Blog

Google pull out all the stops

We’ve been getting pretty excited since the announcement of Google’s Project Glass, but this live demo really kicked our “just shut up and take our money!” thoughts into overdrive. Skydiving, backflipping, abseiling-whilst-Google Hangout-ing madness.

Build stuff with Lego, in Chrome.

Sticking with Google, they created this rather fun demonstration of Chrome’s abilities, allowing you to build things with Lego. Who doesn’t love playing with Lego?

Build with Chrome.

Canon Mixed Reality Headset

Pretty impressive tech from Canon, with plenty of potential uses – the most obvious being to train engineers and technicians to work on complicated machines. We’re sure we’ll be seeing some fascinating uses of this technology over the coming months.

Gilt taste

The iPad is great to use in the kitchen, with a whole host of recipes and cooking apps at your fingertips. What’s not so great is when you’re in the middle of a recipe, your hands are covered in flour and eggs, but you need to scroll or turn a page. It’s a classic problem, which this app solves by using the front facing camera and simple gesturing.

Read more here.

Foodmood

A really interesting app that measures food sentiment across the globe, via tweets. You can drill down to individual countries, and there’s plenty of things to play with.

Check it out here.

Time for our weekly roundup of digital talking points that had the office nattering around the water cooler…

Thunderclap your tweets

Submit your tweet to Thunderclap. Get people to ‘back it’. Then, if you reach enough support during the time limit, everyone tweets the same message in unison increasing its reach and viral potential.

A simple concept that’s still in its beta phase, but effective nonetheless.

Social media with a conscience from Smirnoff

A fantastically innovative idea from two students of the Miami Ad School. Buy your friends a cab ride home to stop them drinking and driving, and earn rewards in the process.

Boys with toys

Handheld projection mapping? Where do we get our hands on one of these for the office?

Dove bring the positive

Dove’s Ad Makeover campaign finally lands in the UK, converting negative, self-conscious and deprecating Facebook ads into positive, motivational ones.

A touchscreen with buttons?!

Tactus technology promises the feel of real buttons without sacrificing any of the functionality of a touchscreen. Could this be the future of modern smartphone and tablet technology?

While we’re on the topic of conferences, it seems like a good time to mention that our director Lloyd is also due to appear at this year’s Social Media World Forum next week.

The event is one of the highlights of the digital marketing calendar, so we’re very pleased to be a part of it. Speaking on the topic of ‘Social TV’, and the opportunities offered to marketers by the rise in internet connectivity among today’s audience, Lloyd will be explaining how to bridge that increasingly important gap between the worlds of television and digital. Important stuff in these fast-moving times…

Representatives from LG, Orange, Zeebox and Samsung will also be appearing to give their input on the subject, making this an all-star cast of speakers that’s not to be missed. There might even be free cake.*

The event itself takes place on Tuesday 27th March at Kensington Olympia, and Lloyd will be speaking at 9:40am.

To book a ticket or find out more details, simply click here.

Come along. You never know, you might just learn something…

*Free cake not guaranteed.

Google+ Search results and SEO implications

Search king Google this month launched ‘Search Plus Your World’ where people logged in to their Google account and searching the internet see relevant content from their contacts on its social network Google+ as well as the wider web. Seen by many as a move to compete with Facebook and Twitter, the launch means that when someone searches ‘Garden Furniture’, they no longer just see sponsored links and natural search results determined by SEO, but any posts made by their friends on Google+ about the same topic. This increases the importance of brands considering a presence across Google+ if only to be amongst those top search results to then drive people out to official sites.

Learn more at: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8643-google-adds-social-content-from-google-into-search-results

Facebook Timeline

Most regular Facebook users will now be familiar with Facebook Timeline, a stylish upgrade to how individual profiles appear. As it starts rolling out across Facebook accounts, one brand and another developer are already playing with the new feature.

