Notorious Beam Team

Extra Tasty, from the brainiacs that came up with the revolutionary, cult T-shirt company Threadless - a catalyst for Web 2.0.


The site sets up a community of people who contribute drinks recipes which is open for comment. It's all set up to take comments and produces a drink of the day that is delivered via an RSS feed. It's a cracking idea and just another example of the proliferation of useful, community based, cool little open sourced web businesses that are springing up. It would be a great way to either test a new drinking strategy or to find find new cocktail recipes.

"They are starting a campaign to scrap VAT (value added tax) on their fruit smoothies. The boys and girls at Innocent are arguing, if you don't pay VAT on frozen chips and pizzas, meat pies, pastries and beef-burgers, why do you have to pay it on something which is good for you and which aids the current UK governments five a day target.

Innnocent is considering a legal challenge to this anomaly. The legal definition of a beverage is something drunk to ‘increase bodily fluid levels’ and to ‘slake one’s thirst’. Well, this quite clearly does not apply to our product.

Is this a clever marketing ploy or a simple common sense argument to pursue? After all, the customers are the ones who will benefit if the law gets changed by paying less..."

From PSFK

"A group called the Second Life Liberation Army have been harassing Second Life inhabitants in the stores of First World brands. Earlier this month, members of the SLLA stopped shoppers buying in American Apparel. Their mission is to get voting rights in the world plus a share in the Second Life company, Linden Labs.

SL doesn't have a police force as far as we see. What would happen if a literal army of SL residents banded together - maybe within a geographic zone - and attacked other residents, land and even commercial operations? We believe that someone could easily do this with enough time and funds." From PSFK

It's all part of a wider debate about the merits of brands getting involved in Second Life. The consensus is divided between Second Life purists who want to live in an unbranded world and those who think that Second Life is much more interesting when brands add something to the mix such as American Apparel, Reebok etc.

To read the pro brand side click here.

To read the anti brand side click here.

The out-take at the moment seems to be that brands should get involved and experiment with what works vs what doesn't but they should be careful with how they do it. Annoying Second Life avatars will backfire very quickly!

Whilst the execution of this idea is pretty average the idea and application of Google Maps in this fashion is really interesting. Any bar that's signed up to a certain promotion could be pinpointed with a link to their website, videos of their cocktail mixing, images of their clientelle and a cocktail list. It's a great way of taking a promotion to the trade and engaging increasingly savvy consumers.

This site was publicised on Coolhunting a few weeks ago. Back then their was no advertising. 2 weeks later Cabana Cacacha have used the site for advertising.

This viral for Absolut Cut has been around for a while and is a classic.



It's yet another example of an alcohol brand realising that virals are an important part of their marketing mix. Make it funny and it will take over the world in weeks.

MIT Adverlab reports that Myspace users are becoming increasingly irritated with brand's fake Myspace profiles.

"So the lowest-hanging fruit's gone now and it's time to move from the static and fake (yeah, fictional) MySpace profiles to something more innovative and interactive. MediaPost: " Peter Blackshaw--chief marketing officer for Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which monitors online "buzz" about a variety of topics--warns that the growing corporate presence on social networks is a topic of significant discussion among users. [...] Rachel Honig, co-founder of the digital-marketing firm Digital Power & Light, agreed that the growing number of fake profiles might quickly prove tiresome."

"Although he is a fervent MySpace supporter, Scott Koboyashi, a co-founder of a "best of MySpace" blog called SpaceCadetz, said in a recent interview that the site has lost its independent feel."

Also, VW's Helga still hasn't friended me despite multiple requests. Adidas, Yaris, Scion, Smart, Cingular and H&M did. Helga - not."

The keys to doing Myspace advertising seem to be:

Be honest about the brand's involvement
Respond to "friends" and commit yourself to giving the Myspace profile a personality and life
Offer potential friends in the community something that they really want - be it something funny, inside information, access to bars and clubs etc. Get this right and you'll capture the brand's core fanbase.

