Creatively, it is always nice to keep an eye on new and engaging formats, so we turn to a couple of sites spotted by Steve Lo Presti: Media Mind (aka Eyeblaster) run a blog which allows users to look at a wide range of differing advertising formats. In the spirit of openness and collaboration, they helpfully provide the code for these, too. Atlas also runs the Atlas Institute and download centre which can be useful sources of information.

Lego announced big profits this week, fuelled by the success of the strategic decision a few years back to develop bespoke Lego sets as part of movie franchises. The fact that Lego has seen a resurgence amongst adults (10% of Lego purchasers sit within a category known as AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego)) has also been a great help. Anyway, Clone Wars is the current hot trend, so this site is quite fun to play with. Watch out for ‘Cars’ which, according to my 6 year old, is the next big thing. Oh, and by the way, I came across this site, which seems to be an interesting set of musings on Gen Y, Kids Culture and Community online. Worth a peek.

Finally, Charlie Sheen has recently broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest person to reach 1 million followers on Twitter, achieving this dubious honour in just over 25 hours (at the last check, he was standing at 1,489,036 followers) Socially irresponsible? Or just an age old human tendency to laugh at someone else’s misery, whilst taking comfort in the fact that it isn’t us? I’ll let you decide.

Just for fun
•    You are Not a Photographer – a vitriolic commentary on ‘professional’ photography shots
•    City Forward – a mashup from IBM that allows users to delve deep into the detail about their city
•    Red Bull Street Art – a collaborative collection of sites using Google Street View that showcase street art from around the world. Mashups, crowdsourcing and Urban Graffiti – so hip, it hurts.
•    Language Development Live – a bright spark at  MIT has charted the development of his child’s language acquisition from birth to the age of 5. It is a fascinating insight into the human brain (especially for anyone who studied psychology). Watch out for the TED talk when it is released.

Given that one the one hand, the majority of what we do is being posted online in some shape or format (creating a sort of virtual portfolio) and on the other hand, there are an increasing number of tools that allow recruiters to trawl the web to find high quality candidates for free, what I would expect to see is some bright spark creating a system that continuously trawls the web to find candidates that match an organisations needs, and then track their progress, flagging up when the candidate achieves some pre-set goal. Like winning and award or gaining a particular accreditation. If you think about it, what I’m proposing is simply an extension of the process already adopted by many of the big consulting and law firms to identify top talent at key universities and graduate schools.

So this week’s mail is dedicated to highlighting different techniques that candidates are adopting to get themselves noticed.

The world’s first augmented reality CV?
Thanks to Craig who spotted this one. It had to happen sometime: the blending of new and old world technologies to create an immersive CV. David Wood (one of the top 100 most influential technologists), the co-founder of Symbian and television presenter Jason Bradbury teamed up with CWJobs to create the world’s first AR CV. Now, not all of us can afford to have a TV presenter to help walk people through our experiences, but given the rise in the number of people who are able to competently use video and web technology, it’s not such an onerous task as it initially seems.

Far from the madding crowd
A copywriter, Ed Hamilton, has come up with a creative way to stand out, while showing off his worldliness and tech skills, mapping his CV to Google Maps. Using Google Maps’ ‘My Maps’ feature, he created a custom map with text posted to personalized placemarkers. Alongside the standard information you would expect to discover about his skills, experience and capabilities, we discover that Ed is an “armchair Fiorentina fan”,  who is “fascinated by Chilean geology” and was once tasked to write an HIV awareness commercial by the government of Trinidad and Tobago without using the words Sex, Condom or HIV. It’s an ingenious use of the channel and one that shows a clear understanding of the mechanics of search, web 2.0 and most importantly, communications.

Paint yourself pretty
There is a great moment in a film called Legally Blond where the fusty professors of Harvard come across the CV of our ditsy heroine, Elle Woods. Written on one side of A4 paper, her CV is bright pink and scented to “give it a little something extra”. It certainly stands out, promoting an amusing debate amongst the professors about the sort of candidate they are looking for, resulting in the acceptance of our heroine to the prestigious law school to “inject a little life”.

