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BMW: Dinner for RR

JakeCanDoBlog — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:18:00 GMT

Like that trick where you pull the table cloth out from under the dishes? Then you'll love this viral video from BMW that makes you believe its "zero to 100km/h (62 mph) in just 2.9 seconds" claim.

15 things you should know about the breasts

JakeCanDoBlog — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:17:00 GMT

Via: Online Schools

Inglourious Basterds: The lost art of the film

JakeCanDoBlog — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:49:00 GMT

Some of the people behind Inglourious Basterds teamed up with Upper Playground to create a number of commissioned pieces based on the film. The resulting batch of artwork included images by Alex Pardee, Sam Flores, David Choe, and about 10 others, and none of them ever saw the light of day. Now, they will be will be released as very limited art prints to benefit the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Each print will have a tiny edition of 6, they will be signed by Quentin Tarantino, and they will be priced at $300. All proceeds will benefit the American Red Cross.

Fox Sports: Regional Sports

JakeCanDoBlog — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:16:00 GMT

A hilarious series of TV commercials for Fox Sports created by Cliff Freeman & Partners. Circa 2001.

India

Turkey

China

Russia

South Africa

British Army: Start Thinking Soldier

JakeCanDoBlog — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:07:00 GMT

The Start Thinking Soldier campaign by the British Army provides a virtual experience to let people attempt war time decision making in real time. The website provides a full video experience where you are involved in special missions, then at critical stages the commander turns to you and asks “What would you do?”.

Thinking on the fly, you’ll need to choose from the three presented options before its too late. Choose the wrong one, and it’s all over. It is a great example of bridging digital with experience online. The further you get into this, the better it gets and you want to complete all the missions. Check out the website here, one of the best experience websites I’ve seen.

Maybe the mandarins at our Indian MoD will learn how to catch them young and watch then grow.

Bomb Factory

Aid

Vehicles

Walking Things

JakeCanDoBlog — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:07:00 GMT

Walking Things is an environment that generates small, walking computational organisms. Each walking thing is built up from totally random conditions. Appearance, behavior, and walking characteristics are all assigned from a range enabling effective, functional mobility.

Click on a walking thing to permutate its characteristics.

All walking things use a 3 x 3 gait, where only three legs are moving at any given time. Each walking thing has a head that maintains direction and destination. A walking thing always walks towards its destination until reaching it, then resets.

The walking thing uses a crude system of 'dragging along' its center of gravity. A limitation in the turn radius is also imposed.

Currently, the walking things are completely unaware of each other. This might be an interesting place to start modifications.

Play the piano on YouTube's interactive video

JakeCanDoBlog — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:41:00 GMT

Hit the play button, wait until the video loads in your browser and then click any of the piano keys inside the YouTube video itself to play some music.

You got to click inside the video as shown in the following animation. The annotations will appear only when the video has finished loading.

Simply brilliant.

Diesel: Be stupid

JakeCanDoBlog — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:28:00 GMT

I think it’s interesting how Diesel takes something negative like "stupid" and makes it aspirational.

What's your take?

The Official Be Stupid Philosophy

Like balloons, we are filled with hopes and dreams
But. Over time a single sentence creeps into our lives

Don't be stupid.

It's the crusher of possibility.
It's the worlds greatest deflator.

The world is full of smart people.
Doing all kind of smart things.
That's smart.

Well,
were with stupid.

Stupid is the relentless pursuit of a regret free life.
Smart may have the brains.
but stupid has the balls.

The smart might recognize
things for how they are.
The stupid see things for how they could be.

Smart critiques.
Stupid creates.

The fact is
if we didn't have stupid thoughts
we'd have no interesting thoughts at all

Smart may have the plans.
but stupid has the stories.

Smart may have the authority
but stupid has one hell of a hangover

It's not smart to take risks.
It's stupid.

To be stupid
is to be brave

The stupid isn't afraid to fail.
The stupid know there are worse things than failure.
like not even trying.

Smart had one good idea,
and that idea was stupid.

You can't outsmart stupid.
So don't even try.

Remember
only stupid can be truly
brilliant

So,
Be stupid.

