2005 Archive

(These are the collected posts from the launch of “Take Five” in August 2005, through mid-December 2005–RJ)

Good morning:
Here’s five off the top of the deck, plus a special bonus!

KENNETH TARRANT “INTERVIEWS FROM HELL” Kenneth Terrant is an advertising recruiting firm in the UK, who’s launched a new ad campaign with the line “It’s not just the people we put in front of you. It’s the people we don’t.” Modem Media created this site in support of that idea, and its called “Interviews from Hell” six short videos of imaginary interviews with the worst, pretentious bozos you might have the misfortune to interview for a job in your ad agency. What’s great about this site is that it’s thew perfect delivery vehicle for the target market—ad executives. Modem identified a real problem, (as opposed to the garbage that Miller Beer is putting out) and this satire is well served by the website, which can deliver all sorts of additional calls to action, while also supporting a viral long-form video that wouldn’t be appropriate expenditure if it was a TV buy. (hint: scroll over the datebook to find the videos) http://www.interviewsfromhell.co.uk/
GOOGLE MAPS “NEVER GET LOST” No one’s sure if this is really from Google, or if its a spoof but here’s a funny viral video touting Google Maps. I think it’s a “viral spoof,” which is becoming a growing online art form for bored art directors at agencies. (You make up a commercial for a company which they never would have the nerve to do themselves, and then you virally circulate it over the Web, just for fun.) Anyway, here’s your viral laugh for the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=tcF-t9ANZCk
DORITOS “INNW?” Hip Cricket is the text messaging company we’ve talked with about SMS text messaging marketing programs. This campaign they did for Doritos has become one of the better known success stories anywhere in SMS, and I think it also shows the (necessary) inter-relationship between SMS and other media like outdoor, in-store/stadium, print, etc. This campaign was called “INNW?” which stands for “If Not Now, When?” That rather bellicose “INNW” tagline was designed to inspire couch potatoes to say “to hell with it” and eat more Doritos. If you don’t eat an entire bag of junk food now, when will you? http://www.hipcricket.com/INNWCampaign_31-march-05.asp
VIRGIN MOBILE “DIALING UNDER THE INFLUENCE” One of the worst mistakes an adult can make is to get near a telephone while seriously under the influence. “Drinking and dialing” late at night to one’s boss / former paramour / ex-wife / old enemy / that cute boy at work is one of those social faux pas that can end careers and bring blinding white terror to the “morning after.” Virgin Mobile in Australia has implemented a service called “Dialing while under the influence” which allows a subscriber to block the ability to dial certain phone numbers on your cell phone before you head out for an evening of bar crawling. The numbers stay blocked until 6:00 am the following morning. The service started out as a marketing gimmick, but this year more than 10,000 phone numbers were blocked, including one guy who shut off 250 numbers in one month. Virgin does it again, with a cheeky mobile campaign that’s right on their brand: http://www.virginmobile.com.au/services/duti.html

THEO “OLD FASHIONED CHRISTMAS” Best example of a cute Christmas Flash viral e-mail this season, comes from a Flash development company called Theo in Ohio. You get to decorate gingerbread cookies and e-mail them, with a message to friends. Theo’s doing this to publicize interactive games they want to license to agencies and clients, but you could see this being branded for Caribou, General Mills or another CPG company: http://www.theoworlds.com/christmas/

BONUS: PERISCOPE DELIVERS THE TOYOTA “RAV4” This morning at 9:00am Pacific time the new Toyota Rav4 website goes live, marking the entry of Periscope into autotmotive interactive marketing—and modestly, we think we enter with a bang. Using “frozen moment” photography, the site shows off Toyota’s new small SUV model Rav4. Working with our partners at Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi LA, many people at Periscope contributed to getting this opportunity, and to its design and execution. Special props to Adam Knutson, aka Grand Master Flash, and Gordon Lee, designer extrordinaire. Click on this page, then click on “Rav4 Experience Minisite,” and go for a spin: http://www.toyota.com/rav4/ Or: http://rav4.periscope.com/beta/

Drive safely—stay away from the cell phone—and enjoy the holidays!
Next week: The Best of 2005….
Thanks-RJ

Just call me, I’ll be there…

Good morning:
Hey, if you’re in the Twin Cities don’t miss the “2005 British Television Advertising Awards” running this month most evenings at the Walker Art Center: http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=2483

SPRINT “ENTERTAINMENT ANYTIME.COM” Sprint is starting to deliver games and TV shows to smart phones through their “PowerVision Network.” Organic in San Francisco built this advergame which puts a hapless passenger in the back seat of a car—and you’re the crazy cab driver. You accelerate, swerve, jerk left and right, and this poor slob loses his coffee as you hammer him from side to side in the back seat. After a few moments of this, a subtle banner ad decends with the Sprint logo telling you “there’s more entertainment of the Power Vision network. Cute enough to have some viral legs, and the technology that subtly blends different film clips is well done—in the tradition of the interactive “Subservient Chicken” from Burger King: http://www.entertainmentanytime.com/

NOKIA “N-SERIES N90 BLOGGER RELATIONS BLOG” Here’s a good example of the first wave of blogs set up by corporations to market their products. There are hundreds of amateur blogs about mobile phones built by enthusiasts who just love mobile phones. They’re the equivilent of car enthusiasts—big “influencers” of other people—and here Nokia feeds their need to be the first to know by building a “blog for the bloggers.” Enthusiast bloggers can link and download information for use in their own blogs. Two interesting points: 1) Nokia does nothing to control how the infomation is used—they couldn’t, so why bother? and 2) You have to register to comment on this blog itself, which eliminates any specious flame postings. http://n90.bloggercomm.com/

SAMSUNG “D600 MYSTERY GAME” Good interactive entertainment game, also in support of a new phone launch, this one from Samsung. The D600 takes great photos, along with other new features, and these features are at the center of a mystery game. Find the five clues during the course of wandering around a maze of scenes from a mystery set in a modern city. Clues abound, and you have to learn how to work the D600 phone to solve things. Complete the contest and you’re entered for a weekend at Sweden’s “Ice Hotel” outside Stockholm: http://www.samsung.com/se/current/campaign/d600/index_en.htm

POLARIS “SPORTSMAN CHALLENGE” Pete Petrulo found this very interesting Polaris site, in support of their line of Sportsman ATVs. It pits Polaris ATV models head-to-head against competitors, with drag races, feature comparisions, etc. It’s the classic “head-to-head” concept, but well done, with a “boxing ring” framework. The comparisons do a great job of objectively demonstrating the supriority of the Polaris line (And please note—ha ha—they don’t compete against any Arctic Cat models.) It’s a good example of Flash being used as an environment for video, animations, text and graphics to create a fluid, dynamic user experience. Goes after both the left brain logic and the right brain emotion: http://www.polarisindustries.com/SportsmanChallenge/

LYCOS / CELINE DION “TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL JACKSON” Lycos in the UK is sponsoring a contest for people to submit videos of them singing songs from the 1980s. To whet your appetite, they are playing some of the worst music videos from that regretably unforgettable decade. Here, with no ado at all, is a video clip you just have to see to believe: Celine Dion in Las Vegas, dressed up as Michael Jackson, doing “Bad.” It’s like a car accident, folks: horrible to look at, but somehow you can’t look away, either:…..http://viral.lycos.co.uk/pop.html?url=http://www.holymoly.co.uk/video/bad.mov

Have a great week. Thanks—RJ

New E-commerce from Fallon + Al Gore on the Internet?

Good morning:

NORSTROM’s “SILVER SCREEN” New frontiers in e-commerce: Fallon Interactive designed this site for Nordstrom’s, which targets women 21-35 with a “broadband entertainment channel” called “Silver Screen.” You install their player application on your computer desktop, and each week you receive new music videos. The videos feature models in Nordstrom clothing and bling bling, and as the video plays you can click on stuff you like and buy it through the site. This campaign will get a lot of attention in the coming year—if it works it means there’s a model for “branded entertainment e-commerce” as a result of broadband connections hitting the home and the office. Three big hurdles:
1. Getting women to install the application on their desktop (is this thing spyware? No, it isn’t, but it looks like spyware
2. Getting them to dig the music videos enough to return every week and
3. Getting them to click in the middle of the videos to buy stuff.
I don’t know about this. It’s the typical top shelf production from Fallon, but it feels as clunky as their “Amazon Films” last year, which bombed: http://www.nordstromsilverscreen.com/

BUSINESS WEEK “GOOGLING FOR GOLD” Last week Janelle Litchfield and I spoke to Bob Ballard and George Creel’s class from the St. Thomas School of Business, and I made a fool out of myself by constantly whopping and hollering about Google. “Google’s doing this, Google’s going to buy that, they’re going to own classifieds, they’re going to own local search,” yada yada. For those few who are not sick of my ranting on and on about how these guys are going to replace Microsoft and the entire newspaper industry in the Internet firmament, here’s a more detailed and objective assessment of Google from the brilliant writers at Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_49/b3962001.htm
NIKE EUROPE “FREE EUROPE” Strong marketing website by AQKA in Europe for Nike, pushing their new line of “Free “ shoes. These are ultra-flexible shoes that were orginally for rock climbing, now getting a lot of traction on the street. The line between animation, video and user control is terrific—very high quality display of merchandise. Broadband makes this possible: http://www.nike.com/freeeurope/
CURRENT TV “AWAITING INPUT.COM” Al Gore is the political muscle behind Current TV, a new cable television channel that’s seeking to build a “progressive” audience for political and lifestyle programming, and they’re counting as much on their website channel for their audience. And here’s what’s very cool about their programming model: they’re agressively trying to spawn an online community which isn’t just an “audience” of “viewers.” The interactive paradigm means that people contribute as well as consume, and content for Current TV will come more from this “audience” than from the channel programmers.

