Thursday, November 19, 2009

Browser Manipulation for Acciona

Good cause, good song, great execution. Campaign for Acciona, a sustainable development firm based in Spain. Song “Pure Imagination” (made famous by Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory). 80-second clip by director Marcel Burgos for McCann Erickson Italia. 1-2-3 punch.


http://www.youtube.com/experiencere

I'm not sure how they did it, but it is impressive. YouTube browser window starts to tremble and shake and then seemingly implodes. Something new combined with something old (the song) definitely captured my short attention span.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Social Media Real Time Counter

Since you got on this site:



Thanks Gary, this is pretty cool.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Expense a Steak


This is an absolute riot. What a great campaign idea.

http://www.expenseasteak.com/

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Oh no, MS does it again.

This is a wild bunch. I don't think I would last at this party for even couple of minutes.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Judges Pick The Funniest Tv Commercials

Market research and communication firm Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, a unit of Omnicom Group, provided handheld meters that allowed the judges to record second-by-second reactions to the commercials, which dated from 1965. These are the best of the best. What do you think?


No.1 Ikea

No.2 Levi's

No.3 Outpost.com

No.4 Federal Express

No.5 Alka Seltzer

No.6 Verizon

No.7 Budweiser

No.8 Yahoo

No.9 EDS

No.10 Southern Airways

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Most Engaged Brands on the Web

A study by Wetpaint and Charlene Li of Groundswell fame scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Here's the top ten:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The study also claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. The brands most aggressive in social media saw revenues grow an average of 18 percent over the past 12 months, while the least active saw revenues drop 6 percent. I doubt that their level of social media engagement had much to do with their revenue growth, it is just that these are companies that do a lot of stuff right besides social media. Then again they're not taking any chances with social either.
'

Gotta love #9, who would've guessed SAP?

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Cherry Girl

MTV has just come out with an environmental campaign "Cherry Girl". It includes a 60 sec. video spot, website, Facebook page and of course a Twitter feed. That's all good, but the the clip itself is a perfect example what advertising should not be - ART. Advertising is a business and it should always be measured by it's ability to sell stuff. I do get the difference between an ad for CPG and a public service announcement, but still - you need to sell the message. By the way I did get the story: she works at the dry cleaners, stuffs envelopes with cherry pits into clean suit pockets and when a customers discover and open the envelopes - cherry trees all over. I just did not buy it. By the time the clip was over I had forgotten about the environment also.





She also has a blog and she's on Flickr

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Wikitude makes Augmented Reality useful

Augmented Reality has always been cool, but that's just it - it has been only cool. Now Wikitude from Mobilizy makes it also useful, while keeping it cool.


Friday, April 3, 2009

Semantic Marketing

If you built it they will come, just imagine a marketing plan that interconnects all aspects of your and your clients' existence. Harness the data, then meta-data, then analyze across the board not forgetting that everything is connected, then optimize...oops, let's call it SWO - semantic web optimization. Optimization within subnetworks of networks and so-on. Then react accordingly and distribute your own data with your own meta-data. Then track and measure the impact across the board, analyze, re-analyze, mash it all together, add a pinch of nutmeg and think for a second that you're done.

Marketing plan that mines the semantic web for customer service, market research, customer monitoring, competitive intelligence, brand protection and something else that I can't even imagine. Your brand in all of the spheres - blog-comments-forums-viral-social-micro something and Google. Because Google will not die anytime soon. It is afraid, but afraid with lot of money. Every time it gets scared it will buy whatever makes it scared. Twitter's next.

Semantic branding and marketing, it's coming and it's gonna be cool.

Viral is not a noun

Since when "viral" no longer describes a spread of things. It seems that nowadays "viral" refers to a thing, not an action. In any case here they are - the latest hits:



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Is it just me, but it seems that online viral clips are becoming little too main-stream? Cool factor - gone. I guess all that's left is to play by the rules that all other media channels obey by - make content that people love and that's not an easy thing to do.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Big Mac & Apple Pie

Hip-hop artist/producer/stylista Pharell at the Paris Charles deGaulle airport starts singing and dancing just to get food at McDonald's is the very best kind of customer "Lovemarks". Somebody being there with a video-cam makes it perfect. McDonald's should be ecstatic and maybe they are. Let's not forget that Pharell, unlike some other hip-hop artist, is a real cool guy and all in all likable human being. If only the employees in Golden Arches uniforms would have shared some of the enthusiasm for their product shown by Pharell.


Wednesday, March 18, 2009

My Name is Bond, James Bond and I wear Baltman



What's going on here? When most brands in a whole wide world are directing their ad and marketing campaigns towards sensibility right now, Baltman is taking the opposite approach, by telling us that if we wear their suits we are not only gonna look good, but also gonna get laid. A lot. Beautiful women, even better, beautiful women in pairs and blindfolded, will become our sex-slaves.



All this because I'll be wearing Baltman clothes? Well it better happen. I'm taking your word for it and buying it. Plus I will complain if it does not happen. Complain a lot.