On purpose: Why some brands have already failed in 2010

JakeCanDoBlog — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:03:00 GMT

Credit: Mark Stivers Cartoons

I’ve written often about the need for a brand to define who it is and what its core values are. I wanted to take that further by saying that it is equally critical to define the goals of a brand in terms of purpose for the year. Without doing so a brand is likely to slip backwards within a marketplace that is moving so fast. You only need to look at the leadership positions Nike, Pepsi, Starbucks and Coke are taking in the social space to see major brands that are tracking with the marketplace.

To be fair brands are often so overwhelmed by the need to survive, meet their next quarterly projections or turn themselves inside out in the face of social media, that they don’t get time to sit down and articulate how the next year can contribute to what the brand wants to be. Yet there is time if a brand puts it first at the beginning of the year.

When I speak of goals in this way, I don’t mean the number of visitors to its website, its profit or market share. I mean how will it change what consumers think about it so that their perception is more closely aligned with the brand’s core values.

The compass in this area is the brand’s purpose, and on the flip side, its that purpose that generates meaningful exchanges with consumers in the social space. For example, Timberland demonstrated its committed to the environment by jumping into the fray over climate control in Copenhagen. They saw that as an important contribution their brand could make to achieving their purpose even though brands don’t usually protest or dialogue with heads of state.

If a brand does this work, it reaps unexpected benefits. Their clearly stated purpose and yearly goals become a filter for all the incredibly confusing decisions they have to make in the face of technology and consumer behavior shifts. And this translates to time, money and anxiety saved.

If a brand doesn’t do this work, the consequences are dramatic and often unseen. Not only will a company waste time and energy on marketing efforts that are schizophrenic and inefficient. But without a clear goal as to brand purpose, they further compound their lack of definition and uncertainty.

A brand must be its own compass in an shifting marketplace.

Consumers are not looking for a something to buy. They are looking for extensions of what is meaningful to them.

By simply articulating your purpose, a brand can set itself apart from the majority of brands that are second guessing what consumers want them to be or what the marketplace will do next.

As 2009 fades from memory and 2010 lurches forward, a brand must steady itself with a clear sense of purpose as it enters the social flow. Without it, a brand will stumble and consumers may not reach out to lend a hand.

How important do you think a brand’s purpose is as a goal? Should that goal be built into its yearly planning?

-by Simon Mainwaring

Nike Just Does It Again: New local-social ‘True City’ App

JakeCanDoBlog — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:33:00 GMT

Nike released a new iPhone app last week that demonstrates why they continue to be a marketing leader. Called True City, it provides unique insight into six European cities by detailing information that only people who live in that city would know. Basically, an insider’s guidebook.

What’s unique about the app is that it combines premium, geo-tagged content, the latest iPhone technologies, and social media integration that is constantly updated by real people in real time.

What interests me about this app is not what it does but rather how it shows what a brand must do to respond to the impact of social media on marketing. Here’s what Nike has done right.

1. Nike has clearly demonstrated a willingness to adopt new technologies. I wrote last week about the most recent social media efforts of Coke and Pepsi that echoed earlier and equally brave efforts by brands like Skittles. And here, once again, we see Nike not only adopting technology but taking it one step further.

2. The True City app demonstrates how the brand not only embraced social media, but assimilated it into its brand culture. By this I mean Nike looked at the existing tools, took the time to understand them, reconstituted them and took them to market in a form that is consistent with its brand voice. As such, it takes ownership of the technology and the community it generates.

3. True City demonstrates that creativity can always be brought to bear on the new technology space. By combining insider knowledge with geo-tagged content and the latest iPhone technology, Nike has created a unique tool that is peculiar to its brand just as it did with Nike +. As you can see from the True City film, the information is provided with Nike’s typical irreverence and unmistakable attitude. What this means is that as consumers enjoy the app, they literally take the brand on the road building community in real time.

4. Finally, this application is a clear demonstration of a leading brand’s ability to move with the marketplace,whether they be changes in technology, how consumers are communicating or where those conversations are taking place.