Business card printers Moo have partnered with the platform to allow people to order business cards based on their Facebook Timeline Covers. http://mashable.com/2012/01/05/facebook-moo-business-cards/

Meanwhile, marketing agency Definition 6 has partnered with the platform to turn people’s timelines into sentimental personal movies spanning a user’s lifetime on the social network. http://www.timelinemoviemaker.com

Facebook Actions

Towards the end of 2011 Facebook made a series of announcements including the now rolled out Facebook Timelines design for user profiles. A more interesting one for brands perhaps, was that of Facebook Actions, now starting to build in prominence. The platform now allows for developers to dabble in verbs, whereby someone using Spotify through Facebook needn’t type a status update manually informing their friends, because a ‘Mark’s listening to Madonna’ note is automatically published.

Learn about some of the initial partnering apps using Facebook Actions: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/18/facebook-actions-rollout/

Advertising Within Facebook

New research by TBG suggests that a discount of up to 45% on cost-per-click Facebook advertising is being offered by Facebook when adverts point to another Facebook destination rather than an external site, an interesting revelation for brands running media campaigns on the platform to promote standalone websites away from it.

See a closer glimpse at the research at http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8699-50-off-facebook-ads-if-you-keep-users-on-site

Curators of Sweden

Some of the most interesting digital campaigns have come out of the travel industry, be it an airline’s random acts of kindness or a tourism board’s job of a lifetime offer. Curators Of Sweden is the latest creative use of social media, granting one resident of Sweden authorship of the country’s @Sweden account each week. A campaign of variety and collaboration, we think it’s a great way to tell the country’s many different stories.

http://curatorsofsweden.com

Late news that you may have come across already – earlier this month, after a pitch process filled with many a late night, we were informed that we’d won the digital account for the UK’s biggest dairy brand Lurpak.

We’re well chuffed with this, and can’t wait to get cracking, bringing Lurpak into the social media sphere and coming up with some killer digital ideas for the kings of butter.

The rumours going round are that it was the “Your Team” slide, which featured us all cooking breakfast on a Saturday morning, that pushed us over the edge. Although this may be someone just spreading it a bit thick …

Last month, South Australian tourism promoters launched Roo Tube, a seemingly good idea to stream live bouncy kangaroos to the UK. However, when British users went to check out this new footage – they drastically tried to turn up their screen contrast as it just showed darkness. 

The Aussies had forgotten that they were 8 hours ahead of the UK – so during the day, when most want to view this webcam, it’s their night time!

However, the Aussie website has given us some assuring advice, “Be patient and you’ll see their eyes jumping around”.

How exciting is that?! Not very. Well, it could be – if you’re a Marsupial Lion.

We highlighted a BMW advert a few weeks back where Content played second fiddle to Placement, with a BMW mockingly towering over an Audi billboard, answering it’s call.

As we said then, very aggressive, very American. But what if you were to go somewhere else? Somewhere like American but without the bravado?

Yup, it’s Canada – Montreal in fact – where a paint company promoted their “recylced paint scheme” with a genius bit of billboard work, recycling the Apple paint spills, and again making Placement the king.

We’re being bombarded by around 3,000 adverts a day, so it’s obvious that traditional media placement isn’t going to be enough. Thinking Differently is the order of the day, and if you can convey your message in an innovative manner you can be confident of breaking through that noise and leaving a mark on the consumer.

News coming over from the US suggests that TV advertisers are beginning to fight back in their battle against the PVR, with Tivo announcing they’re selling “banner space” targeted at those people who fast-forward through the advertising breaks on their pre-recorded programs.

You might remember the tech community guffawing when CEO of Turner Broadcasting said “anytime you skip a commercial you’re actually stealing the programming” back in 2002, and it’s surprising it’s taken those involved so long to get their act together. These targeted commercials are relevant to the media and context they’re being found, with smart “skipping ads” executions no doubt being fired around the brainstorming sessions of the modern day Sterling Coopers of the world.

In this new media landscape, the power of advertising on TV is nowhere near as strong as it once was, but it’s interesting to see they’re not willing to give up the ghost just yet. Like Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs might well be making a comeback …