From the viral mailing list today, we get a link to a new Doctor Who game, to keep you amused now the series has finished for the year. Not really a viral, more a link to an existing website. You get to be K9, move round the maze, collect things, avoid the baddies and get […]
Blackout Country
The US has been suffering a number of blackouts as the heatwave hits the countries ability to provide enough electricity to run all the air conditioners. The blackouts have affected MySpace, which was down for most of the weekend; at times the error message blamed the blackouts and sometimes, like currently, states the outage is […]
HOPE: Literacy and Gutenberg
In one of the talks on Friday, on text to speech software, a series of statistics about the US reading habits were thrown up on the screen. Co-incidently (i think) the same set of stats appeared on on Jeff Jarvis’s blog, sourced from Dan Poynter. One-third of high school graduates never read another book for […]
The old ways are best?
Weiden & Kennedy in London are advertising for a new Creative Director, in the free ads in Tesco (a supermarket, something like walmart). Or at least someone is advertising for them – I wonder which campaign got the person upset?
Hope: Privacy is Dead
I was looking forward to the Privacy is Dead panel at Hope today. Someone had volunteered to be the target and Steve Ramban, from Pallorium Ltd, had spent time gathering all the information he could, producing about a 500 page dossier. Instead, we were told that Steve had been arrested the evening before by FBI […]
Spam email
My domain is being used in a spam email, so I’m currently sitting on about 3000 returned/out of office mails. Not the best problem to have. Now I have to go through and delete everything 🙁
DRM free music by Yahoo
Yahoo have released for sale a song that is DRM free. (One song only, mind you). Unfortunately it’s Jessica Simpson – but you can get it personalised before you download it – get your name in the song. As the Yahoo blog puts it We’ve also been saying that DRM has a cost. It’s very […]
Emily Goes Global (or at least the UK)
The story of thatgirlemily has spread to the UK. The Metro apparently had a shot of the billboard in Los Angeles with the caption: “Californication: A wife takes revenge on her cheating husband by buying a giant billboard poster to abuse him and ridicule his manhood. The woman, known only as Emily, paid more than […]
HopeNumberSix
I’m spending the next few days at a conference, a rather different type than the one I usually go to. I’m at Hope Number Six, where hope stands for Hackers of Planet Earth. Three days of talks about all manner of subjects with a hacking connection with two main tracks plus a do it yourself […]
Morning Coffee
At the instigation of Noah and Piers, a group of us got together this morning for coffee and chat about marketing, trends, technology etc. A couple of hours went by very quickly..and it looks like we’ll be having a few more of these so sign up if you are interested
BTPodshow
As with Ewan, I got an email today suggesting I look at www.btpodshow.com. The mail was from CC Chapman, whose show can be found on Podshow, so it looks like they are trying to generate buzz around a new service. Don’t think it’s for British Telecom (which was my initial reaction) but you never know […]
Greenpeace Anti-car ads
From today’s viral mailgroups comes a link to a new Greenpeace campaign. As it’s called the Gas Guzzler you can guess where it is going, but it’s well put together as you watch the “hero’s” collegues react to him in the office. It turns the usual adland admiration of a new car into disdain. the […]
Anti-astroturfing
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.
The ads that did not make it
Today’s competition on Worth1000 is about the ads that did not make it, those ideas that would never have made it past the first round. I quite like this one (by an anonymnous creator):
ThatGirlEmily – good idea, bad execution
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, […]
Google and Measuremap – lack of feedback
I’ve been using Measuremap blog reporting system for a while now and really like it. It’s laid out well and I like the way it gives me my information in just the right buckets. I;ve got Google analytics set up as well, but just does not feel as good for me. However, the performance over […]
That Girl Emily – viral marketing for something
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 […]
London great for start-ups?
“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 […]
The Podcast Network – buy up some advertising
From Ewan, over at The Podcast Network, they are now offering up 15 second slots for advertisers on ebay for a couple of their shows. The constrictions of ebay descriptions mean that the offer is for pick up only 😉
Sony Bravia blog – a missed chance
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 […]