If it succedes, this is the model of how a community of consumers gathers around an interactive site and contributes as much content as it consumes. There’s still a core of highly qualified professional writers, editors,and journalists at the center, but they’re just the spark. The audience becomes the fire: http://www.awaitinginput.com/ and www.current.tv

Enjoy the week. Thanks-RJ

I’m British, I’m rich, and I’m a winner!

Good morning, and welcome back:
This week: the best UK rich media advertising from 2005.
Here are five great, effective interactive advertising campaigns, as judged by the British Interactive Marketing Association in their annual “best of” competition for this year.
Some people have asked why so frequently the “Take Five” examples are from outside the US, and in particular from the UK. The simple fact is that’s where a lot of the best experimentation is being done online—especially in emerging new media like text messaging and interactive POS. Is this trend part of the UK’s over-all strong stratgegy & creative in advertising? Is it because European and Asian brands aren’t as conservative as well established US brands? Is it because broadband and wireless services are better and more pervasive? Is it because…..?
So take five:
MAZDA “BE DRIVEN WILD” A IPG agency in London called Glue created this online beauty for Mazda’s launch of the MX-7 in the UK, under the tag “Be Driven Wild.” (Glue was named 2005 UK interactive agency of the year BTW) The idea behind this campaign was to give the car a sexy edge, in that fun, cheeky British way. Here’s an interactive online ad from the campaign that allows you to run your hands all over the interior of the car. (Hint: you’ll need your sound turned up to get the humour. Click “back” to see the other parts of the campaign) http://www.gluelondon.co.uk/img/client_img/creative/mazda/car.htm
EMI RECORDS “MAGIC NUMBERS POSTER MAKER” Brit band The Magic Numbers have a microsite where fans of the band can design and hang on a big wall their own poster for the band, using simple design tools and graphics provided by the site. Since there’s only room on the wall for a couple of dozen posters, new ones cover up old ones, providing an ever-changing environment for fans to return to. Songs from the band play while you’re working, so its a great experience to deepen loyalty for casual fans. Great music, too:
http://magic.blocmedia.net/
HASBRO “MONOPOLY LIVE” To celebrate Monopoly’s 70th birthday, Hasbro launched a massive, immersive promotion in London, designed by Tribal DDB. People signed up online to play for a top prize of having your mortgage paid off (Wow!) by playing a real game of Monopoly. How real? Hasbro hired 18 actual London taxi cabs. People signed up online in groups of five to “play” as one of the 18 cabs. The cabs went about their regular business, and everytime they picked up or dropped a real customer in front of a a famous London property, the five virtual “passengers” collected “rent.” If your cab picked someone up at Harrods, your team got 15 pounds, etc. The team with the most rent on their “virtual” ride wins the contest. Lots of security and fraud problems to overcome, but the promotion has garnered about $4 million in free publicity, and Hasbro met their goal of selling 1 million copies of the board game Monopoly before the end of the promotion: http://www.monopolylive.com/
STANDARD LIFE “FREESTYLE MORTGAGES” Here’s the winner in both Finance and E-commerce. The agency DNA decided to create a “shopping” environment for mortgages, where consumers could browse and hunt according to what concerns and interests drove them to consider a mortgage. First time buyers? Second mortgage? Worried about how much you can afford? What ever behavioral mind-set the consumer brought into the site, the site offered a clear, easy, appealing choice: information, tools, personalization. If you wander around enough the site starts to understand you better and changes the choices you’re offered. The best things in this site are all under the hood—you don’t see them, but pretty quickly you realize how well designed this is: http://www.freestylemortgages.com/0.1.html
VOLVO “LIFE ON BOARD” Wow! Here’s the grand prize winner, and I gotta tell you about how effective it was before we get to the magnificent creative. Volvo introduced its V50 station wagon to the UK with this campaign, and blew the doors off their sales goals, beating their 2005 plan by the end of July this year.
The concept of the campaign was to capture conversations with real people talking about how they live their lives, while they drove around in the V50. Central to this site are seven short films of real people driving and talking about the future, courage, luck, design, outer space, the Berlin Wall, and more.
After the site launches, you can sit through a 30 second “intro” or hit a “skip intro” button. When you get to the first main screen please, you must, must click on the “V50 Film” which you can launch by clicking on the color television in the middle of the screen. You’ll launch a 7 minute “web movie” that’s so good it’s one of the best arguments for just how video can play a strong, unique role on the Web.
The film features Thai conceptual artist Narvin Rawanchikwal and a social scientist friend of his driving around Hong Kong in a Volvo V50 interviewing a wide range of people they pick up on the street, talking with them about the question “what are the next steps in your life? Tell us why.” The result is meandering, funny, human, profound and real all at once.
Ah but then, when you return to the main page after the movie ends, you discover that this film and this home page only one of seven home pages, all within a giant 3-D model of a city (you navigate by the orange arrows) The other six centerpiece films include two people looking for the Berlin Wall, a couple of wacky designers driving arounbd talking out design, a conversation about outer space, and more, and more—but this first one is the best!
The campaign included a WAP website you could access through your smart phone, “video posters” in public places like airport lounges, with wireless technology to ddeliver e-mails about the V50 to people who walked by with PDAs and cell phones, as well as an award winning tv and print campaign, and this main website.
Nothing—nothing—takes the place of a great idea well executed: http://www.volvocars.co.uk/_campaigns/LifeOnBoard/default.htm
Enjoy!

Thanks-RJ

Shout it out!

Good morning:
VODOPHONE “YOUR SHOUT” There’s nothing bigger in Britain than football (meaning: soccer) Now Vodophone has found a neat football promotion to show off their new line of “smart” telephones. In addition to the standard voice, text, and e-mail messaging, the phones also can shoot photographs and even short video clips, which then can be emailed or text messaged. So the football promotion they just launched invites you to shoot a short video clip expressing your opinion, or asking a question about some current piece of UK football news, and you then e-mail the video message to a weekly BBC sports telly program called “Your Shout” which plays the most interesting clips, while a panel of experts comments on them. So:
1. Click on the “UKSoccerVid_10.3gp” attachment on this e-mail, and you’ll see what a (bad, unconscionable) example of a home-made smart phone video clip looks like. (and yes, it’s been sent in to the telly show—stand by.)
2. Here’s the TV show site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/football_focus/4229268.stm

INSTITUTE FOR INTERACTIVE RESEARCH “DON’T CLICK IT:” And now for something completely different….an interface you can’t click on, at all. Not anywhere. Nope. Un-uh. Clicking doesn’t work. But you can still get to anything you want—you just point with your cursor, and the interface changes. Have a look. They may be on to something big with this idea: http://dontclick.it/
BMW THAILAND “CUT OUT YOUR DREAM CAR” Ever dream about owning a Beemer? Here’s something to feed your Jones for that shimmering BMW of your dreams. High quality .JPGS of every BMW model can be downloaded, printed, cut out with scissors, and assembled so you can indulge in a little luxury wish fulfillment, scooting your paper dream car around your desk. Maybe the next step for this idea is snowmobiles? Baseball players? Take N Bake Pizza? http://www.bmw.co.th/th/en/index_narrowband.html?content=http://www.bmw.co.th/th/en/general/download/yourdreamcar.html

PRILOSEC “NFL SEASON OF A LIFETIME” MEDIA BUY: “Roadblocks” are a common media tactic on television buys—you lock up spots across all the networks at the same time of the same day, and where ever consumers turn they see your spot. Agencies and companies continue to experiment with Internet “roadblocks,” but so far that’s meant taking over the entire home page of a major Web portal like eBay.com or Yahoo.com for a day. The www.Target.com home page was decked out in Star Wars dress earlier this Spring for a co-promotion. Here’s the first attempt to take over dozens of major websites on the same day to create a truly massive Web “roadblock.” It was on September 21st by P&G for Prilosec and it included special rich media banners, search engine marketing, and all kinds of other online ads in an attempt to “paint the Internet purple.” One big reason this is possible: the top 50 Websites on the Internet get 95% of the traffic. http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=46124

