ABSOLUT’s Currency with Kindness Campaign

ABSOLUT has this really interesting campaign (I think so) in which we see this parallel universe where the cash is kindness. Can you imagine buying food at a restaurant and hugging the entire staff as payment, or how about kissing the cashier when buying movie tickets. hmph.

You can view the ad itself at Adgabber – Kindness as Currency. The entire campaign is a big departure from ABSOLUT’s previous campaigns but at least its fresh, I think I would be really bored and not even bothered with putting up this blog post if it was yet another re-incarnation of that bottle imprinted on another art piece.

Thing is, apart from the marketing campaign, they are also taking it to the real world with the UK-based conversation agents ‘We Are Social’.

London’s cinema-goers exchanged compliments and high-fives for free snacks and drinks; at participating cafes, caffeine junkies were granted free coffee for a smile. – Adrants

You can keep track of other random acts of kindness done by the campaign by following @AbsolutKindness on Twitter. Or you can check out more of the effort at the dedicated microsite.

Right… now that the marketing bullshit is out of the way. I don’t believe Vodka is able to make you a nicer person and you have to admit that this is more marketing bullshit to sell more drinks by duping everyone into believing random acts of kindness are due branded vodka.

Technorati Tags: absolut, kindness as currency, marketing, advertising, adrants

A Short History of Marketing

This is one of the simplest, most brilliant explanations of our current predicament in Marketing. Specially focusing on the relationship between branding and the consumer’s perception of brand and it’s evolution from the time products started getting packed and put onto shelves. Brilliant.

The short animation is done by Scholz & Friends.

Digital Designers Face Off in Digital Drag Race Today

Intel’s Digital Drag Race launches today. It’s a competition in which professional digital designers go head-to-head at designing under pressure. The site also has a consumer-generated aspect for non-professional designers.

The Idea: a collection of professional designers will spend 70 minutes on a computer powered by the brand new Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition Processor using Adobe Creative Suite 4 to create a 17 second motion graphic using supplied assets; video, music, vector images. The content of the videos are to center on the themes of power, speed and innovation.

After each race, judges will select competitors with the best final product. The first two digital drag races will be unveiled on the Digital Drag Race today, site visitors will be able to view and vote for their favorite designs.

There is a cool Social Media Aspect to the campaign, other designers and artistsare able to download the same tools used in the competition to create their own 17 second masterpiece which can then be uploaded to a YouTube Channel and will also be featured on the Digital Drag Race site.

Razorfish developed the program and Ignite Social Media developed the social media portion of the campaign.

Link

Okay, so how is Twitter going to make money if it’s free?

Just read a great post by Adrants on Twitter still seeking a business model and still getting slammed two years on. The getting slammed part came particularly from Simon Dumenco who is a definite non-believer in the benefits of Twitter, especially if its a project which fails to make any money.

While Twitter has said and continues to say it has every intention of creating a business model which will support it beyond seed money, reading the revenue-generating notion “one idea is to charge companies th at want to use Twitter as an official channel to talk with their customers and monitor what they are saying,” causes one to ROFLOL to the point of gut-busting pain.

Charge companies? Charges companies? For what? Any company with half a brain already has access to an endless supply of free “listening” tools that offer fairly deep insight into Twitter usage and what’s being said about a particular brand.

Dumenco concludes not so inappropriately, writing, “I don’t think every tweet or blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human can or should have ads sold against it or be otherwise monetized.”

Of course Twitter is far more than any “blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human” , but still the man has a point. Twitter could charge a yearly fee to use the service, but then what should they charge? I certainly wouldn’t pay to follow a bunch of people talking about what they had for breakfast, or if they just came out for the shower, refreshed. Then again, if you’re paying for the service, maybe people who are really interested in adding value would buy into it and utilise it instead of it being just another social media plaything for the ever-growing population of digerati.

Another benefit of charging for it is that it would save us all from a barrage of useless advertising should Twitter opt for the advertising route.

I don’t know… maybe there is some creative way in which Twitter can make a good business model out of what they provide without totally pissing us all off. I hope they find it!

What do you think they should do?

While I’m here… :)

Hamlet: The Facebook Edition

The king poked the queen.
The queen poked the king back.
Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.
Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here.
Hamlet became a fan of daggers.

- – - -

Polonius says Hamlet’s crazy … crazy in love!
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet are now friends.
Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.
Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.
Ophelia removed “moody princes” from her interests.
Hamlet posted an event: A Play That’s Totally Fictional and In No Way About My Family
The king commented on Hamlet’s play: “What is wrong with you?”

