Cybercom, Ireland’s most exciting, creative and vibrant marketing agency, is growing and growing fast. We’re recruiting across a number of departments and levels to help us with our global aspirations!

Check out our careers page now for more information.

We love this applied thinking from Google!

The global search giant is about to invest millions of $ in R&D in preparation for going green. The aim is to create cleaner and cheaper energy using learnings and expertise gained from developing energy efficient data centres.

The company’s clean technology initiative, called REC, aims to develop Renewable Energy Sources that are cheaper than coal, presently the cheapest, most abundant and dirtiest fossil fuel.

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, said: “We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centres. We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at a globally significant scale.”

Following on from the success of the French Pub Locator we developed for the Rugby World Cup, (don’t mention the war!), we recently launched an equally innovative piece of kit for Guinness Red in the UK. Guinness Red is described as a ‘smoother, sweeter Guinness’ and is exclusive to the UK at the moment.

The brief was to develop a destination site for consumers wishing to discover Guinness Red and inform consumers where they could try it. Cybercom developed a site which uses Google Maps which allows consumers select their region and then search for their nearest pub serving Guinness Red by name or postcode. As Guinness Red is rolled out across the UK, we’re adding more pubs to the map.

So far, it’s been a roaring success with thousands of people visiting the site to find their local. Last week we sent an email to Guinness UK database, telling them about the site and giving them an opportunity to comment on the Guinness blog about Red. It’s been a huge success to date with over 700 comments! We’ve seen lots of people posting to the blog about going down to their local and trying it which is fantastic and what it’s all about really!

Check out the site for yourself here and visit the blog. We’re now looking to take it the next level with more innovations so check back soon to see more from Guinness Red.

If you attended the recent Empathy Marketing Conference held in Dublin last month, you’ll be delighted to know you can now download the “Great Internet Marketing Debate” podcast and MP3 (our thanks to Alex Gibson for posting online).

On the side proposing the motion that Irish Marketers are ready for the Internet were Jonathan Forrest of Cybercom, Rob Price of Diffinity and Simon Ferguson of SalesOnline.ie. The press team consisted of Alex Gibson of The Persuaders marketing and media programme, Richard Delevan, journalist and blogger and Conor Brophy of Newstalk 016-108fm. Michael Dwyer chaired the proceedings.

You can download the Podcast/MP3 from here 

Key Timelines

Jonathan Forrest – Cybercom 3’25″
Alex Gibson – The Persuaders 10’10″
Simon Ferguson – SalesOnline 16’15″
Conor Brophy – Newstalk 23’30″
Rob Price – Diffinity 31’50″
Richard Delevan 38’00″

Audience Questions 51’00″
Douglas Mc Arthur Comments on best speaker and question 59’00″

A big congratulations to Marcus MacInnes and our friends at Pix.ie – Ireland’s own and world challenger in the online photo sharing space.

Pix.ie won the coveted “Best Social Networking Site” at this year’s Golden Spiders Awards. According to the judges, Pix.ie’s “host of features, applications and excellent navigation makes sharing memories a joy”. We wholeheartedly agree!

After Facebook, this site probably consumes more of our free time than any other right now.

Based in more than 232 countries, Last.fm is the world’s largest social music platform with over 20 million active users. In May this year, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for $280m, making Last.fm the largest European Web 2.0 purchase to date.

Using a unique music recommendation system known as “Audioscrobbler”, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or portable music device. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (“Scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favourites.

Visit Last.fm to see exactly what we’re talking about!

Bebo are recruiting six candidates for a gap year adventure that will be documented onsite during 2008. The ‘lucky 6′ will travel the world and have specific tasks set by the broader Bebo community.

It’s a novel competition idea with massive community input, and you can apply here if you have the urge!

For those of you who attended the recent IDMA seminer, here’s the list of “Best in Class” creative stimulus from around the world that we spoke about:

1. Jonathan Yuen (Singapore Designer) – check out creative
2. VW Rabit (Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, Miami) – check out creative
3. Adidas (Net Think, Madrid) – check out creative
4. WWF Save the Tiger (Ogilvy, Beijing) – check out creative
5. Fiat Don’t Drink and Drive (Agencia Click, Brazil) – check out creative
6. Polish AIDS Campaign (ARC, Warsaw) – check out creative
7. Terra Parental Control (DDB, Brazil) – check out creative
8. Try Drugs (Kitchen, Oslo) – check out creative
9. Diesel Boule (Magnetic North, Manchester) – check out creative
10. MTV Against Drink Driving (JWT, London) – see video below

Just get in touch if you want a copy of the presentation.

Boo hoo… we didn’t win Best Use of Search! But we’re more than happy with our first outing at the IMA Awards, the UK’s premier showcase for the best of Digital Marketing.

Our search marketing campaign for Jurys Inns and Jurys Doyle is now widely recognised as one of the Top 4 search campaigns in the UK last year. It has well and trully got the nod as a world class piece of marketing.

The night itself was great craic. The big winner was Glue London (Creative Agency of the Year & Grand Prix) and its Get The Message campaign on behalf of the Royal Navy.

Bebo launched a ‘self service’ platform to media channels yesterday. It offers video media, like the BBC and sites such as Last.fm, targeting Bebo’s 40 million audience. The media channels will receive all revenues from in-video advertising.

You can check it out here