We're all Slideshare RockStars!!

There are a bunch of April Fool's day pranks going round today (I liked this Guardian article), obviously but so far respect for Slideshare for theirs!

I received this email - as did a lot of other people:

Hi Willemvdh,

We've noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job ... you must be doing something right. ;-)

Why don't you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team

I checked my Slideshare and the only presentation I have on there suddenly has over 30,000 views! I think they added an extra 00 or something to everyone's numbers and sent that Slideshare RockStar email! RickStars, more like ;)

It's already trending on Twitter as the number 4 topic. Really simple and elegant idea, lots of buzz and conversation created from it. Brilliant. And it plays with people's egos, so all the more reason to talk about it, they probably also saw a big surge in visits to their site. They must be LTAO ;o)

Earth Hour

It's that time of the year again! WWF are calling to everyone on the planet to turn their lights off for an hour on Saturday 28th March at 8:30pm GMT.

All you have to do to participate is turn your lights off. Get some candles. I participated last year (Reminded last minute by Google that changed their homepage for the occasion ;). You can also sign up here to show your support, it'll only take you a couple of minutes and it's for a good cause.

There are a bunch of resources here for your blog, banners, etc - but what's pretty cool is they also created a highly fashionable augmented reality 'Earth in your hands' thing - if you never saw 3D augmented reality, the concept is that you print out a specific design handed out and then show that to your webcam on the site, and voila! A 3D design appears in your hands. Pretty nifty, heh?



Even the pandas are doing, so why not you? Crazy pandas...

McDonalds Ad..? Or am I being cynical?

I received this email chain from a friend. I hadn't received any in so long, I'm just thinking it's a McDonald's marketing campaign ;) Touching story I guess, though a bit too much God in it.

Do you think God eats at McDonald's?

Don't get me wrong I'd gladly sacrifice 10 friends on Facebook to give a Whopper to a hungry/homeless person, I just don't think God, McDonald's and this email will help them that much.

My friend Adam said I wasn't being too cynical, just too French. I don't know what he means..?

PS: On this note, I'm making a donation to Crisis and I encourage you to do the same, it will make more of a difference than forwarding this email around!

A Return is Requested....You'll see why.

Breakfast at McDonald's

This is a good story and is true, please read it all the way through until the end! (After the story, there are some very interesting facts!):

I am a mother of three (ages 14, 12, 3) and have recently completed my college degree.

The last class I had to take was Sociology.

The teacher was absolutely inspiring with the qualities that I wish every human being had been graced with.

Her last project of the term was called, 'Smile.'

The class was asked to go out and smile at three people and document their reactions.

I am a very friendly person and always smile at everyone and say hello anyway. So, I thought this would be a piece of cake, literally.

Soon after we were assigned the project, my husband, youngest son, and I went out to McDonald's one crisp March morning.

It was just our way of sharing special playtime with our son.

We were standing in line, waiting to be served, when all of a sudden everyone around us began to back away, and then even my husband did.

I did not move an inch... an overwhelming feeling of panic welled up inside of me as I turned to see why they had moved.

As I turned around I smelled a horrible 'dirty body' smell, and there standing behind me were two poor homeless men.

As I looked down at the short gentleman, close to me, he was 'smiling'

His beautiful sky blue eyes were full of God's Light as he searched for acceptance.

He said, 'Good day' as he counted the few coins he had been clutching.

The second man fumbled with his hands as he stood behind his friend. I realized the second man was mentally challenged and the blue-eyed gentleman was his salvation.

I held my tears as I stood there with them.

The young lady at the counter asked him what they wanted.

He said, 'Coffee is all Miss' because that was all they could afford. (If they wanted to sit in the restaurant and warm up, they had to buy something. He just wanted to be warm).


Then I really felt it - the compulsion was so great I almost reached out and embraced the little man with the blue eyes.


That is when I noticed all eyes in the
restaurant were set on me, judging my every action.

I smiled and asked the young lady behind the counter to give me two more breakfast meals on a separate tray.

I then walked around the corner to the table that the men had chosen as a resting spot. I put the tray on the table and laid my hand on the blue-eyed gentleman's cold hand.

He looked up at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, 'Thank you.'

I leaned over, began to pat his hand and said, 'I did not do this for you. God is here working through me to give you hope.'