No doubt other brands will take confidence from Nike’s example but that’s the point. No amount of copying or technology can replace the ability of a brand to take a risk, to leap into the unknown and define the future for others. There will be mistakes, but in a real-time world, the rewards to early adopters and innovators are greater than ever.

In True City Nike has demonstrated the three most powerful drivers of social transformation todays – connection between consumers, connection between consumers and a brand, and the willingness of a brand to lead rather than follow.

Let me know what you think of the application and whether you’d use it?

-by Simon Mainwaring

Consumers say, “Catch us if you can”. Coke and Pepsi give chase.

JakeCanDoBlog — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:47:00 GMT

I really appreciated the fantastic feedback on this week’s post about The Death of Corporate Websites. Lo and behold, last night I spy a quote (thanks, Frank Reed) from Anne Carelli, Digital Marketing Manager for Coke saying:

“Several years ago, Coke realized that Coke.com is not their home page – it is Google.com, digg.com and YouTube. Take the time to keep abreast of what is showing up for your brand in these new social sites and search engines.”

What’s more New Media Age now tells us Coke will no longer be creating one-off-campaign-websites in favor of building out its existing social media presence on YouTube and Facebook.

If brand managers need evidence of the need to leap out of their corporate site nests, they need only look at Coke and Pepsi.

The Pepsi Refresh Project is crowdsourcing and funding ($20+ million) the best consumer ideas to positively transform communities and, ultimately, our world. It is doing so in replacement of a 23-year long run of Super Bowl advertising (a handy snapshot of the shift in consumer attention from traditional to social media and a big brand’s response). Now it hasn’t been without the inevitable snafus. This week faulty security settings comprised personal information of those submitting proposals. You only need to visit Pepsi’s Facebook Fan page to see the response. Yikes. No hugs going on there at that time.

Pepsi will undoubtedly recover and now Coke has wholeheartedly jumped into the social media frey shifting investment and attention from its corporate site to community (rather than corporate) hubs. Prinz Pinakatt, Coke’s interactive marketing manager for Europe explained why Coke has stopped building Coke-hosted pages for every campaign:

“We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform.”

He went further:

“In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com-hosted site. In most cases these will still exist as it’s the most obvious destination for a consumer, but it might only be a page linking to YouTube encouraging people to join the community there.”

So here we see two major brand – arch- rivals – in lock step in their shift towards social media with each choosing a different strategy. Pepsi is creating a brand-sponsored, stand-alone, community building hub, while Coke is leveraging the dynamics of pre-existing social hubs like YouTube and Facebook for the long term.

If nothing else this should convince brand managers of two key issues:

1. Follow consumers. They’re not looking for you any more, they’re looking for each other.

2. The most evolved brands already exploring various strategies within this new space. You need to join them.

Even if you don’t believe corporate website are completely dead, their are dramatic signs of life in the community space that brands cannot and should not ignore. To do anything else is like standing in the corner at a party either waiting for people to come over to you or yelling at them to do so. Quite lonely really. Especially when everyone else starts having fun together on the other side of the room..

This is not a bad time for brands. There has never been more opportunity, potential and uncharted waters than what exist in the social space today. Wade in – fast. You’ll even have a choice of sodas!

What do you think about Coke’s latest move and Pepsi’s snafu? How brave is your brand?

-by Simon Mainwaring

Vintage letterheads of famous people

JakeCanDoBlog — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:06:00 GMT

Letterheady is a fantastic website run by Shaun Usher showcasing interesting letterhead designs, mainly it seems from famous people, offices and corporations. Shaun describes it as, "an online homage to offline correspondence; specifically letters. However, here at Letterheady we don't care about the letter's content. Just its design." What a wonderful resource for ephemera lovers and designers. Here are some examples:

                                    Nat King Cole, 1964.

                                     Frank Zappa, 1986.

                                     Albert Einstein, 1932.


                                                  Elvis Presley.

                                      Houdini, 1913

                                     Adolf Hitler, 1934-1945

                                    Winston Churchill, 1940.