AT EDGE “THE RICH MEDIA REVOLUTION” Here’s an extraordinarily clear, well illustrated article which explains “rich media” advertising—with great, current real world examples. Thanks to Peter Petrulo for the link: http://www.designinteract.com/features/
Have an interactive week!
Thanks-RJ

Good morning:
Just 11 years ago this week Yahoo! was invented by Jerry Yang and David Filo in a mobile classroom on the campus of Stanford University—as a way for them to keep track of their personal Internet surfing. Today Yahoo! is worth $53 billion.
Now, eleven years later, 20% of all media time consumed in the US is online, and that’s moving 3% per year. For young and very affluent demographics the number is above 25%.
Now, here’s this week’s five from the frontier:
MY SPACE “NIKE SOCCER” Community is one of the four legs ot the stool which is the Internet in the 21st century: Search, Content, Personalization, and Community.
Myspace.com is a major new community website that now gets more traffic than Google.
Let me say that again: My Space now gets more traffic than Google.
What is My Space? It’s a website where you can set up your own webpage with information about you, and then you link to other friends who also have pages. You can form a small group of friends to talk about politics, but then you can form another little group made up of your book club members….and another for your block club..and another for your wife’s family, etc. It’s a web portal that allows you to form and join communities on anything, of any size. And now in the latest twist, companies are building their own product and company pages on My Space. Here’s one by Nike Soccer, which currently has 27,000 “friends” actively linked to the page—and that doesn’t begin to count the people who visit the page, but decide not to link to it: http://www.myspace.com and http://www.myspace.com/nikesoccer

NIKE “RONALDHINO” More Nike: here’s the first video commercial to be delivered to the new video IPod as a podcast. Is it good? Well, H.L. Mencken was once at a street carnival in Baltimore, where he attended a performance by a singing dog. His comment: “As with many things in life, I’m not suprised that it’s done particularly well, but that it’s done at all.” Which is my opinion of this “podcast” precisely—-but hey, it’s early in the game: http://nikefootball.nike.com/nikefootball/front/front.jsp?language=9

CARS DIRECT “WEBSITE” Time for a visit to the Cadillac of car sites. If its your intent to shop for a car, this is the driver’s seat for buyers. All the tools, research, configurators, and comparisons you need to figure out what kind of new, used, hybrid, car, truck or anti-theft product is right for you. Next year car companies will move more than 15% of their marketing budgets from traditional marketing to online. http://www.carsdirect.com/home

GMC “ENGINEERED TO INSPIRE” This site is the sole sponsor of Scripps www.living.com, their portal for the Food Network, Diy, and Home and Garden TV. This micro-site is video intensive, and includes a sophisticated configurator for any and all GM models. One trend in car sites this past year is that consumers are looking for more rich media, more video, more immersive experiences, and they find that on the car company sites, not the thirtd party sites like Cars Direct, Edmunds, and Kelly Blue Book, which are designed more to help people do (rational) searches for the car they want. These sites work more on the emotional side of the problem, and this one is probably the leader in putting custom web video together for a broadband experience. http://www.living.com/gmcinspired/
24/7 “2006 PREDICITIONS FOR ONLINE ADVERTISING” At the AdTech Conference in NYC last week the online ad network 24/7 delivered it’s top ten predictions for online advertising in 2006. They are:
1. Consumer-generated media will become increasingly attractive to advertisers
2. Advertisers will continue shifting traditional ad spending to the Web due to increased Internet consumption and better targeting/reporting capabilities
3. Advertisers, cable providers and interactive marketing experts will collaborate to address “The TiVo Effect”
4. Brand advertisers will drive the next wave of growth for the paid search market
5. Best practices in localized mobile marketing will be perfected overseas in 2006
6. Online advertisers will employ holistic targeting methods to deliver better results and reduce reliance on high-profile, high-CPM ad buys
7. Technology and better data access will transform online advertising success to a formulaic equation
8. Japan will be the next frontier for paid search and interactive marketing
9. Mobile carriers will adopt new ad models to boost revenue beyond usage
10. Performance-based pricing models (pay-per-click, pay-per-lead) will demonstrate the true value of search engine marketing (SEM) as a lead generation channel

There’s more behind each one of these predictions for 2006, found at the news release: http://www.247realmedia.com/about/press_2005/2005-11-08.html
Thanks to Paul Aaron for the MySpace links.
Have fun in real time this week—RJ

Spooky: The Worst of Web Design

Good morning:
Just for Halloween, here’s our first occasional visit to the scary world of *The Worst of Web Design.”
“Taking five” from all the garbage on the Web isn’t easy, only because there’s so much to chose from, but here’s a “low five” to start your week.
A few rules: we don’t pick on amateur sports leagues, bridge clubs, dental clinics or family geneology websites that are too small and too new to this Internet thing to do anything other than hire the kid down the block for $100 to build them a website. Not fair.
Second, we didn’t zero in on “boring” websites. Lord knows there’s a lot of those out there, but we were looking for truly awful web designs which illustrate important points about just how important is good web design.
Each one of these five sites was built by people who really, really should have known better. A couple of the worst offenders are interactive design firms for God’s sake! Apparently they were just hell-bent on “pushing the envelope.” In doing so, they’ve pushed their envelope right into the trash can.
Exuse me? But I think the purpose of a website is to be a source of information, yes? A channel you can interact with? But here are smarty-pants designers, and big, major corporations paying big, major money to build truly stupid websites! As Joan Rivers would say: “What were they thinking?”
MOMA “WORKSPHERES” These people too cool for you and me, no doubt because they get to work for the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC. Click on the “Enter” button for this online exhibit and you will be taken to a web page filled with rows and rows of icons designed to look like pieces of ruled paper.
This is the mistake which is known in interactive design as “Mystery Meat Navigation.”
Looking at the page you have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what each of the icons link to (or that they are, in fact links!) The only way you can find out that they are links, and what they contain is by mousing over the icon—and even then you are presented with incomprehensible jibberish like “Link X Chair, Web Desk.” Huh? Navigation like this is called “Mystery Meat,” because it’s just like the un-identifiable meat you were served in your high school cafeteria—you have no idea what it is. But it gets worse: suddenly at the top of the page a complaint from one of the artists appears, floating in the ether: “I think it’s a crime to make people work in a windowless space.” Huh? Too cool for me…. http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/workspheres/index.html
MAGENTIC NORTH—A truly bad Website from some professional, certified (certifiable?) Website designers! “Incomprehensible” is the word that leaps to my mind after a few seconds with this Webfart.
When the introductory animation ends all you see is a bunch of (very tiny) words floating up and down, none of which have anything to do with anything. Huh? Hello? Finally, just to humor these bozos, you click on one: “Menagerie” is one of the words, and belive it or not, when you click on that you get to see portraits of everyone who works at the shop (It’s their “menagerie,” — get it?)
Now run your cursor over their portraits and watch as each one makes an annoying noise. Click on one of the portraits and a small “about” screen appears which tells you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the person—not their name, not their job title—just some enigmatic comments from people who are also cooler than you and I are. Drop dead… http://www.magneticn.co.uk/flash.html
AMP—Another bunch of self-important, clueless, interactive design wankers. Rule #1: When people arrive at your Website they should be able to figure out what you do for a living in the first 10-20 seconds on the home page, you think? These people not only fail that simple test, they go to absurd lengths to deliberately hide information from the visitor. Why? Why!!? Try this: click on “About Us” and what do you get? A shirty message that essentially says: “Buzz off! We won’t tell you what we do, but if you see something you like on the site, call us and we’ll do something like that for you.” Now click on “How We Can Help,” and what do you get? A bunch of crude cropped graphics from clients—no identification of the sites, the catagories of businesses, the types of websites, dates—NOTHING! Why would you presume that giving visitors clear information is inherently a bad thing? Aggggghh! http://www.1amp.com/
CHIPOLTE—Again, more “Mystery Meat” navigation! I’ll help you out: roll your cursor over the circle with the chili pepper in it—it’s the only way to find the navigation on the site. Glad I figured that out. But now you’re presented with incomprehensible navigation choices like “Feel” and “Speak.” Speak? What? Huh? Why would I click on something called “Feel?” This site makes the mistake of thinking people find Chipolte to be one of Life’s most important and engaging enigmas, one that compels them to click into new mysterious sections of their Website, thirsting to know more about this cosmic puzzle called “Chipolte.” So just who is this site speaking to? I think the answer is senior marketing executives at Chipolte who said: “Give us a website with some edge.” (Meaning, presumably, a website without navigation that is clear and functional.) What they got was a very expensive opaque pile of Webjunk. Ole! http://www.chipotle.com/
MUSICWORLD—Ohhhh….I’m going to be sick….I can’t even introduce this: http://www.musicworld.net.au/frame2.htm
I’m not sure if I can do another one of these. We’ll get back to the great stuff next Monday morning…
Thanks-RJ

Into the future!