I started to cry as I walked away to join my husband and son. When I sat down my husband smiled at me and said, 'That is why God gave you to me, Honey, to give me hope..'

We held hands for a moment and at that time, we knew that only because of the Grace that we had been given were we able to give.

We are not church goers, but we are believers.
That day showed me the pure Light of God's sweet love.

I returned to college, on the last evening of class, with this story in hand.
I turned in 'my project' and the instructor read it.
Then she looked up at me and said, 'Can I share this?'
I slowly nodded as she got the attention of the class.

She began to read and that is when I knew that we as human beings and being part of God share this need to heal people and to be healed.

In my own way I had touched the people at McDonald's, my son,the instructor, and every soul that shared the classroom on the last night I spent as a college student.

I graduated with one of the biggest lessons I would ever learn:

UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE.

Much love and compassion is sent to each and every person who may read this and learn how to

LOVE PEOPLE AND USE THINGS -
NOT LOVE THINGS AND USE PEOPLE.

There is an Angel sent to watch over you.

In order for her to work, you must pass this on to the people you want watched over.

An Angel wrote:

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart

To handle yourself, use your head..
To handle others, use your heart.

God Gives every bird it's food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

Send it back, you'll see why !

A box of gold

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

With a secret inside that has never been told

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This box is priceless but as I see

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The treasure inside is precious to me

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Today I share this treasure with thee

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It's the treasure of friendship you've given me.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If this comes back to you then you'll have a friend for life

but, if this becomes deleted, you are not a friend.

Send this to everyone you consider a friend!

It will grant you one wish and only one wish,

that is, if you decide to send this to others. You can wish for anything.

Repeat your wish until you have stopped scrolling. Make it count!

FOR YOUR WISH TO COME TRUE YOU HAVE TO SEND IT TO:
3 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE EVENTUALLY
5 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 3 MONTHS
10 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 5 WEEKS
15 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 1 WEEK

CAN'T WAIT A WEEK???

22 People-Your Wish Will Come True In 1 Day!

****** **********REMEMBER**************
THIS MUST BE SENT OUT THE
DAY YOU READ IT FOR
YOU TO GET YOUR WISH

First day of SXSWi

I don't know if I'll be writing a post every day for this, but I'm not being too crazy tonight and can write so I might as well ;)

First really busy day of conferencing, and it was pretty amazing! Glad I got up early and managed to do my registration and grab my badge really quickly given the Convention Centre was pretty much empty. My hotel is a little far from downtown - not too much but enough that I can't really easily be going back and worth walking if I need to srop something off. Like the gigantic goody bag I got this morning. Hanged around the huge Austin Convention Centre for a couple of hours, came across Alex from Hide & Seek and Jeremy, and talked with a few other people as well before catching up with Katy for lunch.

Went according to plan for the first panel of the day: 'Minority Report is real' and it was very cool - exactly the kind of research and forward thinking I was expecting from coming over here. Three people on the panel, all seriously interesting people, but not exactly into interface design - this was more of a side research project they started conducting together, looking into how movies and sci-fi have influenced new technology developments and still are - or sometimes the other way round as well.

They distinguished several trends in interface design / gestural UI development, and showed us examples in movie clips and then how close or far we are from those in real life. That was very cool and beautiful, but it was really great they kept asking the questions going further about what they might be used for and whether we really need an oblong beautiful Minority Report right now, how much is it exactly used for good, etc.

Next wasn't so good, unfortunately. I was hesitating between a web design one and this one about a company doing ARG types games, I probably should have gone to the other one, but hey - it's also part of choosing between so many things, and some other people told me most of the other talks at the same time as the last time weren't very good - I chose right for the 1st one, I guess. The company in question, The Go Game, actually do really interesting stuff in terms of games for corporate / team building events but I thought they didn't really have much to say and didn't feel like they really prepared for this talk either - they probably could have done it in 10 min with the material they had but talked for an hour... Nice people and their games look definitely great but not so great at talking in a panel...