The death of corporate websites: Top 10 ways they will change

JakeCanDoBlog — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:43:00 GMT

Cartoon Credit: Dave Coverly @ Creators.com

In the not too distant future static corporate websites will be replaced by their social equivalents.

This will happen because more and more consumers are engaged in daily conversations, often involving brands, across multiple applications, platforms and networks, wholly independent of these sites.

As these conversations become increasingly independent of these sites, falling traffic will render them ineffective in their current form. Instead, the online presence of each brand will necessarily expand out into the social space to stay in touch with their audience.

As a result, the online presence of a brand will increasingly become the sum of its social exchanges across the web and not the website that many currently call home.

Corporate sites will change in many ways:

1. They will be forced to constantly reconstitute themselves as a function of ever-shifting dialogue with consumers. (Have you ever noticed how every time you re-do your website, as soon as you’re done, you have to re-do it again because technology and conversations have moved on? It’s just like that and isn’t going to change).

2. The compass for a brand in this shifting marketplace will be it’s core values and purpose. The strict definition, execution and adherence to values allows for a brand to move and morph without cannibalizing itself.

3. Corporate sites will serve as launch pads for outreach rather than destinations for inbound interest. Their main role will be to constantly engage consumers in conversation (wherever that is occurring) and actively damage control any mishaps in brand messaging.

4. Information will no longer sit idly in corporate sites waiting for visitors. Rather, it will constantly flow through moving conversations in the social space.

5. Corporate sites will have no beginning or end. They will live, breathe and die in conversation. As such the online hub of a brand will be distributed rather than centralized in a site.

6. The focus of brand awareness at any given moment (specific to the brand at large, a product launch, or some larger conversation to which it is relevant) will be a moving target driven by conversation flow, engagement levels, technology tools and context.

7. Brands will no longer be places to visit but people you meet on the road. By this I mean consumers will intersect with brands at different points in the day, wherever they are, often indirectly and unexpectedly, rather than a destination they consciously visit.

8. A brand manager’s job will become that of the social officer, facilitating as many moments of authentic interaction with consumers each day as possible. As such, part of their job will be understanding where to find their customers and how to help them find the brand.

9. Control isn’t what it used to be. In a consumer-driven marketplace the tension between granular data/ROI and consumer-focused messaging will be greater than ever. Brands will have to rethink how they measure success for these new distributed sites looking to attention and engagement rather than number of visitors or click throughs.

10. As community becomes more mobile, consumers will increasingly be defined by where they are. As a result, brands will be everywhere all at once and constantly on the move to stay in touch with consumers.

Steve Rubel tweeted this weekend that his big takeaway from CES was that “wireless and social are getting embedded into every device”. To paraphrase Ben Harper, “When consumers lead, brands should follow” and this includes their websites.

How is your brand reaching out into the social space? What other changes do you expect?

-by Simon Mainwaring

Celebrity to go: Personal-ilty apps that take us all to market

JakeCanDoBlog — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:55:00 GMT

Image credit: Brian Solis on iTunes

Just before the holiday break, Brian Solis, the highly respected PR strategist moved the blogosphere one step forward yet again. By launching his own app, he not only gave himself a powerful tool through which to interact with his community, but he also kicked off a trend that is likely to grow exponentially in popularity. (Here’s another app launched by Deepak Chopra the day after.)

In a culture familiar with shades of celebrity, the ability to distribute oneself in a mobile application will prove appealing (especially among the younger online generation). Initially the trend will be driven by content providers; by those active online or in the blogosphere. But shortly after, I believe, we will see widespread adoption as we download each other’s mobile celebrity in the form of an app that combines their writing, music, photos, speeches, thoughts, tweets and daily musings for others to enjoy.

As a consequence, our smart phones will soon feature galleries, not just of our friends and followers, but also of applications that allow us to deep dive into each of those personalities engaging with them directly in real time or exploring their content archives.

No doubt we will then be able to “introduce” these applications to each other through content sharing another layer in the increasingly complex web of social networks.

As the personal application space gets crowded, consumers will then start to filter rather than collect personal applications with each of us effectively creating a self-portrait out of who we choose to download.