"Word at the Second Life Community Convention is that virtual world services company Rivers Run Red is about to bring yet another big-name brand into the virtual world of Second Life. This time it’s sneaker maker Adidas Reebok (the two companies merged a year ago), which will come to Second Life with plans to get closer to consumers by leveraging the community and feedback capabilities of the virtual world.

The company plans to reach out to SL residents with products in the virtual world, and by getting feedback on what the Adidas and Reebok brands mean to them. The Adidas catchphrase “Impossible is Nothing,” for instance, will become a means of finding out just what “impossible” means to the SL market segment — where the word has an entirely different meaning from anywhere else. That’s according to a media agency executive involved in the project. Prototype shoes may also be released in the virtual world, and it’s possible that residents may even be able to alter these designs as part of the feedback loop.

The deal sounds like a long-term commitment of 18 months or more, and from what 3pointD hears is one of the biggest virtual world services contracts to date (in dollar terms, that is). More news as it develops. Just as long as I can get a pair of virtual Rod Lavers (green sole, please), I’ll be happy."

From 3PointD.com and Adverlab

Bacardi's recent Salmon ads are getting a great reception on the TV but are being panned online. Bloggers have noticed that Bacardi is simply ripping off a bunch of pranksters called the Cacophony Society who ran the ING Bay to Breakers 12K run in San Fransico backwards wearing salmon outfits. Check out the Bacardi ad here and the home video of the real salmons below!

Bacardi ad



The real salmon



Interestingly, there are loads of Bacardi ads on you tube which are generally of pretty high quality. This ad though is of poor quality and looks as though it hasn't been posted by Bacardi. My suscpicion is that Bacardi have taken down the original ad to try to stem the criticism they are getting from the online community.

From the Laughing Squid

"Wow this is amazing, alcoholic beverage maker Bacardi totally ripped-off San Francisco’s infamous underground prankster group The Cacophony Society with their upcoming “Bacardi Salmon” (”Swimming Upstream”) television commerial and massive, global “You In?” ad campaign.

Since 1994, The Cacophony Society has had their salmon running in the opposite direction during the annual Bay to Breakers 12K race through San Francisco. The salmon would enter at the mid point of the course and then spawn their way upstream. The salmon are mini-celebrities at the race and always get a huge cheer as they go by. This well known, 12 year old Cacophony event is called Breakers to Bay, and more salmon info can be found on Tribe.net, as well as photos on Flickr and video on YouTube.

So I was pretty surprised when I was sent a link to the “Bacardi Salmon” commerical. It was developed for Bacardi by the ad agency RKCR/Y&R (Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, the UK office of Young & Rubicam) , who used the production company Hungry Man, with Jim Jenkins as the director of the spot. The ad steals the entire concept of The Cacophony Society’s Breakers to Bay event, featuring salmon spawning upstream during a foot race through New York (instead of San Francisco). They make no attempt to give any credit to the event’s origins or the person who came up with the idea for the event. In fact, I shot video of the 1996 Breakers to Bay salmon running and this commerical is eerily close to my footage (which has been in circulation for ten years), even including the salmon showing up at the bar at the end.

Well I guess if you can’t come up with something orginal, you can just follow Bacardi’s lead by co-opting someone else’s idea and “run upstream” with it. Oh yeah, be sure to drink a bunch of rum first."


This post on Metroblogger is even more damning especially as it was aired on the world's most popular blog, BoingBoing.net

"What really smells rotten is that their storyboard for the commercial is the same as the Breakers-to-Bay video Scott Beale shot ten years ago, with the salmon ending up in a bar at the end. Bacardi is going global with the ad campaign, planning to spend millions on it. Losers!