Next was one of the big talks of SXSWi with Alex Bogusky - the B in CP+B - Talking about 'Can an Ad guy bring bike sharing to America?' Having quickly found out that the answer was in fact no, the topic shifted slightly to 'The art of sticking your nose where it doesn't belong'. He introduced CP+B and talked about who they are and the kind of work they do; as you do in such a talk - I actually didn't mind given I'd never heard him talk in a conference and apart from BK these days I haven't been talking about everything they do and found about a couple of campaigns I didn't know about as well. But more importantly, he talked about a load of pretty fucked up things on this planet via a bunch of good quotes and stats (#collapsonomics) and about making a difference. At first it could seem like it's all hopeless, but going from the fact that human knowledge is growing exponentially and a few other things - basically just go out there and do something to help, anything you're passionate about. 'Poke around' Go with an idea, talk to some people, meet some people who know people who know people, stick your nose where it doesn't belong.

He essentially shared this through their project (Humana, Trek and CP+B) of bringing bike sharing to America - a similar system that exists in Paris with the Velib. All really interesting stuff and pretty inspiring!


Mr Alex Bogusky

I ended up going off to a bar from there with Alice from BBH, Nicole (whose Husband was freelancing with us at iD recently), Damiano from the RSA, Conor from the RoundHouse and a couple of other people. Originally well intended wanting to go to the first official drinks for SXSW but way too much queue and it turned out Nicole's sister is a bar manager in Austin, so we went there for drinks (I then tried going to the 2nd official event - saw the queue, turned around) and then on to a Mexican restaurant with a few other Austin peeps. Turned out, we ate close to the Hotel where I'm staying so I thought I'd go back and write this - keep the big party energy for tomorrow ;)


The Gueres Taco bar

Quick SXSW update

I finally landed in Austin, Texas for SXSWi! Long flight (s) and some delays, but got here in the end and that's what counts! Couldn't wait to have a beer and walk around a little as I arrived at the hotel and the event already started. Loads of people were already on the flight and the hotel bar had a few people there already pre-celebrating...

Already maing some contacts, the first person I saw at Heathrow this morning at 8am is also the first person I saw arriving here and turns out to be in charge of new media at the RoundHouse in Camden - very cool Irish guy. We had a really good chat about online and music - having just completed the HERD chapter about WoM and the Arcic Monkeys, I had stuff to talk about ;0).

All looking pretty awesome!

Also met a bunch of other people, including a colourful and pretty lively couple from Tennessee - that I might just try to avoid slightly in the coming next days ;)

Very excited, though tomorrow morning is going to be a very long queue to register for the event, apparently the queues were already huge this evening for the pre-registration...

I realise I should have some kind of picture illustrating, but that will be for tomorrow.

Ice Cream Review - The Garden of Tweetdom: An evening with Marcus Brown

May 7, 1824: Premiere night of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

According to one witness, "the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them."



March 9, 2009: Premiere night of Marcus Brown's Garden of Tweetdom. (Photo by Ben Terrett)

Need I say more..?


An unusual atmosphere of sheer anticipation could be felt yesterday around London Bridge, but on a Monday evening, this had nothing to do with the with the well-known bustle surrounding the famous Borough Market on Fridays and Saturdays.

No, this could only be described as an entirely different level of artistry for this evening was the first live and official Tweet Reading event to take place in London. Rumours abounded over the past few weeks amongst the eminent Twitterati of hushed discussions via Direct Messages concerning the veracity of the artist having turned down requests to speak from the Royal Academy of Arts. The choice of the Market Porter as a venue, an established and popular public house, can only be explained from the extreme proximity with the farmer's market and the glorious food sold therein. Just as food is sustenance for the body, the Tweet Reader's work and interpretation of tweets are sustenance for the mind; moreover the theme of the evening was to be of the origins of all things Twitter, just as the market is the best representation of the origins of food in the heart of a city.

The London Twitterati lucky enough to be invited gathered in the room around 7pm and Marcus Brown appeared soon after, opening the evening with his signature and unmistakable words: 'Good evening'. Those two otherwise innocuous words, carried enough weight to silence the room instantly. A certain feeling of awe was immediately palpable within the audience, clearly the sign of being in the presence of a true master. After a few more words, Marcus announced that there would only be three Tweet Readings for the evening. A slight murmur of disappointment made its way through the room, though I admit I smiled at the intrinsic audacity of the number.

3. As you all well know, a magic number for as long as the number has existed. From the Holy Trinity in Christianity to the Triforce in the Legend of Zelda, three is the first uneven prime number, one of the major forces in the Universe. Using a number of such power, Marcus sets the tone and promises us an extraordinary evening at the very least. 'But will he deliver?' I thought.