Good morning:
A cornucopia of interactive ideas, harvested for your entertainment. Check out an hysterical “haircut” viral campaign from Virgin, and from Honda, a legendary 2-minute viral “webmercial:”
VIRGIN ATLANTIC “HAIRCUT” Here’s a funny, interactive viral for Virgin Atlantic’s new feature: a barber to cut your hair on trans-Atlantic air flights. In this web applicagtion, you can upload your own photograph (or someone else’s), cut your (sholder length purple) hair any way you want, and e-mail the result to a friend—or start over. Great office time-waster. They got something like 5 minutes of average use from visitors, which is so sick. As is so often the case, its from Crispin Porter: http://www.cpbgroup.com/awards/haircut.html
HONDA “THE COG” It’s two years old, but it’s one of the all-time classic viral commercials. Honda took apart an entire car and created a Rube Goldberg machine out of it that you have to see to believe. And here’s something you won’t believe: no computer trickery was used in the making of this (2 minute) commercial. What you see is the fifth or sixth take, in real time. http://194.29.64.17/thecog/movie.html
COMCAST “COMCASTIC” Since Periscope, my agency, has Cox Broadcasting as a client, here’s the latest piece of “advertainment” from Comcast Cable, which pitches their high speed internet and other services here using games. Fun stuff, in a catagory that doesn’t scream “fun.” Plus the games get the point across about high-speed connections: http://www.comcastic.com/launch.html?popupsBlocked=true
ROYAL CARIBBEAN “FREEDOM OF THE SEAS” Big promotional Website from Royal Caribbean to promote the coming launch of their newest boat, the good ship “Freedom of the Seas.” The site is big, all the whistles and bells, and it runs a little clunky, but the production values and the interweaving between 3-D Flash and video clips is high quality. Choose “”Enter the site” and after the opening sequences click on “Explore” on the navigation to get to a master list of a half dozen scenes. There’s a countdown on the lower right which ticks off the days, hours, and minutes to launch.
http://www.freedomoftheseas.com/
BUSINESS WEEK “BIG MEDIA, LITTLE BLOGOSPHERE” Great (short) article from Business Week about “micro media,” the latest summary term for blogs and niche websites. Their power for advertisers is that they can reach niche audiences who are highly motivated to spread their endorsement of ideas virally. The biggest problem? Not enough ad inventory for advertisers to buy. Blogs are here to stay. They represent a strong, fundemental idea which will endure: self-organized conversations moderaeted by a “maven” who attracts new members to his/her blog through the strength of the subject + their skills as a writer/moderator. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_43/b3956060.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
UPDATE “GOOGLE-BOMBING”: A few weeks ago I ran a “bonus” item which said that if you typed “French military” into Google’s search engine, it came back with no results, and the question “Did you mean French military defeats?” This is the result of pranksters (in this case British, no doubt) who trick the Google search engine into ranking certain terms and sites with others, for purpose of humor and/or embarrassment. It’s called Googlebombing because to do it you get a whole bunch of Webmasters to post a link on their site (calling the link “french military defeats”) to a legitimate site (perhaps the official French government miltary Website.) Google ranks a given result higher in a search result when many, many other sites link to it—the idea being that a sites with more links to it than similar sites are more important to people interested in that subject.
The latest contremps with Google is that if you type in the words “failure” or “miserable failure” into the Google search engine, the top result is George W. Bush’s official Website. (right-wingers got their revenge: #2 is Michael Moore’s website….) www.google.com

Apple Introduces the Future…Again

Quiet on the set, please:
APPLE “VIDEO IPOD” The newest iPod delivers video—including television programming—on demand! (here’s the mock-up Jobs used in the announcement http://www.adrants.com/images/video_ipod.jpg) Apple unveiled the new model this week and with it, a deal with Disney to sell copies of some Disney TV shows for $1.99 at iTunes. Things are getting pretty weird in the media markets. What if HBO creates a steamy television series, but it’s “Direct-to-iPod” rather than “Direct to Video?” http://www.apple.com/itunes/videos/
VIVIDAS “SERENTITY PREVIEW” Holy cow, have a look at this: it’s NTSC on the Web! Here’s a nine minute movie trailer for the new sci-fi film “Serenity” blowing through your browser at something approaching NTSC quality. You’ll swear it’s a DVD playing on your computer. This technology, from a company called Vivdas, is a big leap forward in distributing real-time high quality video over the Internet. Vividas makes money doing sales conferences and demos over the Internet. (When the site asks you if you want to down load the “applet” click yes. It takes a few seconds to load, but enjoy the show!) http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/index.html
SHADOW MOUNTAIN PUBLISHING “LEVEN THUMPS AND THE GATEWAY TO FOO” If the “Serenity Preview” is TV on the PC, here’s X-Box on the PC. This is a site for the kid’s book “Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo,” which shows the current state of the art in Flash—animations, sound, interactivity. Click “Enter site” and you can explore the story, order the book, etc. There’s contest to find seven magic cards, and all kinds of photos, maps, and magic places to root around in. Some of the exhibits, like “Traveler’s Guide to Foo” are sadly “coming soon,” which is a little bush league, but the site over-all is the same production values as your typical “dungeons and draqons” X-box game. http://leventhumps.com/Foo/index.html
RENAULT “THE SAFEST CARS ARE FRENCH” I’m going to stop featuring Websites that simply put television commercials up on a site and call that “interactive,” but this “Web-o-merical” is pretty funny, and therefore has a good chance to “go viral.” Renault tries to make the point that more than the Germans, the Japanese and the Swedes, it’s the French who make the safest cars in the world. The opening title is in German, and it reads: “The safest cars in the world are made in France.” http://www.sicher.de/start_spot.php
AJAX “GOOGLE MAPS” Here’s your software briefing for the week. One of the huge, huge technical revolutions on the Internet in 2005 is a kind oif software programming you’ve never heard of: it’s called AJAX*, a new method of programming Websites. I promise this techno-lesson will be mercifully brief, and I’ll start with the benefit statement: “AJAX is a technique for building Websites which allows a Website to play huge amounts of data—video, graphics, software—very quicky, which results is stunning improvements in functionality, video quality and over-all speed. “
Sounds good? You betcha! Simplified: AJAX software programs work with your computer to watch where you are on a Website, and then frantically load data in the background on your hard drive based on where you are most likely to click next. So when you click on your next choice the data is probably already on your computer, and it displays in your browser immediately! In other words, I don’t have to make a whole Website run quickly, I just have to make the 3 or 4 most logical “next” choices run fast, and 99% of the time your user experience will be fantastic. (This makes AJAX a big building block for broadcast quality video over the Internet)
Google Maps is the perfect example: It loads a very high quality satillite photo of a specific location you want into your browser, and then you can drag and click with your mouse to move the picture left and right, up and down—and then switch from satillite photo to map, map to satillite, map to hybrid of satellite and map, and….wow! All this is possible because Google Maps at any one moment has to store ONLY the satillite photos and maps for the area immediately around the one you’re looking at. Try Google Maps and you’ll get the point. Type in an address, hit search, and then drag and drop the map around. You can switch from satillite to map and back using the buttons in the upper right corner: www.maps.google.com
Have a great week, and enjoy the nice weather. Seventy five degrees tomorrow. For what it’s worth, the US Weather Service says it’s going to be another warm winter this year in the Twin Cities, just look: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_story.php?wfo=mpx&sid=1388
Thanks-RJ
(For the deep geek inside you: * AJAX = Active Javascript And XML)