Now I’m not advocating that we all go and spray our CVs with perfume, or adopt the use of lurid backgrounds, but there are an increasing number of tools that are being created online that allow candidates to customise their CVs to help them stand out. I’ve mentioned Visual CV in previous mails and LinkedIn is another great example. Candidates could also use Google Profiles and the more inventive could even create an entry in Wikipedia. In this context Innovative Resume doesn’t really seem that innovative – for me it’s the online equivalent of the CV template in Word. But it represents something more fundamental: an acceptance of the need for a customised brand presence for individuals. Expect to see more such offerings.

Epic win or epic fail?
With a stated aim of injecting “the adventure back into your life,” EpicWin is an iPhone app that converts a to-do list into a game in which each completed task advances the player in an ongoing quest to level up, gain riches and develop skills. The game can be downloaded from the App store, and users select an avatar  and then upload their daily tasks. As tasks are completed over the course of the day, the avatar develops skills and moves ahead on a quest map, with rewards each time they level up. Tasks that become overdue, meanwhile, are shown on opening the app. Players can share their progress via Facebook and Twitter.

It’s an intriguing combination of incentivisation schemes, geo-location, mobile technology and task management. Part of me can’t help but feel a little sad that our focus an human beings appears to have diminished to the point that we need to be incentivised to complete mundane tasks but hey, I can easily imagine some bright spark extending this to Outlook.

Oh yes, and to congratulate the England Cricket team on their historic pummelling of Australia in today’s 20/20 World Cup final, I thought you’d like to see the trending in people talking about cricket on Twitter in the run up to victory…

Augmented reality – the next step
I’m not a sneaker man, but Adidas is one of my favourite brands: their ‘impossible is nothing’ campaign has been to sport what ‘priceless’ is to credit cards, capturing the essence of  triumph over adversity that permeates sporting challenges from playground to grave. Now usually, Adidas tends to lag Nike in the innovation stakes but I recently came across this extension of Augmented Reality and thought it was a great concept. Of course, Hodes got there first with the ABB T-Shirts, but how long will it be before we see clothing that can be used as part of the controlling mechanisms in gaming?

Ashton goes off
Those of you who keep referring to Twitter as a ‘worthless fad’ might do well to read the article in the business section of the Sunday Telegraph… For those of you who are still trying to get to grips with the why’s and where’s of Twitter, it’s worthwhile knowing that in the Twitterati Golden Leagues, Ashton Kutcher features pretty highly. Mind you, his position is under threat from Britney, but who really cares? Anyway, some bright sparks are creating artwork from the profile photos of Twitter users.  The whole ‘Don’t Tell Ashton’ thing is a bit of an inside joke (OK, it’s not brilliantly funny) but I like the idea of user-participated art.

Short-cutting the supply chain (part 1)
One of the brilliant things about the digitisation of information is how it can completely level the playing field. In this example, Alibaba is a site that connects consumers direct to manufacturers. Doesn’t sound like much until you consider the impact this could have on SMEs: stripping out the (often exorbitant) mark-up charges that are applied by middlemen whose sole reason for existence is simply to put one person in touch with another, could have a marked impact on the bottom line. Or in simple terms, when you’re looking for cost reducing measures, this option makes a lot more sense than making people redundant.

Fashion made easy
Continuing on the supply chain theme,  Etsy is a marketplace for handmade goods. Interestingly enough, the site had record sales on Sept. 29th, the day the stock market plunged sharply, and it continued to break records as conditions deteriorated during last year’s holiday season. The post-crash consumer seems to want to feel a direct personal connection with the designer or craftsman, just as she does when she buys carrots or milk at a farmer’s market. It’s been talked about in countless fashion circles, as well as being featured in Fast Company and Marketing magazine. Ladies beware, it is (apparently) hideously addictive, but then some things never change…

One for the Barclays team
This infographic started out as a visualisation of the Forbes 2,000, which lists the 2,000 largest companies in the world: it’s pretty intriguing. It’s also worth noting just how large the banking sector is. Hmmm… might want to rethink my share portfolio. Or revisit our New Business target list?

