Articles in Frontiering Campaigns
I’ve always loved stories that are built from clay models & lego bricks, because as well as watching the story unfold, a part of me is fascinated with the artistic patience required to produce them.
Working for ASICS, agency Nordpol+ Hamburg commissioned Sipho Mabona who has created this gem of a story with Origami which is not only entertaining, but is so on brand for ASICS.
Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.
October 15th is Blog Action Day, where 10,000 bloggers around the world are writing about climate change.
Social Media certainly provides a platform to harness the “collective” due to the global accessibility of internet and the ease of content publication which has given consumers a voice. Cause marketing is certainly one of the early adopters of doing this, and I expect to see a continued growth in corporate sponsorship of these initiatives, demonstrating the merging of social media engagement and PR.
There is still lots of debate surrounding digital piracy.
Matt Mason’s new book “The Pirate’s Dilemma” addresses the issue of piracy demonstrating how piracy helped to evolve Hollywood prior to the existance of the internet. His book describes how piracy is an important source of innovation, and he describes how piracy can be used to effectively spread ideas. In doing so, Matt suggests how piracy itself can be leveraged as a valid business model.
Here’s a video of Matt talking about how youth culture is reinventing capitalism.
Be a Football Hero allows you to create a personalised audio commentary.
Select your name, country, and age, and then listen to the professional soccer (football) commentary of yourself performing the ultimate football heroics.
If you like what you hear, you can order the soundtrack as a CD for 14.99 pounds.
The soundtrack is very realistic, and you get to hear your surname and age as you score the match winning goal in the dying minutes.
IBM has launched an Android based mobile app to “Augment” what is happening at Wimbledon. Taking a live feed from the handset’s camera, it superimposes content and data associated with various points of interest into that video stream. For example live scores, court information etc.
The widespread adoption of 3G and Smartphones has meant that the potential audience for leveraging location (using the phone’s GPS), and supplementing that with value added information is reaching a critical mass.
I think it makes sense to trial new technologies at these type of events.
One of the highlights from Cannes is the Wildfire stories.
You can watch the full presentation of Wildfire – Stories in full here presented by Contagious and Leo Burnett.
This year’s focus was on stories with a strong talkability factor to faster spread the word.
This is definitely where marketing communications needs to head.
Not all campaigns will be successful, but not having a brief, or having one that is “too brief” definitely increases the likelihood of failure.
The Brief is one of the most important stages of the marketing process, and yet many clients fail to see it’s importance, and either ignore it all together or pass this responsibility to the agency. Agency created briefs or “reverse briefs” can work well where the client / agency understand each other well, but there should still be some kind of approval step so that clarity of scope is understood.
7-Eleven in Sweden has released an iPhone app, that no only includes a 7/11 store locator, but also includes coupons for free coffee and biscuits. Users key in their phone number and then the unique coupons (that are only valide once) are delivered to the iPhone. April’s free coffee coupons will be followed by free ice cream in May.
Stockholm-based digital agency Lonely Duck developed the application and it had 2500 downloads in it’s first week.
I have just created this widget for the Victorian Government in support of the Bushfire appeal, which is now listed on the Premier’s site at http://www.premier.vic.gov.au
Here’s the video Bullseye produced for the Australian Sports Commission to encourage the development of young Australians sportspeople on this promotional site.
Already the viral has been picked up by many of the mainstream press both here and in the UK.
Australia Press Coverage
Adnews (subscribers only)
UK Press
Blackmores is a client of ours, and we have created a new website called Byourbest, which contains lots of tools and information about the Sydney Running Festival.
I’ve decided to translate some of these tools into widgets.
Imagine you are in the delivery business, and want to show that you deliver anywhere in the world.
DHL, with the help of a swedish artist Erik Nordenankar, and a GPS device have managed to create what they describe as the biggest drawing in the world.
The website documents the creation, along with detailed instructions and delivery documents, and even contains video footage of the drawings journey.
Most of us remember the Mission Impossible series which immortalised the saying “This message will self destruct”.
Deadline Couriers created an effective PR stunt by building a billboard message that included a 8 day countdown timer. At the end of the 8 days it literally blew up.
I just love the way the message ties to the service offered by the brand !
MSNBC have released a NewsWare site, which provides an interesting news spectrum which can also be customised into a widget to embed on your blog, social network profile, or desktop.
The news experience includes this spectrum which is very engaging.
There is also a Newsblaster tool which lets you read the news while you are playing an online game.
To promote this feature, MSNBC setup the world’s first interactive cinema crowd game.
Dr Martens are running a campaign allowing consumers to create a boot design at http://dmbootdesign.com/
After selecting the boot canvas (8-hole or 14-hole), and then using the sites pen and paint tools, or using their own tools, 2 consumers will be selected to have their boot designs manufactured and sold in shops worldwide. One will be chosen by the people, and the other by a panel of industry insiders.
