Australian Sport's Commission Viral

The brief from the Australian Sport's Commission was to draw attention to the talent ID program which they set up to attract the next Australian Olympic champion for London 2012, get us noticed and get the message out there was the brief to us at Bullseye, one thing, when I looked at this brief and I knew that our audience was so competitive that beating the 'Poms' in their own back yard was to good to pass by. How do you reach and engage with this cycical group of 15 to 25 year old Aussies? Answer, get a Pom to have a go at them? In coming up with the idea I asked myself; 'was there a way that I could push the idea further?

For one I made sure the actor was English and my aim was to have his accent slightly out, all chavved up,I KNEW this would create a response back home, responses like: 'Them Aussies can't tell the difference between a Londoner and Northener', for me that was perfect, as the viral kept spreading, below is some PR, good or bad, I couldn't care less, it did its job, just on the video on the ASC site it had 400,000 hits within in a week!! and it's still rising (That doesn't include any uploads on the various YouTube sites and all the press coverage.
Below is just some of the press coverage, it even made the Sun Newspaper!

At the end of the day if the ASC get some Aussie kid come through the program that picks up an Olympic Gold medal in Straford, East London where I spent many an hour on a Sunday skateboarding in the late 70's,I'll be chuffed.

Australia Press Coverage

Marketing Mag

Livenews

Sydney Morning Herald

Sydney Morning Herald (2)
Sydney Morning Herald (3)

Adnews (subscribers only)
Brisbane Times

Canberra Times
UK Press

The Times
The Sun

The Telegraph

The Independant
London Paper
And various other places
MySpace - ausports

Australian Sports Commission Viral | Digital Possibilities

Australia : Let’s rip the brits to bits - Page 3 - General Discussion - Digital Spy Forums Lets rip the Brits to bits in 2012 - All Games
“Lets rip the Brits to bits in 2012″ // Current
Australia encourages athletes to ‘Rip the Brits to bits’ in Olympic ad campaign - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic
Champions365 - The Complete Sports Portal
Australian Sports Commission’s talent search for London 2012
Hire a hoodie: Australia v Team GB | News | guardian.co.uk
Let’s rip those Brits to bits is Australian Olympic ad campaign messaeg - Times Online
Digg - Aussie ads leave Brits insulted
LinkSwarm.com
Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites | eBizMBA
Aussie ads leave Brits insulted - World - smh.com.au

Agency Christmas Video

Yes it's that time of year and every creative hates, when your CEO walks in the office and says we need a digital Christmas card we've no money and even less time but as a creative you still have to produce the goods well in this instance it's a Bullseye Christmas Hamper but with a twist, I particularly liked the Twitter treats, it was a good laugh to shoot and I thought our actress was a great sport so hats off, credit also goes to Rod who did the colouring in Phon with the words and our actors (who weren't acting Dan and Colin, Dave N for getting all the flash to work and Phil K who is the master at getting the job done with a smile (I think he's going mad) and finally to Matt Clarke upstairs who directed it and did the voice over so to all of you out in web land Happy Christmas and whatever your aim have a successful New Year.

Big banks get smaller

Well what can you say? I know some of you will say with a wry smile 'poor Citigroup they've only got 82 billion in their pot left’ even as a non financial person looking at this graph their in a heap of pain, apparently this is now a month old and it has got even worst, look at RBS is that 22 pounds left in the kitty?

But what do these banks do in times like this? As a customer with ANZ Westpac and Egg I would say; look at your customers and focus on offering them a level of service that is second to none, the customer must always come first a lot of banks forget this, no gimmicks please, or as they say in marketing terms they have to be more 'customer centric'. The bank who truly looks after their customers gain as they have loyal customers who will stick with them even in times like this, as an example here in Australia the banks still charge people for using other providers ATMs, banks make bucket loads (It’s the same operating system software so there’s no excuse in charging to use other ATMs) so why charge the customer?
There’s a good piece from MoneyWise read the whole piece and Australia come out of it badly.

Over the years a lot of banks became greedy, forgot all the previous crashes, and were blinded by cheap money flying around.

You You You sod US

Brands are built by YOU not by the advertising agencies here's why:

Time MAGAZINE in 2006 nominated YOU as the person of the year:
YOU are not a consumer in your eyes you do not ‘consume’ you engage.
YOU will not allow brands to speak to you unless you ask them.
Brands can no longer interrupt a conversation online they have to earn that privilege, agencies are still in the mindset that they talk to their target audience rather than talk with them.
YOU are the ones in control online, YOU will decide if you click, send, open, download or delete!
YOU are now online savvy enough to realise the currency value in brands having your details.
YOU know that online isn't just a TV ad shoved up on the web and called a 'viral'
YOU can push companies to do what you want not what they want you to do
look how the Great British public got Wispa back on the shelf via Facebook
YOU are more responsive within this space
How can agencies be cutting edge online when they are carrying a 10-ton dinosaur around with them? the business model doesn’t work.
YOU can be heard online: Skype’s customer base was built on WOM not from advertising, last year Skype was one of the fasting growing brands in the UK.
YOU are now playing agencies at their own game, reversed high-jacking, agencies in the past used people’s ideas to sell their products, now people use their products in a way companies wouldn’t expect –Diet Coke with Mentos viral

PhotoReal

You can't help but look and look, I love the detail, is that wait, real Letraset I see? For the Gen Y out there this was some new fangled stuff that was transferable type that you used when presenting your ideas to the client it was a bugger to use and expensive so in most cases you drew the font by hand, I'm sure that's why so many headlines were so short.

