Looking good there Kanye…

Pop star lesson number 1:
Always make sure the people around you look worse than you…

Innovative savings accounts… good work BOA

Looks like banks are starting to think more cleverly about interesting account prodcuts and services. This from Bank of America is a really simple and nice idea to help us all save based on automatically transfering the loose change we would get when purchasing with cash directly into our savings account when we purchase using their debit card. I’m impressed

Brand advocates.. A case study right here

So, we all know the theory. The basic idea that our greatest and most effective communications tool, especially online, comes from brand’s customers themselves eulogising about a product or service to their friends, peers, readers, viewers etc.

And again, we all know that we can help facilitate this by providing the appropriate information and resources to these individuals.

Big deal, nothing new here. Well, to spice things up a bit, if you look below at the T-Mobile – ‘Survival of the Quickest’ post below you’ll see a real life case study occurring within this very blog.

The story itself is seems to be about the very nice JonJonBaker posting up a copy of T-Mobile’s ‘Join The Dance’ advert on his YouTube channel minutes before the official channel went live, therefore achieving, to date, over 1.3 million views from those searching for the advert after it broke on national TV.

T-Mobile, or Saatchi & Saatchi, for that matter, may well have looked upon dear JonJon as a pesky little party pooper who deprived them of at least 300k views to the T-Mobile official channel. Understandably too, you may say.

Instead, clearly someone has decided that JonJon is far better as a friend than a foe. I have no idea the exact dialog between the two parties, but as stated in the comments, JonJon has certainly been invited to take part in the campaign’s follow up viral and I imagine there may be further offerings between the two parties (exclusives on new T-Mobile video content? I don’t know, I’m simply guessing)

The result of T-Mobile embracing JonJon in this way? Well, JonJon subscribes to the T-Mobile ‘Life’s for Sharing’ channel. It is his only subscription – now viewable by the several thousand visitors to his channel than have come about from his ‘Join the Dance’ scoop.

But most interestingly? Well, see the comments section of the original post. Firstly, the follow up T-Mobile virals have been discussed in a public space, as has JonJon discussed his favourable views about the T-Mobile ad itself when challenged by Alastair in the comments.

In short, this man, who literally nicked 300,000 channel views from T-Mobile’s official YouTube channel (through no fault of his own, I should add) has been converted into a full on T-Mobile brand advocate discussing the campaign and the advert both for his own channel’s benefit, but certainly also to benefit of T-Mobile, in blogs all over the web.

Good stuff

A quick note… I have made wild assumptions on all of the above. So if I’m wrong, I apologies completely. Just an interesting, if not completely flawed, observation

We all love photos

Some pretty spectacular ones of London from above by Jason Hawkes here

The Places We Live

A beautifully simple but powerful way to bring a cause to life – The Places We Live

Ex EMI boss launches “the ultimate online music community”

Ex-EMI top dog, Eric Nicoli has launched an online music community RandRWorld, aimed at unsigned bands, music lovers, music professionals and venues.  Perhaps 5 years too late, RandR outline their mission statement to ‘music lovers’ in a format that probably looked good on a Powerpoint slide, but really won’t engage the modern day consumer. 

We hate to be negative on this blog, but this looks to be a bit of a lame duck on 1st viewing….

“Best kebab shop in the world” told to stop late night music

The Telegraph report ‘Best kebab shop in the world told to stop late night music’.  The story shows a video of one of the impromptu late-night ‘raves’ that have been stopped thanks to one reveller posting a clip on YouTube. 

All is not lost though as the legendary Marathon Bar kebab shop in Camden lives on, with music from the legendary French singer/guitarist, ‘Daniel’ through the early hours of the morning…

Call Cutta in a Box

The latest in innovative theatre as picked up by Springwise. 

Call Cutta in a Box is one on one and therefore interactive theatre. Dubbed “intercontinental phone play” it marries creativity with call centre efficiencies to deliver a personal entertainment experience.  

Aretha’s Hat

Genius flickr appreciation/support group - courtsey of ewarwoowar.

Is it really about telling stories?

Found this little nugget on We are Social taken from Ian Tait’s excellent Crack Unit blog.

Ian Tait’s  full post can be found here, and is well worth the time to sit down and read.

“My suspicion is that we’re seeing adverts made by people who haven’t been collaborating deeply online. Who haven’t been a part of these things. Who don’t understand the subtle, emotional things that happen in online relationships and groups. Another part of the reason we end up with big, generic, broad-brush, advertising. Things that work, in general, for some of the population.

But maybe broadcast media isn’t the place to tell the (more) interesting, deeper stories. The stories that happen quietly, inside the wires, over the airwaves, through the devices and in people’s minds.

Perhaps stories of togetherness and collaboration are best told in places where people are together, collaborating. And perhaps they should be told in ways that reflect the brilliance, excitement and usefulness of what doing things together using tools and technologies – not metaphors – is actually all about.

Or maybe in those places it’s not about telling stories at all.”