With readings of William Humphrey, John Dodds, and ended with Sam Ismail (Whom according to anonymous sources has been instrumental in enticing the artist to a live performance) the evening certainly couldn't go wrong with such prolific and extremely talented Tweet authors; and they certainly deserve the acknowledgment accompanying their readings by such an important international figure in the Twitterverse; some even call Marcus the very first Twitter Academic. The sceptics will certainly accuse Marcus of a certain lack of creativity in choosing the most obvious authors for the evening, but what truly counts is the value of the insight and of the interpretation and in this field, detractors will have a difficult time finding any flaws to Marcus' readings.

But let us also remember that Marcus is first and foremost a Renaissance Man, a Polymath recognized by the worlds of arts and sciences as the Leonardo da Vinci of the Third Millenium. Marcus shared with us his previous works: iPod Singing, The Sacrum episode with Wieden and Kennedy, Charles Stabs' Business Horoscopes, and more surprises. As I said, food for the mind, but also food for the soul. To describe the rest of the event would only destroy the surprise for other spectators and as such, I will stop revealing any more here.

There is only one way to finish this review and Marcus Brown fortunately showed me the way: Marcus Brown delivered an outstanding performance at the Market Porter yesterday and I urge you; no, I beg you, to follow his works on And As if by magic, or run to get tickets if you hear of another live event, it might just... transform your life. Thank you.

Become a Vedett

Now here's a really nice little mix of digital and experiential for a campaign. I was talking to my sister a few days ago and she tells me she was having drinks with a few friends in a bar around Shoreditch. A guy showed up to them with a camera and asked them if he could take a picture.

They said yes, he takes the photo and disappears. He then comes back a few minutes with a beer bottle for each of them, the beer label prominently displaying the picture that was shot a few minutes ago. He explains that Vedett - the beer brand in question, is running a campaign where they will be printing pictures of people on the labels countrywide, so here's a free beer with your picture on it and go check out the website for more info about the campaign.

My sister said all of the sudden she has a completely different experience of that evening, she brought her beer bottle back home and said it's decorating her room now, it's a souvenir and she won't be drinking it for a while.

I really like that idea, very simple and even though the overall digital campaign isn't that original, having a few people roaming bars and priting picture labels makes a huge difference, all of a sudden the experience is real and personal, potentially becoming a souvenir token, or at least something to talk about at the bar with other people. And making people talk is generally awesome. I like it.

I need to try that beer now!



Here's the pic I submitted on the website. I thought having a bottle of Tsing Tao on it would be appropriate ;)

ASDA - Astroturfing Stupidly Destroys Advertising

I saw in a Brand Republic article this morning that ASDA just launched a new campaign and a Youtube video channel: Saving You Money TV



I started out being in two minds about it. Basically the gist of it is ASDA is always being cheap and saving you money. Given the recession it's even more important than ever to all pull together like brothers and that you keep spending the little money you have at ASDA - anyways something like that.

So they created this TV channel on Youtube where everyone can share what their money saving tips are - though it's already (Just with 11 videos) turning into an any tips, advice or cooking recipe acceptable.

Sooo... I thought OK, sure could be interesting, Youtube channel design is nice, the videos on offer aren't overly interesting but could have a small audience, and more to the point some the videos shot on location in an ASDA might be shared to friends of the people appearing on there.

The whole idea works for ASDA as a brand (even though milking and choking to death the recession theme, but everyone is doing right now...) and they're making sending videos as easy as possible, which is a great point in their favour (via Youtube uploads, email, MMS, etc).

But here's the last thing, I kept looking at a couple of videos, such the definitely waaay too long cheese grating 'competition' and noticed the 2 comments. Those are highly suspicious and prety sure it's astroturfing. Could be just those two and hopefully not part of the whole campaign, but I hate that. It's wrong and it always backfires.



User 1: Nitramrallytrack - Joined Youtube in January and since then the only activity is to have subscribed to the ASDA channel and watched their videos. Highly suspicious. Basic astroturfing. Other user is katec1975 and only joined a few days ago, same story...

They write: 'Utterly random but funny as...This man should be on telly - mentle' 'What a grate idea...'