This new trend is further evidence of an undeniable phenomenon. We are all producers, publishers and curators, and as such, we are taking ourselves to market.

Is this something you would do, or do you disagree?

-by Simon mainwaring

Top ten digital trends for 2010

JakeCanDoBlog — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:04:00 GMT

It feels SO good to be in 2010. 2009 was full of upheaval for many reasons, not the least of which was changes in digital marketing. So let’s kick start the New Year will a look at some powerful trends that will shape the coming year.

1. WHERE YOU ARE IS WHO YOU ARE
In the past year we have seen a powerful increase in the mainstream adoption of social media. With the increase in popularity of veteran sites like facebook and twitter, along with location-based newcomers like Foursquare and Postabon, digital marketers will be forced to rethink their advertising strategies to incorporate this new location-based variable.

2. THE CUSTOMER AS ADVERTISER
As social networking, real-time and geo trends are integrated with mobile devices that enable consumers to effortlessly produce, publish and advocate for brands, consumers will move towards a unique position where they become the de facto advertiser for much brand messaging.

3. REAL-TIME SEARCH
As Twitter and Facebook posts become indexed, real time search will become part of our daily lives. Google and Microsoft Bing are currently leading the way and digital marketers will need to adjust their strategy and creative to capture, leverage and profit from this new immediacy. For marketers its a powerful shift in focus from archives and what was to intention and what will be.

4. SELLING THE “WHY”, NOT THE “WHAT”
As consumers come to understand that they are in charge of where they put their attention, digital marketers will be left with the responsibility of providing the “why” behind where consumer choose to look. This is especially true with millennials who are very aware of their role as cultural change agents.

5. OVERCOMING OVERLOAD
Commanding consumer attention is becoming increasingly difficult due to a multiplicity of social media websites and advertisements throughout the Web, challenging digital marketers to stand out, grab attention and keep their audience interested. This is complicated by the fact that content is increasingly being dispersed across feeds and social media robbing marketers of the intended context for their content.

6. CONTEXT IS KING
Web users not only have the power to determine when and where they will receive marketing messages, but they are using that power to resist payment systems for online content. As a result, digital marketers are being forced to embed ads in engaging content that captures consumer interest and dialogue better than advertising on its own.

7. AUGMENTED REALITY
AR has already begun to demonstrate its usefulness as a location based tool. As with other recent success stories like digital music service, Spotify, AR satisfies an undeniable consumer need in a simple manner that plays into the rise of mobile community and commerce. As such, digital marketers ignore it at their peril.

8. MEASURING ENGAGEMENT
Marketers are being forced to develop a more sophisticated approach to the relevance or meaningfulness of a message to their target audience. As such, as Stowe Boyd stated, “Meaning is the new search’. Yet, measurement tools for the meaning offered, perceived or received by a brand or consumer do not exist. As a result, we can expect exploration into analytic tools that can measure and quantify meaningful impact for clients.

9. CROWDSOURCING FOR EVERYONE
Marketers are still struggling to wrap their heads around the power shift to consumers armed with social media tools. In order to minimize risk, they will increasingly reach out to consumers for strategic and creative feedback, allowing them to participate and often lead initiatives to ensure that their efforts will be well-received.

10. YOUR BRAND IN THEIR HANDS
Combine the trends of social media, real time search, location sharing services and augmented reality, and it’s easy to see how digital marketing is increasingly being exercised in partnership with consumers. With data, tools and networks being accessible everywhere, consumers can interact with each other in ways of their choosing that can make or break a brand. As such the most effective digital marketing with invite contribution and celebrate participation by consumers.

Obviously this list isn’t exhaustive. What would you add and do you agree?

Image Credit: www.political-economy.com

Kala Niketan Sarees: Crockery

JakeCanDoBlog — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:16:00 GMT

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A radio spot for Kala Niketan Sarees, circa 1998.

Client: Kala Niketan Sarees
Ad Agency: Cosmos, India.
CEO & Creative Director: Jitendra Sheth
Copywriter: Sunil Shibad.

