Update - 52 burrito dates

This blog didn't really have a purpose for some time now, it may find a second life some time in the future, however for now and for the next year or so, you will find me over at 52 burrito dates.

a bit of background to the new blog...

at the 2010 london twestival, chilango, the mexican food chain donated a prize in aid of concern. the prize was a year’s free burrito meals, luckily i won! just as i was about to selfishly stuff my face with burritos, i began to experience twitter envy. in a moment of weakness (or greatness?!), i decided to share the prize by taking a different girl for a burrito every week for a whole year! how generous of me this (the new blog) is the story of the 52 burrito dates…

*In Transition*

This blog is in transition. I am moving from Dublin to London. From Cybercom to We are Social. And from 2009 to 2010. A designer, Dominik at Cybercom, whom I rate very highly is going to re-design this blog. It's gonna be called Metro Scrawl, like the new domain name. The general idea is that in will be a non work related blog, but that could change ;-)

All previous posts will remain on the blog. To sort of 'sign off' on the old blog and to reflect on working in Dublin with Cybercom, here is a list of all the clients I have been associated with over the past two and a half years - no particular order.

Powerade (Web dev and Social Media)

Diet Coke (Online Advertising 2007)

Fanta (Social Media 2008)

Coke Zero (Zero Zero 7 & Possible campaigns - Online Advertising and Social Media)

Coca Cola (eBoy Coke Cities Social Media and Online Advertising)

Sprite (JD Quench Social Media)

James Hull Associates (Web development)

Fuse Interiors (Web development)

Aviva (Online Advertising and Search)

The Open University (Search)

Dublin Bus (Search)

Burn (Social Media)

A|wear (instore animation)

Aer Lingus (Over 200 emails!)

Lily O Briens (Briefly search and email)

Delta Index (Briefly search)

Guinness Storehouse (Web dev. / Search / Online PR)

Jurys Inns (Search)

The Doyle Collection (Search)

Check back here early in 2010 for the updated design, for now Happy Christmas! I'll leave you with a fairly cool social Christmas viral for TorchBox.

Friday Viral - Marketing Jedward

You either love them or hate them, but there is no getting away from the fact that Jedward a social phenomenon. No one (or two) has got more media attention from a talent show since... Susan Boyle!

Around 15 million people (UK) are tuning into to a TV show as they are weekly for the X Factor - that is 4million more than watched England against Portugal in the last 16 of the 2006 FIFA World Cup! When you take those 15 million people and empower them with social media tools, the potential for offsets to the show to take a life of their own is huge! This is very relevant to all marketers, not least those who have spent large sums on official sponsorship - only to see nimble competitors piggybacking on some in show story to their own benefit.

TV3's The Apprentice is another current reality TV ratings hit, and similarities to the X Factor for marketers can be drawn. Brands such as Meteor and Dairy Milk have invested heavily in sponsorship and spin off campaigns. However, like Jedward, one of The Apprentice participants, Breffney Morgan has become the shows biggest assets and a social media phenomenon. Marketers could be better off picky backing his popularity!

This weeks Friday Viral, above, is done by AnyJunk.co.uk who have cleverly used the attention of Jedward to creative a viral video promoting their brand. In this case, it works well! But, Jedward wouldn't be a great fit for all brands.. and also the newsworthyness of the two twins, and thus the virality of anything thing Jedward, is diminishing due to the public tolerance, and that their stint on X-Factor will soon come to an end. This video might have had more success had it been released a few weeks ago.

Friday Viral - VIDEOGIOCO

Friday Viral loves animation videos. Cheers to @RobReid for sharing this one. Hope you enjoy - or share further :)



Ref:
VIDEOGIOCO
animation and concept by Donato Sansone
sound design by Enrico Ascoli

To Adervtise Is To Persuade

This week Sir Martin Sorrell blamed agencies as the reason why brands weren't spending more of their marketing budgets online? On average 11% of marketing budgets are spent online.

"The people who run agencies tend to be of an older vintage - to put it politely," said Sorrell. "They tend to be resistant to change and want to spend the last three to four years of their careers travelling around the world rather than dealing with fundamental strategic issues on a daily basis."

Sorrell, who's WPP group employs over 100,000 people believes that brands are not being led in the right direction. That they are not being persuaded. Persuasion is a fundamental of advertising. Advertising agencies are by default, and by claim, the best persuaders around, well then, why can’t they persuade their clients to spend more online?

So what should agencies be persuading brands to do exactly? Here's one suggestion.

One of the great powers of the Internet is it’s ability to make the world smaller, to bring people together, and its collaborating nature. This sort of power has led to what is known as Crowd Sourcing. Open sourced software has been key in many Internet software success of recent years such as Social Networks (Facebook Apps), Web Browsers (Firefox) and mobile phones (Android phones).

The idea of crowd sourcing has been around advertising for years, Open Ad is ancient (circa 2005)

Can agencies persuade brands to use digital technologies to create content, co-creation of products, co-creation of marketing ideas, co-creation of business ideas etc. or is their fear of what this might mean to the purpose of agencies?

If you're not sure of what I'm on about, check out this slideshow of how crowd sourcing was used to come up with a presentation. Brands can use the same methods to come up with what ever...

Boardtownhall Final

View more presentations from hapsblom.