Have you seen the video? Do you just happen to specialise in bad puns or bad spelling? Who do you think ASDA customers are? All dumb and illiterate? If it's the case, it's insulting is what it is.

Maybe nobody will care about this whole thing, but hey... What goes around comes around.

Now on the other hand, a couple of real Youtube users - or rather one right now have noticed the channel and posted one of their videos, so as I said earlier it might be interesting to a few people and might get khgibbons more video views, so why not...

Skittles - probably the Nth post about it

I'm sure there are already hundreds of posts about it out there and I read at least 2 good ones and I'm doing something else, so I'm going to over it very quickly and be really lazy and just advise to read their posts.

Without any particular argument, I personally really like it. And whatever you think about it, a LOT of people are talking about it.

Is any press good press? Good question.
Have they basically ripped off the Modernista website? Yes - but so what?

iboy compared the whole thing to a Turducken: Check his post.

David Armano also wrote about it on Logic+Emotion, check his out. Both are interesting for different reasons.

I think it's really interesting and they're a lot of attention for their new site launch

And let's remind ourselves that Skittles adverts are generally a bit bonkers anyway, I love their latest one:



And Cherry flavoured Skittle on the top, join in the fun and change your Twitter avatar to a giant Skittle!!

Hand crafted goodness

Here's a movie I'm seriously looking forward to: Coraline. And along with it a very cool campaign to promote it! Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors and I seriously recommend checking out his books if you've never read him (I'd say American Gods and Neverwhere are amongst the best), Henry Selick has done amazing work in the past and Laika animations are always outstanding!

Besides the almost obvious fact that the animation looks beautiful, one particularity here is that everything in the movie has been entirely crafted by hand.

W+K was in charge of the campaign and apparently part of Laika's intention was to come up with a completely innovative way to market the movie. To start with, they created 50 different hand crafted boxes, with designs representative of the look and feel of the movie, filled them with goodies, little puzzles, clues, challenges, access to a website and specially made films; and then sent those to specifically targeted bloggers. The campaign went on with interactive store fronts (Where people could see themselves with buttons on their eyes), guerilla style posters, custom made Nike trainers, rich media online advertising, etc. All of this cultivating a theme of intrigue and mystery encouraging people to go find out more about it.

Nice stuff, really looking forward to the movie! Check out the Coraline movie website here and the video summing up the campaign here:

Where the Wild Things are

This is my first time creating and uploading a presentation to Slideshare! I thought of this yesterday, and here it is, not necessarily ground-breaking but I hope you like it.

I'd love to know what you think of it!

Where the Wild Things are - with a modern communication twist

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: wild marketing)

Eyebrowbics

Eyebrowbics: All the scream with the cool kids of today.

So the new Cadbury's ad just came out, I saw it earlier today. I have to say that once again I'm not impressed by A glass and half full productions. It's vaguely interesting in a weird way and I'm sure it will be talked about a lot (I'm saying I don't like it, but I'm still writing about it...).

Given how much I disliked the Gorilla when it came out and it so successful (So I hear, at least) and well received that I'm wondering if my personal preference and opinion simply goes in opposite directions of that of the majority of people - and actually please confirm this is true only if you really want to please my ego. ;o)

This whole talk about the Gorilla and emotional marketing is sort of absurd. I watch the Eyebrowbics and I'm definitely sure it stirs emotions for the viewer - I suspect a range from amusement, laughter, slight confusion, like/dislike, etc.

But it doesn't say anything. Is there a message I'm not getting? Not really a story either... Is it enough to cause an emotion for the audience watching to associate it with your company, or does the memory prime the video content over that of. I think it's the latter. Just like any user created video, only with more money and a product depicted at the end.

Anyways, that's just one more positive tick in my mind for Lindt and Green & Black's and even though I rarely eat Cadbury's chocolate, I think I will suppress it entirely from my diet.

Ice cream for everyone

I just came across this video and a list of reasons why social media is like ice cream, regardless of any relevance it is obviously perfect for this blog! And the video is cute too, explaining what this whole social media shenanigans is supposed with an easily understandable analogy - even though it probably could have something else than ice cream.



