First up is a lesson we’d all do well to learn – that is, don’t use a word if you don’t know what it means. Now, not so much of a problem when you’re playing Scrabble (although I did have a bit of a falling out with a friend earlier in the week when they put down “GRIFF” for 24 points and couldn’t say whether it was a real word or not and I let them have it and they went on to win and I hate losing so I flipped the board over and smashed up their kitchen with a ball peen hammer) but when you’ve got a big fat prestigious brand to pamper and protect – well then, it’s a different matter altogether. Take Pontins for example. Long famed for their cheap holidays in the British Isles, they’re particularly in vogue at the moment thanks to the crunchy credit crisis and the fact that no one can afford their usual fancy overseas holiday in Magaluf. So you’d think protecting their brand would be pretty high up on their agenda, alongside making sure the swimming pools are wee-free and the kitchens have a big enough stockpile of gristle burgers to last the summer long. You’d think so, but no. They’ve plastered the word “PONTASTIC” all over their marketing materials. Try googling it, and see what the first entry above the official Pontins site is. Go on, I dare you.

Earlier, on my way to work, I saw a man wearing a surgical mask on the tube. I don’t think he was doing it for fun, either. I think he was scared of catching swine flu. Now, I’m not bothered about swine flu – but then that’s because I have a strong belief in reincarnation and am hoping to come back as a oinking cartoon pig. But for those of you who are unsure of what will happen to you in the next life, well. I can kind of understand why you’re worried. Take my mother for example. She’s terrified. Calls me at all hours of the night, asking me if the Tamiflu she paid £180 for during the height of the bird flu scare will still be effective. Now, I’m no expert, but if it’s three years out of date, the active ingredients aren’t going to work properly. Even if you have kept it in the salad bit of your fridge for the duration. As my mother says though – out of date Tamiflu is better than no Tamiflu. And it is with that in mind that I present to you THE TOP TEN SWINE FLU CONSPIRACY THEORIES.

Finally, a bit of fun for those of you in need of light relief after all the doom and gloom of recent times. It’s a game Jim, but not as we know it. Basically, it works like this: you go to the supermarket to do your weekly food shop (soup, crisps, savoury rice, ham, some lumps of value chicken, Reggae Reggae sauce, hand cream, tissues, pine nuts, Listerine). While in the crisps aisle, you spot a mysterious-looking black packet of Doritos without a flavour. You think “oooh, I bet I could identify that mystery flavour. I know loads about crisps I do. I even remember proper big Monster Munch the first time round and everything”. So you place them in your basket, and buy them. Later, you’re watching A Touch of Frost and feeling a bit peckish. So you get the Mystery Flavour Doritos out and start crunching down on them. As you’re marvelling at the spicy taste and racking your brains as to what it could be, yours eyes wander to the back of the packet, slowly widening as read that the person who guesses correctly is set to net a cool £20,000. Come Monday, you’re on http://id3.doritos.co.uk/ entering your unique packet code in order to take your guess at the flavour. But, as you’ll discover when you have a go, that’s just the start of a massive interactive adventure – the kind of thing that makes Anthony and Mister Stu (the two guys in spectacles in IT or Digital or whatever it’s called this week) foam at their joysticks.

Obama and the power of Facebook (http://my.barackobama.com)

The Barack story is interesting, because there is a parallel with the Conservative rise to power of the early 70s. In both cases, the political parties/candidates recognized the power of new channels to activate and capture the attention of previously hard to reach candidates. In the 1970s the channel was TV; in the case of Obama it was the internet.

There is a lot of material about the Obama campaign (I’ve included two links below), but for me one of the most interesting and unique features was its use of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Chris Hughes, the founder of Facebook, was brought onto the Obama team and immediately set about activating a whole tranche of activities, run by engaged supporters. Some of the stats have been included below:

·         More than 1.5 million people visited the mybarackobama website and organized themselves into 35,000 separate groups

·         Over 150,000 meetings and events were organized during the 21 months of Obama’s presidential campaign

·         Supporters bombarded YouTube with videos of his speeches to boost his online presence

·         The campaign raised over $600m in donations from 3million people, many of whom contributed online

·         When the Republicans started the viral rumour mill, the Obama camp used the internet to counter the various rumours that were being aired.

Simon Rosenberg, who worked on Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, said: “He’s run a campaign where he’s used very modern tools, spoke to a new coalition, talked about new issues, and along the way, he’s reinvented the way campaigns are run. Compared to our 1992 campaign, this is like a multinational corporation versus a non-profit organisation.”

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24610850-5018194,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7412045.stm

Pincha La Rueda de Hamilton

In the run up to Sunday’s Grand Prix, competitive fervor was at an all time high. For those of who were either dead or simply don’t care the premise was this. Felipe Mass, racing on home turf, needed to come 1^st or 2^nd and needed Hamilton to come 6^th or 7^th respectively to win the grand prix. If Hamilton came 5^th or higher he would automatically win. Added to this, Fernando Alonso, who had very public spats with Hamilton last year, had implied in press conferences that he might try to assist Massa (or at the very least hinder Hamilton). Man vs. boy; Spain vs. England; black vs. white. Take your pick – there were plenty of angles to choose from.

In the pique of nationalistic fervor, TBWA, an Omnicom agency created a site called Pincha La Rueda de Hamilton. The site, which translated means “Burst Hamilton’s Tyre”, invited visitors to place a virtual nail on the track at Interlagos, the setting for Sunday’s title showdown with Felipe Massa in the Brazil Grand Prix.

The site was closed down after hundreds of abusive messages were posted, some of which referred to Hamilton as a “half-breed” and others which used the n-word. It’s a classic campaign of an organisation creating something and then foolishly not monitoring how it gets used.

Now let’s be clear – this isn’t the first time that a voodoo style campaign has been created; in the most recent football world cup there were sites where you could stab effigies of key players with a pin in an attempt to curse them prior to a game. It isn’t even the first time that an agency has used the web to push the boundaries of acceptable marketing behaviour. The problem here was that the agency didn’t respond immediately when offensive comments started to get published and when Lewis won the championship, the story became incredibly newsworthy.

There is only one fitting epithet to this story…