The Cacophony Society has contributed immeasurably to local culture with their whimsical situationalist Da-Da-ist pranks since 1994 -- their tentacles touch the annual St. Stupid's Day Parade, and nationwide x-mas invasions in major shopping areas of busloads of drunken Santas (to be seen in the next Bacardi holiday ad campaign, I'm sure). It sucks to be reminded by a company like Bacardi that companies like theirs have no compunctions about ripping off individuals, groups and communities to sell their products."

It's early days for the Beam Team blog but the map of where these pages are being viewed is very encouraging.

We've had visitors from India, Mexico, Canada, Italy, New York, Chicago, Ontario and all across the UK.

This fantastic website allows you to map your music and film tastes and suggests things that you might like.

http://www.liveplasma.com/

A search for Madonna shows all these connections:



Simliarly searching for Harrison Ford reveals this web of suggestions:



It's a great way to expand your culutral horizons.

Fresh off the back of the Million Dollar Home Page comes the real world version of the same concept - except on the facade of a buidling.

The Sandberg Institute in Holland is selling sqaures of its facade as advertising space as you can see below:



This is what Quick Online Tips have to say about it.

"The Sandberg Institute in the economic business area of Amsterdam, is running a new advertising project which they call Artvertising. It is similar to the successful million dollar homepage on the internet (which sold $1 per pixel on a single page), just that this time the advertisement are offline and placed in the form of tiles on a building facade.

Each tile is 29×35cm and 19.99 euro per tile for the advertisement to be placed on the building for one month. Images in jpeg, 150 dpi and of the exact size will be accepted.

I see lots of top brands on the top of the facade like Nike, Philips, Google, Mercedes advertising their huge logos on the million dollar building face. The smaller advertisers seem contended with the lower part of the building facade, possibly because a smaller ad will be better seen from the lower level.

The million dollar homepage had inspired a long list of pixel homepage advertising. I am sure this new artvertising concept by Sandberg Institute will inspire a new advertising race to create many more million dollar buildings!"

Heinz have launched a website in the States, called MyHeinz, offering the chance to customise your Heinz Ketchup label. I've tried to order some bottles for the office. This could be a really interesting way of offering customised bottles for Fathers' Day and Holiday. Or it could even be used as a way of giving consumers the chance to design their own label in a graphical sense. The best designs could either be made into limited editions or perhaps be used as a tool to redesign our brands' labels.

This is from the Lightning Labels Blog:

Last week after 130 years Heinz announced something completely new in the world of ketchup. No, the recipe hasn't changed, but you can now customize the label on their ketchup bottles. In celebration of the famous ketchup brand's 130th birthday Heinz is offering everyone the ability to create their very own ketchup label at www.myheinz.com.

The good news is that the minimum quantity is just one bottle and the cost starts as low as $4.50. The bad news is it takes 3-4 weeks and there is a pretty steep shipping & handling fee. Regardless, what Heinz is doing is a breakthrough. This is the first time a mass market consumer product like this is being offered with the ability to create your own label. I say it is about time.

The technology to be able to do this has been around for several years, but Heinz is the first company to attempt this on a large scale. The way they are doing it is most likely printing a large number of blank shells of their labels and then overprinting the personalized messages on these shells on a high speed digital printer. They are probably waiting to run a large batch all at once, which is why you have to wait 3-4 weeks.

Here at Lightning Labels we also have the capability to do labels like this. Because we only use digital label printing every label we produce can be different. We obviously hope this move by Heinz will be the first step in a continuing trend of personalized labels for consumer products. We are ready for it.

"The printing press did for communication what the Internet is doing for marketing. Both changed the medium of mass communication and both revolutionized the way things get done. We are starting to see a new trend these days with all of the Web 2.0 applications out there. The Internet has reached critical mass allowing social networking sites to catalyze the evolution of marketing on the web and we are beginning to see a merging of the "old" and the "new" ways. As a result, we would like to introduce a new series of posts on Marketing 2.0 that revolve around the ideas below." (Pronet Advertising)

In the spirit of Web 2.0 here is a section from Wikipedia on the topic:

"Marketing 2.0 is an evolution of Marketing that leverages the social networking aspects of many new websites. Frequently called Web 2.0, these sites reach millions of people via social networks and can involve media such as pictures, videos, blogs, social bookmarks, and feeds.