Why is social media like ice cream?:

1) it has tonnes of variety
2) the best is usually not mass produced
3) freshness counts
4) it's neat to mix flavours
5) it's best when shared with others
6) flavour preference is very tribal
7) it comes in different formats - cup=video, cone=audio, cake=blog
8) it sparks passion, emotion and positive thoughts - we enjoy it
9) depending on the environment, it has a long or short half life
10) it's more than just bits and bytes/bites
11) the winning brands usually have a good story
12) the worst tended to forms tend to get burned/freezer burned
13) tastes better with authentic ingredients
14) you gain incredible loyalty when users feel in control (i.e. Coldstone Creamery)
15) some people don't like it, some people gorge on it
16) it's practised and consumed differently by country
17) it's a good way to waste time and gain weight

Shamelessly plundered from here, thanks!

Another post about Twitter

I had written a long post about Twitter, but in hindsight I think it's boring and doesn't really add much to the plethora of posts about Twitter out there already. I might revise it at some point, we'll see.

This is what matters in the meantime:

- I'm addicted to Twitter. (You can follow me @Hippowill)

- I mostly like following friends / acquaintances and people sharing interesting stuff around digital / advertising / marketing / planning.

- I use it as my main information filtering tool.

- It's interesting but I am getting bored of the amount of posts about how to best use Twitter, I'm going to stop reading most of them and use it however I like.

- I leave you with a pet of one of my favourite comic strip characters ever: Gaston Lagaffe's laughing seagull (La mouette rieuse). Here, in one of it's aggressive phases. Not sure why, but I think sometimes Twitter feels a bit like that for non-users adopting it, particularly when others around keep talking about it. ;o)

Hippo eats dwarf and meerkats using hippos

I just came across this and just had to post it:



All right, it seems this is pretty old news after all given apparently the first time this hoax came around the internets was in 1994 with a resurgence in 2006. Good memes (also rumours or urban legends) live through some sort of web boomerang effect and I hadn't heard of it at the time, so here it is again!

It was actually published in the Pattaya Mail, and there are a bunch of mentions on sites if you Google 'Hippo eats dwarf' including pages on The Museum of Hoaxes and Snopes.com.

Well that wasn't as exciting as it first seemed when I came across the image on Google five minutes ago, so maybe I should mention something about digital marketing given it is supposedly one of the main intentions of this blog.

Now maybe hippos don't eat dwarves, even accidentally when one falls in their mouth, but sources tell us meerkats will certainly be using them as soon as they evolve and are ready to take on the human race. Casual Meerkat Manor documentaries aficionados perhaps do not realise how advanced they have become... But some Antipodean dwellers seem to have an idea of possible times to come (Be sure to read the first comment as well).

The site recently developed by one Aleksandr Orlov (Most certainly tied to the Russian maffia) and his outrageous company Compare the meerkat.com dares boasting roller-skating or knitting meerkats from all over the world to show us what they can do!

Crazy conspiracy theory you say..? Here is the undeniable proof of a meerkat playing ultimate freesbee in New York:



Now of course if you really don't care about the meerkat world domination and all you're interested in is cheap car insurance, you might as well head over to Compare the market.com...

You might have realised I really like this new campaign, really simple, very fun and memorable idea! I learned from Amelia that a creative team at VCCP are responsible for this so congratulations to them! They were looking for a way for a comparison to stand out and come front of mind for people when they start looking or using a search engine and I love the solution.

Just seeing that Aleksandr Orlov has over 3000 friends on Facebook (Update - had, looks like his personal profile has been taken off, now and over 400 fans on a 'more official' page) it seems a bunch of other people are appreciating the idea as well.

My DNA personlity type

I came across this on Chris' blog via Twitter and had a little bit of time to kill so did it. I turns out I'm what they call a 'Free-wheeling' inventor - I actually quite like the description, I think it sounds good for someone working in planning & strategy ;o)




Nice test, I'm a bit surprised I have a low level of empathy on their scoring though... On cool sort of test basis, I'd recommend 'Now, discover your strengths' which is more about looking at your main strengths and encouraging one to develop them rather than overall personality - it's really interesting. Buy the book and do the test online.

Next generation talent

Melanie invited me this evening to judge in a social media panel for this Next Generation Talent competition ran by Panasonic in partnership with YCN.

