Aggregated tweets

Two examples of twitter monetisation.

ExecTweets - tweets from senior business execs / interesting people, paid for by Microsoft


MarchTweetness - tweets relating to March Madness, paid for by AT&T

More info at MarketingVox

I wrote earlier about possible ways to monetise twitter - some of these now seem to be happening.

Interactive banners for Nike on Mens Health and Shape in Germany

This is a nice way to make banners engaging:

For a limited time users of Men's Health and Shape (female orientated site) in Germany can send messages to each other through banners on both sites.

For example, visitors to MensHealth.de can write a message in the banner on that site, which will then appear within the banner on Shape.de.



Pretty heavy moderation is going on, I'm sure, and this is only live from 1700 - 2100 German time from today until the 6th April.

More info at BannerBlog

10 MPH & DIY film distribution

10 MPH is a US indie film, in which two film makers try to travel across the US on a Segway.



You can watch it on YouTube (above), buy a DVD or download it from iTunes (if you live in the US). It seems to be the closest film making has yet got to the indie ethos of music; they've even written a DIY manual on how to distribute a movie independently. It reads a bit like a film version of the fantastic 'how to have a number one single' book The Manual, which I can't recommend highly enough. (Incidentally, The Manual is currently out of print, and the 1999 re-print is selling for >£40 on Amazon Marketplace. Re-publish, somebody!)

For example, from the DIY Guide:
"When making a movie, your brand often starts with the website. Eventually, if you have the luxury of getting picked up by a big distribution company, they'll control all of this. But when you are distributing and creating awareness for your project, it's critical to make something that looks like it could have been produced by a distribution company which has $30,000 to spend on web design. Because of our backgrounds, we were able to absorb this cost ourselves. If you have no web skills, I'd advise learning them. It's not too hard to hack something together based on a borrowed concept. Or find an amigo who can do this stuff and entice him/her to work on the project with either profit guarantees or some other creative payment scheme."

Buy the DIY film distribution guide if you have any interest in digital media - it's worth $0.99 of anyone's money.

Live tweeting during ITV's Primeval

In what's probably a UK first, ITV has aggregated all tweets with the hashtag #primeval together in one place to allow fans to chatter online during the new series. From what I can tell it's not moderated, but the people participating are behaving themselves.

See it here:

Hard Rock Cafe memorabilia collection with Silverlight

We had a meeting with DotNetSolutions at our office this morning, to show us some of the things that you can do with Microsoft's new Silverlight technology.

One of the examples was this memorabilia gallery produced for Hard Rock Cafe. Visit the site or have a play with the embedded image - it's amazing how close you can zoom in with your scroll wheel! This is just one of the thousands of bits of memorabilia that you can see on the site, but it demonstrates how much detail you can see.

Also, as one commenter has pointed out, there is a very entertaining Easter Egg built in. While you are navigating around, press your 'v' key and see what happens!

You can see other Silverlight examples here

Buy a ticket for No Doubt, download all their music for free

Another good example of a band trying something new. Anyone purchasing a top-end price ticket to No Doubt's summer tour in the US gets to download all of their music for free - seven albums worth.

Details here

They also have a Tour Club ($15) that lets registered fans buy tickets in advance of other purchasers and get other exclusive merchandise. The tickets are purchased direct from the band, and so this bypasses the traditional routes like Ticketmaster.

Liam Gallagher's fashion brand Pretty Green

This is the site for Liam Gallagher's new fashion brand Pretty Green. The aim is to produce clothes that Liam himself would wear, and since he always seemed to see his role as looking the part as much as anything, he's pretty well qualified to pass judgement.

The site is pretty minimalist (the clothes will be unveiled in June), but I like the videos, especially where he answers fans' questions.



Check out the YouTube channel, and also follow Liam on twitter. Typical tweet: "Yes, the Desert boots will be available this summer... LG"

Franco Manca

I still get asked a lot (in a personal capacity) about what sort of websites small businesses should have, and I've got a few examples of good and bad versions. Here are two:


Franco Manca, a great pizzeria in Brixton has this fabulously minimalist site. It gives you the menu, and the address, and that's it. It's all you need. (Created by Codelocator)

Compare with this nightmate in flash by the Indian restaurant Tayyabs. Horrible, although I've heard the food is superb.

I'd also bet that the Franco Manca site was a lot cheaper to produce. It's a good case of cheaper being better.

Lego Easter building instructions

I don't know how long Lego have been doing this for, but this is pretty inspired -download instructions to make chickens, lambs and bunnies out of Lego, in honour of Easter. Love it.

Google Streetview comes to the UK

Today Google Streetview arrived in the UK. Now you can explore maps as if you were walking or driving down them, at least for he major cities and major streets in those cities.


You can't see my office, because presumably Parker Street WC2 was too difficult to get down (or blocked - there was building work going on last summer when they were taking the pictures), so here's a shot of the map shop Stanfords, in Long Acre. It seemed appropriate, what with Sergey and Larry having met at Stanford University, and it being a map shop.

Also: Nick Burcher has re-created a couple of album covers and been looking for street art over at his blog.

Viral for the BBC Today Programme

This is a really entertaining viral for the BBC's Today Programme (on Radio 4), that captures something of the personality of the presenters.



Evan Davies provides the background on his blog here

Memo to social media gurus

I got an email this morning inviting me to join a group on LinkedIn. The invite included this text:

"Traditional marketing and advertising no longer works. It's hit and miss. This group specifically focuses on the influencer and the channels they live in (online communities, social networks, micro-blogs, etc)"

A few months ago I was at a conference where one 'name' social media commentator said:

"Just how low do click rates need to fall for people to realise that banner advertising doesn't work?"

To which I say -

Some traditional marketing works. I know of agencies who produce very successful work for clients based on banner campaigns and search campaigns. Or, if you're talking about non-digital media, I know of lots of campaigns that work in lots of ways; one advertiser recently had to cancel some advertising on TV and posters because it was driving too many sales and they couldn't meet demand.

Some social media marketing works. I've seen campaigns & ideas that have become really popular, I've seen virals that have suddenly 'tipped' and got millions of views. I know of campaigns that have created such a fervent core of enthusiasts that millions of pounds have been generated.

I've also seen campaigns that have not worked; traditional campaigns and social media campaigns. Marketing always has an element of hit and miss, as has writing a book, making music or making a film.

Social media gurus - get over it.