Vodafone New Zealand have just released a viral video campaign that follows a slightly similar line to AKQA‘s Christmas Wish from last year. However, instead of microwaves, mobile phones have been used used.
The premise is simple, using 53 different ringtones and text alerts from 1000 different mobile phones, Vodafone New Zealand sent over 2000 text messages timed to perfection, to reconstruct Tchaikovsky ‘s 1812 classical masterpiece. The end result is a work of art and demonstrates a triumph of technology and imagination working together. We dare you not to be impressed.
Last week, Microsoft’s Bing announced search deals with Twitter and Facebook, and Google followed suit by completing its own deal with Twitter, and perhaps more importantly, announced a new feature: Social Search.
Social search from Google combines results from your friend’s blogs, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, and a wide variety of other social media sites (so long as your friends have connected their social accounts to their Google profiles) with Google’s regular search results. For example, search for [restaurants], and restaurant reviews by your friends and other contacts may appear more prominently in your results.
For now, the feature is opt-in, and appears at the bottom of the search results page under the title “Results from people in your social circle”. However, such is the trust that web users put in their network to deliver relevant results, Social Search is likely to become so popular that social results will start blending into regular search results higher up the page (in the meantime search results in 9th and 10th page on the home page could benefit from increased clickthroughs).
What with Google Lab experimenting more and more to add a social dimensionality to every aspect of the web experience, we’re beginning to wonder if we will soon stop asking our social circle for tips and recommendations and instead ask all our questions to Google who will deliver us personalised, relevant and timely results?
Machinarium machinarium.net
Check out this nicely illustrated adventure game to see how far you take your bot.
AYV: Planting my Ideas Garden www.plantandinspire.org/
Share you story through art and music with the help of the Black Eyed Peas.
House of Halloweenies houseofhalloweenies.com/
Since it’s the season of ghosts and ghouls, it wouldn’t be right not to feature a haunted house, especially a cool interactive haunted house like this
EP Carrillo www.epcarrillo.com/
This is a really interesting combination of google maps and twitter. Basically everyone who is following on Twitter will have all their Tweets automatically show up on the map.
In October 1994, 15 Years ago this month, the web saw its first display banner go live! The campaign was placed on HotWired.com and featured a 468×60 banner with the line of copy ‘Have you ever clicked your mouse here? You will!’. Six of the magazine’s clients took part in the first campaign: MCA (telecom), Volvo (auto), Club Mes (travel), AT&T (telecom), Zima (softdrink) and 1-800-Collect (telecom). The site, which no longer exists, was part of Wired magazine and was the first commercial web magazine to attract online advertising.
It was the beginning of an industry that has grown to become a €16 billion worldwide industry today. The world of online advertising was different back then, there were no adservers or ad networks as we know them today. The advancements within the industry over the past 15 years; from rich media capabilities, conversion tracking, to DIY online advertising on Google have been nothing short of phenomenal. This first campaign is said to have delivered an astounding CTR of 78%! Maybe we should go back to basics
If you would like any further information on any aspects of the campaigns, please feel free to contact Christian Hughes (Cybercom Digital PR & Communities Manager) at christian@cybercom.ie
With increasing competition and a need to maximize return on advertising spend; it has become more than necessary for marketers to reach as many qualified customers as possible. It’s no secret that mobile has arrived and is an emerging opportunity. For example, in its ‘UK PC & Mobile Internet Usage Report,’ comScore estimated that 25% of the entire UK population aged 13 and older went online with a mobile device in July 2008.
Mobile presents an opportunity to target and engage with people, individually, better than any other channel. With the launch of Google’s ‘Go Mobile!’ service, they offer a mixture of well-known and fresh tips on building your presence:
1. Mobile-ize your website
When considering reaching a mobile audience, marketers must ensure that their website is mobile-friendly to maintain website formatting and overall usability. It is possible to detect whether customers visit via a computer or a phone. Therefore, they can be directed to the appropriate version of the website accordingly.
2. Know your place
Customise information based on user location. For example, allow your customers to skip the step of inputting their location in order to find the closest pharmacy. Instead, use location information to show the nearest pharmacy pro-actively and immediately.
3. Engage your user
Engage your users while they are connected to information via their mobile devices, either in the form of a mobile game on your website, a downloadable mobile application related to your brand, or peripheral information based on your offering.
4. Help your customers spread the word
Be part of your customers’ mobile conversations. For example, choose apps on your website that your customers can share with their friends and encourage your customers to engage with your brand via their mobile devices.
5. Help them find you
Finally, help your customers find you. Promoting your mobile-friendly website is equally vital. Explore advertising products for mobile phones, including text and image ads, and placements alongside search results on relevant content and within mobile applications.
Xbox have just announced a deal with Sky TV. Launching on October 27th, this new service shall allow Xbox owners to avail of ‘The Sky Player’, Sky TV’s online service. Users shall have access to Live TV and sports, as well as an On-Demand movies and tv shows. There shall be no need for a sky dish or subscription, any xbox owner with a Gold membership and a broadband connection shall be able to enjoy the service.
For live events you’ll be able to virtually sit down with your Xbox owning buddies, via your avatar. Finally you can hurl abuse at your United supporting friends from the comfort of your couch.
Popular social platforms like Twitter and Facebook have changed the way people use the web and more interestingly, how people integrate the web into their everyday lives. For quite some time Twitter and Facebook have had the world answering the question, “What are you doing right now?”
Now, newcomer Foursquare is asking different questions of us, “Where are you, and can I come join you?”
Foursquare is a social networking mobile-driven service that is a combination of friend-finder, city guide and competitive bar game. Users in 34 cities in the United States and Canada, as well as London and Amsterdam, “check in” with a mobile at a bar, restaurant or art gallery, alerting their friends to their current location so they can drop by and say hello. Helping users quickly find their friends, it is negating the need to text or call, and is proving the perfect solution to ‘planned serendipity’.
Just seven months old with about 60,000 users so far, one can only expect this service to grow as current users already claim to be heavily engaged – the system awards points and virtual badges to players depending on how often they go out and which places they visit. Users who frequent a particular place enough times are crowned “mayor” of that particular location. Mayorships are social currency of the highest order, so no doubt should Foursquare soon make it to Dublin, there will be a whole new battle of the Mayors on the cards. Not just that, but as it encourages discovery and meet-ups, it could be the recessionary answer to resurrect Dublin’s nightlife.
As to whether it’s the next Facebook or not, that remains to be seen, but it could very well evolve as the intimate sister of Facebook – as Foursquare involves actually meeting up with friends, users will think twice before “friending”.
Pritt Knutselwereld www.knutselwereld.nl/
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of ‘Pritt’, this website was created to enthuse children about crafts. We don’t understand a word of it, but the 3D and animations alone make this site well worth a visit!
Email with ease www.nokia.com/
Create your own email art and email it to friends, in this campaign for the Nokia E75.
Lech 3D www.lech.pl/
Got your 3D glasses handy? then discover the 3D world of LECH beer’s official Polish website.
Volkswagen: Rollercoaster www.volkswagen.co.uk/
Volkswagen just keep doing it – in yet another example of brilliant marketing VW’s Rollercoaster campaign skilfully demonstrates the new BlueMotion technologies, through full screen video.
The only Irish Agency to win Gold this year, the IMC European Awards take the winners of the local Irish APMC awards and pits them against all other Gold winners from across Europe. A true European Championship for marketing!
