Appletiser (from Coca-Cola) have a timewasting game ready for you to play – and if you are lucky you can win a diamond. Based on a cross between Tetris and another desktop game (whose name I never got but I played a lot) you get a chance to play the game and then enter a prize draw for a diamond bracelet. You don’t actually have to play the game – of you start it and then click Quit it takes you to the entry form anyway.

Unlike many sites I’ve seen it does offer an obvious text only method of entering the competions, with out having to use the flash entry form. The text version gives a link which allows you just to email your entry (although it appears their tems and conditions don’t quite allow this)

I like the new piece of functionality and guidance from the Tate.

Tate has devised a new way of looking at the Displays with a range of themed ‘Collections’. These suggest a number of personal journeys you could take, reflecting different moods and enthusiasms and revealing the extraordinary breadth of work on show.

It gives you some collections set up already but it also allows you to set up your own collection, although currently from a limited selection of art. Choose your favourites, add you commentary and produce your own leaflet to guide you or your friends through the gallery.

There is still work to be done on the selection tool as it stands – you can’t see larger versions of the images, there’s no information available on the work and it won’t let you choose less than 6. You can’t comment on your choices either.

Even with these shortcomings, I like this idea and can see it expanding. Give us the chance to choose more than 6 and let us choose from the whole collection. Let me add written commentary. Furthermore, how about letting us upload our own spoken tours round the choice. Add some voting for the best tours and you increase the community around this – pick a few favourites tours, load them up on your mp3 players, print out the maps and off you go. Nice start – but will it go anywhere?

Unlike Coca-Cola, Mentos mints have embraced the idea of mixing Mentos with a variety of pops to make fountains of sticky sugar water. They are running a competition to find the best fan video, which gives the rest of us plenty of fun to watch.

But Lloyd has to do it a little different. He’s used Stormhoek wine to produce a wine fountain. There’s a video showing how to do it and the various attempts. I wonder how champagne reacts?

University College London have been researching the digital lifestyles of the British population and put them all in a nice handy tool. There are 22 categories, ranging from E-unengaged (groups that do not have access to electronic communications or technologies) to e-experts (every confidence in their abilities to undertake on-line transactions and to make full use of electronic technologies. ) The theory is that the information can be used to help inform future policies on digital access – but of course, they could also be used to drive some advertising 😉

The tool allows you to plug in postcodes and see what the different areas are like. And I think I’m living in the wrong place, as my area comes out as part of the E-Unengaged set – too old to be bothered. It seems to be accurate down the individual postcode, which is a group of around 50-60 houses, so it does reflect reality. I live in an ex-council flat and many of the remaining tenants are elderly.

Yesterday, Media Guardian (reg req) ran an article about Honda providing web only videos:

“This is the start of exploring different ways to provide content,” said Rebecca Tickle, the Honda account director at Wieden & Kennedy London.

This follows on from the success of Cog and Choir available. I went to take a look at the new content, but have no idea where it is, as the piece links to the home page of the website only, with no direct link appearing possible. And there’s no pointer to the new stuff. So I’ve no idea whether it’s any good or not. So they are missing a simple trick – if you have publicity about content on your site, please make sure that anyone landing on the site can find it easily.

The blog for the Sony Bravia has gone quiet over the last week, after they have finished filming – they all busy doing the editing know. There’s some great footage over on YouTube of the towerblock being covered in paint and then of the air blasts going off.

Lynx (or Axe as it ges under in most of the world) have a new campaign out. Not moving too far away from its core values, the site features lots of scantily clad women in videos and games. It also has the expected (compulsary?) user generated content competition. Load up your video of you (the expectation is that you will be male) dancing in a towel and you can win yourself and 6 of your friends your very own wash down by the promotional girls.

Following on from the You Tube change to their T&Cs, I took a look at the ones for this competition and was surprised to see that by entering you waive all ownership rights, including the right to be be identified as the author, to the work you submit. Looking at other competitions, kayak.com asks for a licence to publish but recognised you still own the work. The lawyers here are taking a very conservative stance which is contrary many expectations – if I make something, I own it.

I’ve been playing with Bix a little over the last few days and their T&Cs are a lot more reasonable

Subject to:
1. Company’s ownership of any underlying code incorporated into Content that you create with the Software; and
2. Company’s or third parties’ ownership of material on the Site, such as lyrics and music, that may be incorporated in Content you provide to Company,
you retain ownership of the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Content, including but not limited to your performance.

Here again, they expect you to grant them worldwide rights to use the content, but that enables them to display the content on the site.

From today’s viral notifications we have something a movie trailer and a little more. Severance is a UK horror film, sending a team of sales people out on a ‘team building’ event in the wilds when somethign goes a little wrong. I’m sure many people have had to endure the horror of team building events with people they have to work with, but hopefully never this bad. The movie/game site is very straigh forward – info on the movie, a trailer and the game. I think they have borrowed the game from somewhere and reskinned it, as in gameplay it’s basically taking penalty kicks, even it is with a severed head and the idea is to hit the goalkeeper and knock body parts off.

Update: Ana has commented that they didn’t borrow or reskin…even so, I’ve played very similar games and htis one is still fun.

Over on the NewPR wiki, Paull Young and Trevor Cook have started an anti-astroturfing campaign with a great list of resouces about reported instances of the practice and commentary about it and how it can backfire.