This recently came up on McSweeney’s: Hamlet (The Facebook News Feed Edition. Absolutely hilarious. This is what would probably happen if Facebook was around during Shakespeare’s time.

Muhammad is worried about people who have too much time on their hands…
: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Facebook, Funny

Playboy hosts “Hottest Blogger” Contest

Playboy is hosting a hottest blogger contest including Violet Blue and Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin among others. Boing Boing recently made a really bad move by deleting content which was published on Violet blue’s site and Playboy is now capitalising off all of the publicity with this competition.

Who said blogging was all about content? This just goes to show, it doesn’t matter what you write… as long as you’re hot, you’ll get publicity :P

Source: Adrants

: Playboy, Contest, Bloggers, Hottest Bloggers

Winners of the South African Twitter Story Competition!

Mandy de Waal, one of our esteemed judges has recently coined the phrase “twiction” to represent micro-stories, especially those created within 140 characters on the micro-blogging platform, Twitter. I found it extremely appropriate to put this new term into use for this competition.

What a ride! The South African “Twiction” competition has now come to a head with the winners in sight and the prizes ready to be sent off. Thanks once again to all the contestants, the beautiful and intelligent Judges and, of course, the sponsors!

Okay… Let’s get to it.

First Prize: @JasonEsch

“He was both at a loss and lost, staring at the road sign that seemed more to describe how he was feeling than where he was going: Bakgatla.”

Judges comments:
“A journey at a crossroads, with a real sense of character. The ending wins it for me.”

“Beautiful use of metaphor for such a short form, and strong expression on the archetypal journey and ability of humans to get lost on that journey.”

@JasonEsch wins a T-shirt from SpringLeap.com! Congratulations!

Second Prize: @yusufk

“Vuvuzela in one hand,phone in the other,he watched the cross float by 3 defendenders,deflect off a forehead into the net. Tweet:”SA Scores!”

Judges Comments:
“Sports offers up great narrative. The themes of struggle, perseverance and victory are timeless. The ‘tweet’ added a nice touch.”
“Another strongly descriptive entry, which conjures images of our strong sporting nation.”
“I am so excited about World Cup coming to SA, and I think it will be great for the country spirit. And every goal will help. So this captures that hope beautifully!”

Yusuf’s entry was a close contender for no. 1

@yusufk wins a $20 Amazon.com voucher from the guys at Qatarliving.com! Well Done!

Third Prize: @samanthaperry

“A writer entered a story competition, lost, and killed herself. The judges denied guilt, claiming the writer had terminal Bulwer-Lyttonitis”

Judges comments:
“ For the benefit of those who don’t know the reference – click over to http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ Clever entry; complete and concise.”
“Smart. Funny. Self evasive. Another complete story in 140 characters.”

Samantha’s entry was very close to snatching second place. She wins 40 Minutes Free wi-fi access which she can use anywhere in South Africa. Great Work Samantha!

Runners Up:

These were entries which were contending with the three winners and made some great efforts which put them onto the list…

@takilla786: Innocent window washes, innocent sells, innocent begs, innocent smells.Innocent pleas, innocent harps,all so that Innocent Jnr never starves
@blacktiemedia: Thembi stood contrasted against the sky of hungry fire. Smoke filled her lungs, blood stained her clothes. “Ubuntu” she whispered tearfully.
@nicharry: We’ve lost our ubuntu. 14 years gone and we are too scared to stand for our countrymen. Instead we fall for anyone carrying a knife or a gun.
@Sznq: He said: 1.Like it or 2.Hamba Kahle.When he wasn’t looking,she left.Now why can’t he buy her back ? Such bitter sweet things,ultimatums.
@qudsiya: One day she clicked on his nick and typed “hi”. A year later, she shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you.” On 19/01/07 she said, “I do.”
@ismaild: its dark and she misses him, hears a sound in the kitchen! “WTF? Should she check? slowly tiptoes, damn those skelm tokoloshe with munchies
@shaunoakes: ! I said “Fok, Chyna” said a frustrated God, after another misunderstanding with an apologetic Mother Nature. “Now look what you’ve done!”

The competition overall showed the great variety of experience and expression in our great nation. Different stories, varied perspectives, emotion and intellectualism all in 140 characters. A tremendous example of creativity :) I was humbled at the outstanding creativity in each entry and I know for a fact that it made the judges’ jobs all the more harder to choose the overall winners.

Last Word from the Judges:
Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet – “Such stellar entries made the judging process really difficult. To facilitate the process, I tried to look for the most complete story in a twitter format, ones that gave a sense of a beginning, middle and end. SA twitterers have a wicked way with words, and I hated to let some really poetic entries go.”

