The Post Office's Gift Wrapping Tips on Vine

A great set of seasonal Vines, perfect for the 6 second format:

Books:

Bought books for your loved ones this #Christmas? Get inspired by the art of Japanese gift wrapping and try this > https://t.co/oFZG9bFXcg
— Post Office (@PostOffice) December 23, 2013

Jewellery

Buying jewellery for that special someone this #Christmas? Watch this creative way to gift wrap it > http://t.co/gybSFTMvvT < Re-tweet?
— Post Office (@PostOffice) December 23, 2013

Hampers

#Christmas hampers are lovely gifts, but tricky to wrap! Watch this handy wrapping guide. Re-tweet? > https://t.co/yNRiiPVUEc
— Post Office (@PostOffice) December 23, 2013

Footballs

Always wondered how to wrap a football for #Christmas? Well, here's your answer > https://t.co/1KnHmyGfb4
— Post Office (@PostOffice) December 24, 2013

Merry Christmas everyone!

XBox ads in GoggleBox and Fresh Meat on Channel4

This December these ads have been appearing in GoggleBox and in Fresh Meat, both on Channel 4, to show how you can use the XBox One as a media console.  I think it's a very good bit of placement - although I think it must have been pretty close to the boundaries of what is legal, given that people appearing in shows aren't meant to appear in ads near to the shows.



Via Thinkbox

Nokia's Robotic Photos in Turkey

Crowdsourced Robotic Photography from Carat Turkey on Vimeo.

Colleagues in Turkey have done a very neat thing for our client Nokia.  To promote the 41 megapixel camera in the Lumia 1020, they have set up a phone on a robotic arm in Istanbul, and let Facebook fans take photos.  7,000 photos were taken in the first week alone.

It's quite hard to follow the instructions as it's all in Turkish, but you can have a play with it here

& see examples of the photos in the video at the top.

Nice work!

Facebook's 'Donate' Button

Facebook has launched a 'Donate' button that charities can put on their pages, so that people can donate without leaving Facebook.  Facebook isn't taking any commission from this.

I think this is great, and ties in well with my 'Frictionless Payments' trend in my new presentation

Full details here

Casey Neistat's film for the Walter Mitty movie

Love this:  To help promote the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the film company gave YouTube star and film maker Casey Neistat $25,000 to make a video on the theme of 'living your dreams'.  But... he just spent the money on going to the Philippines and helping the people in need.



I think it's great, and it's another example of films making promotion videos that aren't just clips of the film - see also this for Carrie.

Full disclosure - 20th Century Fox is one of my agency's clients

10 Trends for 2014

10 trends for 2014 from Dan Calladine

As in previous years, I've produced trends to help us think about how the worlds of technology and media will change over the next few years.
There are lots of things happening, and we hope we have chosen some the most interesting
This year we look at:
Smart Devices
Push Notifications
Bluetooth Beacons
Frictionless Payments
Location & Local
Deliveries
Health
Actionable Intelligence
Polarisation
Borrowed Formats

Beyonce announces her new album on Instagram

Like this, with the caption 'Surprise!'



& here is some more info - 32 tracks on iTunes for £12.99, of which 17 are videos  You can't buy individual tracks, just the whole package, which is pretty smart.

She's also uploaded 30" teasers of all the videos to YouTube - and they seem to be very effective in taking down the full length versions that people are uploading (i.e. I can't find any).  I think this will be seen as the 'Blue'print for future high profile album releases



Update - it seems to have worked - she's broken the iTunes sales record with over 800,000 copies sold in 3 days (Yes, I think that's quite low too, when you remember that Oasis's Be Here Now sold 350,000 physical copies in the UK alone on the first day of release)

The first campaign on Instagram Direct

Instagram Direct was launched yesterday.  It allows people to send direct messages within Instagram.  It's potentially very spammy - you can send messages to anyone, not just people that you follow (Harry Styles must be getting hundreds of thousands of pictures today, for example).

Within hours Gap used it for a promotional campaign, essentially using it as a mechanism for people to enter a competition.

They posted this picture:



With the caption:

"Join our #WIWT @Instagram Direct challenge: first 15 people to comment below will get a message from us to participate!"

They then sent these first 15 commenters this message:

So presumably now some lucky Gap followers have won a nice tablet case.  Full details over at Fasionista

Old Spice's #GentleManHunt

Old Spice brings Isiah Mustafa to the UK, for a #GentleManHunt, including some personal appearances, all backed up on Twitter and Facebook



& also on Instagram

Burger King YouTube Pre-rolls

Good work from BK - 64 different YouTube pre-rolls that related to the videos about to be watched, talking directly to the viewer and acknowledging that many people hate the pre-rolls