreed to use it to spread happiness.  Heartwarming!



Full story here

Valentine's Viral Advert Compendium 2013

Here is a selection of Valentine's Day viral films & ads produced by brands.

See last year's set here (& some previous years)

It seems like pretty thin pickings this year - let me know which ones I'm missing either in the comments or on twitter (I'm @dancall) 

Durex



& also this (which I think is better)




Nivea UK

A non-embeddable, but very interactive YouTube video

Cadbury Creme Egg

A series of Vines, where they draw their fans, for example:

Our artist @rosadoddart is burning through the valentine portraits. Here's the next one @blackberrychris vine.co/v/brmOquxwvjH #HaveAFling
— Cadbury Creme Egg (@CadburyUK) February 14, 2013

HP Sauce

Ann Summers

Air New Zealand



Lynx / Axe



Heineken let men #TweetforaTable in the US

Plus - there are lots of ads in the press - for example this one for Ikea UK

Please let me know which one's I've missed out!

Also - Ads of the World has this list

Topshop at LFW AW13 with Google+

This is a nice collaboration between Topshop and Google for London Fashion Week, Autumn Winter 2013, to show off the different capabilities of Google+



Features include a live broadcast of the Topshop catwalk at 3pm on Sunday 17th February, plus:

A Model Cam - see the show through the eyes of a model
A G+ Photo Booth on Oxford Street
A G+ Hangout
& a G+ App to make your own collection

All focussed on the Topshop G+ page, and the Topshop site

Very good!

Update -

Here is the hangout



(Louis Tomlinson appears 11 minutes in)

Also - 3 models do the Harlem Shake backstage

Update - finally, here's a good summary of how everything was planned, and how it worked

American Express lets you pay with a Tweet

American Express have just launched a new service in the US, encouraging people to sync their Amex card and their Twitter account, so that they can potentially pay with a Tweet (when they tweet a hanstag specific to an offer).



For me this is an other example of a workaround (one of my big trends for this year); ideally you'd have your Amex details on your phone and you'd be paying by NFC.  In this case the card and account (& therefore phone) are linked, so this mechanism lets you buy things with your mobile.

Full details here.

Photo Opportunities

A few months ago I wrote this post about Optimising for Instagram, arguing that brands were starting to produce stunts that deliberately got people to share photos.

This is a classic example - a stunt in Oslo to promote the film A Good Day to Die Hard.

(Full disclosure - Fox is one of the clients of my agency)

This has been spotted on Imgur, and is spreading all over Facebook and other channels.

& here's a version taken at night and posted to Instagram

Update - this is a good one from HotWheels in Brazil

Dr Hermann Hauser & the 5 Waves of Computing

I was lucky enough to see Dr Hermann Hauser CBE give the Perutz Lecture at the Friends of Peterhouse theatre in Cambridge last month, and since seeing it I've come across so many things that have reminded me of it.

Hauser, one of the founders of Acorn and involved in the spinning out of ARM, believes that there have been five waves of computing:

Mainframe, minicomputer, workstation, PCs and now mobile plus cloud computing

In each wave companies have come to dominate, but then have failed to become important players in the next one.  For example Microsoft were very dominant in PCs, but have so far failed to have a similar role in mobile.

After the lecture someone asked the obvious question:  What is the sixth wave?

The sixth wave, came the reply, is computers built into devices, for example houses, appliances and cars.  This of course then makes interfaces (like voice recognition) very important.

& from the BBC Technology site today, a report into computing in cars 'Every new car' to be connected to the web in 2014

"The connected car is already the third fastest growing technological device after phones and tablets, Intel believes"

Try to find time to watch the presentation above if you can.

New phrases

A couple of new phrases that seem to be entering the (marketing) lexicon:

'Mobile blinders' or blinkers - How a mobile distracts your attention from everything else around you, for example point of sale material in shops.

From the FT:

"It is a scene playing out in supermarkets across the world: a consumer waits to pay and, instead of browsing the magazines and chewing gum displayed alongside, she pulls out her mobile phone for a quick digital distraction.
US magazine executives call the habit the “mobile blinder” after the vision-narrowing headgear worn by racehorses, and say the trend is wreaking havoc on the industry.
Data released on Thursday show a big decline in single-copy sales of US magazines at newsstands and retail outlets, amid increased digital competition and reduced retail space. Single-copy sales fell 9.5 per cent to about 26.7m in 2012 from the previous year, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. That is about half the 52.9m magazines sold on newsstands a decade ago."

'Binge viewing' - when people watch multiple episodes of a TV show in one sitting.  Apparently Netflix prefer the term 'marathoning', but binge watching was the buzz phrase used most often when discussing last week's launch of their House of Cards.

From the New York Times:

"Television producers have turned bingeing, hoarding and overeating into successful prime-time shows for years, but now they are having to turn their attention to another example of overindulgence — TV watching.

Binge-viewing, empowered by DVD box sets and Netflix subscriptions, has become such a popular way for Americans to watch TV that it is beginning to influence the ways the stories are told — particularly one-hour dramas — and how they are distributed.

Some people, pressured by their peers to watch “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones,” catch up on previous seasons to see what all the fuss is about before a new season begins. Others plan weekend marathons of classics like “The West Wing” and “The Wire.” Like other American pastimes, it can get competitive: people have been known to brag about finishing a whole 12-episode season of “Homeland” in one sitting."

Real time marketing on Twitter at Super Bowl XLVII

As most of the UK slept, marketing finally became real time, as brands started firing out tweets that were responsive to what was happening at the Super Bowl and on TV.

The Super Bowl is the biggest deal in American marketing, but until now it's mainly been TV that's been the focus, with massively expensive ads trailed and released online before the events.

Last night there was a power outage and within minutes brands responded with tweets about it, or started to buy keywords like 'Power Outage', knowing that people would be searching Twitter to try to find out what was happening.  I think it'll be seen as a landmark event in second screen marketing.

Oreo seem to have done best, with this picture tweeted within 5 minutes:

Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

(How they did it)

Tide tweeted this about 3 minutes later:

We can't get your #blackout, but we can get your stains out. #SuperBowl #TidePower twitter.com/tide/status/29…
— Tide (@tide) February 4, 2013

& Calvin Klein clearly had a whole set of Vines ready to send out at key moments:

Since the lights are still out... vine.co/v/b1iiiiUz5uq #SB47
— Calvin Klein (@CalvinKlein) February 4, 2013

(More examples on the Twitter blog - & Duracell did well with a post on Facebook)

This is all great stuff, and made possible by close relationships between clients and agencies operating 'war room' type set ups during events like this.

You can argue that it's been going on for a while - for example see how Paddy Power tweets during football matches - but I'm sure this is how more big events will work from now on.

Update - Virgin Holidays did very well with this, posted a few minutes after the Equal Marriage vote in the UK

#equalmarriage: Time for a honeymoon. twitter.com/VirginHolidays…
— Virgin Holidays Ltd (@VirginHolidays) February 5, 2013

Next Generation Media - January 2013

My new presentation on major stats and stories from the last 3 months is now online - have a look!

Next Generation Media Quarterly January 2013 from Dan Calladine