Do the Monster Mash Up


Good morning:

Cool word for the next 15 minutes: “Mash Up.” A mash up is a web site or web application that takes information publiclly available from other sources on the Internet and integrates that information in some new, cool way.

PODBOP: “Mash Ups” are becoming a big part of the next wave of the Internet. One example would be taking information from Google Maps and matching it up with a list of celebrity addresses, so you can see where famous people live: Celebrity Google Maps

Another form of “mash up” are the parody film trailers, where editors re-cut pseudo movie trailers for humour. (There has been a predictable rush to create “Brokeback Mountain” parody mash ups from other films, like this relatively tame “Top Gun” mash up: Brokeback Top Gun If you saw last night’s Academy Awards, they did the same kind of “Brokeback” mash up with lines from old John Wayne and Gary Cooper movies.)

Podbop is a perfect example of a mash up. Podbop takes concert and music club schedules in most cities and matches it up with freely available MPG-3s songs---so now you can cruise through the schedule of music in the Twin Cities, and if there’s a band at First Avenue or another club, you can click on the listing and hear a song from that band. Podbop gets the music mostly from record label and artist websites. Here’s the latest Podbop listings for Minneapolis: Podbop Minneapolis


BUMBLEBEE MEDIA “RIVER ISLAND FLASH SITE” Flash is the software that animates the Web. Like all technology, it can be used for good or it can be used for evil. The evil Flash animations are over-blown self-indulgent wizzy garbage. But if used well, Flash can create a rich, animated, graceful experience. The latest version of Flash 6 allows for more interactivity to be programmed into the animation—e-commerce, for example. Here’s perhaps the first “all Flash” e-commerce site, designed by a Bumblebee Media for River Island: River Island Website


NEW MEDIA AMAZE “ WALLACE AND GROMIT’s GIANT VEGATABLE PATCH” Viral e-game for kids, from Wallace and Gromit, which invites young sprouts to plant and tend their own giant carrots, all in support of the DVD launch of “The Curse of the Ware-Rabbit.” There’s an on-going contest to see who can grow the largest carrot. Designed by a London-based 30-person interactive agency called New Media Amaze: Wallace & Gromit's Giant Vegatable Patch


STIMOROL “KISS OFF” Stimorol is a breath-freshner gum sold in Europe. This website allows you to challenge someone (presumably somone you know) to a “kiss off.” You select one of four models, and then choose the lip pressure, toungue action and moisture of your kiss. I’m not making this up. You put in your e-mail address and your friends e-mail address, and they receive an email invitation to join you in a virtual lip lock. Apparently this went up for Valentine’s Day. Fun spin on a holiday promotion: Kiss Off


“CHASING WINDMILLS” Cristina Cordova and Juan Rosario live in downtown Minneapolis, and they are the writers, directors, and stars of a very cool soap opera series of short movies on the Web called “Chasing Windmills.” Every weekday they post a new four minute episode which stars a man and a woman---Cordova and Roasio—as they muddle through their daily lives. They’ve been creating the series since the Fall and there are now more than fifty episodes, and the series is starting to get wide attention on the Web. It’s kind of in the Jim Jarmusch school of deadpan noir. Hans Eisenbeis has a good review of the work in the Rake this week ( "Chasing Windmills," The Rake)

Clearly a work of passion and committment, but it also shows how low the barriers are on the Internet to creating widely distributed content. The line between creators and consumers isn’t much of a line anymore. Take in an episode: Chasing Windmills

I guess in the world of the future everyone will be famous for more like 4 minutes...

Thanks-RJ



2/28/2006



Bling My Sid!


Good morning:

We’re a week from the Oscars, so it seems like a good time to see what kind of stuff movie studios are doing market films online.. Here’s the latest in interactive movie thing-a-ma-bobs:

20th CENTURY FOX “ICE AGE /BLING MY SID” “Ice Age” was one of the best kid’s animated films of the last four years—very funny, very well made, take it from my five year old daughter and me. And now It’s back—“Ice Age II” is about to hit the theaters, and 20th Century Fox has built this advergame around one of the funniest and most endearing characters from the film, Sid the Sloth.

“Bling My Sid” allows you to dress Sid up in whatever---formal, hip hop, punk boy---or any mix of atire. Then you can let him strut his stuff in clubs and subways from London to Paris. One great thing about the game is that it’s fast-loading for a broadband gamer.