For the launch of the new Viera HD TV entertainment hub, Panasonic decided to run a competition for aspiring UK creative talent to create a print or TV ad for the new product. From the 60 entries, the Brand Communications Manager at Panasonic and creative agency Billington Cartmell shortlisted about 15; and this evening a social media panel of about 8 people further shortlisted the candidates down to 6. From tomorrow for 48 hours (very short time frame...) people can choose their favourite entries on the website and an ad is going to be published in the Guardian tomorrow morning to that effect.

I had a very nice evening and thought it was pretty interesting for a bunch of reasons. To start with, it was the first time I was on a panel for an advertising competition, so that was pretty cool.

Referring to Will's post here for a second, I noticed the conversation tends to go towards swiftly towards bullshit bingo. I tried to avoid some words, but they keep coming back. I guess It can't really be helped given it goes with the territory, but it's always funny to notice. We could have had printed grids, really...

More interestingly, some of the entries were really great. It was sometimes difficult to judge given a lot of effort had gone into all of them. The conversation kept coming back to what the idea was behind the execution and whether that was something that could be used for an ad, which is fine for the purpose of selecting a winner, but another point I think is more interesting is the fact they have great material for brand advocacy and sort of high level user generated content they could be promoting a lot more than for just one winner of a competition. And the fact that the voting is limited to 48 hours is a shame as well.

Here are the 6 selected by the panel this evening:

'All memories in HD' (I'd say that one was my favourite of the 6)
'Centre of attention'
'Meet your HD family'
'Boxes'
'The mess around'
'Roots'

Now a very special mention to my personal favourite: 'The beehive' or 'BeeHub'

It doesn't actually have anything to do with the brief, but it's mad and I'm going to remember that one and talk about it. It would be amazing for some sort of viral piece - or purely promoting the fact that Panasonic is actively encouraging creative talent in the UK, and not just looking for someone who do their next ad.

And even about a next ad, just think again what a drumming gorilla has to do with chocolate before you start knocking off the bees...

Referring to a great post from Paul I read this morning, the competition itself is advertising that does and that's where there is a lot of value. Rather than trying to get a 'professional' ad out of one those competition entries, keep expanding and encouraging people to do and talk about this TV and these advertising ideas and creative concepts - that's more exciting - like the bees.

PS: Neil just opened Think Tank post of the month votes, there are some really good nominations, go check them out!

Fill a plane

A friend in China just invited to participate in this digital campaign for KLM Asia-Pacific, I thought it's a nice little idea. Register your plane and invite your friends on board to win prizes once the plane is filled up with passengers. In the meantime, have your picture on the homepage:



Apparently you can only email your friends about it, but coming soon are the Facebook applications and stickers for your blog or website - though I find it a bit strange they launched the campaign without having those ready...

Macy's Rickrolls America for Thanksgiving

Awesome! You may have seen this by now, but if not check it out:

They managed to have Rick Astley, appear and perform the song suddenly in the middle of the Macys Thanksgiving parade, amazing ;o)



I think Rick bowed down to the power of (internet, in this case) memes!

Just like this one!

Tropfest short film festival winner

Tropfest is the worlds largest short film festival. It already happened a couple of months ago so you may have heard of this, but this year for the first time the best film award was won by someone who shot their short entirely with a mobile phone camera.

The movie itself is beautiful, so if you have 3 minutes check it out, but it also made me think more about the way we use/consume/create media, not only has it been getting easier and easier for anyone to create and use production tools on their computer (I recently edited a video at work in a couple of hours, and it was the first time I ever opened iMovie) but all the different tools are getting mashed together in smaller and smaller devices. It's a topic that is definitely being talked about a lot these days, but I'll look at putting some of these thoughts together for a post.

I was also at the Mushrooms of the Russian Avant Garde exhibition on Saturday, I'll definitely write a post about it tomorrow once I upload the pics to Flickr - it was pretty weird and fascinating...

Global Beersphere

Thanks to Andy for the logo!

Catching up on on my posting so this is already old news but the Global Beersphere happened last week and it was a great evening! Thanks to Faris for initiating it and to all the people in different locations around the world to take on managing the event. For those not in the know, Beersphere is a casual gathering of all sorts of planner type peeps, generally in a some cool bar or pub and guess what? Having beers/drinks and a good chat.

The lovely Rachel was our official host for the evening, and it was a pleasure to meet her again and as well as a good bunch of other always interesting people.

The event took place last Thursday 13th November, for the first time in about 9 locations around the world: New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Boston, Berlin and Bucharest!

