Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Cool & Online | Tags: caramel, chocolate, chunky, employees, funeral, Funny, KitKat, nestle, peanut, sad, video, viral
What can we say about KitKat Chunky Peanut… It’s the Jimi Hendrix of choc bars. Utterly brilliant and gone before it’s time 
Watch the sad Nestle employees as they see off this chocolate wonder…
…but what’s this? Has someone inserted a coin in the StreetFighter machine? Do we have a New Challenger? What is this unknown wonder called KitKat Chunky Caramel?
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Cool & Online, Events, Hot List Clients, News | Tags: 15 seconds of fame, Andy Warhol, competition, diva, exhibition, fabulous, icon, letters, marketing, showcase, Southbank Centre, The Hayward Gallery, video, Warhol, widget
I went to the Warhol’s exhibition yesterday at the Southbank Centre and I truly loved it! I especially loved the letters and invites sent to him that he kept in his time capsule: fashionable gallery openings, letters from young boys – offering to be models and perhaps join his entourage of Warhol’s superstars – friends reminding him how fabulous he was. It doesn’t get any more diva than this!
Warhol and his work was camp as Christmas with all the excesses that may come with that festive period (not including food). I love the way he was able to market himself and make the Warhol experience so complete: paintings, drawings, films, composed photographs, TV, contact sheets, Polaroids, booth pictures, even cardboard boxes silkscreen on wood!
I am a great admirer of his talent to make people buy into his ‘iconicity’ whilst he was alive – I think I secretly wish i could have been able to be part of his entourage. I would have moved to NYC to make it happen if I had had the chance to live in his time and be included in his cliquey group.
The Hayward Gallery has organised a video competition coinciding with the Warhol exhibition – 15 Seconds Of Fame. Neoco has created the website and widget that showcases the best videos entered in the competition at www.15secs.tv. The curator of the Hayward Gallery will choose the winners and their videos will be showcased at the entrance of the Warhol exhibition.
The competition is open until the 2nd of January 2009 and anyone can submit their 15 second video. Best of luck to everyone who enters.
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Cool & Online, Hot List Clients, News | Tags: community, Contiki, pitch, re-design, re-launch, social bookmarking, Twitter, vacations, video, win, worldwide
We’ve just won the pitch to create a new design for global website Contiki.com. Contiki are the worldwide leader in vacations for 18-35 year olds, and we are really looking forward to working on this fun and exciting project.
We are going to be implementing a community focused concept to the site, which we developed alongside Contiki’s internal team. The site will embrace the strong community that exists around the Contiki brand and facilitate its growth inline with the website and the brand as a whole. The site will be enhanced by a raft of 2.0 functionality including Twitter feeds, image and video sharing, social bookmarking and more.
As well as creating the design, we will also deliver the front end build, working closely with Contiki’s development team located on America’s West Coast.
As usual we’ll be sure to keep you posted when the site re-launches.
Filed under: Cool & Online, Industry news | Tags: annotations, card trick, digital marketing, evolving, instructional, interactive, marketing, opportunities, video, viral, YouTube
YouTube is about to get clever with the addition of video annotations. These are a new way to add interactive elements to your videos. Add background information, create stories with multiple possible endings or link to related content. You control what they say, where they appear, when and for how long.
The possibilities are endless, and could open up a whole new set of opportunities for viral marketing. Check out the instructional video, or check out the example below:
Filed under: Industry news, Mostly Mobile, New Technology, research | Tags: broadband, Internet, mobile phone, new, online, report, research, Statistics, tv, video
New research by the IPA has shown that almost a third of people between the age of 15 to 25 have watched TV via the internet. And around 18% of people aged between 25 and 64 (a very broad ‘old people’ category or what?!) had too.
The IPA Touchpoints report surveyed over 5,000 people and also looked at mobile behaviour. It was found that 30% of 15 to 24 year olds watch video clips on their phones, with 13% of all mobile users doing so.
Jim Marshall, chairman of the IPA Media Futures Group, said, ” the young are still driving the take-up and use of digital media and new technology, however, the older age groups are also moving steadily towards greater adoption.” Personally, I would have thought that more than a third of 15 to 25 year olds would have watched TV online, but I suppose if this statistic was expressed as a number than a percentage it would seem greater.
Just as an extra update – overall broadband penetration now stands at 73% of all UK adults, with internet usage at an average of 45 minutes on weekdays and just over an hour at weekends.
Filed under: Cool & Online, New Technology, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: application, chat, Facebook, Flash, friends, live, plugin, social networking, TokBox, video
TokBox, the web-based video chat tool is bringing video chat to Facebook via their TokBox Facebook application. TokBox’s current app is just like any other chat facility, but their new functionality takes them into a new league – enabling users to have a video chat within their Facebook chat.