Good dumb fun, and when you get a chance, see either Ice Age I or II: Bling My Sid


FOX “FOXFAITH.COM” Fox is also the movie studio which distributed Mel Gibson’s blockbuster “Passion of the Christ.” The $500 million+ gross that movie brought in certainly got the attention of senior management at Fox. Now they’ve launched a website devoted (ha!) to Christian and family entertainment, called Foxfaith.com.

It’s a little bit more than just a place to buy DVDs which might be of interest to Christians and families devout to other religions. There’s clips and booklets which can be downloaded by churches to use in education, and a nacent community function. We perhaps think of online communities as being non-traditional, but they’re a place for any group with strong ties, and this is a lordly (sorry) example. Fox has committed to producing 13 movies in the next two years with religious themes: FoxFaith.com


iMEDIA CONNECTION CREATIVE SHOWCASE “THE CORPSE BRIDE” iMedia Connection is a terrific website devoted to interactive marketing. Every week they get a couple of creative directors and agency executives to take apart and analyze a current online marketing campaign. For those so inclined, this “Creative Showcase” is a weekly stop on the Internet circuit.

Here’s an example of one Creative Showcase they did about the online campaign for Tim Burton’s “The Corpse Bride.” Check out the archives of “Creative Showcase” and you’ll find all sorts of great case studies: "The Corpse Bride" iMedia Creative Showcase


AMP’D & WARNER BROTHERS FILMS “A SCANNER DARKLY” Keanu Reeve’s new film, “A Scanner Darkly” is the subject of the first big mobile marketing campaign in the film industry.

At the center is a website built to be seen on cell phones, available only through Amp’d, a mobile phone service provider trying to stake out the young and hip market. Warner Brothers built the website using the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) which is the software standard for all internet stuff for mobile browsers.

To access the site, you need a code listed in advertising for the film, which gives you free access to the site featuring video trailers, interviews, pictures and even an advergame, all quite play-able on your cell phone. Warner’s did this as a marketing test, but this year there will be more and more of this, as people get hungry to see video on their phones.

And don’t think the car companies aren’t watching this closely. Here’s the mobile content page on the Amp’d website, to give you a flavor of what they offer: Amp'd


AMPAS “THE OSCARS.ORG” Terrific facelift (darling) for an important website that was sadly stuck in the 1990s—the official Oscars site. Now it’s structured more like an online newspaper, but that’s to get you to the infomation you want—nominees, the ceremony, past winners, even e-commerce for oscar posters and bling. Get your film viewing in this week, because the ceremony is Sunday night: Oscars.org


BONUS: THE NAPOLEON DYNAMITE “AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION SCRIPT” Remember “The Rocky Horror Picture Show?” Well, Gosh! Here’s the Napoleon Dynamite version of audience participation. If you haven’t heard about this sort of thing, it’s a script with goofy things for the audience to say back to the screen while watching the movie, and well....well, if you don’t get it, then.....Well, will you do me a favor then? Can you bring me my chapstick? It’s available for download from the Napoleon Dynamite Fan Club website. Just in time for your next visit to the video store: Napoleon Dynamite Participation Script

As Napoleon Dynamite would say, “Who’s the only one here who knows illegal ninja moves from the government?”

Gosh!-RJ


2/21/2006





Widgets, Wacking and Weblogs, oh my!


Good Morning:

YAHOO “WIDGETS” Widgets are little desktop applications you can run on your computer which deliver simple interactive applications: time of day, weather, sports score. But they can also be extended to include airline reservations, shipping updates, personal financial information and more. Yahoo has published a set of intructions for building widgets using their widget toolset.

So know it’s a fairly low cost way to deliver a client’s functionality to the desktop. Arctic Cat, for example, could deliver show conditions in a specific area. The Twins could deliver scores, batting averages, and schedule.

The trick is to find some small application which customers would find valuable enough to put on their desktop. Here’s a gallery of them, at Yahoo: Yahoo Widgets


HBO “SOPRANOS GOOGLE EARTH MAP” Last week Ferrari was burying cars in the snow around Torino and asking you to find them with Goggle Earth. This week HBO announced a deal that uses the Goggle satilletie and maps to tour sites around New Joisey where the Sporanos take place: the Bada Bing Room, Tony’s house, where so and so got whacked:
The Sopranos Google Map


WENDYS “ESPN VOICE OF THE FAN” Wendy’s is sponsoring the chat section of ESPN, and the “brand wrap” extends from the chat pages all the way to the little people icons, called “avatars” that people select to represent themselves when they chat. The avatars are in the Wendy’s trade colors, and include men and women, some of whom are holding up Wendy’s hamburgers.