The interconnnectivity of social networks combined with their ability to communicate a variety of mass media forms can be used to advertise/market in novel ways. Companies can supplement traditional marketing methods with Marketing 2.0 for things like branding, hype, promotion, and public relations.

The fast food giant Wendy's created a profile for their square hamburger character from television commercials on Myspace.com. This character was then added to the "friends" list of over 90,000 profiles resulting in a significant amount of unpaid advertising.

The Weinstein Company posted an eight-minute clip of their movie "Lucky Number Slevin" on YouTube prior to its release. This movie ended upon the homepage in the category of "most popular videos of the day" and received 4.5 out of 5 stars from YouTube visitors.

Other websites that can be used for Marketing 2.0 include Flickr, Digg and Del.icio.us."

For podcasts on everything to do with Web 2.0 and Marketing 2.0 visit the New Media Knowledge website to listen to podcasts on topics such as Content 2.0, Social Networking, Folksonomies and Invisible Culture.

Whilst having a look at a target consumers' Myspace profile in the States I came across a Crown Royal Myspace profile with a collection of other spirts as "his" friend.

Whether this is something done by fans of these spirits, the brands themselves or distributors is unclear.



Crown Royal's Myspace friends include Jose Cuervo, Bacardi, Absolut, Southern Comfort, Jim Beam etc.

Or is it some sort of "Myspace advertising agency" plugging for business... if anyone has a view on it let me know.

Diageo has got an online bar which allows you to explore the Diageo range and see how the different spirits are best mixed. Whilst this is a really neat solution it seems that things are moving so fast that a fully interactive Second Life bar might be a more exciting concept.



Below is a sample of an off the shelf bar you can buy with Smirnoff in the backbar.



Maybe we should have a Beam bar in Second Life... it would be a great way of interacting with consumers and a chance to do something innovative.

At the moment some brands such as Amstel and Smirnoff have bar kit for sale in the Second Life Boutique such as the barrel below for 375 Linden Dollars:

Starwood Hotels have launched a virtual hotel in Second Life. Things are moving very quickly in this online world.





3pointD has posted the following:

"Steve Rubel jumped the gun on this news so I’ll feel free to blog it too: Starwood Hotels is building out a version of their new Aloft hotel brand in the virtual world of Second Life as a way to attract future customers and presumably get some feedback about the brand’s features before it hits the physical world. (It is not meant to be a functional hotel in SL, I’m told.) The SL project is being constructed by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), who are also blogging the process along with Aloft execs.

I like the idea of virtual hotel rooms being on view in SL. (How great would it be to be able to check out a bunch of rooms in your destination city before you booked a trip?) I’m more excited, though, about the fact that Aloft and the Sheep are blogging the process of building the project. This is something I wanted to do a while back at the Second Life Herald, but found it hard to find a builder who’d put up with being annoyed by my questions while building. The Sheep’s solution is great: get a talented builder who is also an articulate speaker and writer to do the job. Fortunately, they have SL resident Cory Edo (the real world’s Sara Van Gorden), who is both. The SecondCast crew interviewed Cory recently, which is how I know she’s articulate. Her builds speak for themselves.

Of course, for a more critical assessment of the final product itself, we’ll have to wait until the Aloft build is open to the public, but whether it’s a luxury virtual pied-a-terre or a virtual fleabag SRO in the end, I do think it’s extremely interesting and valuable to document the process of creation, and of translation from plans that would result in a physical building to those that result in a virtual model of much the same thing."

What will be next?

I've been meaning to write a post about Dodgeball for a while now.



