Less blogging, more skiving…

I’m off skiving again this week to Budapest, less blogging but I’ll be back…

I’ll leave you with Skoda’s tasty new ad that everyone’s talking about. And I have no shame in saying my friend works at Fallon and worked on this. I think it’s fab. And you can see more about the ‘baking of the ad’ here.

Personalised viral - VW’s mid-life crisis retreat

 

This week I went for a drink with a friend I used to work with at Volkswagen. He told me about this tongue-in-cheek viral they’ve just done for the Passat. I love personalised virals, and this is executed very well, and nicely integrated with the TV.

So if you know of any one having a mid-life crisis send this on. So do you find yourself using words like “word” and “sound”? Have you ever sung karaoke seriously? Or do you make a phone shape with your hand and say “call me”? Brilliant.

User-generated advertising - Nike meets Back to the Future II

 

I stumbled across this great example of user-generated advertising. It’s a grassroots movement to get Nike to make the futuristic-looking sneakers in Back to the Future Part II. What a brilliant idea! You can join here, and it even has a thriving MySpace presence. 

Amelia here discusses several brands out-sourcing their advertising (is this just lazy?) but more importantly points to user-generated spoofs that seem to be piling up on YouTube - these are led by the consumers themselves. Personally, I think there’s something really exciting about consumers championing brands themselves, but particularly when brands haven’t told them to do it. Just like this MyFly 2015 project. These campaigns and spoofs tend to be a lot more creative and funnier than bland brand incentivised ads. Brands are increasingly becoming obsessed with consumers generating their advertising for them, as if this is the answer to all their problems.

And so while I’m on the subject of user-generated content, and Back to the Future, here’s a quality spoof: Back to the Future meets Broke Back Mountain. Can’t resist a good spoof…

Funny or Die - Will Ferrell’s YouTube

I recently came across FunnyOrDie. It’s a video sharing community like YouTube, but purely for comedy videos. Set up by Will Ferrell (who I love) and some of his comedy pals. The idea is simple. Users have to vote whether a comedy clip is funny or not. Crap videos are banished to ‘the crypt’ whereas great ones (with over 50,000 votes) become ‘immortal’.

You’re probably thinking there are already enough ‘me-too’ video sharing sites. But considering it only launched in April , it’s already got quite a following. According to this blog post it is the fastest growing website ever!  An amazing 1.7 million unique visitors in its first week. I guess its popularity is not all that surprising. If you take a comedy celebrity like Will Ferrell, throw in today’s connected web users, and what emerges is a grass-roots community. I wonder if we’ll see more celebrities get involved in the Web 2.0 hype. There seems to be demand for it - Lily Allen’s MySpace presence is another example of this.

There’s some great clips on FunnyOrDie with Will Ferrell himself. The most popular being ‘the landlord’ and the even funnier out takes . Here’s another classic (though borrowed from YouTube).

More on this story here, here, and here…

No hands! Classic…

Love this. Another brilliant YouTube viral that’s been making the rounds recently. Apparently fake but don’t care really. A great example of user-generated content for an iconic brand - no brand interference needed really. Love that we’re seeing consumers taking control of brands - mixing things up, making spoofs, more please…

 

Playboy enters Second Life

 

I haven’t raved about Second Life for a while now so here it goes.  It’s not just that I’ve had withdrawal symptoms, I actually think that Playboy entering Second Life is potentially a good brand fit. Several brands have been attempting interesting stuff in Second Life, such as Vodafone and ING, but with most just creating buildings (dull huh?). But those who have actually spent any time in Second Life would know there’s more porn in there (not that I’m into that!) than brand experiences. Though this isn’t at all surprising, considering when the Internet first took off it was a steaming cauldron of porn. The Internet has since matured, maybe Second Life will too.

Are you seeing double?

I saw these great Guinness cans on adsoftheworld.com as part of their “enjoy responsibly” campaign. I’m not saying it will revolutionise the way we drink, but it’s a nice and simple idea. No doubt they will get the conversation flowing about the brand over a pint or two (or three) of Guinness. And I’m not exactly sure how they look when you’re really drunk?!  I think I’ve missed the point of these cans…

South Park Mac vs. PC