Have a great evening tonight and a Happy New Year!

A move towards Genomic Advertising?
I talked earlier in the year about the prospective rise of genomic advertising, where the DNA of living organisms are altered or adopted for the purposes of advertising. Well,  I spotted an interim step towards this – using glow in the dark bacteria for campaign purposes. I’m not sure whether I should be impressed at the inventiveness of the company that came up with the idea or terrified at the direction we are taking. Anyway, decide for yourself.

Christmas Tweets
It would be remiss of me not to cover Twitter, so I’ve come across quite a nice site that uses Twitter in a very inventive way. The site allows a user to discover what Christmas means to people this year, by using an unique visualiser. It’s a nice idea, well executed and I’m heartily glad to see that Christmas Spirit is currently out-tweeting Commercialism by 268,213 tweets to 145, 457. I’m sure that the Catholic and CoE will be a tad concerned to see that Religion is only covered by 57,964 tweets…

The Pepsi Challenge: phase 2
In an attempt to leverage the current trend for involving people in decision making process, Pepsi has created the Pepsi Refresh Project, reportedly setting aside USD $20 million to fund a variety of community projects across America. Rather than simply donating to existing charities, however, it will be inviting consumers to suggest and vote on the projects it funds. Pepsi will hold contests every month for 10 months beginning in January, with grants split into four categories (<$5K, <$25K, < $50K and <$250K). The first contest will begin Jan. 13, when consumers will have 10 days to submit ideas “that make us think, inspire us and ignite participation”. It’s a nice CSR initiative which uses social media in a positive way and should gain a lot of traction. The only issue is that I prefer Coke…

Decode at the V&A
The V&A Museum is currently running an exhibition called Decode which showcases the “latest developments in digital an interactive design”. The exhibition explores three themes:

• Code presents pieces that use computer code to create new works and looks at how code can be programmed to create constantly fluid and ever-changing works.
• Interactivity looks at works that are directly influenced by the viewer. Visitors will be invited to interact with and contribute to the development of the exhibits.
• Network focuses on works that comment on and utilise the digital traces left behind by everyday communications and looks at how advanced technologies and the internet have enabled new types of social interaction and mediums of self-expression.

Anyway, the V&A commissioned Karsten Schmidt to design a digital identity for the Decode exhibition using open source code (his blog is quite an interesting read, too), and is giving anyone the opportunity to recode Karsten’s work and create their own original artwork. Many of the efforts are displayed here and you can also see them on the Underground.

IBM Smarter Cities
Data is the new black. Apparently. So the clever bods at Ol Big Blue have been trying to find ways of articulating how the intelligent management can help make our lives better. And I think they have done a nice job here.

Nikon Festival
Nikon is running a competition to get more pepole using their cameras. Or phones. Or whichever particular devices that they use to create videos. Anyway, the idea here is that you upload a lovely video (maximum length 140 seconds) and then use Twitter to get people voting on what a great video it is (see what they have done there?) The winner gets £25K. It’s a simple idea, simply presented that relies on two things to be successful: greed and our desire to be recognised. I think it could work.

Monster tie in with Microsoft
I was seaching the Office website for interesting plug-ons and add-ons and noticed that Monster seems to have created a tie in with Microsoft to get people who are using Office to create their resumes to upload them to Monster. One of those very simple ideas that’s a win-win for both Microsoft (who get value-added content) and Monster (who get access to a much broader audience). Why didn’t we think of that?

Easy Tweets (https://easytweets.com/)
Our folks in the States Facebooked about this.I haven’t had time to explore it fully, but from what I understand it seems to be a tool that allows our clients to control multiple twitter accounts, but also to track their brand reputation. If any of you get a chance, I’d love to know what you (or your clients) think.