It's a brilliant social networking service that not only allows for contact with your list of online friends but also allows you to tell your list of friends to meet up with you if they are in the area. So imagine if you are having a swift gentleman's half after work - you send a text to Dodgeball which tells all your friends within a 10 block radius to come and have a drink with you if they're feeling thirsty.

Currently the service is booming in the States with coverage over 22 cities.

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times about the phenomenon for such social networking sites. The exciting thing for us is that it helps to bring the connections you make in the virtual world into reality.

"I'M 24 years old, have a good job, friends. But like many of my generation, I consistently trade actual human contact for the more reliable emotional high of smiles on MySpace, winks on Match.com and pokes on Facebook. I live for Friendster views, profile comments and the Dodgeball messages that clog my cellphone every night.

I prefer, in short, a world cloaked in virtual intimacy. It may be electronic, but it is intimacy nevertheless. Besides, eye contact isn't all it's cracked up to be and facial expressions can be so hard to control. My life goes like this: Every morning, before I brush my teeth, I sign in to my Instant Messenger to let everyone know I'm awake. I check for new e-mail, messages or views, bulletins, invitations, friend requests, comments on my blog or mentions of me or my blog on my friends' blogs.
Next I flip open my phone and check for last night's Dodgeball messages. Dodgeball is the most intimate and invasive network I belong to. It links my online community to my cellphone, so when I send a text message to 36343 (Dodge), the program pings out a message with my location to all the people in my Dodgeball network. Acceptance into another person's Dodgeball network is a very personal way to say you want to hang out." (Theodora Stites)

This article from Spectrum offers an excellent overview of the service.

This gives an overview of the 15 most influential websites since the internet was started.

Here's an brief section from John Naughton's article:

"To get a handle on the scale of what has happened, think back to what the world was like 15 years ago. Amazon was a large river in South America. Ryanair was an Irish airline that flew to places nobody had ever heard of. eBay was a typo. Yahoo was a term from Gulliver's Travels. A googol was a very large number (one followed by a hundred zeroes). Classified ads were densely printed matter in newspapers. 'Encyclopedia' was a synonym for Encyclopedia Britannica. And if you wanted to read what your MP had said in the Commons yesterday you had to queue at the Stationery Office in London to buy Hansard. Oh, and there were quaint little shops in high streets called 'travel agents'.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the web we've assembled a list of sites that have become the virtual wallpaper of our lives. What the corresponding list will be like in 15 years' time is anyone's guess. As the man said, if you want to know the future, go buy a crystal ball. In the meantime, read on and wonder."

Fascinating. A must read. I can't help thinking Second Life will be on there soon as well.

American Apparel is taking the lead with their immersion into the online, virtual reality game, Second Life. They are getting great kudos from the online community.

Second Life design guru, Aimee Weber, has created an in world virtual store where visitors can buy clothers for their virtual characters as well as order the clothes in real life.

They have created their own island called Lerappa (Apparel backwards)to host the store which is receiving fantastic feedback both from the online community and from serious business journals such as Forbes.



To see what the fuss is all about have a look at these images and check out the blog entries below.









The below is taken from 3PointD.com:

Popular Second Life architect and content-creator Aimee Weber of in-world brand *PREEN* sends news that she’s just designed and built an in-world showroom for real-world fashion brand American Apparel. The store, located on a private island in Second Life, is set to open as soon as this weekend. The news has SL residents considering what it means that the first real-world fashion brand has made an entrance to Second Life. Fashion is one of the virtual world’s biggest industries, and the fashion business in SL is extremely competitive. So it’s not a surprise that the first real-world retail brand to set up shop in SL is a fashion retailer.

The fashions themselves are patterned after American Apparel’s real-world clothes, and were designed by several designers, including Aimee, though she wouldn’t say who else was involved. The clothing will be priced “high-priced reasonable” compared to other SL fashions, Aimee says. No comment either on where the revenue from clothing sales will go — which leads me to believe it will go to the designers as part of their compensation. Notably for Aimee, who herself has become a wildly popular brand in Second Life, the project is not one from a virtual world services company like Millions of Us, whom Aimee has worked with before, but was generated when an American Apparel marketing rep approached her about establishing a presence in SL.

