Pretty Happy with Virgin Media

I Just got Virgin Media installed and so far so good at 6pm at home the download speed is 19.5 and its meant to be 20 so not too bad really.

Fishy Poster

A Frankfurt seafood restaurant, 'Fisch Franke' have come up with an interesting new poster gimmick. Basically they filled up a roadside poster and then added live trout! The world's first poster aquarium has apparently been very good for sales…

How cool

Star Wars Uncut

You can always rely on Star Wars fans to go to extreme lengths but I really like the idea of this project Star Wars Uncut.



The original film has been cut up in to 15 second clips and fans are attempting to recreate it / film and put it all back together. Each fan chooses a clip, recreates it anyway they wish and then uploads the clip back up. So far their are 18 finished clips, 536 clips claimed, and 386 still available. They range from the sublime to the ridiculous but it is fun.

New Media Guru

Working in digital you have to have a sense of humor this is an awesome spoof and reminds me and everyone else not to get too up ourselves.


You have to love a guru joke and Father Pop up is a brilliant incarnation. Taking the piss out of all the buzz words and new memes it is great fun - I love hte description of AR.

Using Online Advertising for a MGM scheme

This ad intrigued me. Not anything about the creative execution but more the fact that O2 are using online network buys to advertise a specific offer to their existing customers.

Clearly, as I am not an O2 customer I do not remeber ordering any additional O2 PAYG Sim cards!



Ultimately, my first impression was that this must not be the best way to communicate with your existing audience and there will be considerable wastage. My next thought was there can't be any real targetting on IP or behaviour as I've seen it 3 times and I'm not a customer.

So I am left feeling a little bit bemused but intrigued. either there are so many customers of O2 online that they feel the wastage aside its still cost effective to talk exclusively to customers through the medium of display advertising or they are trying an experiment to see what happens as an acquisition tool. Or they bought it all on a CPA deal?

Interested to know but I can only speculate.

Technology excuses

Sadly so true

Brilliant spoof of Augmented Reality

Me too (doing some AR stuff)! from Anatoly Zenkov on Vimeo.

Just had to laugh at this

AR Business Cards

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

I imagine James will not be working for his current employer for very long or will have a nice payrise coming as this is brilliant - well done James. I want one.

Storytelling in the banner

This banner from Pringles is an interesting experiment in storytelling using the medium of banners - although it is totally pointless and banal, it is also strangely addictive. Once you start you just can't stop - very clever guys.

To be fair although it irritated me - it is a really nice play on human nature and that is basically what we all strive for and then call it 'insight driven'. I just had to know how it ended.

If you can capture your audiences attention in the first place (with a stupid, funny, surreal image) and reward them quickly with some interesting or funny content then contrary to popular belief people will spend time clicking on your banners.



Great idea

If you work in Customer Service Remember the name Dave Carroll

I love this story that Faris just posted about a Country & Western Singer - Dave Carroll who had his guitar broken by baggage handlers from United Airlines. Having had a very bad experience myself with Unite Airlines I am not surprised.



Dave says: Full Story: http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story... -

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn't deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise. Follow me at http://twitter.com/DaveCarroll

It looks like Dave has been on TV a lot stateside - the cynical side of me thinks this is not a bad publicity stunt for him and his band? We'll see.

A real Man Bites Dog moment - I love it when big corporations take people for granted and get bitten. I bet Ms. Irlweg is regretting not helping him out now. In one day his video has been viewed nearly 400,000 times, has 7,000 favorites and has over 3,000 comments - nice one.



Hopefully customer service teams are being briefed on this all over the world and they will change their behavior - but I doubt it.

Nabs Subservient Admen

I went to the Nabs president's breakfast today. Amongst the very interesting and serious bits of the charity including supporting people in hard times in our industry, and training and professional development including FastForward which I help out on, they announced something that looked like it could be really fun.

Unsurprisingly its hard for NABs to raise funds in hard times, and the irony being this is when they need it most. Also there are relatively few people who are likely to give to Nabs - 'please give for poor ad people' isn't something that is going to sit well with the public when Martin Sorrell gives himself a £60million bonus after letting 25% of his workforce go is it.