The big idea here isn’t sponsored avatars—that may or may not work—but it’s sponsors paying the operating costs of an online service so that consumers get the service for free in return for advertising and sponsorship branding on the service---that’s an idea with big legs.

Mobile services is a great next arena for this “sponsored services” notion: Voice of the Fan


GUINESS “WEBLOG” Guiness Brewing’s marketing department has started a weblog. The great news is that it’s content written and developed by the Guiness people, so its authentic stuff, not outsourced to an agency team. Why is that good news? It seems to be very very hard for an anonymous agency to write with the same credability that the brewmaster at Guiness has.

The lesson? When it comes to corporate blogs, they can work well when people get to hear from real experts within the company. (When you sign in, indicate you’re from the UK, or it won’t let you in) : Guiness Blog


BUDGET RENT A CAR “UP YOUR BUDGET CONTEST” More blog marketing. Budget Rent A Car held a contest a few months ago called “Up Your Budget.” They hid a stickers in a public place in four cities in the US each week for four weeks, and then posted video clues where they were located on a blog. If you found the sticker you received $10,000.

Budget worked hard to get viral buzz going—and even to win the prize you had to upload a photo to the blog of you with the sticker at its location. The blog was the focal point, and its very promotional.

What’s really working here is the idea to take a typical promotional contest and put the narrative about winning into a blog. If it’s interesting enough, you’ll get people to come back dozens of times over the course of the contest, instead of just once to see if they’ve won: Up Your Budget


BONUS: MARTI BARLETTA “SUPER BOWL ADS FOR WOMEN: NICE TRY BUT NO CIGAR:” This isn’t interactive, but its an Ad Age article which has come up in conversations this past week a couple of times.

Marti Barletta discusses this year’s Super Bowl ads, and in it advances a gender theory of television humour: funny television commercials aimed at men are all about a hierarchy, and the jokes come from putting down someone, usually lower in the pecking order. Female funny television commercials are about a funny predictiment where the viewer (female) can say, “I’ve been there—I identify with that.”

Hmmmm. Worth reading, I think: Nice Try, But No Cigar

Enjoy the week—RJ

2/14/2006





Actung! BMW Deuteches Website ist Kaput!


Guten Morgan...

Here ist das Internetnewsehummelishissen:

“BMW GERMANY GETS THE GOOGLE DEATH PENALTY” Listen up! Google has “de-listed” the BMW Germany website after they caught the BMW webmeisters trying to rig the ranking that BMW Germany received in such ordinary Google searches as “used car.” Google gets very upset when unscrupulous Web-vermin use “illegal” technqiues to articficially improve their ranking in the Google search engine.

So here’s how it’s done: BMW created artificial “doorway” pages which link to their home page and stuffed them with all sorts of words you want to be listed for in the search engine, like “used cars.” If you do it just right (and disguise the words using Javascript so they can’t be seen by the human eye) you’ll get ranked very high by Google and other search engines, because it will apear that thousands of sites (the doorways) are linking to you.

Here’s a link to the full story, plus links to pages which explain in some detail how these phantom “doorway” pages work.

But it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature....or Google: BMW.de ist kaput!


BMW “BMW AUDIOBOOKS” Well, let’s give those Beemer Weiners a second chance, eh? This week, on a different Website, BMW rolled out four MP3 audiobooks for iPods---each is a short story by by one of four well-known writers, and each features a BMW centrally in its storyline.

This is one of the first “branded content” strategies writ large. I haven’t listened to the first one yet, Don Winslow’s “Beautiful Ride,” but the tease on the Website sounds pretty good:

“He’s falling through the cracks of the ‘Gold Coast’ life, until he turns to money-laundering to get back in the game. Then things get worse...”

You have to register with your e-mail address, but that process is brief. I think this was done by the radical ad agency in London, WCRS (WCRS UK Website) who some may remember for their goofy “118, 118” ad campaign in the UK. BMW will add one story a week to the site for the next month. Read on: BMW Audio Books

WEATHER CHANNEL “MOBILE ADVERTISING” The Weather Channel has a mobile business model that works. It’s simple: sell sponsored weather listings to advertisers that offer geo-targeting.