Steve Jobs demonstrates the Apple Macintosh in 1984
“Insanely great.” Oh how far we have come…

Enjoy

P.S. Unlike some of the emails that have been doing the rounds today, you can click on these links without any fear of reprisal…

The Original Human Tetris Performance
Some people have FAR too much time on their hands…

The Cube
No, not the weird award-winning sci fi film of the same name, but a stop-motion video of a Rubik’s cube being solved to funky musak. For those who are TRUE connoisseurs, try watching in high definition. BTW, did you notice how many of the labels are dog-eared – as if the owners has tried to peel them off to solve the cube, rather than twisting and turning? Hmm…

Twitter with a creative twist
OK, so Social Media is out of grace with Teens (was it ever IN??), but I love this site for its simplicity: it’s Twitter with an artistic bent and to me shows how a creative take on things can make a huge difference.

Scarygirl
My eldest lad LOVES gaming. Free gaming at that. So miniclip and y3 are a constant part of his web repertoire. Anyway, it’s not often that you get a free game that is engaging and beautifully designed at the same time.  It’s pretty slow to load, but is also fairly extensive with over 16 levels of gameplay. Some people have found the mechanics slightly frustrating, but no way near as frustrating as watching England play cricket.

What we often see is tools and sites being used in ways that had never been anticipated. So this week’s mail is dedicated to resilience. Things that we are not meant to be able to do,  but still can. As the boundary between PR, Recruitment Advertising and mainstream Advertising blurs, we will have to consider adopting a much broader array of techniques to get our message in front of an audience. And as our ongoing Herts Police success shows, it is joined-up thinking that delivers results. And a good relationship between client and agency…

For those who are about to rock, we salute you
A friend of mine recently attended the AC/DC concert and spent many days beguiling me with details of how cool it was. For those of us who were unable to attend, Sony BMG issued the album in an Excel spreadsheet. That’s right, a full album, compete with videos made in ASCII characters in an Excel document. The idea was that it was a way of distributing music across company firewalls which would normally block anything other than the standard suite of Microsoft products. It is pretty cool, but also a stark reminder of how easy it is to transcend security procedures.

All your Easters come at once
A modern means of ‘signing’ your work (rather like the mice that you can often find carved into pews in churches, or the cameo appearances by Alfred Hitchcock in his movies), an Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game. I’ve mentioned these before, but it is amazing just how many of these proliferate the media that we use on a day to day basis. My kids are pretty adept at stumbling up on these, but for those of us who are less trapdoor savvy, EEggs.com is a useful site. If you’re just interested in software eggs, click here.

Show me the money!!
OK, so it’s not an Easter Egg or an interesting use of an application, but it DOES make you think. If you get as finicky about long, drawn out meaningless meetings as I do, this tool is a stark reminder that time equals money. Simply plug in the average charge out rate of the individuals attending a meeting (I usually go for £100 or £120), enter the number of attendees and hey presto, an instant cost calculator. Next time you hold an internal meeting and someone is 15mins late, it is worth noting just how much billable time we are actually losing…

Extending the afterlife of a conference
Given how much ignorance there is about microblogging and Twitter in particular, I thought this article was very engaging. Skim down to the section headed ‘The Open Conversation’, which talks about how Twitter extended the shelf life of a conference on education reform. At a number of recent conferences, it has been interesting to see how Twitter and hashtags have been used to distribute and discuss particular topics and debates on a much broader basis.

“Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange. And it gave the event an afterlife. The sum total …added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles.”

World news has been completely overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson. The YouTube vid above is an interesting way of seeing how quickly the information was picked up on Twitter and then became a Storm. As an interesting addendum, MJs videos have stormed the viral video charts, to represent the entire top 20.

