Viral Marketing Benchmark Data

If you would like to know the latest benchmarks in viral marketing, check The latest report of MarketingSherpa and you're updated in 5 minutes.

 

Heineken and Tapvat

Great online experience of Heineken Tapvat, a good extension of the current tv-commercial. In the Heineken Tapvat campaign the Dutch band Voicst is playing a central role. In the tv-commercial the fans of Voicst are part of the concept. The online experience goes a little step further. With the use of Google Maps everybody is challenged to find the locations of the live performances of Voicst. To find it, you'll not only need to have a good geographical knowledge, but also have to listen to a radiosignal. Based on the quality of the radio signal, the distance to the location of the live performance is determined.

 

Online demo VW & Google Maps

It ain't news anymore that VW & Google are working on a navigation system with the realistic images of Google Earth, the navigation planner of Google Maps and the location based information of Google Local. But CNET now has a video online with a real demo of this system. Quite impressive!

 

Reboot 8 - Renaissance?

Very happy to get an email today announcing Reboot8, which again takes place in Copenhagen on June 1- 2.

I went along last year and had my mind nicely reupholstered by a charming bunch of geeks, farmers, and lots and lots of bloggers. You can read my initial thoughts, then a day 1 review, the day 2 review and an overall autopsy of the whole thing.

This year's theme is "renaissance?", and as you might expect for an event which celebrates interconnectedness, creation, participation, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities etc, the conference is all about creating a platform for sharing visions and making new friends.

It's a genuinely wonderful experience which I thoroughly recommend. Hope to see you there.

Go check out the Reboot8 site for more info, to propose a topic for discussion, to volunteer to make a presentation... and all the rest.

 

First results British survey of multi-media use

The British Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) recently finished their survey called Touchpoints. The survey gives a new integrated picture of consumer lifestyles, behaviours and multi-media use. The costs of the project amounted 1,4 million euro. 5.000 consumers participated. You can find the first results, here

 

KPN's vision online

In a few month's KPN is entering the IPTV market with a broad range of channels, personal video recording, etc. Recently they launched hethuisvanmorgen , a real nice way in trying to bring the experience alive.

 

Transformational TV shows

Ever since I was forced to abandon my pleasurable-but-costly habit of upholstering finches by an itinerant troupe of behavioural therapists, I've been hopelessly addicted to those transformational TV shows where innocent-yet-mental members of the public volunteer themselves and their families to be mercilessly 'improved' by 'experts'.

You know the ones: Faking it, Wife Swap, Life Laundry etc.

Last night I was privileged to watch the best episode yet of "Honey we're killing the kids". Like all the best reality TV it was a hilarious piece of voyeurism with just enough real life value to assuage your guilt at the amount of entertainment you derive from watching it.

The set up is that the fat/ lazy kids are subjected to a barrage of diet, concentration, exercise etc. tests, from which the resultant 'scientific data' are combined with some 'advanced computer graphics processes' (Photoshop! You can actually see the designers using it!) to create projected headshots which "literally show you how your kids will look aged 40" - with *hilarious* consequences.

Examples:

So last night, robot-demon hostess Kris Murrin (amazingly, even less bearable than Life Laundry's Dawna Walter) patronised a single mother into saving her daughters' lives by giving her the same list of advice that she gives everyone: stop feeding them rubbish, make them go to bed on time, do some exercise and social activities and (for the adults) stop smoking.

Same thing.

Every week.

All delivered with that Anne-Robinson-gone-wrong lopsided smile and chirpy brightness that lets the mother know that if she fails to pull off any of these steps it means that she hates her children.

Compelling stuff. And last night's was so good! I don't know how the mother didn't burst out laughing when presented with the initial comps of how her daughters were going to turn out if they didn't mend their collective ways. One of them looked like Fungus the Bogeyman, the other like a smacked about version of "funnyman" Peter Kay. Both with stubble, hairstyles chavved out to the max and murderer's eyes. Good on her though, she bit her lip and soldiered on, learning to cook, taking the girls to karate ("a great way of improving their self-confidence") and generally improving their family lifestyle.

After 3 weeks, they do another projection of how the kids will look if all the rules are followed - lo and behold, a pair of princesses appear! Yesterday's had the Fungus girl miraculously looking like Barbie. Preposterous! Yet strangely magnetic.

Really, really worth watching if you can get hold of it. It's currently being shown on BBC3 in the UK/ Satellite where available. The best bit is the way Murrin walks into the corner of the room and appears to shut down like an android at the end of every show.

OK, rant over. I'll talk about the internets next time, I promise. Where are all the websites that are as entertaining and addictive as this sort of thing?

 

Headed to Mars?

Then you'll want to get your map first...

Google Mars

That is one hilly planet! 21 km peaks and 10 km deep valleys...

 

Flash is all Around you.

Flash has become a solid solution for bringing interactiveness all around us.
Flash is being used not only for the web and more and more companies start to see the flexability for other (embedded) applicances.
From mobile phones to kidstoys, cars to gaming consoles and videofiles to digital camera's.

Let me give you a sum-up of companies and products that use Flash:

LeapFrog - Uses a 100 percent flashinterface in their toys.
Jaguar - The new Jaguar XK dashboard interface uses flash.
KODAK - The new KODAK EasyShare has a touchscreen which controlls the Flash interface.

Several gaming consoles embed the flash player in their hardware to give you interfaces in a more attractive way
Sony PSP
Microsoft Xbox

Google - Watch (your) videos in Flash format

 

Free database?

Oracle has released its free database: Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE).
It is ideal for small organizations and software vendors who want to embed an Oracle database in their application. This release is aimed to be an alternative to other free databases.

(Read more...)

 

The Golden Age of Advertising – The 60s

The german publisher Taschen has a book about the 60's, the golden age of advertising. It's packed with beatiful illustrations, and interesting ads. Each and everyone of these is a little piece of art by itself!



Here are some more examples of ads that you can see in the book. These are a series that Motorola did, a part of their consumer targeted marketing.