According to Aimee, its boxlike structure is based on the American Apparel store in Tokyo, by the company’s request. One unusual feature of the site is that the lighting is scripted to change when virtual darkness falls across the land (which happens every six hours or so in SL, if I remember correctly).

Check out Adverlab's post on this here.

Check out what Aimee Weber's site here.

Check out the Forbes article here.

Check out the ad below for Smirnoff's Malt Tea beverage drink, created by BBH. It's already been viewed half a million times in about 2 weeks. Feedback seems to be that people think the ad's funny but little more than this. To read more about this have a look at this article in AdWeek.





Smirnoff has taken a comedy approach and engaged the services of white rappers to take advantage of the possibilities that YouTube offers.

Look out for a Tea Partay website and a manual coming out soon.

This blog article from the "Tea Guy" offers some interesting commmentary on this viral. In particular he points out that Smirnoff should have set up their microsite in advance of the ad becoming a hit to maximise its impact.

If anyone knows of any other alcohol brands doing something similar let me know.

Thanks to Victor Houghton and Erika Warren for this.

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by 396,651 people from around the globe.

From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.

You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.

The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world currency, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online currency exchanges.

To find out more check out the Wikipedia article about it.

From Wired.com's Monkey Bites:

Heather Hopkins, an internet trends analyst at Hitwise, has discovered an interesting bit of news. It seems that traffic to Second Life's website has more than doubled among U.K. web surfers in the last two months. Here is Heather's chart:



While the spike could be the result of any number of news items -- such as Business Week's May cover story -- I think it's an accurate reflection of how buzz works in the social networking sphere. The fact that the traffic spike is centered in a specific location speaks to my belief that interest in particular social networking sites is propagated via word of mouth more than anything else.


People are far less willing to invest time in a community site if they see it mentioned somewhere on the web than if they hear about it from a friend, a colleague, fellow student or some other "trustworthy," local source that they personally know. Hearing "Oh, you're not on MySpace?" from a co-worker in the lunchroom makes a lot more people go to MySpace and set up a profile than some news article talking about how people are really into MySpace. Online communities are just extensions of our real world lives, anyway. At any rate, it's interesting to consider the ways in which our personal interactions serve as catalysts for our online actions.

To get a feel for what it's like inside Second Life have a look at this video, or better still download the game and get involved.



Brands are beginning to catch on to Second Life's potential. I just stumbled across this U2 video that is set in Second Life. As is often the case music bands/brands lead the way with new media.

The web is constantly evolving and getting increasingly democratic - ideas are coming from the bottom up. Collectives are seeing off the Golliaths of the net. Web 2.0 is a term coined at the end of 2004 and stands for the opening up the web and the open source, collective nature of thriving web businesses. Just look at wikipedia, Flickr, Threadless, Technorati and BoingBoing.net as examples of this.

Tim O'Reilly's seminal article gives an excellent overview of this trend.

Hopefully the video below explains this somewhat better than me!



Also check out this mind cloud from Wikipedia's article on Web 2.0. The image also appears in Flickr but with hyperlinked comments - perfectly summing up the collective spirit of Web 2.0.



And don't forget to read the related article that goes with it on Wikipedia.

This chart from O'Reilly on Flickr sums it up well too.



The web as we knew it is disappearing fast... the balance of power is shifting from the top to the bottom. More content is now uploaded by youngsters than is downloaded from the net. Welcome to the communual age of sharing. We must all embrace this and encourage engagement.

Agenda Inc. sends out a weekly list of trend setting articles - one of them was about the fact that guerrilla advertising is becoming mainstream. To see some of the best work around at the moment (in the eyes of Business Week) visit this link. This work is fairly basic but shows what can be done with limited budget and a tight brief.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ex Publicis Group Creative Director David Droga has teamed up with Mark Ecko the creative jack of all trades from New York to plug a new Sony film by filming him tagging Air Force 1 - or at least a mock up of AF1!



