Diesel turns 30!

With a trackrecord of creating a certain hype and attention around everything they do, a birthday giving the roman numbers XXX couldn’t pass by without a controversial campaign. 

This is dirty, fun and intriguing in an absurd way. So if anybody haven’t seen it yet, here is the viral campaign kickstarting the event follow by a huge facebook driven campaign inviting to the world’s biggest party.

This moment the facebook event has 6.440 confirmed guests, and the events will be broadcasted live on www.diesel.com

Unlike my dear collegue Daria, I think charity packaged as events is a pretty good idea. Of cause I follow the points about just being good… But as well as anything else, nothing is black or white. Google’s campaign for making the world a better place isn’t just to do good either – it is all a question of branding and doing it in a clever way. So with the crowded charity marketplace these days you need to do it all a little bit different to get attention – and money. And if that means making food, getting restaurants to sponsor locations, food companies to give ingrediences and getting people to pay an amount they find fair for the experience – and more money than they would ever give to regular charity, I think it is a pretty good idea.

Last week an event called “Dine with your heart” was arranged in Aarhus and we supported them with comms strategy for the project. Though we were involved a little bit too late to really make a difference, we had some good talks with the team behind it and it was a pleasure working with them. And all the way through, it was a really good experience with lots of happy people, interesting networking and cool conversations.

I worked for free, gave my best ideas up for grabs, had a wonderful meal with the agency and “Red Barnets Katastofefond” got a lot of money they wouldn’t have had, if we hadn’t done it.

In respect and love for different opinions, here’s the link to Daria’s post on not king the idea at all

The appstore opens a whole new world for branding. Easy to use, easy accessible and highly relevant connections with the consumer. The apps create a space for engaging the consumers on their terms and a new race has opened. The race for developing the most inviting, intriguing, innovative and involving app. So I will kickstart the race here and ask everybody to send comments with branded apps they have seen or heard about. Also ideas for cool apps that could have had a perfect sponsor or sender on it. Please participate. This could be quite fun and interesting .

This is my first post from my iPod touch . I have to admit that I haven’t been blogging much lately but there is an explaination beyond the perfect Danish summer weather.
I fell in love with app store!!!!
After I bought the new software for the touch and got access to app store I been discovering the hidden world of crazy apps and very usefull apps . Even though it hurts me that I haven’t got the iPhone yet this makes it easier. So I spend a lot of time – and money – testing different apps to get a feeling of what’s going on. I especially see the potential for utilities such as shopping lists, spending/budget apps, exchange rates and all everyday tools. Of cause gaming is huge to and so are social networking tools.
I just downloaded the wordpress app 5 min ago so perhaps this means I’m back in the blogosphere.

This is really so cool. When we say the internet is focus groups on steroids this is a cool brand image exercise.

Look at Noah Brier – brand tags here. This is Adidas…

Created in tag clouds, by people to people. I could get lost a whole day looking at this real life perception of brands.

I have to blog about this special innovation, which just went live 72 meters from the agency in Aarhus. In a world where we are hunting down new connections with our precious consumers, the shop and the experiences there, play a key part in the communication process. CAVI in Aarhus has been working on a solution for three years where the shop window interacts with the people passing by.

Here is the description of the Dynamically Transparent Window from CAVI’s website:  

A Dynamically Transparent Window responds to the movements of people passing by. Using a camera, passers-by are tracked, and the data is processed by a system that controls custom-built interactive windows on the facade. The windows are fitted with so-called electro-chromatic foil that can change from opaque to transparent when an electric current runs through it. By using thin strips of the foil, narrow bands on the facade change in order to reveal what is on display in the store when people walk by the window. The facade uses various interaction modes in order to lure the by-passers near and make them explore the display. 

And here the Youtube video explaining the details:

Reminds me a bit about a Tomato project I saw at an evening inspiration session at LYNfabrikken where they did some work interacting with the passing by’s. I think it was with Asahi TV and with another project working with air to flow to giant sculptures when passing them. (If anybody remembers exactly – please help )

But this is interesting and I just held a focusgroup working with a pitch for H&M in Denmark where all the young women talked about how important the shopping window were for them. So this is interesting. Hope they will tell more about the results and reactions afterwards. 

We all know how hard it is to get peoples attention today. One of the world most difficult tasks is to get attention on very boring, un-sexy subjects such as public signage. We know people do not pay as much as a small moment of attention to anything that falls in the category of  “this is something you already know, but you ignore it, so we try to tell you once more” like the safety messages on airplanes, alcohol/smoking campaigns and alike.

We often see how some of these categories continuesly cross borders, to renew the possibility to get attention – and some just seems to lost faith in attention (like the flight safety messages – though we here see small glims of hope: Like the flight attendant described in the Heaths brothers Made To Stick where the messages was spiked up  with  some humour for example about the disco-lights that led to the exit signs).

Humour can be a good lead into attention. Eventhough it is an informative message it can be told in a different way.

This is a brilliant example from Larsbjørnsgade in Copenhagen. Found the pictures on a Swedish guys blog. Translated it says:

1: Bicycles will be removed in co-operation with Polish Bicycle Import.

2: Bicycles parked here get its tyre pierced for free.

3: What’s wrong with the public parking around the corner?

On the beach of Barcelona I just found this in Attention by Ken Sacharian, which gives another funny comment on the validity of media planning based on efficiency based on simple CPM-values. Just for the record – I don’t believe a second in planning this way. I believe in interaction and engagement.  But everybody say they do – and still I see flowcharts packed with these numbers. I think they are okay at optimising the plan after making the stategy based on insights – but not as a tool of strategy. This quote kind of makes the point in a funny way.

Efficiency is not strategy
If other fields worked that way – imagine an architect who has been awarded  a skyscraper design project. If she operated as our fictional brand marketeer does then she would start by examining the efficiency of building materials: Brick is less expensive than steel, but wood is less expensive than brick, and plastic and vinyl is less expensive than wood – we’ll build an scyscraper in plastic ad vinyl.  Attention – Ken Sacharian

Spending some time exploring all the new emerging technologies challenging the traditional TVviewing and bringing the TV experience online, combining the best of both worlds, I am a bit confused about the lack of keeping the feeling of flow TV. Watching Youtube, dailymotion, currentTV, Jalipo and Joost I miss something. Even though it seems as there are a tendency towards on-demand viewing I see plenty of possibilities of keeping the aspect of flow and live at the same time as the possibilities of control. Especially at Joost where they very nicely have combined chat functions and viewing it doesn’t make sense that there aren’t a flow to gather around with? Have I missed something. It would be obvious to be able to invite somebody to view content simultaniously as re-creating the feeling of shared viewing across space and context. But can’t find out if I’m just a newbie in Joost or if online TV just is killing flow TV.

I have previously posted this on my danish blog, but was reminded how incredible it is when I watched Gaming theme evening on DR2 ( a danish public service TV channel).

I think it is amazing to watch how World of Warcraft created not only a game, but a virtual world. You really see how this virtual place works, when players (or more appropriate inhabitants?) break the storyline of the game and start to create their own stories.

See tales of the past II here…..