Vlogging and Vodka

Good morning:
Here’s the new word for the next 15 minutes: “Vlogs.”
It means “Video Blog,” and it’s officially the new new thing. Read on:
VLOGS “KARMAGRLL: “WAKE ME WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS” You heard it here first: “Vlogging” is the new new thing. The next wave of blogs is “vlogs,” or “video logs,” which are blogs whose stories are made up mostly of video pieces. It’s still very early in the development of this art form, but you glimpse something of the power of “television on demand” meets “viral self publishing.” This vlog is from a woman named Karmagrll, and It’s a montage about the nation’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It’s set to Green Day’s “Wake Me When September Ends,” and it uses television footage expropriated from NBC, CNN and others. (Interestingly, Green Day has made no legal move to stop her.) These “vlogs” will get traction in political and alternative communities first, but already there are cooking vlogs, travel vlogs, quilting vlogs and of course, sex vlogs. (No links to those—this is family entertainment, thank you…) Here’s Karmagrlls thoughtful “Wake Me When September Ends—it’s the SECOND item down, from Thursday:” http://smashface.com/vlog/
ABSOLUTE “METROPOLIS” How much fun is it making ads for a great booze brand? Absolute continues to set the pace in this segment, with a daffy website project called “Metropolis.” Photographer Nadav Kandar went to Tokyo to shoot eight very unique people to appear in a series of those iconic Absolute magazine ads. This website allows each of the eight to tell you their personal story, and how they came to live in Tokyo. One guy is a rockabilly singer who calls himself “Go from Tokyo.” “Pyuupiru” is a Kubuki drag queen. It’s interesting that actually the magazine campaign acts as shill for the website—it’s the Website where the campaign pays off, letting you find out all you want about eight enigmatic souls. These hipsters from the edge and the underside of Tokyo are right on the Absolute brand, hitting straight into that (Vodka drinking) 20-35 urban demographic. There are thirty million stories in the Naked City. Here are eight of them: http://absolut.com/metropolis
LEGO “LEGO FACTORY” New frontiers in e-commerce: Lego has come online with the “Lego Factory,” an online e-commerce channel that allows you to design and assemble your own custom set of Legos, using free desktop software. The program looks like a 3-D version of Visio. You start with a blank “stage” and use “palettes” of different size and colored bricks to build your digital model out of legos—the example they show is a 350-piece pirate ship that someone designed. Once the model looks the way you want, you can buy a kit of those lego blocks to assemble it in real life. You can also save it, buy it, e-mail friends to come see it, or offer it up on the site as a design which others can buy. So think about it: #1. It’s all about your creative passion, not some professional designer’s. You’re buying your vision #2. You can create very sophisticated models using the intuitive “drag and drop” tools—so it’s easy, fun and powerful #3. It’s community—share it with friends, or see what crazy things others people have built. For Lego’s this is great interactive up-selling that couldn’t be done any way other than e-commerce. (When you get to the Lego Factory page, click on “Quick Help” to see how it works) http://shop.lego.com/Product/Factory/About.aspx
LEO BURNETT CANADA “WEBSITE” Given all the creative talent at our disposal, advertising agencies often disaapoint with our own Websites. For example, I’m bugged that the Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s site (http://www.cpbgroup.com) opens with the headline “Welcome to the Factory,” (which is like, wow, very aspirational, man…) Saatchi & Saatchi ( go to www.saatchi.com, then click on “high speed version” ) is another site where someone in charge should have pulled the plug on the creative development early on. But here’s an edgy, ultimately successful agency site, from Leo Burnett Canada. You have to read the instructions at the bottom right to learn how to navigate (which is bogus) but you’ll get the hang of it quickly. It’s a little like the NEC “Ecotonoha” tree. The icons on the “branches” are a little small, but once you start zooming in and out on the icons, it’s a fun way to cruise. The whole home page is about their work and their success stories, and this is an interesting structure in which to get the Leo Burnett message across: http://www.leoburnett.ca/
BP “ULTIMATE BEGINNERS” Good viral campaign from the UK for British Petroleum, which is positioning itself as the “green” oil company (if that’s not oxymoronic…) This BP campaign includes a microsite, a print-able coupon for loyalty points, and a program to seed the orginal viral ad on news websites aimed at the college educated demographic. In the months to come as gas prices rise, look for this “green” trend in other advertising, like Toyota’s agressive move into the “green” space with their hybrid engine technology. Using viral strategies for “green” campaigns makes sense—the mindset around “green” is about changing the way things are, about spreading the word. http://ultimate-beginners.cyb-m3.co.uk/largemovie.htm?id=85798146600
IKEA “LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK” Yet another Ikea website makes this week’s list because, hey it’s a funny concept, well executed—this time for Ikea in the UK. This it a website to encourage people to have a life outside of work. (presumably you would then buy good furniture for your home, to enjoy your life outside of work….) Funny stuff. I loved the “Life Outside of Work Updater,” a series of slides to catch you up on what’s happened while you were chained to your desk these past few years: “Prince Charles has married Camilla Parker Bowles,” “The Spice Girls have split up,” etc. There’s a lot of crummy advertising that presumes to “tell the truth” about a common problem we all face—usually that men are pigs, women like to shop, etc. This one has a good ear for what “not having a life of my own” is all about: http://www.lifeoutsidework.co.uk/
BONUS ITEM: This site needs no introduction: http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
Thanks to Jenna Froysland for the Ikea site. Know any terrible websites? Good websites? Send us either, and we’ll make them notorious / famous.
Happy surfing. Thanks-RJ

Whoa! 3-D Web! Far out, man!

Good morning:
You gotta check out the first item—Ikea’s new Swedish site! (and the “bonus” item, which is an industry in-joke from iDeutsch. The stuff in between is fun, too:
IKEA “DROMKOK AT ALLA” Groovy site of the week, and it’s must see! Ikea has launched a site—only in Swedish—for their new line of super cool home design furniture. “Dromkok at Alla” roughly translates as “Dreams for All,” —and the site is pretty trippy, if not dreamy. When you get to the opening screen, use the mouse to drag and click the whole picture left and right—as the picture turns, you get to see the entire scene in 3-D, and then you transition into the next scene, etc. all of them built using the same technology as the “Matrix” 360 degree cinematography. Goofy opera music sets up a very droll and funny experience. (A little more Swedish to help you along: “ladden” means “loading,” and “Hojvolymen” means “adjust your volume.”) It’s a dromkok! http://www.ikea.com/ms/sv_SE/kampanj/fy06_dromkok/dromkok.html
McDONALDS “ITALKSMACK.COM” McDonalds and Tribal DDB bring you a Website for fantasy football fans. You get to build your own football coach, and then practice building long streams of insults until you find a particularly offensive spew of vitriol. When you’re happy, you can e-mail a postcard with the coach—shouting all the insults—to your friends (and enemies) in your fantasy football league. Cute, viral, it certainly goes right at the trash talking demographic within the fantasy football world.
http://www.italksmack.com/
ROBOTS “GUERILLA INTERVENTION ADS”—Organic in San Francisco won a Web Marketing Assn Gold Award for this campaign for the movie “Robots.” They bought online media where ever competitive films like “The Incredibles” were being mentioned on news sites. Their rich media ad played over the content, and specifically referenced the news mention in the competing movie underneath. It’s “counter-programming” online advertising, which you can debate the ethics of, but you gotta like how they customized the ads to match up against each competitive film. http://awards.organic.com/robots/conquest/incredibles.html
ACLU “PIZZA” Edgy Flash commercial for the American Civil Liberties Union on the ACLU website, about privacy regulations. This has been getting a lot of attention, though its not particularly interactive. Give them credit for a sharply executed idea, and using the Internet as a more realistic setting for this than a TV spot. http://www.aclu.org/pizza/
STONYFIELD FARMS “BABY BLOG” Stonyfield Farms makes organic dairy products—milk, butter, cheese. They’ve hired freelance writer Chritine Halvorsen to author four blogs about babies, kids, women, and the company. Three important points: Stonyfield is clearly identified as the orginator of the content, the blogs are about subjects of genuine interest to their audience, and because they’re organic there’s a “crusader” quality to their brand that the blogs totally fit. Low cost, sticky, and right on the brand: http://www.stonyfield.com/weblog/BabyBabble/index.html
Bonus item—an industry inside joke from Deutch:
IDEUTCH “AD CONCEPTOR” iDeutch created this “Ad Conceptor” for creatives who will be attending Advertising Week in NYC this month. They figure if you’re attending Ad Week, you’ll need some help getting your regular work done while you’re away. Here’s an automated campaign conceptor: choose a product, a tone and a target, hit the “go” button, and voila! out pops brilliant, strategic creative. http://www.theadconceptor.com/
Thanks to Zara Gonzales for the Ikea tip. Remember to send links to the worst stuff you’ve seen on the Web recently, and we’ll give away an eBay mouse pad at the end of the month to the worst of the worst we can find.
Thanks-RJ

