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!