Ahhh Skittles! This is what agency EVB (a team skittles member) created as part of the skittles valentines day campaign, utilisng their newly created “Mob The Rainbow” facebook fan page of over 4 million people (Coca-Cola has 5 million) to mob an unsuspecting meter maid with love!

This is a great way to integrate and leverage your social following with real world activation, then completing a full circle by demonstrating the power of that following back online with video proof of what’s been achieved by the group. In this case, over 44,000 people wrote valentines day messages as part of the facebook Click here to read the full article...

This is a very cool way of utilising a little bit of digital magic in-store to solve a pretty big business challenge. Made To Order; it’s what McDonald’s have spent tens of millions on trying to tell you over the past year or so, and Burger King (in Brazil) are now trying to remind you that’s how they do it too, and that every burger is made just for you!

The solution was simple: take one cashier, one hidden camera and one printer!

This is a pretty brave guerrilla marketing event by Heineken on the eve of one of the biggest matches you can imagine, Real Madrid vs AC Milan. Now you’re probably thinking it’s something out on the street, taking advantage of all the crazed soccer fans passing by, but you’d be wrong…

Heineken decided to stage a fake event at the same time the game was to be played, a mix of classical music meets poetry in an Italian theater. To make this happen, they recruited about 200 people to help get over 1000 people away from their TV’s and into this event, sacrificing the biggest game of the season! Click here to read the full article...

With the launch of the iPad next month, I thought it would be interesting to post this infographic for comparison in a years time to see what impact the iPad has on the app store economy, and like everyone else, I’m predicting it to be massive!

There are some great numbers in here and it’s interesting to see that the average price of all apps, including the free ones, is about $2.70 (with out them, it averages at about $3.60) and only 1 in ever 4 apps are paid. Stats like these are as good as any to help convince you to start turning those great app ideas you have into real world dollars! (via Gigaom)
Click here to view the App Store Economy Infographic

I think 2010 will be remembered as the year social commerce really took off. Last year, I posted on how to explain the benefits of social, and I think that video is pretty relevant to how Social Commerce works (albeit a pretty “plain English” explanation) from a different angle.

This great little video from Good Magazine (in partnership with IBM) combines a lot of the latest numbers surrounding eCommerce and social consumers, and with these two combining at a rapid rate, it’s now being known as Social Commerce, and every retailer, every brand, is going to need a strategy to harness the benefits of it (and manage the arising challenges), or risk sinking in a sea of extra savvy shoppers in 2010. (via ViralBlog)

So make sure you think about how you’re utilising the power of social commerce in 2010.

Volkswagen have just launched a new iPhone app game called the “Think Blue Challenge”. In contrast to their previous Real Racing GTI game, the Think Blue Challenge app rewards players for efficient driving, half educational (complete with tips and quiz questions) / half racing game this app tests your every day driving skills and attempts to make you a more efficient driver, the better you get, the higher up the global leader board you’ll go! The aim is to be the smoothest driver, by going the longest distance on your single tank of fuel.

YouTube Annotations. Last year I said agencies & brands would really take advantage of them in 2010 and Mattel is the first big brand to utilise YouTube’s annotations technology in a major digital campaign this year. And this from Mattel hasn’t disappointed.

It’s the Hot Wheels Custom Motors Cup Challenge Campaign and it allows you to become the pit crew chief and race your car across 3 tracks to victory if you can customise your car with the right gear for the right track. It’s a pretty cool digital experience, and would be even better for kids, who I could see playing it again and again.

Although I would love to have seen a little more depth in the game (then again, it all comes down to budget!), this is a great example of digital brand engagement and with over 200,000 games played in the first few weeks since launch, it’s ontrack to be very successful and something I’m sure, will be used as a case study for other brands to follow this year.

This video is getting some hype since airing on Australia’s ABC1 last week. So I thought I’d post and clear up a few issues with the numbers and facts they are using! Firstly, it seems some of the numbers, like the 450,000 servers are years old (that was quoted back in 2006!) and the 1 billion web searches per day was surpassed years ago, with 2 billion per day the estimate way back in July 2009. The video is again testing Google’s “don’t be evil” commandment! But cool video!