Blogadi Blogada

Image courtesy

It's being a seriously busy November over in Ice Cream land, but going to the London Bloggers meetup always inspires me to make an effort and get back to writing a few posts. Thanks again to Andy for organising the event, and also for the inimitable inspiration for naming the events - which gave me the title for this post as well!

It was nice to see some people met before (Anthony, Jaz, Andy, and others) and meet new always interesting people is as ever a great pleasure (Melanie, Hayley, and several Chris - sorry I need to find your blogs).

Melanie who writes at Fake Plastic Noodles, which for some reason I thought was Fresh plastic noodles - (Sorry I haven't had time to read it yet, but hopefully will soon) talked about some differences in the UK and US blogospheres, her experience of moving over to London and the fun it was getting working visas in order, some good talk about PR / blogger outreach good practices, and it finished with some great informal questions / conversations.

A few more drinks and good conversations and we was on my merry way home. I'll definitely try to make it to the next one. As I said, it's a great way to meet cool people and find out about all the different topics they blog about and it's really a good motivation to post regularly.

Last post before November!

Happy Halloween everyone! I'm very proud to announce this is the 15th post this month, which for those very math astute will realise that's extremely close to a post every other day! But I'm probably the only one that cares that much...

So let's get to what I'd like to write about quickly. I was at Playful today and it was an absolutely amazing conference. Certainly the best one I've been to this year and one of the best ones I've been to full stop. I think what was really brilliant was to bring together a bunch of people passionate about whatever domain and particularly interested in play, games, interaction from different fields and talk about what they are doing. So a wider spectrum than if they had only invited hardcore game designers - more than often probably pitching the latest product they developed (nothing wrong with that by the way, but I guess not what I was looking for today).

Which brings to what I was looking for today. Nothing specific, really. But I came out of it really inspired! I learned a lot of things about hacking things, making them do stuff they weren't meant to. Theories about games, play, meaning, scores, etc. A lot of very smart people either demonstrating experiments, or talking from a slightly more abstract point of view about people, play and games.

I think one special mention for myself was to meet James Wallis from Spaaace. James opened the event with a brilliant talk about play in general, OuLiPo and a lot of other interesting things inclusing board and role playing games which I love. The best was to learn over a drink after the conference that he designed one of my favourite card games ever: Once Upon a Time. The funny thing is that I just did an internal talk about playing games last week (Which I will upload to Slideshare very soon - as soon as I find some time) and we're going to organise some sessions fro Once upon a time and a couple of other games. A lot of other talks were amazing and I will tell you as soon as they are uploaded on Vimeo and Flickr for the pics

Thanks again to Toby, Richard, and everyone else at Pixel-lab for organising the event! Thanks to all the sponsors as well - Poke, Melinda @ Miss Geeky, The people who provided lunch that I can't remember who they are right now, etc...

PS: I think I just realised James Wallis also created Nobilis, an RPG I've been wanting to try for a long time that looks amazing! And I also realised that had I simply read the details on the speakers list, I would have known all of that already, but hey...

Robocop on a Unicorn (And people stuff)

Image courtesy

Also because from this post onwards, October will be the month with the most posts in this dramatically thought altering - NOT - ice cream blog!

And just because that's what it's all about!

If you're still wondering what the "it" is I'm talking about, call your mom. Watch Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. Go for a drink and have a laugh. Give a call to your best friend. Check the status of the US election campaign/election. Have a drink. Update Twitter. Cook a meal. Whatever else you fancy...

Next step, pull it all together. This time the "it" being all the data, information, experience, feelings, thoughts, opinions, etc.

Analyse.

It doesn't make any sense.

For the most part, and that's just to be nice, all the sense that is there for you is what you added.

And that's people.

I love it!

PS: I was completely not going to write this originally, but there you go. It almost wrote itself. If this doesn't make any sense to you, I would estimate you're on the right track. Same if you disagree. Or even if you agree for that matter. The secret is in short sentences. Although there is no secret.

PPS: I had a nice time at the Digital Lounge - I may even have had a drink or two for those ready to believe such an astonshing statement. I'll talk about Digital Loungers later on. And by the way, Robocop on a Unicorn is a big meme that is going round the internets these days! Check it out. Do tell me if you explain why, I'm sure it will be quite entertaining.