TokBox’s web-based platform is a Flash-enabled browser plugin. It makes the video chat process really easy to use – there are not downloads or any difficult setups – as long as you have a working webcam or computer microphone, you are ready to go…
You just need to install the TokBox plugin for Facebook (which is only supported for Firefox at the moment). Underneath each of your friends’ names there will be a link which will give you the option to start a video chat with them. Then you just need to tell the app that you allow access to the webcam, and you’re off. As with all TokBox video chat conversations, you’ll see your screen on the left, and the screen of your friend on the right (so it will look like below…)
TokBox also allows you hold multiple video chats at once, with each chat in its own window (like standards chats).
Filed under: Cool & Online, Mostly Mobile, New Technology | Tags: Internet, iPhone, live, mobile phone, Qik, streaming, Symbian OS, Twitter, video, Windows Mobile
Bored with Twitter? Fed up with Twinkle? Step it up a level and stream video direct from your mobile phone to the web using Qik!
The core idea is that you download a small application onto your phone, sign up to qik.com and then simply stream whatever you fancy direct to the Internet. Videos can be watched live or at a later date via qik.com.
To make it happen you’ll need a pretty modern phone though. Windows Mobile and iPhone support has just been added to Symbian OS, covering many modern handsets, but still leaving many needing an upgrade (like myself). Qik also advise that you get yourself an unlimited data plan. I imagine this is a wise step. Qik is probably the sort of app that would ruin someone on pay-as-you-go fairly swiftly.
Right now it all seems pretty fresh. The website looks sparkly and web 2.0 enough, but the videos seem to show people dipping their toes into the service. There are lots of short clips of people videoing their computers / desks / the ceiling etc..!
The functionality is all there, however, and well layered. There isn’t that feeling of being overwhelmed that you sometimes get when confronted with just too much functionality. Most of this is through the clever use of tabs and a well laid out, crisp design.
It has all the syndication features you’d expect from a descent app. You can access user’s video feeds via RSS. You can even make Qik update your Twitter feed every time you post a video!
Fresh from securing $3 million in funding, Qik seems to be securing it’s status as the market leader in live video streaming direct from mobile phones. It will be interesting to see how the service grows and blossoms as it moves beyond the early-adopter phase.
PS: Benn can I have an iPhone please so I can play with Qik?
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Cool & Online | Tags: brief, girlfriend, Guttierrez, hula hoop, Nintendo, secret, Tinsley Advertising, video, Wii Fit, YouTube
You may have already heard about this YouTube video as its been viewed over 2,700,000 times since it was uploaded two weeks ago. It shows an ‘unsuspecting’ girlfriend being filmed by her boyfriend’s hidden camera while she tries to keep her hula hoop up on Wii Fit. The video was posted in response to a video “Wii Fit Hula Hoop makes you look stupid”.
The video is a great response to the negative video and will probably encourage a few guys to go out and buy their girlfriends the game – and the creator, Giovanny Gutierrez (who just happens be a Director for an Advertising agency in Florida) clearly knew that when he created it.
So, is the video a response to a secret brief from Nintendo? Many people in the industry suspect that it has to be, and I have to agree with them. According to Nintendo and Gutierrez it’s ‘100% nothing to do with Nintendo” – although they wouldn’t admit it anyway would they?
And if it wasn’t a secret brief, Gutierrez must have known that his video would get his agency, Tinsley Advertising, some positive publicity. I’m sure they’re not going to be short of a few briefs for a while.
Watch the video and see what you think…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v31qxrXsxv0
Filed under: Cool & Online, News | Tags: BBC, BBC1, broadcast, channel, Internet, iPlayer, licence fee, live, relaunch, stream TV, video
BBC1 has just announced that within the next year, all of its programmes will be simulcast as a live video stream on the internet. This makes it the first of BBC’s analogue TV channels to be aired on the web – ITV has already been simulcasting ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 for a year.
The channel will be available via their website, bbc.co.uk, which is being relaunched with improved listings and programme information. BBC Director, Mark Thompson, said that “building on the success of the iPlayer, we want to develop bbc.co.uk to include a broad range of the BBC’s broadcast content, as well as new and interactive forms of media that enable audiences to interact with and contribute to the website.”
Despite the fact that we no longer need a TV to watch BBC1, they are still going to make us pay the licence fee: “You need a TV licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, set-top box, video or DVD recorder, computer or mobile phone to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV.”
For the full article, visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/04/bbc.television2
Filed under: Coffee Break, News | Tags: copyright, court, lawsuit, piracy, sharing, sue, Viacom, video, YouTube
Viacom are suing YouTube’s video sharing service for its inability to keep copyrighted material off its site. They have identified 150,000 unauthorised television and movie clips on the site, including South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants and MTV Unplugged, which have been viewed tens of thousands of times.
YouTube’s owner Google says that the lawsuit threatens Internet freedom and the millions of people that legitimately exchange information over the web. They maintain that they are faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and they respond properly to all claims of infrigement, claiming that they go “far beyond its legal obligation in assisting content owners to protect their works”.
However, Viacom disagree and believe they do not live up to standards and have done “little or nothing” to stop infringement. They do not believe they should “tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube…they cannot get away with stealing our products”.
The battle is set to head to court…