With the amount of Augmented Reality work being created (or at least promoted) at the moment, I thought it might be worth while posting up what I think are the Top 10 Augmented Reality Examples, that showcase the depth of what Augmented Reality has to offer us to date.

To do this, I’m looking at a mix of promotional ideas, competitions, real world application, mobile, campaigns, virals and experiences. The Augmented Reality Examples I’ve chosen are hand picked across that various mix to showcase where Augmented Reality is heading into the future, and how it can be used today. Click here to view the Top 10 Augmented Reality Examples.

Personally I think the future of Augmented Reality will live in the mobile space, that’s where it will play it’s most useful role in helping deliver relevant content in a contextual environment. But the use of Augmented Reality activation online mixed with all the various DM, viral, packaging, experience and shopping executions will keep it well balanced from a consumption point of view. (more…)

This is an awe inspiring stop motion piece created with origami (and a little CGI) to help tell the ASICS brand story to the world in memory of company founder Kihachiro Onitsuka. Not only is the story magical, but the stop motion origami is just amazing and everyone agrees. Created by Nordpol + Hamburg, it won a Grand Prix at the Eurobest, gold at the New York festival, gold at the London International Awards, silver at the Clio in Miami and two times bronze at ADC Germany!

After trying out a bit of chat roulette for my previous post on the FCUK competition, I’ve decided that nobody else should ever have to use it! So I went in search of a demo video that you could all watch, that in turn, saves you the pain of having to experience it yourself! Turns out, this is a pretty good short film on what actually happens in Chat Roulette. You are now free from pain!

This beautifully designed infographic from Permuto visualises some of the latest shopper data from the US Census Bureau. What’s interesting to see, is that eCommerce (including phone & catalogue sales) is starting to “out sell” many of the traditional bricks and mortar categories in the US. There is some debate as to the exact numbers being used in this chart, but overall it tells a pretty important message to brands and retailers. Click here to view the full chart...

Yes, I’ve been out of the country for a few weeks so this viral is about a month old. But it’s possibly the funniest ad I’ve seen in a long time and on top of that, it’s still sitting at #10 on the Viral Video Charts so it deserves a mention! So far, the “Old Spice” ad has almost 5 Million views in under a month, and interestingly (for the production buffs) was filmed all in camera in a single shot.

But the content doesn’t stop here, Old Spice has launched a new site full of great content and even a love giving twitter app that promises to please your woman 100%!

ChatRoulette discovered about 3 weeks ago when it was suddenly featured across a host of US news sites and tv shows. It never takes long, and FCUK (with agency Poke, London) have become the very first brand to try to leverage the success of ChatRoulette and all 500,000+ unique players per day by launching a competition inline with their current The Man, The Woman campaign.

Basically, you have to record a conversation of you seducing a woman to win a $250 voucher! It’s a pretty bold move, as there is some serious spam floating around there already and plenty of things you probably wouldn’t want your brand associated with, but either way they are getting some attention by being the very first to try! Click here to see some of the winners so far!

Check out my favorite video to date… Click here to watch the ChatRoulette Video...

Brands trying to generate large numbers of fans on Facebook know it generally involves some serious work over a decent period of time, or in this case (and the much preferred method!), just a very clever idea that has a platform to go viral! This is a new Facebook app for Gold Star Beer (Israel’s #1 Beer), created by McCann Israel where they have created a man vs woman car parking challenge for players recruit friends to help win the battle of supremacy!

You’ve got to park a car perfectly in the fastest possible time to help your genders average parking score! The app has been a massive hit over in Israel, with 200,000 people becoming fans, generating 2.5 million + games in under a week! Check out the Facebook app here! (thanks Nir!)

Oh, women are currently parking in about 53 secs while men are averaging a speedy 42 secs!

