brand-e

By Simon Fuller. Web, wirelessly. The European Interactive Advertising Association has taken a good long look at digital mobility across 15 European countries, and found that consumers are increasingly accessing the Net via their mobile phones and wireless laptops.
According to the Mediascope Europe Study 2010, more than 70 million consumers use mobile Internet on at least a weekly basis, passing an average of 6.4 hours a week online. That compares to just 4.8 hours spent with a newspaper.

Creative you. YouTube has teamed up with director, author and producer Hermann Vaske to launch a contest, Creative Heads, to get creatives uploading videos showcasing their work. And all for the chance to become part of a film slated to premier at the Cannes Lions.
“Are you the most creative head?” YouTube asks. “What does creativity [...]

Film fizz. Schweppes brings us the 2010 version of its Short Film Festival. No need to dress up, go out, wait in a queue and buy tickets. It’s online. So step into the virtual foyer – bring your own popcorn – and get yourself a festival pass (electronic). Then you can watch the likes of [...]

Y not? All fashion brands seem to want an artsy film short at the moment. Here’s Yohji Yamamoto’s Y-3 label partnering with The Last Magazine for a 60-second dance video, The Third Wave. It’s choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, and features the principal dancer at the New York City Ballet himself, along with four young dancers. [...]

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.

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.

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 [...]

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.