When ChatRoulette star Merton came to town

The production of this little film (and its soon to be released additional content) has been keeping myself and my team busy for the past few months.

This gives you a great taste of how many smiles Merton managed to create on the day itself.

All credit to the guys at T-Mobile for making this happen.

Midem / Olympics 2012

The nice people at Midem invited me to contribute to their newly launched blog.



The cross-over of the Olympics and the music industry is something we've been thinking a lot about recently, so it seemed as good a time as ever to jot some thoughts down.

Murray in a hurry

We made this for RBS with the ever superb Pulse Films. We had 18 minutes with Mr Murray.

A 2 min talk on what you do

We had an M&C Saatchi Central Strategy Unit away day yesterday. Lots of chin scratching and beard stroking.

I was asked to do 2-3mins on what we do in Sport & Entertainment.

In a truly 'Brutally Simplistic' fashion I opted for this:

It didn't contain the words 'Sponsorship', 'Content' or 'PR' - which is why I like it.

Location based marketing 1.0

If you wanted a Brazilian, you'd want to be sure that this fella was facing the right way?



Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Bracknell,United Kingdom

Augmental Reality Ibiza

We're working with the guys responsible for this at the moment, which all kind of leads on from my earlier post about 'Location Based Japes".

Backed by Sasha, it lets clubbers check in around the island, which in turn creates a heat map of exactly where it's all kicking off - as opposed to where the clubs say it will be kicking off.

As this image shows, you can also choose an augmented reality version, within which you can drill right down to individual bar level.

The clever thing about the app is that it creates that wider social content through Facebook connect and the like, so all your friends know where you are and how much you're caning it!

Flipboard - the "social magazine"

Demand is so high for this new iPad app, that their servers have been unable to cope. At the moment, I've only got as far as the homepage, before I get dumped out and asked to "come back later".

Weirdly, rather than annoying me, this has only served to build the anticipation!




UPDATE - it's now invitation only according to Brand Republic

Her name was Lola ...

15 years ago, my cousin Eliza got me my first job as a TV buyer at Mediacom (in the days that it was hidden away on Livonia Street).

She now works thousands of miles away at Mindshare in Melbourne whereas I'm about 500 yds away in Golden Square.

Her daughter Lola hung with my girls this weekend and as Vampire Weekend's "Cousins" is Rhiannon's favourite tune, I made this:



It'll have to do as I don't know any tracks entitled "Second Cousins".

Ridley Scott need not fear me.

Ymerodraeth State of Mind

Props to Big Red at SoSlashSlash for this little gem from the homeland:

Ouch

Taken from CreativeReview:

Surprise and delight!

Credit where credit's due.

I ordered two sets of kids headphones for my daughters from HiFiHeadphones.co.uk - nothing expensive, simply something that would do the job in hand and something that was the mandatory colour - pink.

They just arrived in the post, along with two lollipops (presumably for my kids).

Nice touch.

What did that cost them? 20p?

A lot of bigger brands could learn a lot.

Would I go back to them in the future? Yes. Would I go to them over and above Amazon? Yes.

Job done (although lollies will probably be hidden so that I can pull them out at an appropriate time and take all of the glory!).

Tilt Shift video

This is beautiful.

Reminds me of some lovely shots that the wonderful Nathan Gallagher took for us at Glastonbury in 2009.

Location based japes

A little while back, we pitched an idea very similar to this to a client. It was admittedly a little less advanced, but the general premise was the same - use location based services to create an engaging customer promotion to an early adopter audience.

Ours had more of a Geocaching focus, with 'virtual' prizes dotted around a secret location which was to be revealed using Twitter at a given point in time.

Already in the UK, smartphones account for 23% of handsets, a figure way ahead of the USA; the question is, when will marketers see this as a critical mass that warrants significant investment in the technology?

As ever with these technological developments, someone will make the first, significant move.

From a sponsorship perspective, there's unlimited potential thanks to the prevelance of on-the-ground activation opportunities. Just think about the fun you could have with this across a long day at the cricket, or a long-weekend at a festival; for once, it doesn't need to be about brand visibility being a physical necessity, it'll be enough to be there virtually

Brand e-biz article

Doesn't this make be sound like a bouncy-chap:

http://brand-e.biz/engaging-the-consumer-with-authenticity_7670.html

Regards
Mr Happy
;)

Fisticuffs

A big row erupted yesterday in our office.

It didn't start as a row, but as a rant; it only really turned into a row when I chipped in with a counter-viewpoint.

The issue? How simple it must be to work in a media agency.

The alleged evidence:

- huge budgets
- reliance upon the creativity of media owners
- freedom of choice (only limited by budget)

You can't argue with these really, but my point was that on the flip side, you can easily level similar criticisms at the PR world:

- ideas over insight
- "dubious" evaluation metrics
- minimal accountability

The truth of the matter is that (having worked on most sides of the fence, as I said in the previous post), I still wrestle daily with which industry offers the right balance of opportunity and reward?

What I do know is that, as with many industries, you can do things the lazy way (and settle for being average), or you can go that extra mile and make a genuine contribution.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The fall of advertising and the rise of PR?

A couple of days ago I was playing on my shiny new iPad and whilst perusing the shelves of the book store, I came across this book by Al and Laura Ries.

I should say at this stage that I have not (yet) read this cover to cover, but that what I have read genuinely baffles me?

Having worked in media agencies, ad' agencies and now, within an agency which has PR as a large part of its offering, I think their argument is ludicrously simplistic and outdated.

In essence, they argue that advertising agencies focus more on creating 'art' than effective communications and that this can only be expected to maintain brands; on the flip side, they argue that in a world of "marketing savvy" consumers, PR alone has the ability to build brands.

It would be wrong to say much more at this stage, having not progressed further than Chapter1, but suffice to say, I'm already questioning the wisdom of spending my hard earned cash on this naive twaddle.

Some blatant plugging ...

Oh and whilst I'm here, I may as well use this opportunity to push a nice little film that made for our client Tuborg and their online game, "Beat The Intro".

If you were a fan of "Look Around You", you should enjoy this.

Strong.

The collision of the virtual and the real

It's been a long time, but I'm determined to make a real effort to keep this up.

Partly because I've been asked to be a guest contributor for the MidemNET blog and partly because I need to get back into some regular brain-stretching.

Having said that, I'm stacked at the moment (playing Glastonbury catch-up), so for the time being I simply wanted to share this lovely film.

There's been lots talked about the collision of the virtual and real worlds, I just love how this takes it one step further ...