Droga's new agency, called Droga 5, is an inventive leap of faith... that really embraces the idea of 360' thinking.

Here's what Droga said about the stunt:

"We produced a film that seemed like a real event and seeded it anonymously on 20 websites," Droga says. "It was so controversial, it exploded into the mainstream."

According to Droga, the film was initially seen by 20 million people online, but when TV news networks such as CNN and NBC picked up the story, 30 million viewers across the US saw it on more than 100 news reports.

"The Pentagon had to deny it three times," Droga says.

Although the event was a hoax filmed in California using a plane painted on one side to look like Air Force One, disclaimers were attached to the film. Fans of Ecko were the first to get the joke: "Still free" is his company mantra.

"We literally did have seven lawyers sitting in pre-production meetings telling us what we could and couldn't do," Droga says. "[Ecko] came out with a public statement saying it was him."

Droga says the campaign was a "pop culture moment" that lit up the Ecko Unltd clothing brand "like a bright flare". According to reports, 87 million people viewed the film, which remains available at stillfree.com. Phase two of the campaign then began, featuring Ecko backing street artists in a court challenge against laws banning minors from buying spray cans. Two weeks ago a Federal Court judge ruled in Ecko's favour, preventing New York City police from enforcing the law. Ecko, according to Droga, is a rare commodity among today's marketers in that he understands his audience's media habits: they're online, and they want to "discover, debate and share" information.

Thanks to Sarah Madeley for this.

I'm not sure there's much to say about this except WOW!

We're reaching a tipping point - some point in the near future being bad to the environment is going to become as socially unacceptable and taboo as drink driving, not wearing a seat belt and smoking in public places.

This blog of eco advertising offers a great snap shot of the creative work that is out there at the moment.

The beauty of using Myspace is its authenticity and the fact that it reflects the personality of the person using it. They should be idiosyncratic, interesting and not reek of being censored by a company's legal department. Thanks to http://glueplanning.typepad.com/glueplanning/

Lily Allen was happily doing the real marketing thing on myspace, so the record label decided they needed to copy the elements that worked and build their own ‘brand’ site. A cute site, but wasn’t it more authentic keeping her myspace page as the original and best place to go? it’s got ‘legal’ written all over it.

Compare and contrast:

http://profile.myspace.com/

vs

http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/

Filtered culture.

I spoke to someone who works at Flavourpill last night who has sent me their media pack which makes for fascinating reading. If you want to target media savvy, 18-34 year old urbanites then this is for you.

It's got excellent case studies of their past tie ins with Bacardi, Absolut and Budweiser.

I won't write much about it - just explore for yourself: Flavourpill.

Ladybank Distilleries is attracting consumers by making them feel highly involved with its product. In this case: Scotch single malt whisky.

While the whisky market is dominated by large breweries and a small number of well-known brands, a counter-movement is (inevitably) taking place. Ladybank, based in Fife, Scotland, is one of a handful of new, artisanal distilleries, and is completely structured around the concept of consumer involvement. The Ladybank Company of Distillers Club, as the full name goes, plans to start distilling by the end of 2007, which means the first dram of malt won't have matured before 2017.

The private club will have no more than 1,250 members. Memberships are becoming available in small releases; UK memberships currently on offer are priced at GBP 3,250 (USD 6,020/EUR 4,760), and fees are lower for overseas members. For that one-off fee, members of the Ladybank Club are entitled to the equivalent of six bottles a year during the first 50 years of production. They're also welcome to visit the distillery, which is closed to the general public, and may invite guests. Furthermore, members have full voting rights on key issues.
Distilling days will allow members to get hands-on, and a Whisky School will offer a total understanding of whisky production, 'from grain to oak cask'. Yearly production will be in the region of 25,000 litres per year.