So it's only from within our industry and the organisations and individuals that are involved that they are ever going to get £££ from. They are running a £1 a week campaign - estimating that if all 70-80,000 employed in the industry in the UK sdigned up a Direct Debit to Nabs it would help a lot. A nice thing Hamish Pringle was quoted as saying was it was a bit like an insurance policy. Anyway if you can you should.

However the thing that interested me was that Nabs are very sensibly embracing two things. Firstly creativity something the industry they represent has in abundance - and secondly a move towards digital and social media, again very wisely.


So they have run a bursary competition for young creative talent to get involved in to come up with interesting and creative fund raising opportunities and a young team from McCann won it with a campaign called - Subservient Ad Men. Clearly paying homage to CP+B seminal Burger King campaign - at some point in September the great and the good of the UK ad industry will be in front of a live web cam and at your bequest for a small or large donation literally perform or do anything you want.



The mind boggles but get thinking and watch out for it I can already see Jeremy Craigen drinking a bottle of wine that cost under £250, or Jerry Moira reciting an ode that praises women in the ad industry, Bruce Haines dressing in white, Helen Calcraft eating a Big Mac instead of the Ivy Plat du Jour - come on this is your chance to get them back - for a good cause too... your future self.

More MJ, More CGC

Yesterday I put a link to the Japanese pop video that took the spirit of 'Nike pass it on' set piece compilations a bit further.

Today another MJ tribute the eternal moonwalk has come to my attention courtesy of FWA



I'm sure you can guess how it works, very simple mechanic and surprisingly fun to watch.

It is interesting to see how many people want to pay tribute/ participate and create in simple quick and easy fashion.

I'm not a great fan of media hysteria and collective mourning it reports on but it does makes you wonder what Diana tributes might have looked like with Twitter and You Tube had they been around at the time.

Cool living art in Trafalgar Square

This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley invites you to help create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.

Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. If you're selected, you can use your time on the plinth as you like. One & Other is open to anyone and everyone from any corner of the UK. As long as you're 16 or over and are living or staying in the UK, you can apply to be part of this unforgettable artistic experiment.

You can play your part in making this idea a reality - either by volunteering yourself, by telling others about it, or by experiencing it online or in the square itself.

Very Nice CGC pop video from Japan

Iain has just posted this video on his blog - a really lovely Japanese pop video



It takes the idea of 'Nike pass it on' to another level in terms of the consumer generated content in the videos - I couldn't find Nike pass it on but this came up instead - you get the idea.

Great AR Iphone app - Tube finder

This really doesn't need much introduction or explanation - it is just great.

Glasses Direct online advertisng

Update:
After posting this I got a comment from someone at glasses direct:

Hi - interesting post and thank you for your comments. If any of your readers would like to try us, then you may use the following discount code which I have set up for 10 x uses at 10% off. Simply enter at checkout: 'morgonzola'. Jamie Murray Wells (founder)

Nice one Jamie.

I've seen a lot of Glasses Direct banner advertising spring up over the last few weeks and to be fair although the ads aren't the prettiest in the world they have embraced the banner as a DR channel and really used some innovative and useful techniques. Here are a few of their ads.

1. Nice way to show a lot of product


2. Showing range in affiliate banners:


3. More range techniques:




4. Nice interaction linked back to product benefit


Overall very impressive use of the medium.

Billie Tweet

Vincent just put a great post on his blog about Michael Jackson - where he showed Billie Tweets an awesome Twitter/Youtube tribute to Jacko.



Just play it and you will get the picture - nice, and done very quickly too.

So I couldn't resist putting this video in too.


It is from The White Glove Tracking project all the entries are below in this compilation.

White Glove Tracking Compilation from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Another awesome poster

Using technology - courtesy of Osocio Amnesty International rigged up a camera in a bus stop, the camera recognizes when someone is looking at it and changes the image. Very effective, very cool.

Wordle meet Brandtags

Wordle is a great tool Richard just created a nice one for Elvis



But David recently sent me this variation on a theme called Brandtags


- essentially in their words:

"The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads. Therefore, a brand is whatever they say it is.
1.5 million + tags and counting.

So it is essentially crowd sourced Wordle for Brands - the really cool bits are the 'value exchange' you have to submit a word about 3 random brands before you can then see from the list of others.

Also you can play a guess the brand game by only seeing the results then guessing the brand being described.