Mandy de Waal – “For me the biggest skill in the short form is not only the concise concept and the writing, but the re-writing. The ability to shave off everything that’s not necessary, leaving only the bare bones of the story. Short form is essentially fiction that tells a story in anything from five thousand words to a couple of paragraphs. Imagine then how ruthless one must be with Twiction, which surely must be the shortest form of fiction ever written.”

Eve Dmochowska – “Overall, I think that the entries were fabulous, creative, inspired and mostly a whole lot of fun. And It was wonderful to see so many entries .. it shows that the twitter community is quite a cohesive one in this country. Well done to all the entrants!”

Winners, please contact me to collect your prizes :)

Till the next competition, Keep Tweeting!

: Twitter Story Competition, South Africa, Winners

Joe Jaffe Slams Brands for Social Media Screw Ups

Marketing Guru, Joe Jaffe takes on brands who abuse Social Media for marketing purposes.

Speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ Integrated Marketing Conference, Joe Jaffe calls out five brands for abusing or not taking advantage of the increasingly social nature of media or, to paraphrase his new book, Not Joining the Conversation. From Sony’s fake PSP blog to the fight between T-Mobile and Engadget over the color Magenta to Target’s refusal to engage with a blogger who took issue with one of the brand’s billboards which showed a woman on Target’s target. Link

: Joe Jaffe, Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0, Brands

Online Bookstore Voyeurism – Book Rabbit

What a cool Idea. BookRabbit.com< allows users to upload a picture of their bookshelves so that everybody else can see them in an effort to encourage interaction, comparisons and more shopping!

BookRabbit, which just went through its public launch in May, aims to be an online bookshop that “dynamically connects readers, authors and publishers through the books they own.” It also claims to be cheaper than Amazon on the top 100,000 titles, and offers free delivery within the UK. More interesting, though, are the ways users of the site can share their passion for books, including creating their own personal bookcases and catalogues online and making recommendations to other readers. Each user is invited to upload a photo of his or her bookshelf—along with a user profile—and to tag the individual titles therein. Other users can then view all the bookshelves on the site, compare with their own and make connections with other readers based on the titles they have in common. More than 900 bookshelves have been uploaded so far, and they’re viewable by “latest,” “most connections” or “most discussed.” The winner for most connections so far, for example, is a user named Glynis, who has more than 100 books in common with other readers.

Of course, in the process of viewing and comparing bookshelves, BookRabbit no doubt hopes users might get inspired to buy some new titles and expand their own collections. The site includes an affiliate programme that lets users put links on their sites or e-mails to show off their bookcases and earn a fee if anyone buys anything through them. Link

: Book Rabbit, Entrepreneur, Voyeur, books, Website

South African Twitter Story Competition

Welcome to the South African Twitter Story Competition!

Here’s how it works…

1) You need to write a story that’s exactly 140 characters long.
2) Being that it is South African, you need to include at least one word from any of the 11 official languages excluding, ofcourse, English.
3) Post a link to your story tweet in the comments section of this blog post. (You have to post a comment with the link because if you just replied on twitter “@mkarim” it wouldn’t be 140 characters :P)

Example: “Who took my bloody biltong?” Oom Jan shouted at no one in particular, knowing for sure those bloody monkeys had invaded his home yet again. Twitter Link

The stories submitted will be judged by a panel of seasoned South African writers/bloggers

The Judges
Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet – Blogger, Writer and Journalist
Mandy de Waal – columnist, writer for hire and freelance journalist.
Eve Dmochowska – Writer, Blogger and Web Strategist.

The Prizes

1st Prize: Up for grabs is a SpringLeap T-shirt proudly sponsored by the guys at Springleap.com – Check out their site for awesomely designed T-shirts by some of South Africa’s Brightest Designers :)

2nd Prize: A $20 Amazon Voucher from Qatarliving.com the biggest social networking site in Qatar and owned by a South African Startup!

This should help with shipping costs now that Amazon has Banned the SA Post Office for theivery and fraud *sigh*

3rd Prize: The winner gets a 40 minute free wi-fi access voucher from Telkom Business which will allow access at any wi-fi hotspot in the country.

The competition was to end on 21st June 2008 at midnight, but has been extended to Thursday, 26th June 2008. All submissions after this time will not be considered.

COMPETITION OFFICIALLY CLOSED… WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON :)
: Competition, Twitter, Social Media, Web 2.0

« Previous Page — Next Page »