brand-e

Thinking out of the Box

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:30:03 +0000

Boxed in. Man In Box still has – perhaps – seven days left in his box. He could be there for 30 nights in total, together with £30,000. He doesn’t know where he is, but he’s been told his location is ‘meaningful’ to him. You can keep Man In Box company courtesy of live streams from two cameras, and listen to him recount all the places he has been to over the past 35 years.
And you can take a shot at guessing where the box is. Get it right and you win the cash. And Man In A Box – TV personality Tim Shaw – goes free.
What’s it all about?
“It is not about making money,” the organisers say. “It is an experiment that links solitary confinement with social networking. Observing how a human being behaves for a period of a month in a world of total isolation. One-way traffic. You can see and hear his every move, however no one can communicate with him. …
“As you build up a picture of his life you can send guesses of his location through the map facility on a uniquely designed Google Maps application. If your coordinates are correct, you receive 30 thousand pounds cash, the door lights turn green and he is released.”
See Man In Box here.
All proceeds go to UK wounded soldier charity Help For Heroes.
And David Blaine ponders on why he wasn’t asked to sit in that box…

The art of sourcing the crowd

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:11:31 +0000

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.
So what’s led to this ongoing drive towards collective work?
“Brands are beginning to recognise that understanding, engaging with and listening to their consumers is imperative for individuals to feel connected to them,” says Helen Robinson, marketing manager at Current TV. “It is a way of adding value and allowing people an experience, rather than simply being subjected to messaging. It is important for brands to step up their game, and by interacting and crowdsourcing material they will always have something different and unique to offer.
“Consumers trust adverts that are created by consumers as the endorsement comes straight from the horse’s mouth.”
And Current hopes that the VCAM group will have an impact on marketing.
“VCAMs aim to open eyes to young and undiscovered creative talents that have grown up in the consumer world, and that have become more savvy to the advertising industry than ever,” says Robinson. “It should certainly keep agencies on their toes as we find it harder than ever to cut through the market. VCAMs essentially aim to help bridge the gap between the brand and the consumer and we believe [the VCAMs] will encourage brands even more so to listen to the people that will buy or use their products.”

Research: The brand value of social media

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:32 +0000

Social savvy. Facebook is the web property most commonly used by business in social media, with 85% of companies deploying this site as part of their marketing strategy, while 77% used Twitter, 58% went on LinkedIn and close to half used YouTube, according to a survey, The Value of Social Media Report, conducted by Econsultancy/Online Marketing Summit.
Three quarters of respondents said they used social media to boost traffic to their websites, while increased brand recognition was the second most important business objective (64%). A similar proportion of respondents, 62%, cited better brand reputation.
However, despite widespread recognition that social media marketing impacts brand reputation and brand visibility, only a quarter of all respondents surveyed used online brand mentions and brand awareness as metrics for measuring off-site social media success. Just 15% used brand perception as a metric.

A rum story, from Bacardi

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:45:49 +0000

Short sips. Bacardi has lit a new website, BacardiRumAndFamily, featuring seven film shorts. The videos tell the story of Bacardi Rum and the brand lets users interact with the clips. The site has already gone live in Canada, the US and Denmark, with the UK set to follow.

cool creative: social networking, the movie

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:30:08 +0000

Net loss? It’s time to bring you the trailer of We Live In Public, a film from Ondi Timoner. What’s to see? Well, it’s a documentary about Net entrepreneur Josh Harris and asks what happens when we start to live in a virtual world rather than in the physical one. The makers say the movie ‘challenges us to look at whether or not social networking is worth the loss of our own privacy and dignity’. More about We Live In Public, right here.

Red Bull’s augmented reality ski pack

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:27:47 +0000

Ski bull.It’s time to take a look at Red Bull’s six pack. The high energy drinks brand has issued a six pack packed with augmented reality to take advantage of the public’s desire to bathe in post-Olympics euphoria. Cue US gold medallist Lindsey Vonn in full AR glory.

Putting pop-up into the community

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:20:45 +0000

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.
Right now, among others, there’s a coffee shop called Federation run by Kiwis – how come all these London Antipodeans can make such good coffee? – and the smallest cinema in Brixton from the Artinavan// collective.
And there has been a regular roll call of pop-up events to increase footfall to Brixton Village. Last Saturday was Mellow Madness Day featuring acoustic music sets and soulful singers. And the arcade has already hosted Feb’s Got Flavour day where food fare was served, and a bunch of foodie bloggers showed off their cuisine.
“Brixton Village is a combination of arts, new businesses and community,” says Katrina Damianou, socialpreneur at Space Makers Agency, the outfit behind the project. “When we put out a call for tenants we got more than 100 applications… We were looking primarily for people based in Brixton. It’s important to drive the local aspect.
“This is about how to bring more people to the market and revive it. Art and performances do a lot to get people here and keep them entertained. And that’s what we want to do on a weekly basis.
“What’s great is that Brixton Village also increases footfall to existing, long-standing traders.”
Damianou says the local council, Lambeth, has asked Space Makers to look into doing similar projects in the area. But that doesn’t mean everywhere will get something akin to Brixton Village.
“Every area is unique so can’t simply reproduce this,” she says. “There’s no single formula to it.”
But there is a Brixton Village video right here.

Case study: The film, the brand and the message

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:00:31 +0000

By Simon Fuller. Movie media. Last week, we took a look at how comms strategy group Naked Comms had set up its own branded entertainment division to roll out engaging pieces like the film The Forest Guard, a documentary following the adventures of a bunch of Californian kids who have invented a device for the quick detection of forest fires
Well, Sony Europe green-lit the film and commissioned it. So we thought it only right to have a chat with Sony about the project, and about why brands in general are beginning to turn to moviemaking to get their messages over to consumers.
“[The Forest Guards film] was a piece of activity that was genuinely happening in the business,” says Emily Young, general manager of environmental comms at Sony Europe. “We thought that it was interesting from an internal communications perspective, and also it was embodying our message, so we thought, let’s document it.”
The film charts a genuine relationship in which Sony was involved – the company’s engineers work with the kids to transform their forest fire detection idea from prototype into working reality. But Sony doesn’t have a weighty presence.
“It was not heavily branded,” says Young. “Stories are things that engage people, rather than tell the same message over and over again. People don’t want to be shouted at. But stories can be discovered, learnt from, and [form] a testimony to the work [of the children and engineers involved].
“I think the reach [of the film] is a benefit. With a piece of advertising we don’t know how effective it has been, who has seen it and so on. We wanted a piece of content to use in lots of places, for example online, or that could be cut into small pieces and seen that way, or [that] you can watch as a whole thing. It was very flexible in that way as a piece.”
And with the likes of McDonalds cooking up its own branded film, Dreaming In Mono, could we see brands and films becoming something of a winning partnership going forward?
“Filmmaking is increasing as a movement, because we know the media landscape has changed, and people pay less attention to straightforward ads,” says Young. “Brands need to think of different ways [to engage consumers] – subjects that mean something to the audience. [They need to] find something that consumers are interested in already.”