Don’t be a square. Welcome to the 45th degree

It’s what I’ve always been waiting for - Diamond shaped Shreddies! The latest in product innovation. Just check out the site. This is a huge achievement in cereal technology…

Tom Cruise…running

This clip is old news isn’t it?! Oh well, I hadn’t seen it before so thought it was worth a quick post! I’m not a fan of the Cruise, but I have enjoyed watching him run in every film he’s ever been in. Yes running. Throw in a bit of badminton too…

People are messing with ads, in fact, they’re messing with just about everything! It doesn’t need to part of a huge UGC campaign with the lure of big cash rewards - we’re living in a participatory culture and people just like to play with things and create their own fun.

I love dog judo

Funny stuff from 12foot6 - great guys : ) More here.

The Loch Ness Monster is loose in Tokyo!

Okay, well not the real Loch Ness monster…now that would just be silly wouldn’t it!

The Loch Ness monster has surfaced in Tokyo Bay - created using a water screen and water jets. This is the latest in movie marketing gimmicks, this time to promote The Water Horse. So are movie promotions getting more exciting or just over hyped?

We all enjoyed the ARG campaign for Cloverfield movie, and the hype has indeed made it a box office success, but if you read the reviews they tend to start something along the lines of… “it was never going to live up to the hype”. The films ‘herky-jerky’ camera work requires a lot of commitment from the audience, and it’s just not everybody’s cup of tea.

Before a movie hits the big screen, it’s tricky business striking a balance between sparking genuine buzz and generating over hype in movie marketing. Nonetheless, it’s a tough industry to crack and I’m thoroughly enjoying the innovative and often brave campaigns we are beginning to engage with.

Consumers are demanding more and more and are living in a highly charged media mix culture. Let’s face it, we’re bored with flashy movie websites with wallpapers and screensavers. That all seems all a bit lame now. As our expectations rise, I expect nothing less than real world Loch Ness monsters, complicated hunts across multiple platforms, and even bloody limbs in public places. Are you excited? I am…

Amaztype: A typographic book search.

I love Amaztype - it allows the results of a users’ amazon search to be rendered into the search term using the book covers. This is really cool. Type in a keyword and see what happens. Here’s one a made earlier…

By Yugo Nakamuru. He is a believer in the old Japanese saying:

“Rather than beautifying one own’s creation, make better the environment that surrounds it; bring into presence the beauty of the place in which it will lay.”

He clearly applies this thought throughout his design work - whereby Amazon has become more alive and intriguing through his work.

ARG entertainment for The Dark Knight: I love this shit

I love this shit! Warner Bros have gone all out with their ARG style campaign for the new Batman movie ‘Dark Knight’. The story travels across a bevy of sites including the The Gotham Times, this game, and the official Wiki amongst others. But there’s more! This story unfolds across a multitude of media platforms and travels into the real world. The cross media nature of this viral has catapulted ARG into the mainstream culture.

Players in the US were encouraged to visit 22 real world addresses to collect a treat under the name “Robin Banks”. Nice. The Joker had left cakes at bakeries with phone numbers written on them in icing. It gets better…when ringing the number the cake itself rang! In the cake was an evidence bag with a mobile phone and charger, a joker playing card, and a note with another number on it.

The note reads…

“Wow. You really took the cake! Now put the icing on it. Call [number] immediately from this phone and this phone only. Do not give this phone number to anyone else.

Let’s hope your fellow goons come through as well as you. Once all the layers are in place, you’ll all get your just desserts. I’m a man of my word.”

Text message reads…

“Good work, clown! Keep this phone charged and with you at all times. Don’t call me. I will call you … eventually.”

Brilliant huh?! More and more stories are travelling across multiple media platforms and offering a deeply engaging experience which is only possible in today’s media mix culture. But with so many layers, the consumer base becomes smaller as you are asking a lot of people’s time and imagination. For the casual consumer, are Warner Bros asking too much? And for the superfan, maybe they are asking too little? While this is probably too involved for most of us - those superfans get one hellova reward what with mobile phones, invitations to IMAX screenings, and ultimate bragging rights.

Having worked on two very similar campaigns – identifying the balance between meeting the fan community’s expectations and still remaining accessible to the casual consumer is very difficult. But if the objective is to create an entertaining experience for brand advocates who will spread the word, then it’s probably pretty successful. There may only be 22 key players, but how many more people are talking about it (as I am doing now)? How many are participating? And how many are listening? As with the Guinness Tipping ARG campaign, we are beginning to see fans group together in online knowledge cultures to gather information as well as wildly speculate. There are over 100 pages of speculation on this Guinness ARG forum, very interesting read!

The movie arrives in the US July 18th - let’s hope the movie is as much fun as this teaser…

More brilliant speculation here, here, and here…