Think Different….and Big

Good morning:
The theme this week is “big ideas.” Here are five recent online marketing campaigns which were successful because of a big idea that was executed well. Some (Vayago) are executed better than others (Saab) but each one gets good marks because somebody sitting in front of a blank screen in a dim office somewhere came up with a cool uber-concept:
METHOD SOAP “COME CLEAN” Here’s one of the two top Grand Prix winners at the 2005 Cannes Golden CyberLions. It’s an online campaign launching Method Soap—the campaign is from Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (but of course). You are invited to write down something you want to confess on the palm of a hand, then watch as it’s washed off. Or you can read other people’s confessions—Or, you can e-mail your confession to your mother. (Watching the hands wash away your sordid confession gives you an eerie Zen-like calm.) This is a fun interactive idea, simple exeuction, great viral legs: http://www.comeclean.com
RICOLA “THANKS A MILLION” INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN: So here’s the deal: Ricola is offering $1 million to the first person who finds a “mystery cougher” on a tour of major US cities this Fall. Radio, print and online ads tout the contest, and a website will offer more and more clues about where the “mystery cougher” will be. In each city the cougher will be standing in a public place for at least ten minutes. If you see and hear the mystery cougher, AND you offer them a Ricola cough drop, you win $1,000,000. The website will track progress, and keep accumulating the clues. I think this idea could easily be copped, and re-worked to fit a text messaging contest: http://www.ricolausa.com/sweeps/
VAYAGO “VIRAL ELEVATOR” Vayago is a “vacation insurance” company in the UK, which means they’ll insure your vacation against cancellation if you’re sick, or if you break your leg skiing on the first day out, etc. Here’s a great viral e-mail movie that’s doing very well on both sides of the Atlantic for all of the right “viral” reasons: the humor is black, the film looks real, it has a deadpan punch line. IMHO: Viral e-mails have become to TV commercials what HBO is to network television—it’s a place where the humor can be racier, edgier and darker (and therefore more viral) than what you can do on TV. If a client’s got the right attitude, this kind of stuff can be a blast to create: http://viral.lycos.co.uk/attachments/848/elevator.mpeg
MINI COOPER “BLACK SHEEP” A funny site that Mini-Cooper did for the Canadian market—produced actually by an interactive firm in Toronto called Taxi. Click into the models of the car and you’ll see how they executed the “black sheep” narrative all the way through. It’s an example of taking the high concept worthy of a full media campaign, and driving it (no pun intended) all the way through a Website: http://www.neverinneutral.com/Black_Sheep/
SAAB “RACE AGAINST TIME” Here’s the game of the week, from another car site. Saab is pushing their speedy 93 sedans, especially their peppy new diesel. This game is more a memory contest than an X-Box “fast-twitch” auto racing game. But your job is get out of the downtown of this big city, and make your way out of town to a small village on the beach, as fast as you can. At strategic points you are stopped and asked which way you want to go. So it’s like a high-speed maze. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll see extra goodies like picnic baskets and bicycles, which you can stop to pick up, and win more time. Fastest time in the world wins a brand-new 93 car. Ready? Go: http://www.saabraceagainsttime.com/
Finally, I’d like to offer a “Take Five” invitation for the next few weeks: send in the worst websites, e-commerce, or online marketing you’ve seen—bad navigation, bad design, bad ideas, bad breath—give us links to your unwashed worst, and we’ll pick the best, er the worst—-or rather the best of the worst. (At the end of October I’ll award an eBay Mouse Pad to the person sending in the absolute bottom of the barrel.)
Thanks-RJ

Dance to the Music

Good morning:
Let’s get up and dance! A couple of this week’s Fab Five feature music—companies trying to ride the “MP3” wave—Cingular, Dell, Gap. Plus, re-thinking the ugly duckling static banner ad. Blog on, dancers:
CINGULAR “iTUNES + CINGULAR” Cingular launches the availability of iTunes on their mobile phones through and integrated campaign supported by this Website, which allows you to select a dancer (even upload your face onto the body of a dancer) then pick a tune from a list, drop the song title on top of a picture of a mobile phone, and watch them shake it. Funny characters, simple but fun interactivity, plus the ability to personalize, all make this a winner. (and they copped a really nice URL for the site: makemedance.com) http://www.makemedance.com/
CLICK Z “STATIC ONLINE ADS: THE WEB’s LITTLE BLACK DRESS” Here’s a short article from ClickZ magazine, which makes a great point: static online banner ads are doing better in some places on the Web than rich media ads. The reason? Static ads are popular in very targeted niches, like blogs or narrowly focused websites. So small static banners often work well because the context they’re seen in is so strong. If I’m reading some blog about great current fiction, and I see a banner ad for Louise Erdrich’s new novel “The Painted Drum,” there’s a good chance I’ll bite on the ad, because the context I’m seeing the ad in is so strong—I’m thinking about fiction, I’m pro-actively seeking out a blog or website about fiction, etc. The author of this piece calls the static ad “the little black dress” of online advertising. Cute: http://www.clickz.com/experts/media/media_buy/article.php/3548516
DELL AND MICROSOFT “WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER” Two technology giants jointly funded this microsite on www.dell.com which touts the virtues of the new media center software for Windows XP. The NMC software allows you to control all of your media (kind of a software “universal remote.”) Two cool things about this site: 1) It uses Flash animation everywhere in every way to create a very fluid, animated world that you can interact with, and 2) There’s real-time price data and e-commerce integrated into the site—that’s something that Flash can now do very well, to turn animated worlds into animated stores, or animated service centers. http://www.dell.com/html/us/segments/dhs/mediacenter/tour_rel2/flash/default.htm
GAP “GAP.COM REMODEL” The Gap is working hard to re-invent itself because of lackluster sales and no sharp identity in the marketplace. They’re experiementing with new store designs that feature separate entrances for men and women, lounges with couches and refreshments, art on the walls, yada yada. The Gap used to be the gold standard of brand management: Banana Republic was business casual, Gap was clothing “components” for all types of demographics, and Old Navy was the low end “knock off” brand of Gap iteself. Now the lines are all blurred, and the core franchise of Gap is fighting for its life. One move they made online was to consolidate the 25+ Gap websites into a single “portal.” The new great big Gap.com doesn’t look very new, but at least they’re starting to look and act like the Gap again. Play the great “Gap TV” commercial all about “what’s your favorite song?” and enter a contest to “win a backstage pass.” The official site launches this week, this is a “soft launch” preview site: http://www.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=8050
FORBES “BEST OF THE WEB: BLOGS” Here’s 200 or so of the best blogs on the Web, organized by catagories, rated by Forbes Magazine. They’ve got some cool catagories like “Art Blogs,” and “Video Game Blogs” and some great business catagories like “Marketing Blogs.” Good bookmark to have if you want to tune into the conversation on a wide variety of subjects: http://www.forbes.com/bow/
Thanks for Peter Petrulo for the Saab site, and Rebecca Kane for finding the Forbes site. Keep surfing, and keep sending those links.
Thanks-RJ

Great Navigation Helps You Get Around

Good morning:
The first item this week brings you one of the coolest, most functional Website navigation systems yet. Great site design includes great navigation which can mean funny or cool, but absolutely has to be clear and functional. Here’s one that’s all four. Intrigued? Click on…
FIRST BORN MULTIMEDIA Any good interactive designer will tell you website navigation is hard to design. If navigation functions well, it’s hard to make it unique. And if you design something unique, people have a tough time figuring out how to use it. Navigation needs to be so simple that almost every single person visiting the site can use it successfully. So now, take a look at the Website of First Born Multimedia in NYC, (one of the hottest interactive firms in the Big Apple.) Here, the navigation is the Website. Do this: when you get to the home page, click on “OUR PORTFOLIO” and then click on sort “by project type,” then “by medium,” then “by client.” Mess around with the navigation choices by clicking on them, and you’ll see how great this design really is. Cean, clear, and dazzling. http://www.firstbornmultimedia.com/flashLarge.htm

LEE JEANS “BUDDY LEE, GUIDENCE COUNSELOR” Lee Jeans aims for the college market with this viral “career counseling” site, featuring a very funny intro screen (the Glee Club sings, “Buddy Lee, Guidence Counselor.”) The site is a big pile of games and funny movies, which are intended to be spread virally among friends. We’re seeing more of these “advertainment” sites building many inter-related games and movies on one site, as opposed to tossing out a site with just one game on it. Nice touch: the games are optimized for quicker download, which is still an issue as “advergames” become more complex. Someone ought to do an advergame like these, only make it multi-player across the Internet. Arctic Cat, maybe? http://buddyleeguidancecounselor.com/

TECHNORATI The world of blogs on the Internet is still a mess—finding a good blog is usually the result of accidently finding a link from another blog you like, etc. So the race is on to become “the Google of blogs.” (And why isn’t Google the Google of blogs?) Anyway, a site called Technorati is the early leader. In addition to their search function, you can register, tell them what you’re interested in, and they’ll contact you by e-mail or RSS reader when information about that subject appears on any blog they’re tracking. Cool. http://www.technorati.com/

KFC “CHOOSE YOUR SAUCE” Not sure if this website by Foote Cone Belding Interactive is a good or annoying—but you decide. It’s a website which runs an interactive movie (populated by 20-something office workers) about a guy making decisions during his workday. You’re him—it’s shot from his perspective, and you listen to his annoying friend, his ec-girlfriend co-worker, her father, who happens to own the company, and is his boss. You choose at critical points what he does with his day—you’re given three options which range from mild to “wild and spicey.” The three choices are supposed to remind you of the three flavors of barbque sauce at Kentucky Fried Chicken. One thing to admire is that a screenwriter sat down and thought through an ingteractive movie with 27 different endings. “B+” for effort: http://chooseyoursauce.com/

VIRGIN ATLANTIC “PODCAST LOUDISH” Virgin Atlantic jumps into the podcasting pool with the first of several travel guides delivered as “podcasts.” From last week’s “Take Five” you will recall these are, in effect, radio programs which can be downloaded to your iPod. Virgin always does things very well and with a bit of cheek, so hip travel guides for iPods fits the brand perfectly—hip, high tech, funny, all about important cities like London, New York. http://virginatlantic.loudish.com/newyork.html

Keep your links and e-mails coming in.

