brand-e

By Simon Fuller. Current thinking. Over the last few months we’ve looked at crowdsourcing initiatives, such as Benetton looking for new ad peeformers via an online campaign to BBH utilising crowdsourcing platform Talenthouse. And there are few signs of brands letting up on this, with crowdsourcing campaigns a regular fixture of the marketing landscape.
Current TV is one bunch which should know a thing or two about all this. It’s VCAM – Viewer Created Ad Message – group allows creative types to get involved in producing videos for brands, with big names like Samsung and HP getting involved by assigning briefs.

By Steve Mullins. Market mix. Brixton is really getting into the spirit of pop-up. Earlier this month, we explained how Ogilvy went to this colourful part of South London to set up shop and hand out free advice to local businesses. Now we can let you know that the agency’s store was just one of a score of shopfronts doing good pop-up service in Brixton Village - aka Granville Arcade, a 1930s market hall.
Tenants – among them retailer and artists – began moving into the Arcade at the tail-end of last year on free three-month leases – either to test-trade their wares, or to entertain – among them the Brixton Cornercopia corner food store, the Remade in Brixton Work-Shop for local reuse, repair and recycling, the OKIDO doodle shop for kids, and HERD, a design studio for young creatives.

Social savvy. So, just how important is social media to bands? “It’s the fans who are driving the distribution of music,” Susie Moore from BrandRock said at yesterday’s Music 4.5 event in London. … We should embrace it.
“The band will be a total business of people, with maybe a few people working on that band’s music, what that band believes in, its identity and values. It’s like any brand marketing exercise.”

Movie here. Absolut last week began promo-ing I’m Here – the film it commissioned from Spike Jonze – in the UK ahead of the short movie’s global premiere 7th March.
The brand has been deploying billboard and graffiti messages to build intrigue around the launch, offering consumers the opportunity to go to exclusive preview screenings of I’m Here ‘in no ordinary places’.

By Steve Mullins. Annual watch. JWT has come up with 100 Things To Watch In 2010. Well, we don’t have the space to run an exhaustive list, but we do reserve the right to cherrypick on your behalf.
There’s augmented reality, of course, which the agency says will make its way into the hands of mass audiences this year. “Marketers are getting in on the act, including GE and HP, whose AR game Roku’s Reward has players chase virtual images… on a phone’s screen.”

Whose brands? We bring you MyBrandz. What is it? Why, it’s an online social service for brand lovers. And it will grant shares in the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, Disney and Starbucks, to real brand lovers.
How does this work?
“To participate, enter MyBrandz.com and post content about your favorite brand,” the US outfit says. “The content has to be interesting enough to get 50 hearts from the other members.”