If you’re Eddie Bauer and you want to sell close-out winter clothing, advertise in cold weather area codes. The consumer gets weather information on their cell phone for free, you get an avail geo-targeted at your customer.

(Who’s the anchor advertiser? Periscope's very own client, the Toyota Rav4: Rav4 Mobile Ad )

Next step: use the GPS positioning to sell ads when the consumer is within a block of your store! Weather Channel Mobile

MARRIOTT “EXPERIENCE MARRIOTT” Marriott creates something of a “virtual hotel room” where you have great views and can try out the hotel room features in this site designed by T3, a groovy shop in Manchester UK. Experience Marriott

DICE “BEING IT” Modem Media created this game site on a shoestring for Dice, the IT personnel recruitiing company. In the game, called “Being IT” you’re a corporate IT worker and you manouver around an office, encountering the project manager, the sales manager, the office manager—all of whom have typically stupid demands to make on you.

This “Dilbert” humour continues as you use a variety of weapons to exact your vengence. It’s a decent enough concept, and the acting level is better than the small budget would typically allow.

What’s amazing about the site is the traffic and e-mail pass along its gotten---12X what Dice had hoped for. This wasn’t intended as a direct response vehicle, but it’s turned into that, given the traffic its seeing.

Some times you don’t have to over-think the interactive creative, just execute well: Being IT

Keep on truckin...RJ


2/7/2005




Richer, Deeper, Broader.....


Good morning:

The bright folks at RG/A in New York show off their interactive design skills again, this time on behalf of Verizon. And also this week we show off a very cool contest from Ferrari—working with Google Earth—in time for the Winter Olympics:

VERIZON “RICHERDEEPERBROADER.COM” Verizon built this site to sing the praises of broadband, showing off short films, streaming media and other digital eye candy that showcases the best new work in online broadband.

Three reasons to look at this site:

1) It shows off a client’s product very well—and Verizon is fast moving marketing dollars to the Web

2) It’s a terrific look at great broadband content

3) It’s designed very well, by the very cool folks at RG/A in NYC.

Roll your mouse over the pictures that make up the main interface, and the title and a short explanation of each choice leaps out, complete with audio. It’s a great broadband site, which as they say, is a rare medium well done: Richerdeeperbroader.com


FERRARI & FIAT “DISCOVER SEDICHI” Wow, just in time for the Turin Winter Olympics, here’s a contest to win a Ferrarri or one of four new Fiat Sedichi automobiles.

The catch? The five cars are actually buried in the snow around Turin in secret locations, and your job is to find one of the five cars using Google Earth’s satillite photo service, pinpoint where you think one of the cars is, and you might be a winner. Who hasn’t gone to Google Earth and zooomed in on the house or building where you live? (I can see the umbrella on my backyard patio...)

The idea came from an Italian interactive firm, TestawebEdv, and its use of Google Earth—and the guilty pleasure of playing “spy in the sky” is brilliant. The contest is both in Italian and English, so have a go: Seidichi Contest


LA GEAR “SHOESTRING THEATER” Good online advertising execution by LA Gear shoes, using the Pointroll “Fat Boy” ad unit. This is an interactive rich media online ad unit which allows you to expand the “play” area if the customer mouses over (note in this ad, they do explicitly ask you to mouse over, which is good). You can have interactive buttons, forms, animations—whatever.

Here, two shoestrings act out either an Action, Romance or Drama movie before your eyes. Cute: Showstring Theater Rich Media Ad


IKEA “ROAD RAGE RENDEVOUS” and “WHAT IF?” Ikea advertises their new “What If?” campaign with this short, pithy viral video in which a little old lady gets even with a jerk in an expensive car: Road Rage Viral Video

It’s all in support of a campiagn called “What If?” where Ikea gave 28 designers full license to design any damn thing they wanted for the home. Here’s the payoff website that the viral sends you to: IKEA's What If?


PRINGLES “KING KONG JUMP” Straight ahead online game from Pringles, advertising their sponsorship affiliation with the film “King Kong.” Kong rolls cans of Pringles at you, while you attempt to jump out of the way. Dumb, but it was the top viral email last week world wide.

I guess it shows the power of a time-wasting online game: King Kong Jump game

Back to work...RJ