Friday Viral - Economist on Convergence

An unusual source for a Friday Viral is the Economist YouTube channel (discovered via @ZooDigital) This isn't the first convergence, Internet or social media statistic video you might have seen. However it is extremely current, and is a relevant follow up a first 'The Media Lane' post Yesterday about The Late Late show and convergence. For all mediums mentioned TV, Mobile, Web) the figures are signify a startling shift in media consumption that continues to develop and advance.

Will the fundamental principles of marketing (circa 1970's)- which govern many New Media Marketing decisions - remain relevant in this new communications world, or are they obsolete and should new rules apply?

The Media Lane

"The Late Late Show is a hit on Twitter"

The Late Late show is an institution. It is the most popluar programme on TV in Ireland. Since Gay Byrne announced the first show in 1962, it has proven to be greater than any one guest, than any one host, than any one audience generation. What impact will the changes in media consumption and the advances of technologies have on the programme?



The role a TV set as a must have piece of technology is more and more in doubt as we often here about convergence and the battle of the TV room. Which devise will prevail – the TV, a Laptop, a computer console? The convergence debate is directly related to what’s happening online, and it is the seismic shift in audience behaviour which the internet has brought about that makes a ‘one meets all’ convergence model impossible. Judy Shapiro writes in AdAge “Before the web, content was a tightly controlled and distributed commodity - a limited amount of content was distributed through highly controlled and limited channels. This was the ultimate "push" model. The internet was the game changer because it is one big "pull" engine -- users pulling what they wanted, when they wanted it: services, connectivity and, yes, content. The tight control the media industry had on content was gone forever.”

Will the audience, rather that any company, decide on how The Late Late Show moves into the new media world? Let's assume that there will always a demand for The Late Late Show content. Two developments during the later stages of the Pat Kenny era have impacted how the show under Ryan Tubridy is being consumed. Firstly, the RTE iPlayer has made post show views possible, and secondly there is #latelate. The Late Late show is a hit on Twitter! There is ongoing live commentary / updates / debate from people watching from home. I was made aware of this a few weeks ago when I tweeted that I was going to be in the audience for the show. Never did I receive more @reply’s. It may not be happening on one device, or be controlled by any one entity, but the show can be viewed where ever, when ever, and the audience can chat to each other during it!

Tune into the #latelate show feed on Twitter this Friday Night for more!

Friday Viral - The Wardrobe

Watched this ad after reading a tweet, and it made me want to share it. Not only is it funny, it also promotes creative writing and original programming, would RTE gain inspiration from it?

Background details: "French television channel Canal Plus is promoting the power of story with Le Placard (Wardrobe), a humorous television commercial featuring a man who must defeat incredible odds to survive. The spot marks the launch of the original creativity campaign, highlighting original programming created by Canal+.

The spot begins in the forest with a man running under gunfire. The plot thickens as one escape leads to a new crisis, demonstrating the saying, “the solutions of today become the problems of tomorrow”. Never underestimate the power of a great story".

Source: The Information Room

Friday Viral - Twilight Football

This is a pretty slick viral video created by Sony, to promote their global Twilight Football campaign which will see a match of five-a-side football played consecutively in seven countries across four continents as the hour of twilight falls.

More details:
"The event, devised by Fallon, seeks to promote the Sony's Exmor CMOS camera technology that enables photographers to capture high-quality images in low light.

The matches will begin in Italy on 22 September before moving to France, Spain, the UK, Argentina, Australia and then finally South Africa over approximately four hours and 40 minutes.

The viral, created by Dare, focuses on the third location, a Spanish bullring, and includes shots of a bull showing off its footballing prowess.

Footage of the event as well as a twilight photography competition will run on a dedicated microsite."

The Saatchi Gallery

This blog post is about The Saatchi Gallery, a visit to which I really enjoyed recently. Firstly, I will share the advertisiging related backgound story of Maurice and Charles Saatchi...

"With the award-winning London agency they opened in September 1970, "the" brothers went on a 16-year acquisition spree that created the world's largest marketing conglomerate and permanently altered and redefined the U.S. advertising landscape... the brothers' financial officer, Martin Sorrell, would split off in '86 to create (rival) WPP Group... In 1995, Saatchi directors rebelled against the brothers' lavish spending and ousted them from the troubled multibillion-dollar publicly held company. The brothers Saatchi thereupon created M&C Saatchi - a small London-based agency - while Saatchi & Saatchi survived, and WPP Group grew to be one of the top three holding companies" (Adage).

Charles also invested much of his personal fortune in emerging aorist's. This developed into a huge collection of contemporary art from around the world, and he first opened The Saatchi Galley in 1985. It's current location on the King's Road, opened in 2008, in London, and hold a few exhibitions annually displaying some of the collection. Read more about the gallery.

The other interesting element of the Gallery and Art Collection is that the site acts as an Online Gallery social network for Artists to display their work on personalised profile pages.

The current show is called Abstract America, an interesting and varied collection of abstract art form emerging US artits; the pick of the bunch being former Nascar driver Kristin Baker. It is rare that pieces of art kept from one show to the next, however, on the bottom floor there is moving installation of old people in wheel chairs called 'Old Persons Home' from the 2008 show: The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu (click here to read more). Definetly the stand out piece for me!