This is an interesting new digital concept from SilkTricky (a digital content agency) where they’ve created a combination of interactive movie that meets an iPhone app game to complete the story! It’s called Bank Run (you can start watching here) and empowers you to control the short film’s direction online, once you’ve watched that part, you’re prompted to buy their $2 iPhone app which contains the Click here to read the whole article...

Do you remember the band that released that music video with them performing a song while moving around on Treadmills? Well, that video made them famous and now they are back with another YouTube release of their latest music video, and it’s already getting some serious attention online with almost 3 million views in it’s first few days!

Although their music is easy listening, the video is out of this world and shows how great video content, when released specifically online just seems to take off. It’s gone viral and I’d say will hit 5 million views by the weeks end. Click here to check out the making of videos...

I don’t think this type of trend will take off, but I’m sure there would be a few interesting uses around for it away from the big screen (possibly for use in online campaigns, museums experiences and the like). Either way, it’s a pretty cool concept that would definitely capture some engagement and certainly has been creating some buzz online since being released. What do you think?

I’m in a bit of a statistical mood this week and have been hunting down all sorts of charts to keep my sanity in order, and this chart is an absolute winner. It shows (by percentage) the average age demographics and distribution across all the major social networks. We often get people talking about how facebook & twitter are only for “young people” in their teens & twenties, but ofcourse most of you know that’s just not the case and here is the proof! Click here to view the full chart...

I think this a pretty cool chart (by Pingdom) for anyone who takes an interest in Google, and while there is nothing groundbreaking here, it’s a great compilation of key Google Facts & Figures that tick along month after month, with some that you probably didn’t know (and now do!). So just click here to view the visualisation and stats...

This video by Jesse Thomas is getting some serious attention since being launched on Vimeo last week. The format is simple, a great combination of animation meets statistical visualisation to showcase some of the most recently released stats on the state of the internet.

It provides us with some great insight into what’s going on online; with numbers around all the social mediums, video platforms and more (although it’s all pretty basic, top line info). A few interesting stats you’ll love… There are 2.5 billion photos uploaded to Facebook every month, YouTube serves 1 billion videos per day, The average person watched 182 online videos per month and there are 200 billion spam emails sent every day! Enjoy the video!

After the huge success of Carousel project, Philips launched a new campaign called “Parallel Lines”. They teamed up with five film directors (Greg Fay, Johnny Hardstaff, Carl Erik Rinsch, Jake Scott and Hi-Sim) from Ridley Scott Associates to shoot five cutting edge short films. The main goal is to bring a brand experience for movie lovers and showcase the picture and sound capabilities of Philips Ambilight TVs.

DDB, Tribal DDB, Unit 9 and Carat teamed up for this campaign. Check out for more details here.

If you haven’t seen this already, it’s a pretty cool little app that NBC launched as part of their Winter Olympic coverage for the 2010 Vancouver Games. The Tweet Tracker is made up of a picture grid that expands and contracts each sport depending on the current buzz being generated.

You’ll also be able to dig in to see who is tweeting and the links being tweeted from. I think the apps design could have been a little better, but overall a great app to play with on NBC.

I was hoping to post this before I left for Japan, but just didn’t have enough time! Now that I’m back, I thought it better be the first thing I’d post up. This is the hype video & demo video showing the new Adidas Augmented Reality Shoes in action, they were released earlier in February to fans around the globe. Waiting to hear the first month stats round up, so will let you know when I do!

Apple’s iTunes Store has reached a huge milestone: 10 billion music downloads since opening on April 28, 2003. Back then there was about 200,000 songs to choose from. Today music isn’t all they sell; with the evolution of the iPod and the creation of new products such as the AppleTV, iPhone, iPod touch and soon the iPad the iTunes Store now delivers audiobooks, podcasts, TV shows, movies, apps and games. To celebrate the occasion Apple is giving the purchaser of the 10,000,000,000th song a $10,000 iTunes card.

Update: The 10 billionth song was “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash, purchased by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia.