Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

  • Social Media Marketing Win: Marmite Cereal Bars

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    Was offered this on Facebook recently in that little Advertising block on the right hand side of your screen offering a free marmite cereal bar. So I though ‘What the hell… let’s give it a go.’ Well I got it in the post yesterday and I was impressed by how integrated the whole campaign was in terms of Marmite launching the new innovation. The objectives must certainly have been awareness and trial, with a higher focus on trial of the product since the messaging of the campaign encourages feedback on their new product.

    The product itself, well, it falls under the general feeling around Marmite doesn’t it? You either love it or hate it. Well, I do like Marmite in general and the cereal bar is pretty good. It’s not overbearingly marmite, but you get the taste and it fulfils all the passport factors of being a cereal bar.

    I don’t know if they’ve done any TV advertising around it, but the Outdoor is fairly ubiquitous in London and very eye-catching and engaging. I especially love the twist and the emotion it creates around even thinking of having a Marmite showergel, Fabric Softener or Perfume. In contrast, the cereal bar looks like a great idea.

    Check ‘em out…


    Ad Agency: DDB

    An overall brilliant marketing campaign which fitted Social Media into its mix and overall strategy pretty brilliantly and was the first FMCG brand to do so. The bars were also sampled at tube stations and other places and the sample bars through facebook were obviously voluntary and you had to put in your address. So instead of Social Media i.e. Facebook Ad units being the main driver it was, in fact, only a part of the campaign for marmite to increase its reach.

    Great Idea. Great Work.

  • How Israeli’s are ‘Helping’ Iran

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    Everyone knows that Israel is most definitely NOT a friend of Iran in any way or form.  Given the current circumstances in the country and the media coverage around Iran and Election, in our information age, it goes without say that there would be spin from either side regarding the coverage.

    Case in point, from a social media perspective, is the website helpiranelection.com On the website it shows the man behind it all to be “Arik Fraimovich, friendly web-geek.”

    and.. here’s the guy’s personal website

    Notice… Israeli Military Consultant… You can’t tell me this doesn’t tarnish the intentions behindthe websites intent on helping the Iranian people. This also makes me question all of the media surrounding this issue. This post is not about standing behind any particular side but it is an attempt to get people to look a bit deeper and bit further than what we get force-fed over News websites and TV journalism.

    WE seem to slip back into complacency a lot when we see a lot of our friends following a trend on Twitter or wherever, and quell the urge to question the nature behind the source of all the information.

    It’s not a great place to be when people’s rights are curtailed for the benefit of the few, but the lines which are drawn are far from black and white. The shades of grey behind the so-called good intentions of some people need to be made a bit clearer. Because, unfortunately, the one’s with the worst intentions know how to play the system and the shades of grey tend to spiral more toward darkness.

    All I’m asking is that you question… question everything, don’t blindly believe.

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  • ABSOLUT’s Currency with Kindness Campaign

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    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.

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  • A Short History of Marketing

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    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

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    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

  • Happy in Greenville

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    Happy in Greenville is a site with awesome interactivity and brilliant use of animation to convey both the feeling and culture of the people living in the city of Greenville, South Carolina. I think all sites which are based oncities should follow a similar concept but integrate the culture and aesthetics of each place, be it a country, city or even a small town.

    I love the site, it’s very interactive (try clicking on the Moving Van under “City Secrets” or the painter which seems ot paint up the sky when you click on him). The City Secrets section let’s you find all sorts of information about the city itself as you click on different buildings. The music is pleasant and fits the theme of the whole site, it also seems to blend into the background instead of itrritate the hell out of you as with most other websites.

    As you navigate the site you’ll find tons of very cute things which pop-up and add to the funtionality and aestheitcs of the site like a string of cyclists on the same bike and hot air balloon which rises when you click on it.

    Ultimately the site is a Healthcare site and was created…

    “To encourage Greenville, South Carolina-based users to explore the Bon Secours St. Francis Health System”

    - Adrants

    The site was created by Brains on Fire and Grow Interactive.

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

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    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… :)

  • Radiohead’s “House of Cards” First Ever to be Premiered by Google

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    Check out the first-ever music video to debut courtesy of Google and also the first to be shot without cameras. Only lasers and scanners were used in the production and, which is why Thom Yorke looks kind of like a sonogram.

    So… “interact” with the video on Google. There’s also a making-of video that talks about Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR, the technology used to capture all the imagery in 3D.

    The video is directed by James Frost of Zoo Films.
    Link
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  • Online Bookstore Voyeurism – Book Rabbit

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    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

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  • South African Twitter Story Competition

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    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 :)
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