I'm as kinky as the next guy, willing to roll with the best of them, but the last picture gives me the creeps. Once again Baltman you better deliver on your promise.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

@savisaar - To Tweet or not To Tweet...




...that is the question and the answer for you @savisaar is a simple NO. Whoever is in charge of your Social Media or Online Media or Earned Media tactics unfortunately does not have any kind of understanding what Social Networks are all about. Sure he made you start a blog or at the very least started writing the posts for you, but that's not enough in 2009. Fire him.

Posting links to your blog on your Twitter account is not just beat, it's a pathetic attempt to do something without knowing what you're trying to accomplish. Twitter is not about you, Twitter is about what everybody thinks of you. Make it personal, make it human... OK that'll be hard. Well make it funny then and fire him. Make that announcement your first real Tweet. He is no good at his job. He's work has "me too" attitude written all over it and now so does your Twitter account.

By the way, your Tweets are your voice and right now you're telling everybody that you got nothing to say.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Holy Mess Over the Rainbow - the Future of a Corporate Web-site


Skittles has taken a small step for a candy, but a giant leap for a CPG brand web-site. A click on skittles.com will not take you to a corporate home page in a traditional sense, but instead to Skittles on Facebook. The only thing that has the functions that we have become accustom to on brand web-sites is a small widget in a upper left corner. Clicking on listed products will land you on a product Wikipedia page, so even this is very Social Web.

The rest of the clicks on the widget categories will take you respectively to these: Pictures - Flickr, Videos - YouTube, Chatter - Twitter, Friends - Facebook. So it's all good, somewhat messy, but still good. When I say messy I'm talking about little things that make up the big picture. For example if you search for Skittles on Twitter, you'll end up with 43 results and there's no way to tell which is the actual brand among them. I finally settled for these two - @skittlesrainbow that has 0 updates and @skittles_com that has 126 updates all of them going like this "I'm a Skittles master... get a free Netbook only for Skittles USA/Canada: http://tinyurl.com/bl3yeg #skittles". Not sure which is worst.

Still, is Skittles showing the way for the rest. Is this the future of a corporate web-site? Let's not forget the risk factor that comes with earned media - the social media - the uncontrollable media. For Skittles this undertaking is pretty low risk. When was the last time somebody opened a package of candy and was so disappointed with it's contents that it stayed with him or her for years. At the same time I still remember when an airline refused to let me board a plane with my kids at 6 in a morning. The younger one was only two at the time. Let me see if I can remember the airline, well there's no way I can forget that. SAS.

So here it is. Is this the future? Is this the solution? Is it worth the risks? I think it could be . Even when a Brand drops a ball and really screws a customer and the customer posts all his negative emotions on the brands Facebook wall, it will give the brand an opportunity to engage in a dialog. Not an easy thing to do, but it's better than watching and hearing all these conversations from a sideline.

What do you think?

NB! Oh yeah the picture is one of the results from the Twitter search.

Friday, February 27, 2009

WHOPPER SACRIFICE HAS BEEN SACRIFICED


I know this happened a while back, but just now I checked the link and it made me smile. First of all, I think that Burger King "Sacrifice your Facebook friends for a Whopper" was a truly original and funny campaign, scarce commodity nowadays. Give up ten of your so-called Facebook friends and earn a free burger. Tell me this is not making you at least crack a smile. The loose connections so widely spread all over Facebook are called friends, if Facebook would use a word like contacts for example, then a sacrifice your contacts would not be funny at all.

Unfortunately Facebook forced Burger King to terminate the whole thing over some privacy issues and that's too bad, cause c'mon it is funny. Still, I think it's gonna be a while till we see something as simple, free and absolutely hilarious. Good for you Burger King and also you must admire the perfect ending. Here it is http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/



As an afterword I want to add that who knows which side of this app was more receptive to the marketing message. The one who was willing to give up friends for a value of a sandwich or the one who got the message that this burger called Whopper is more valuable than his or hers friendship. LOL. Perfect execution.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Kluster or clusterf**k

For everyone who doesn't know that I love all things crowdsourced - here it is " I love all things crowdsourced". Lately I've been playing around with kluster and it's younger sister namethis. I'm not sure why I picked sister over brother. Anyway namethis is simple by nature naming process for new businesses, but it stays true to the whole wisdom of crowds thing. Plus guess what, it's plenty fun.

The way it works is that you sign up and you're ready to start giving baby names to baby businesses. You just read a short description of a start-up and try to give it a truly original and useful name. There's also a reward involved, but the amounts are usually marginal and I really don't think anybody would get into this for money. Then again times are hard.

My only problem with namethis is that I have not been able to come up with a good enough name for something. All of my suggestions keep getting un-original ratings, can't even crack the average rating. Then again I have a feeling that it's all on me.

Now kluster is much more complicated and sophisticated. I'm really rooting for them, since their platform is built for accomplishing serious things. Now they just need members and what I remember from James Surowiecki's book is that you need a lot of them. Variety is just as important.