Thanks-RJ

R. Greenberg, Boy Genius

Good morning:
We have a veritable State Fair of links this morning inside “Take Five!” Something for everyone this week: great e-commerce, e-mail, text messaging, podcasts, and a special note about coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s devestation of the city of New Oleans.
NIKE “NIKE ID.COM” Here’s this year’s winner of the Cannes Gold CyberLion for Best E-commerce site, and it comes from someone who is the lion of interactive design, Bob Greenberg at RG/A. Everything RG/A does for Nike online is solid, if not great. Watch how this site “unfolds,” gracefully moving your eye from one part of the screen to another, and how at each step along the way it explains visually the possibiliities of what you can do at the site—see how the site “merchandises” the shoes in a way that even the best store design can’t—this is interactivity at its subtle, most purposeful best.
These’s something else this site does—watch as you drill down into it, how much information you’re gracefully given at each step along the way to make an intelligent next choice. By comparison, it blows my mind the stupid, blind, ambiguous choices that other Websites offer—how in the hell are you supposed to know what’s behind a button called “The Inside Spin?” or “View Other?” The groovy extra in this site is that you customize the shoe any way you want. The bar just got moved higher in e-commerce. .http://nikeid.nike.com/nikeid/
EMAIL INSIDER “ALCOHOL SECTOR STRATEGIES” E-mail Insider an email newsletter which I follow because they do a great job of reporting on all aspects of e-mail marketing: strateigc, creative and technical. Once a month they pick a business sector and give a short “state of the sector” report. This one is on booze. While we don’t have any liquor clients, its a sector that’s always been an innovator in digital (and all types) of marketing—along with cars and gym shoes. Here’s 3-4 quick examples of how e-mail is working within this sector. http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=33667
PEUGEOT “1007 NEWS WEBSITE AND SMS CAMPAIGN” Peugeot advertising for their new 1007 model asks people to text message a special code into their mobile phone, and they’re whisked to a (tiny) mobile phone website which shows (very small) pictures of the new car, along with news about it from car shows, etc. Visitors can book a test drive, or sign up for a SMS message back when the model arrives in their local showroom, so they can come in and see it in person. They also can download ringtones and wallpapers, which are pretty standard on these (tiny) sites.
Here’s a link to the bigger, HTML version of the same mobile phone site—so all of the graphics, videos, and music you receive are bigger versions of the same thing you would get on your (tiny) mobile phone screen. What’s cool is that they’ve created a world out of black and white drawings, into which they drop (very, very small) videos. As mobile phone screens grow in size and capacity, this kind of site is the beginning of the multimedia experience through your phone. http://www.1007.peugeot.co.uk/home.asp
NPR “PODCASTING: Podcasts, if you’re not familiar with the term, are audio programs which you can download from Websites to your Apple iPod, to listen to later. They started out as random college students putting together their own radio programs (think “Wayne’s World” on your iPod) but they’ve graduated to the big leagues, with everything from soap operas (“Guiding Light) to religious programming to every kind of music . Of course, National Public Radio is a natural for this. My wife has been griping about missing “All Things Considered” for years. Now she can download it at work and listen to it on her walk home: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php
Here are two links to podcast directories—the firsst is Apple.com’s with big-time podcasts, the second is a more “organic” directory:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html
http://www.digitalpodcast.com/

WASHINGTON POST “NASA NEW ORLEANS ANIMATION” This isn’t an ad, but given the catastrophic events of this past week, a lot of you—and me—have been trolling the online newspapers, looking for the latest coverage of Hurricane Katarina. Here’s a great example of how online can bring an unique understanding to a story through interactivity. It’s an animation of the City of New Orleans which was made by NASA to show what would happen to the city if—as happened this week—the levees broke and the city was flooded. You can stop the animation and run it again. If you pause the animation around “3 meters,” that’s how deep the water is now in New Orleans. And FYI: the Washington Post is hands down the best online newspaper anywhere. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2005/08/31/CU2005083101665.html
Bonus sixth item:
GOOGLE “French Military” This has nothing to do with online advertising—it’s just one of those funny Internet tricks, from friends in the UK. Go to Google, type in the term “French military” and instead of clicking on “Google search,” click on the button to the right of it that says “I’m feeling lucky.” Tres, tres amusant: http://www.google.com
Keep the e-mails and links coming in, and thanks to Sky Iouan for getting me on to Adiddas and Nike, and to Annalee Ulsrud for previous links.

Going Mobile

Good morning:
I’ve been asked about how text messaging will work as a marketing tool. It’s still early, so it may be hard to find examples of how text messaging (sometimes called SMS, for “Short Message Service) actually works, let alone how to use it as a cool marketing element. So the first item is about a great strategy being used early on, called “Text2Win.”
Addidas—like Nike—does much of the leading in interactive marketing. Those shoe companies are so darn profitable they can throw a lot of money against brand campaigns. So we also have to highlights from www.addidas.com. You should also know that Nike’s many websites consistently clean up at the awards campaigns, so we’ll take a look at some of their best in a later Take Five.
THE TEXT MARKETER, “WHEAT CRUNCHIES TEXT-2-WIN” Here’s one of the early leaders in the contest to find strategies for using text messaging, either from cell phones or from SMS text messaging on your computer. It’s called “Test to win,” and the idea is that you promote a contest through offline/online channels, but to win the contest you have to type in a certain text message—usually a personal code found on a box of cereal, or a CD case—and send it to a certain email address. If you’re a winner, you find out instantly. Here’s how a breakfast cereal used the idea in the UK: http://www.textmarketer.co.uk/news.php?action=fullnews&id=27
ADIDAS, “SOCCER” This is the latest big, splashy shoe site from a revitalized Adidas. Click on “ENTER SITE,” and from there click around on stuff—almost every part of the site has motion, video, music. They do a good job of syncronizing all of the transitions, even with the visitor controlling the pace of choices. In the upper right hand corner there are three figures in silver ovals. Click on the face, which is of Jermain Defore, one of the top British “footballers.” He’s a face in the UK that’s as recognizable as Tiger Woods here in the US. There’s a lot of personal detail about him, and they really are selling him as a “up from the streets,” in order to push their street cred. http://www.adidas.com/campaigns/verticalsfootball/content/index2.asp?strCountry_adidascom=us
MERCEDES AMG “WEBSITE”—One of the better high end automobile Websites, this Mercedes AMG site was built by Avenue A / Razorfish, and it features all the latest in rich media. For those of you who aren’t that familiar with “rich media,” its a description of several technologies which allow for websites and online advertising to become animated with motion graqphics, video, and audio. At the centrer of rich media is Flash, ithe main toolset for creating animation on the Web, which can now be played in all web browsers (how good it looks depends on your connection speed). The glitz on this site serves a purpose—it conveys through the texture of the animations both the high performance attributes of the AMG series, as well as the quality of this luxury brand. You see this site, and you get an idea why the cars are worth $100,000. (If you want to see a horrible QA/testing goof, click on: “Showroom” then the car on the right, “SLK 55 AMG,” then “Exterior Highlights,” then “Retractable Roof.” The text reads: “Retractable roof copy.” Ooops…This is why you must have time to QA a site. That goof has been up on the site for more than a week. http://www.mercedes-amg.com/
AD KNOWLEDGE “MONITIZE YOUR WEBSITE”—This isn’t an ad, it’s an advertising program. Ad Knowledge has created an online advertising program that allows any Website on the Internet, on any subject, to show ads from its advertisers. The key is that the Website earns revenue only if people click through on the ads, so its in the interest of the Website to pick ads that their visitors would likely click on. They will also do the same kind of offer with any e-mail newsletter. Ad Knowledge does require registration, which keeps their ads away from sick and creepy Websites.
But there’s a very, very important paradigm shift in this program: it’s not about “reach and frequency,” how many eyeballs an ad is exposed to—it’s how many respond. So Ad Knowledge—and their advertisers—could care less how often and where the ad is seen. They’re totally focussed on how many people click through, period. As long as the “yield” is where they want it, they’re happy. The advertiser is buying a user declaration of interest—the “click through”—not exposure. http://www.adknowledge.com/publishers.php
BURGER KING “SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN”—Some people asked me what this “Subservient Chicken” thing was about. It’s a goofy website that everyone was talking about last year. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the Palm D’Or Grand Prize Winner for Crispin Porter Bugusky, and unofficial winner of the “most hyped/most awarded Website ever” award: http://www.subservientchicken.com/

Are you game?