Since Ladybank whisky won't be available for general sale, exclusivity is a big draw. However, according to the company's founder James Thomson, the core appeal is involvement. Which shouldn't come as a surprise to those of you who've been tracking trendwatching.com's customer-made trend.

Other products are following this collective, membership, exclusive trend. Nudo (oliver oil collective) and Tribe Wanted (Eco Tourism collective) are excellent examples. In a world getting more generic, homogenised and ubiquitous it's fascinating to see brands bucking this trend.

Thanks to Mike Iskas for this.

Who else would smuggle their own subversive exhibits into the V&A!








Have a look at more Banksy videos here.

Buy a Banksy book here.

Check out Banksy's website here.

Buy Banksy's here.

Explore the world of Banksy on Wooster Collective.

Shepherd Fairey, responsible for the ubiquitous Andre Giant, OBEY, artwork that you find all over America and sometimes in the UK, gives 4 interviews on YouTube.

The medium is the message 1 on Andre



The medium is the message 2 on Banksy



The medium is the message 3



The medium is the message 4 Politics of Aesthetics



To read more about OBEY and Shepherd Fairey have a read of some of his articles.

Myspace is a great site but it is being rapidly overtaken by the surge from You Tube.

What's the story? Build your web presence through Myspace by all means but make sure there is plenty of interesting stuff on YouTube to go with it.

Grolsch have busy putting together a very clever holistic campaign based around their "Green Light District" concept. See the video below for a clear overview of what they did.



Their agency, Leith in Edinburgh, teamed up with Vizeum and Kinetic (specialist outdoor media planners)to use different types of media for different purposes to work together to create a holistic concpet.

Before the campaign even broke, in fact during the sell-in to targeted bars in Edinburgh, a further four outlets contacted Coors Brewers direct and asked to be included on the basis of the strength of the campaign materials. At this stage it was clear that the idea would develop into a nationwide concept.

Interactive maps on bus shelters guided punters to Green Light District bars
Green lights in bars drew people in
Dutch waitresses served perfect pints of Grolsch



This has been rolled out in 14 of the UK's most fashionable areas: Clapham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Brighton, Islington etc.

This all combines with their interactive ad which links directly to their BTL campaign to win glasses by collecting bottle tops. Symbiosis of on and off trade targeting through a holistic idea.



Areas that hosted the Green Light District had a 62% rise in sales.



To read Leith's case study click here.

Sony are being very clever with their Bravia ads. The original ad filmed on the streets of San Francisco, not only was a beautiful ad, but it was PRed in such a way as to gain as much buzz as possible. The filming of the ad was made into a spectacular event - roads were blocked off as thousands of curious people came to see millions of coloured balls bounce down the slopey roads of San Francisco. This buzz quickly made its way onto the internet as blogs told the world about the impending Sony ad hitting the screens.

Since the ad has been aired it has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times around the world. To see the ad just click on the triangle below.



The video below shows how the ad was made by the guys over at Fallon. This video has been watched thousands of times.



Since then, Tango has brilliantly made a spoof version where pieces of fruit replace the coloured balls causing chaos. This has been viewed tens of thousands of times doing wonders for Tango and Sony's street cred.



In the last few weeks Sony's Bravia campaign has made its way over from the style and glamour of San Francisco to the, erm... squalor, of Glasgow film their latest ad. Like the SF ad, the filming of this version has generated plenty of interest with thousands of people wathcing a tower block explode with colour. The numerous versions of this video have already been watched over 100,000 times - some teaser.

Absolut Raspberry street art in Norway on Wooster Collective. PR through Wooster Collective reaches global target audience and creates buzz.





Absolut Raspberry street art in Australia


Absoult Raspberry street art in Belgium.

Excellent, transparent use of graffiti/street art as opposed to other brands' more devious and deceptive approach (i.e. Sony and Sagatiba).