100 dances and 100 songs

Quite surreal, very camp, pretty enjoyable

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

Online Journalism by the NYT done well. Example 1

This is brilliant. I love it, I really do. I won’t even try and describe it, so just go and have a play with it… here

New Pepsi logo

A riposte..

You have a lot to answer for T-Mobile…

13,000 people descend on Liverpool Street station and cause havoc. The 21st century version of being Tango’d?

Youtube Vloggers give birth to a… Super Vlog

As the current #1 subscribed channel on Youtube in February so far, 4 Guys and Mhazz is, as they put it, “Youtube’s first real (AWESOME) collab channel” (and has already outsubscribed “Lifesforsharing”). 5 well-subscribed video bloggers getting together to create a new, collaborative channel. It’s pretty genius – they’ve all got different talents (comedy, music etc), all got around 3000 subscribers each, and it’s 5 times less content to generate each – is this convergence of “Super Channels” the future of youtube?

It’s an interesting concept for any brand looking to create a Youtube channel, with a long-term aim – people seem to subscribe if you promise regular content, like daily, weekly shows (and they’re interested, obviously).
If you don’t, then why would anyone subscribe to see more? Even if you are aiming to provide regular content in the future, you have to tell your audience up front – it’s like asking people to subscribe to a magazine that doesn’t have any more issues (kind of)

They’re only 7 episodes in – here’s the Monday one (It’s like the Mary Whitehouse Experience has been reincarnated, with a young David Tennant…):

Hi-De-Hi Camp(Bestival)ers…

In an era of festivals being launched with full page ad in the NME, the legend that is Rob Da Bank has taken an entertaining approach to launching 2009′s Camp Bestival festival….hosted by none other than, er, Peggy from Hi-De-Hi, aka Su Pollard.  Weird.  Nice to see a concert promoter embracing the modern age with an entertaining launch mechanic.

Social character extensions

We’ve been talking to clients for sometime about the power of Twitter and other social channels in creating intimacy around brands inherent or associative passion points. Something that’s particularly relevant for entertainment brands – where character extensions and back stories can come to life to maintain engagement and develop deeper more immersive narratives between (and possibly even during) on air/line shows.

If you were following Man Men’s @Don_Draper on Twitter last year it turns out it was actually Paul Isakson conducting a research project on doing exactly that. At first AMC had the profiles pulled from Twitter, then probably realizing they were getting free advertising and potentially facing a firestorm of online backlash, they let them go back up. However when Paul gave the profile over to AMC, despite being handed an active and essentially free dialogue with a large group of fans (who when finding out it was Paul still wanted @Don_Drapper to live on) they promptly did nothing with it.

The point isn’t so much the issues of authenticity and control – although those are obviously huge (and for another time) – but the fact that whilst followers of @Don_Draper probably feel let down by AMC, the other characters profiles, run by fans, have been thriving ever since. If brands are to jump in, whether through choice or through circumstance, they need to be committed to an ongoing approach. If they are not and are just in it for the life of a campaign they had better be clear about that up front and have an exit strategy that doesn’t leave those who were engaged feeling cold.

@betty_draper
@bettydraper
@Sally_Draper
@bertramcooper
@peggyolson
@bud_melman

On other Mad Men stuff – a great clip from Seth Godins blog on what comes first – product or marketing.

@acotterill
@mindsharesocial

Bio Mapping

Saw Russel Davis speak about this at the Howies ‘Do’ Lectures. Lovely idea which tags areas of a map with emotional arousal – achieved by having sensors attached to volunteers skin as they travel around. The idea is to create a global emotions map, where geographical location and emotional arousal are linked and catalogued.

Have a look

Paul’s Boutique

Cool little site for the 20th anniversary remaster.

 

 

 

 

(Makes me feel old as well.)

Google earth..

… just keeps getting better – as well as satellite and storm overlays, now explore the oceans with  content from a variety of sources overlaid all 3.0 style.