Odds on a Top 10 mainstream chart of Michael Jackson videos by the weekend? It would be worth taking a punt, certainly…

The clip was posted on April 15 to You tube. Over the day, views on You Tube increased as follows (all CET):
• 562,627 views (8am)
• 636,000 views (11:15am)
• 690,000 views (1pm)
• 728,816 views (3pm)
• 745,679 views (5pm)
• 930,390 views (9:30pm)

As you can see from he chart below, despite a mild drop, the share price has actually increased as the Twitter storm has gathered pace. I’m wondering whether this is a general response to any publicity (as the share price fluctuations are in line with what seem to be normal Domino’s trades) or whether the swift response of the CEO to the crisis actually enhanced his credibility?

It’s been a week of surprises; both on the populist culture front and on the business front. First, we saw Susan Boyle shoot to instant stardom, courtesy of a breathtaking performance of ‘I dream a dream’ from Les Mis on Britain’s Got Talent, which was immediately uploaded to YouTube and has already attracted over 17.5 million views throughout the world, attracting comment from celebs like Ashton Kucher and Demi Moore. Then we have the photos of anti-capitalist Nicky Fisher who was ‘brutally attacked’ by an unnamed police officer, all conveniently captured on video/camera and sold to the highest bidder for c£50K (I thought the whole point of anti-capitalism was that money was the root of all evil?) Nokia, the once darling of the mobile phone world, fails to curtail growth forecasts and suffers a 90% downfall in profits, citing the popularity of the iPhone as one of the principal reasons. Finally, a couple of employees at Domino’s have become infamous for shifting the perception of the brand from positive to negative in a couple of days (according the market research firm YouGov) by releasing a ‘day in the life’ video on YouTube, which shows them doing inhuman things to food in preparing it for general consumption. Domino’s went quickly into damage-control mode, inevitably firing the employees and producing its own video of apology and reassurance, as well as succumbing to the inevitable and delving into Twitter. All too late.

As you can see, our theme this week is about the viral element of campaigning. We live in such a short-termist society, that a well-planned and well executed viral can have a huge impact on a campaign; something that marketeers have recognised over the past few years, but struggled to implement consistently. The great thing about using the web as a medium to drive viral campaigns is that the advertising regulation isn’t as stringent, so you can push creative boundaries a lot further. The challenge is that is can be extremely tricky to know what will and what will not take off. Given the rise in prominence of brand response advertising in HR Recruitment, it is something we should all start thinking about, so I’ve got a couple of sites to help get you started.

Viral Video Chart (http://www.viralvideochart.com/)

I’ve seen Jim sneakily peeking at this site during his lunch hours and aside from the guffaws/sniggering it induces (well, it’s better than his mobile ringtone) it is a pretty useful site. Imagine YouTube with tracking capability. The site allows you to deconstruct the popularity of a video by tracking how and where people are talking about it – just click on one of the video links and look at the data on the right hand side. Great stuff.

Viralbank (www.viralbank.com)

Once the darling of the viral world, this site has fallen by the wayside of late, but it is still a useful repository of videos, microsites, emails, photos and games.

PotNoodle (http://www.potnoodle.com)

Pot Noodle are the kings (or queens) of viral and can often be relied on to come up with engaging, weird and whacky campaigns to keep us on our toes. The most prominent from last year was PotNoodle, the Musical but I can’t get the link to work (www.potnoodlethemusical.com) So I’ve sent you a link to the main website. I love the fact that there is a section of the site called ‘Nutrition’ that, when you actually look at it contains two facts about the product and then some general useless tat.

Twitscoop (http://www.twitscoop.com/)

Part of your planning approach for viral campaigns will be to understand what is current and how to adapt it. Twitscoop is a site that provides a live feed on topics that are being discussed. The site trawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger (no joke here). Quite often you will find that you have access to hot topics way before the they actually hit the mainstream information channels! For those of you who remember how accurate Google Trends was at predicting the outbreak of ‘flu epidemics, just imagine how much more potent this is…

]]> http://hodesdigital.co.uk/hyatt/2009/04/friday-mail-the-price-of-fame/feed/ 0