I like stealth marketing campaigns, viral campaigns, ARGs, what ever you want to call them. When done well, they challenge and engage, provoke comment and get people involved. They are fun. But with this latest one from Court TV, the buzz is there but so are the potential problems.

Behind the scenes we have PR, media buyers, technical teams and the agency people out pretendind they are Emily – ‘she’ was outside Pennn Station in New York yesterday handing out fliers. There’s a thatgirlemilyblog that’s getting linked to, outdoor posters that are getting plenty of notice and comment and probably all other stuff in the works. So far so good. Everything is working out right.

But a few boundaries were overstepped and that could have the wrong implications for the brand and the agency. There’s a hint of astroturfing or just plain stupidness. Emily was out on the blogs and message boards spinning her tale and getting tea and sympathy back. But as with Cillit Bang, it’s not the best thing to be out and about posting as a character in places that don’t expect it. ARGs do this…but a working practice appears to have arisen – there are ways to get attention and not piss people off in the wrong place. ‘Emily’ has hurt some of the people who read and enjoy these boards…not the greatest result.

A second mistake with this campaign – they should have done a little more research and not used an identity that already exists. thatgirlemily already has a presence on message boards and other sites. Her online profile is now messed up with this one and I would not be too pleased at that as the buzz aroud the fake Emily is probably not what the real Emily would like.

I finding myself getting angry at this campaign, most likely a slightly over the top response, but agencies doing these things badly makes it more difficult to get compnaies to even touch these types of campaigns. I strongly beleive they work well when done well. done badly and clumsily like this one means that the whole industry gets tarred with the same brush.

Updated…
My friend Keiron sent me a few links (from Fark)to what is, to all appearances, a new viral campaign..for something. Not quite sure what yet, but it’s definitely looks like a campaign. First of all read ThatGirlEmily. She started a blog a few weeks ago and then sudden calamity. A women scorned, swearing a 2 week campaign of vengence on her cheating husband. She has some nice contacts – called in a favour on Saturday night and less than 48 hours later she has billboards up in 2 cities declaring vengeance.

Now Will Thompson has done some digging and gives a rundown as to how you can spot that this is a campaign. Starting off with the perfect spelling and grammar and purple prose. ( I wonder how many client reviews the agency had to go through). And the multiple postings of the same message on different discussion groups, calmly posted 15 minutes apart when she is supposed to be on her way to see a PI. There’s a few other postings that Emily appears to have made as well, including this one, or this talking merrily about her lovely husband at the same time as posting that he is cheating on her on her blog.

And with all the advice that the women on these boards have offered, she’s not gone back and told them about her campaign to get back at her husband? But she is posting comments on other peoples blogs.

It’s at this point I hope I’m completely wrong, that it is not a stealth marketing campaign, that all these pointers are just because she is an extremely gifted writer/editor and very quick at picking up on blogs/message boards and her posts to some of the boards just got delayed in the timing. (because if not, this could severely backfire given the time and concern that is being expressed on the boards where she has posted. I’ve subscribed ‘cos I’m interested in what she’s going to do in the 2 weeks of wrath she promises (interestingly the feed is listed as new yesterday in bloglines).

Update: I’ve got confirmation that this is a campaign for Court TV. (friend of a friend).

And here’s a follow up comment from Smart at Love:

Manipulating forums like this where people actually go for actual help just to sell your products to people already suffering… that’s the lowest of low.

I can’t wait for someone to find and out the scam marketers responsible for this, so we can publish all their REAL personal info on the internet. And billboards.

There are other similar messages on the message boards where Emily has been asking for help and advice.

There’s a billboard up in Chicago as well

“London is a unique market, with a highly developed start-up culture. In the UK, start-ups are more fashionable and sexier and clients are often more inclined to give them their business. In the US, they don’t generally succeed – the size and scale of business is a barrier to entry for start-ups and means the top talent generally believes they will be better off staying with established agency brands.”

Someone thinks the UK is brilliant for startups – a definite change of opinion from previous US/Valley only comments.

Well, it would be if they were talking about technology startups. Instead this is David Jones, EuroRSCG, talking to Campaign magazine about advertising agency startups.

Updated: they’ve now added moderated comments,and are regularly updating. Thanks Ed for the response.

Via Adweek, I see that Sony have being listening to their consumers (at least one bit has…still not sure about their music/DRM section), seen the enthusiasm for the bouncing balls and are going to let the bloggers follow along the making of their next commercial.

Online viewers will be treated to exclusive content here on this site including video blogs directly from the ad shoot. Bloggers will be supplied with Sony Cyber-shot digital cameras to film themselves, each other and the action straight from the set. Seeing it first, means seeing it here!

Look, they’re even going to to let bloggers on the set, give them tools to film the filming and create online buzz all by themselves.

Now, I admit there’s a nice piece of film on the site about the making of the previous comercial (I always like behind the scene stuff) but isn’t this all a little one way? A select few will be allowed to film (I’m going to hazard a guess that they may have to sign some kind of promise not to diss them too much?). But the rest of us? I can feed back about what I like the site, but only via a set questionnaire. Are they going to share the comments from that? There’s no open comments, no chance to ask questions and challenge them….and no chance to build a relationship and rebuild some potential bridges. Now i could be charitable and say, from previous experience, that the lawyers said no to open comments and they do not have the funding to pay for full time moderation. But with the bashing that Sony have taken in the past in areas – and the great buzz they got over the Bravia ads – surely it’s a missed opportunity to take a small step to an open conversation.