Give a Facebook page to someone you love

JakeCanDoBlog — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:56:00 GMT

According to a recent article in Inside Facebook, Facebook is the #3 destination for people over 65. You first reaction may be, on my God, the Geritol set is getting into Facebook! Your second reaction may be, I’ve to get those pictures off of my profile! Followed by several other paranoid thoughts. Or you may think that Facebook is great way for your family to stay in touch.

So Chris Kieff (whose idea it is) and I’d like to propose that all social media users adopt the following program:

”GIVE A FACEBOOK PAGE TO SOMEONE YOU LOVE”

Every social media evangelist, expert, guru or whatever you call yourself needs to make at least one Facebook page for someone else this Holiday Season.
Create the Facebook Page for that person, include a profile photo of them.
Set up their friends, find their children, siblings, and loved ones.
Set up appropriate privacy settings.
Set their browser homepage to Facebook if they are technology challenged.
Teach them how to respond to wall postings and how to read the newsfeed.

For an older family member this gift for the holidays will have an incredible impact upon their life. You will give them the give that truly keeps on giving the whole year long. They don’t need to ever post anything on their Facebook page, they will love seeing the pictures, and being aware of what their loved ones are up to. Let them be a part of the 90% Lurkers who inhabit Facebook . The ambient awareness of the family will enrich their lives immensely.

There is now a Facebook Group for this idea, please join and help spread the word.

If anyone has any ideas on how we can take basic computer literacy to street kids in , do email me.

The point is that you know how to do it and there are people you know that could use your help. You can assist people with money or with your time. Giving your time is more meaningful and rewarding. Everyone has a talent or skill that they can share. Everyone should donate their time to others – friends, family and people you hardly know.

So pay it forward and share your skills and knowledge.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

Southwest Airlines conducts its 2009 shareholder meeting in rap

JakeCanDoBlog — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:40:00 GMT

Rapping flight attendant, David Holmes, from Southwest Airlines, explains generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in a "GAAP RAP" at the company's 2009 shareholder's meeting. Who says finance is boring?

A glance back at the future of social media

JakeCanDoBlog — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:05:00 GMT

This has been a transitional year, partly spent recovering from the trauma of the Great Recession and partly spent adjusting to shifts in power in the marketing industry. Everyone from brands and advertising agencies to their employees have been reeling from one change after another.

One of the many unsettling aspects was the rise of social media. I consistently heard the same questions. Is it a fad? Is there any money in it? Will it change everything? What is social media again? (My favorite.)

So I thought I’d look back at a few thoughts from this year about the industry and its future. No one has a crystal ball. All we can do is take leaps of faith, build case studies, lean on each other’s expertise and cobble together our best guess of what our daily lives will look like in a few months or a few year’s time.

In the spirit of Dave Letterman, here’s a reverse order look at ten posts that touched on the future and proved popular this year.

10: What I lost when I found you: Life after social media

9: Surviving social media with your creativity intact

8: Using social media to shoot an Iraqi

7: How advertising handles the chaos of social media

6: Top ten advantages of social over traditional media

5: How top brands build effective online communities: Part 1

4: If you want to go viral get out of the way

3: Top ten things brands forget in their rush to social media

2: The experience revolution: How augmented reality is about to change how you live, advertise and brand

1: Top ten things a brand must be to go social

And my favorite that didn’t make the list:

Powers of Ten for the Twitterverse (Just because I love the original film!)

Before everyone starts disappearing for the holidays, I wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed the dialogue and friendship this year and I look forward to 2010. I hope many of us get to meet in person at conferences and I’ll keep sharing thoughts that I hope are helpful. I’ll be blogging though December but will nip off at one point back home to Sydney, Australia, to see family and spend Christmas on the beach. Weird, I know!

- Simon Mainwaring

Sixty2 on Wharf Restaurant and Lounge: Really Happy Hours

JakeCanDoBlog — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:40:00 GMT

Ad Agency: Keith Lane Creative

Client: Sixty2 on Wharf Restaurant and Lounge
Photography: Lajla LeBlanc
Graphic Design: Deborah Hines
Creative Director/ Art Director/ Copywriter: Keith Lane