Good morning:
BURGER KING “FANTASTIC FOUR HAVE IT YOUR WAY” Burger King (through the ubiquitous CP+B) lets you “have it your way,” by letting you write and then print out your own Fantastic 4 comic book, on a new website to promote the new F4 movie. Great through line with the brand position, fun and interactive Website. What more could a desirable demographic ask for? http://www.bk.com/fantastic4/main_content.aspx
WEDDING CRASHERS, “CRASH THIS TRAILER” Here’s another promotional Website that uses the “do it yourself” idea to support the central brand theme. If you’re not familar with the (very popular) movie “Wedding Crashers,” the idea is that two guys live pretty well by crashing wedding parties. (Everyone assumes they’re with the other side of the wedding, etc.) On this site you can upload your picturre into an application that makes you the star of the Wedding Crashers movie trailer. So, you get to crash the trailer—-get it? Well, I guess you have to see it: http://www.weddingcrashersmovie.com/crashthistrailer/
3M “3M EVERYWHERE”—Another UK breakthrough, this time by AQKA, one of the big interactive firms in the US and Europe. How do you get the message across about to a B2B audience about all the different types of products 3M makes, that 3M is everywhere? This game takes a simple advergame format and adds some cheeky Britpop with agressive editing to get its point across. This was part of a large integrated campaign in B2B channels across Europe this summer. Nice touch: if you don’t get all the answers right, you can go back and add correct answers until you get them all right, and even then its okay to enter thegrand prize drawing. http://www.3meverywhere.com/home.aspx
BURGER KING “COQ ROQ” You may have heard about the latest Burger King campaign from CP+B about a fictional thrash band called Coq Roqthat wears chicken heads. Well, welcome to the Twilight Zone. The Burger King viral featuring Coq Roq upset actual heavy metal band Slipknot because the parody, by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, incorporated some of the same visual elements used by Slipknot onstage. The Web site The Smoking Gun recently reported that Slipknot was threatening legal action; meanwhile, Burger King has returned the favor, having sued the band to ensure it can keep airing the campaign. www.coqroq.com
ANGEL SOFT “BATHROOM MOMENTS”—Can’t resist. Here’s the first integrated, Internet-centric marketing campaign to sell——toilet paper! “Hi, Mom? It’s RJ. Yeah, things are great! What am I working on? Aww, Mom you won’t believe it, but I’ve finally got my shot at doing something really, really cool in interactive, totally cutting edge. Are you sitting down? Okay, it’s a….a TOILET PAPER WEBSITE!…..Hullo? Mom?…..Mom!?” http://www.angelsoft.com/bathroommoments/index.html

Some of the best

Good morning…
This week features real ROI statistics, and a couple of big creative award winners….
VIRGIN MOBILE WINS AUSTRAILIAN AD EFFECTIVENESS AWARDS—The Virgin Mobile campaign by HOST advertising and The Glue Society won the ‘best of show’ award from the Australian Federation of Advertising’s “Advertising Effectiness Awards.” The campaign delivered $37.9 million in incremental profit and a return on investment of $4.36 for every $1 spent while Virgin outstripped market growth by up to five times. The Virgin campaign has virtually scooped the pool at both Australian and international awards over the past two years. It features a hip hop rapper named “5Cent” who touts the new 5 cents per text message plan for Virgin Mobile. http://www.virginmobile.com.au/5cent/tvc.html
METHOD SOAP “COME CLEAN”—If you didn’t see it already, this was the 2005 winner of the Cyber Lion at Cannes. It’s by CP+B in Miami. (First “Subservient Chicken,” now this…) You are invited to write a personal confession, which then gets washed away—or you can read what nasty things others have done. http://www.comeclean.com/
NEC “ECOTONOHA” Tree—This is one of the all-time great online award winners. It’s a huge interactive tree, and the leaves are made up of messages from people all over the world. To add yours, click on “Skip Replay,” and wait for the prompt to “Add your own words.” You have to explore the red dots on the very tips of branches to find an open spot, but when you find an open spot, a message blank comes up and you can type your own welcome of up to 32 characters. There’s even a mobile version, and a downloadable version. This campaign is almost four years old, but many people have never seen it. It’s part of NEC’s PSA campaign for “Building a Sustainable Society.” https://www.ecotonoha.com/ecotonoha.html
SNICKERS “SNICKERS SATISFIES”—Snickers is posting a new web game every morning on this campaign site. We’ll see how long this lasts, but the “games” are very simple, goofy gags. The one last Friday morning featured a “Svengali” who bent spoons, ignited paper, transformed objects, all with his creepy stare. (Click on the attached .tiff graphic, if you want) I guess you had to be there. One way to get the Snickers name in front of hungry adults every day. Hmmm, a Snickers does sound pretty good right now. http://www.snickerssatisfies.com/
SONY ERICCSON “MEMORABLE MOVIE MOMENTS: Sony Ericcson has started a contest in the UK for people to send in funny or otherwise memorable photos taken from their cellphone cameras. They’ve taken it a step further by allowing people to create “mobileblogs,” or blogs which are a diary of annoated pictures. (click on “Top rated,” then look on the left-hand column for “Mobileblogs”) This is one of those new media ideas based on the idea “let’s do it because we can, and we have too much time on our hands anyway.” But a mobileblog about an event (Stugis is this weekend, for example) could be interesting. http://www.memorablemoviemoments.com/

Real Beauties

Here’s this week’s beauty contest….
1. DOVE’S “CAMPAIGN FOR REAL BEAUTY” — This breaking integrated campaign has generated some debate, but for me its one of the best I’ve seen online in years. It’s about around the idea that for women, beauty has been defined by “narrow, stiffling sterotypes,” from advertising, movies, magazines.

Dove (Oglivy & Mather is the agency) uses a big billboard buy in major US cities, plus online ads and opt-in e-mails, all to send customers to a website which introduces a group of women of different ages, ethnic groups, and body shapes, and also invites customers to send in their own pictures and comments. Dove also uses the site to promote their funding of a non-profit campaign to help improve body image among young girls through school programs.
Some people have complained about Dove trying to co-op an important issue for commercial purposes. My personal take is that I would rather have Dove preaching (and selling) this way, than pushing my two daughters to look like Kate Moss.
You decide, but I think it puts Dove right at the center of their customer’s world, hanging their marketing on a gutsy stand that ties directly to their brand promise. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/
2. VIRGIN EXPRESS, “FIND A BUDDY”—Here’s a funny viral campaign for 18-30 year olds in the UK. How it works: enter your name at a special website, and receive a “buddy word.” It might be something like, “Barcelona.”

When you attend a designated rock festival in the UK the following weekend, someone else entered in the contest at the festival will have the same buddy word. Your job is to find them, and if you do, you both receive two free tickets anywhere on Virgin Express.
People have taken to walking around the festival between acts, shouting out their “buddy words,” or waving one word signs, as well as writing blogs and e-mail blasts trying to find their partner. Over 20,000 people have downloaded words, and more than 2 million have visited the site to read stories about the winners. http://www.festivalbuddy.be/GUI/Default.aspx?Culture=en
3. CORPORATE BLOGS — Who cares about blogs? Why would we ever try to talk a client into starting one? Here’s 500 pithy words on why corporate blogs work—and why they don’t. “Blogging is a form of strategic PR to raise your brand’s or company’s salience, not a carefully timed marketing promotion.” http://www.clickz.com/experts/crm/actionable_analysis/article.php/3517546
4. US BUREAU OF ENGRAVING, “THE COLOR OF MONEY” This is a rich media ad from—of all people—Uncle Sam. It touts the features of the new $20 bill. Fun use of user controls, delivered through one of the two leading rich media format developers, Pointroll. Arctic Cat? Volvo Penta? http://www.pointroll.com/PointRoll/AdDemo/PointRollSite/DeptofEngravingsBEP_728x90_TByd2.asp
5. ZED’s “PIG BLASTER”—Zed is a UK mobile telephone provider, targeting 18-30 year olds with hip, edgy campaigns. They asked Panlogic, a UK developer, to come up with a game, and they invented this one which features, well….flying, farting pigs. That’s okay, I guess, but what really pushes this way over the top me is that customers can download a pig fart ringtone for their cellphones. Can you imagine the client meeting where this was sold? http://www.pigblast.com

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