Let's say you build a community of 100 000 members. Great. Unfortunately 95% of them are guys who think that if you haven't built a Twitter+Second Life+Virtual Earth mashup, you haven't lived. That's where the great idea of kluster can turn into a total clusterfuck. Still I'm rooting for you guys. I'm also starting a DIYcity Group for city of Tallinn.


Same time I'm taking it slow. Baby steps...baby steps. Well hey, I'm still trying to reach the un-reachable goal. An average rating.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Ray Ban Gets It - kinda

We all remember the guy catching sunglasses with his face, it was good and fun. So to stay with a viral feel Ray Ban is continuing with Cutwater and brought us these. I do absolutely love the "Disco Ballers" or "One Man Disco" or what ever you would call it. It's the second one. I do not like the length of it and also that it's still following all the guide lines of old-fashion TV ads.

Is this the future? Virals merging with TV 30 sec. spots and becoming professionally produced virals that last 3 minutes? That's not good, I don't have the patience to watch 3 minutes of still obvious advertising. I think the impact could be made somewhere around 15 seconds.

I do admire Ray Ban for its self-discipline though, their slogan "Never Hide" is visible at the end of the clips only if you look for it. It would've been so easy to go down the slippery slope and plaster their logo all over the content. Maybe that's it, nowadays it's content as long as it's missing the logo and content becomes advertising as soon as the logo makes an appearance.



Tuesday, February 3, 2009

COOL - UNCOOL

An uncool company like Microsoft brings you an uncool product like Songsmith, but then somehow some people still found a way to use all this "uncoolness" and make something cool. Pop culture at its very best. Here are couple of my favorites.





Just for comparison here's what Microsoft came up with to promote Songsmith, gotta warn you - it is physically painful. Watch at your own risk.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

AOL screw-up becomes ART

In 2006 AOL released millions of search logs, by mistake of course. All the search engines keep telling us that search logs are anonymous and carry little meaning. Here it is. You decide.
"I love Alaska."


I Love Alaska - Episode 1/13 from SubmarineChannel on Vimeo.

It's 2009 and we are what we search for. Turns out it was the same way in 2006.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Google, Skype and Twitter are making me dumb, cheap and lazy.

...and I don't care.

I no longer even try to remember the way to spell words like accommodate or conscientious. I'll just let Googles recently updated algorithm for misspellings do the work. Type in couple of letters and voilà - done. Who needs grammar.

I no longer understand why do I have to pay the phone company. Skype is free, Fring that puts Skype on my mobile is free. Paying for something like that just seems so unfair. I think even the phone companies are starting to get it, that's why they're cutting back on offering free WiFi. They used to do it more. This must be their last stand.

I no longer check my RSS or News feeds, I just keep Twitter open and if there's anything even remotely significant happening, I"ll know about it in seconds. Lazy - yes, but efficient lazy.

So here we go, say it out loud - I'm dumb, cheap, lazy and proud of it.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

MyFitness I Know You Missed Me



Here goes the # 1 of my resolutions, but just to get 2009 off on a right track, I need to be fair and let everybody know that they did not raise the price of monthly membership. Maybe it's me, maybe it's them being nice and understanding, or maybe it's just a federal law that prohibits raising the price if a client was signed to a contract with the club before it was sold. What do you think?

In any case the amount stays the same. Here's their letter:

Hea MyFitness Rocca al Mare klient,

Täname Sind usalduse eest, et oled sportimiseks valinud MyFitness Rocca al Mare fitness-klubi!
Anname Sulle teada, et Sinu liikmelisuse leping, mis on sõlmitud Coral Club OÜ-ga, hakkab lõppema. Kehtivusaja lõpp on 31.12.2008. Selleks, et saaksid muretult endistel soodustingimustel treeninguid jätkata, palume Sul lähiajal pöörduda kliendihalduri poole, et sõlmida leping My Fitness OÜ-ga.
Sinule, kui pikaajalisele klubiliikmele, pakume väga häid tingimusi jätkamaks MyFitness kliendina, kuutasu jääb samaks!
Tavahinnad uutele liitujatele on tunduvalt kõrgemad.
Soodustingimustel liitumine kehtib vaid Sinule kuni 31.12.2008.

Meeldivaid treeninguid meie klubis!

MyFitness Rocca al Mare meeskond

Wait a second...I needed to sign something before 01.01.2009. Crap. Does that mean that I still need to look for a new place to work out? Plus I now own several black and red MyFitness towels that are not available for rent, just sales. In case you don't remember I was not happy about that here.

For conclusion: I was on the stationary bike today and some what bored, so I ended up reading their club rules. Who in their right mind works the term "Force Majeure" into gym rules? ... and I can't help myself... I just have to add this ... misspells it.

Resolutions.

I will stop ranting about MyFitness, because nobody's making me go there.

I will look for good in people, companies and brands.

I will look hard, because I will need to.

This year I will work hard.

I will consume less of everything.

I will finally start taking care of my personal online brand.

I will start a meaningful relationship.