My employee’s parent company, IPG, has established a London ‘chapter’ (yes, it’s American) of its Women’s Leadership Network, which has proven successful in the US. After an initial kickoff meeting, to discuss mission and values and all of that stuff, they ran their first general event yesterday, with a talk by Nicola Mendelsohn, who is currently President of the IPA and Exec Chair of Kamarama. The title of her speech was ‘what she wished she knew when she was 20’ and it came down to 10 great tips for getting ahead in your career, regardless of your age. Understand the…
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I asked Tony what his favourites were – World of Warcraft. Click To Play
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I went along to the Social Breakfast organised by Ewan Spence this morning at Magnolia. I asked the table my question of the week. Will, from Austin, CC Chapman, Eric Skiff and VinVin Click To Play
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Aaron talks about Holiday Inn Express and Loren chips in with a comment about Geico
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I’m off to SXSW tomorrow, to have fun, to do a little speaking and to take some videos. I’ve decided to do a wee video series, asking people what their favourite marketing campaign is at the moment. I’ve been using qik on the N95, which I won’t be able to use in the US, so probably moving the stuff to blip for that – in fact, I’ve used Blip to do this embed. Fist up is Jo, who describes her faves. You’ll have to ignore the starts of the videos – I’m sure I’ll learn to edit soon! Then lloyd,…
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I just twittered that I was off to the IAB MIXX conference today and Tom Morris responded, (only partly tongue-in-cheek) that he thought they’d been replaced by Ad Block. Which leads me to my question. If, hypothetically, we all had Ad Block so that no ads were served how much would you pay for your services, starting from Google Search, Gmail and other services, including Yahoo and 1000s’ of other small services that are ad supported. As a starting point, I pay $25/year for Flickr, for additional services and no ads. I’d probably pay the same for Gmail – but…
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Mahalo is brilliant, or so says my sister. That’s what she thought when she took a look at it after looking at Twitters about it. When I asked why she thought that, here’s what she said. Wow – now I do not have to spend hours searching for things on the Web – I can just ask MAHALO – one human powered search engine that will find the best pages for you. This is a genius concept that will move Web research in to a new dimension. Interesting to see that “I am not a plastic bag” is in the…
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Shameless plug for a site and campaign I’ve been working on, but check out ColorShowdown.com* from Sunsilk for some fun stuff. The site taps into the blondes vs brunettes war (you don’t think it’s a war – take a look a the MySpace groups!). Not sure how many of the target audience read this, but if you are, you can do the following: watch videos – the TV spots, behind the scenes, jokes (send your friend a joke video) see results of our ‘secret experiments’, currently it’s who eats healthiest, but we have a few more to come. read all…
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An example of a ad slogan that got into my brain years ago and has never left. But today, there’s almost nothing ‘official’ on the web about this, the only bit being on Unilever’s corporate site; so you just have to look up everyone talking about the day and not the company – or complaining that the company have not put out any adverts to remind them! There’s a nice little analysis of the meme on IanVisits, so not going to repeat it. It’s Shrove Tuesday, time to break out the eggs, flour and milk and whip up a batch…
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This is now back…some changes but nothing substantial. One of the projects I’ve been working on, at least from a metrics and tracking perspective, is a US campaign for Domino’s Pizza: Anything Goes, any large pizza, any topping any crust for $9.99. Supported by a heavy TV promotion, in-store, email, SMS, online advertising, all the usual stuff, it also had an unusual contest and teaser video component. The concept behind the online promotion is that anything goes for $9.99. So for 5 weeks, starting 1 Jan, Dominos have been auctioning items on eBay for $9.99. From ipods to video cameras…
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This is one of the more interesting job sites I’ve seen. It’s a very different take on the company I currently work for who are recruiting entry level people – are you Ready to Sell Your Soul?
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Hugh is offering to help solve the conundrum of meshing big, corporate business advertising as performed by the big corporate advertising agencies with the world that is Web2.0. He has a solution he’s willing to offer you for $100k. And if I had the cash, I might have taken him up on the offer, given the success he’s having with Stormhoek, English Cut and others. Meanwhile, I’ll keep plugging away here, hopefully breaking down a few barriers and making small steps into moving the big clients closer to a different way of using the web. I mentioned fear in my…
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A satirical look at what goes on in an ad agency, presenting a pitch to the client and what it really means. It rings a little true!
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This set of games has to be one of the most addictive I’ve seen. But to you by Kempt for Sony Viao, it just takes the form of one game after another. All short and suite, some of them incomprehensible (you click and something happens) it just keeps you onthe page with all the different things. The email announcing it says the time spent is over treble the industry average. I can well believe it – it is so addictive. And I was planning on writing a post about how all the virals I’ve been pointed to over the last…
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The agency where I work have been busy producing a series of 2-3min shorts, called Lovebites, that are being shown 5x/week in TBS here in the US, in partnership with Sunsilk. They focus on the life of a 25yo as she develops a relationship with her new man. A few episodes were filmed that would never make it onto US telly, so can be found on the website and the video sites, covering such topics as spanking, male fake orgasms and shared shaving.
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The Million Dollar Homepage was successful and was immediately followed by plenty of imitators, none of whom achieved the same notoriety. No-one had a really new take on it. But now I think we have one in Your Name into Space. MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and the Georgia Institute of Technology Space Systems Design Lab are designing a satellite which will be launched into space in 2010. To support the development they are selling advertising on the satellite, at 1cm3 spaces. In return for your donation (tax-deductible of course) you will either get a photo of the logo from…
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Bad, bad title. Setting up everyone to believe you can take control of the masses out there. As was acknowledged eventually in the panel conversation, taking control is out of the question but it seems that none of the panel had questioned the title in preparation. Again, this is taken from rapidly scribbled notes. The panel were: Mary Bermel, Director Interactive, HP Dean Harris, Chief Marketing Officer, Kayak.com John Trimble, SVP Branded Sales, FOX Interactive Media Moderator: Stacey Lynn Koerner, President, Consumer Experience Practice, Interpublic Media Stacey: What is an operational defintition of UGC? John: It means different things to…
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Frank Kelly is the CEO of Arnold US and has written a book ‘The Breakaway Brand – How Great Brands Stand Out’. However, I found his talk about using interactive to help build brands extremely frustrating, with multiple asides and exclamation marks in my notes as he said something that I disagreed with or just left me baffled. (I’ll add those in to the notes as I go through). As the person next to me said, he was obviously selling his book but not necessarily giving any real insights into interactive usage. He’s CEO of an agency that has dome…
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Nissan have been runing some interesting commercials this week, to promote the new (I assume it is new) Nissan Sentra. Marc Horowitz has blogged his story – it was last week – and explains the rules. I must live 7 straight days out of my Sentra. I am free to come and go from the Sentra as I please. I must not return to my apartment at any point during the 7 days. I must assume my normal day-to-day responsibilities including work and all scheduled client meetings. I must personally prepare at least 4 meals within the immediate vicinity of…
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Bore Me are listing the top 10 viral downloads for the year, for both commercial ads and for more fun videos. Interestingly Volkswagon top both the polls. In the ads section, their Singin’ in the Rain mashup ad came out on top. The marketeers would be pleased with that result, but rather less pleased that in the general downloads the spoof VW ad about suicide bombers being contained by VW’s strength came out on top.