Here's some more shots of how the ad was made: flickr Such a lovely simple creative idea congradulations to Bates141 Jakarta.

And the Brands are..

First up is the Commonwealth Bank
Second is Duracell and the last one is for Bunning's Warehouse

Not great sites but all credit for great branding, Well done Duracell for making a start on UGC but why doesn't these sites have more UGC? Build that relationship online.

When you read with colours

Just took a walk down the high street during my lunch break my mind is buzzing with ideas that I'm currently working on, with everyone's busy lives it amazes me how we can take it all in, one trick is the power of colour. If your brand is so powerful that you can tell the product or service just by its colour then you're doing your job, here's three I spotted at a glance, I could tell who it was, can you? or better still, any marketing director's out there who would like to test it on a few people during their lunch break, no cheating and giving clues, if the vast majority of people can't tell your brand, you might need to look for a new advertising agency

The one in the middle is a Global brand, the other two are Aussie brands.
If you haven't guessed I'll reveal the brands identity in a couple of days

When social media becomes very unsociable

The website at the centre of controversy over racist abuse of British formula one driver Lewis Hamilton is owned by a New York-based advertising agency, TWBA, which is part of the world's largest media services group, Omnicom.
Read this tonight and my first thought after reading the full piece was; 'What a bunch of arse holes' and secondly was; 'This is where social media doesn't work and can back fire and in this case not from a F1 car but from the ad agency,they now have been lumped into all this melee which can be very damaging for a company.
It reminded me also of Ian Farmer, Bullseye's online strategist who delivered a brilliant insightful presentation on social media last week on what companies should and shouldn't be doing when looking at their social media strategy, one not to do is have a blog and leave it, it's a PR disaster. Ian in his closing speech also had an 'action plan' for when things like this regarding social media gone all horribly wrong.

I suggest TWBA have a peek and get some tips on how to handle this.

Picture this- your mood

Seen this over the weekend even though I've been on Getty images for years but what I love about this particular tool is how it can refine my search depending what mood I'm looking for, it can even build a mood board that showcases the feel I'm after, great functionality and very instinctive, so you're not 'wadding' through thousands of pictures or videos, Flickr something you could maybe follow? well done Getty.

http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/usa/?isource=usa_lid_img_moodstream

Online Treasure Hunt

I had a really interesting chat with a mate of mine who doesn't even work in the digital business he was raving about 'geacache' I had a rough idea what he meant but he demonstrated how it worked as he had just downloaded the app on his blackberry or as I like to call them 'crackberry' but with his excitement in between big gulps of his cafe au lait he went on to explain how it worked and how the previous Saturday spent the afternoon with his kids on a treasure hunt, yes, yes we've seen them all before, a bit like Easter egg hunts isn't it? well no not really, this is something much more than just wandering around the back garden looking for a couple of Cadbury's cream eggs.

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. This is big, currently there are 679,530 active geocaches around the world.
Enter your postal code or address and click "go" to explore the geocaches near you so the site says, I got my mate Des to enter our postcode to where we were and hey presto there was two in our area.

He said that the kid's loved it and when they found their 'treasure' the previous week they shrieked with delight some coins, hearts, and beads with a message from the last visitor, all harmless fun and my kids have already started to dress up and started to look very much like Captain Jack Sparrow.
http://www.geocaching.com

Post modern art

We may be living in the era of the email, but one young illustrator has proved that the art of correspondence is far from dead. While working for her degree at Glasgow School of Art Harriet Russell decided to find out exactly what lengths the men and women of the Royal Mail were willing to go to to ensure the safe delivery of her missives.

To put them to the test she concealed the addresses of 130 letters to herself in a series of increasingly complex puzzles and ciphers. Among the disguises she employed were dot-to-dot drawings, anagrams and cartoons. The answer, it seems, was very far indeed. Amazingly, only 10 failed to complete their journey back to her.

What a cracker of an idea, who would have thought old Royal Snail Mail could be such an addictive and fun way to commuicate, much better than going through endless emails, who said; 'the art of conversation is dead' was talking rubbish.

An idea in which with the digital threat Royal Mail or the Australia Post could adopt, this could get people to start sending mail again, they then could 'post' the best on a mircosite gallary wall.

Encourage art students, kids to get scamping ideas.

Runners come together

It's amazing the web, yes I know we can talk about all fancy websites, cool interfaces, slick animation, but for me nothing beats when real people from real communities come together and contribute to the web, that's what happened last week for one of our clients, Blackmores who are one of the major sponsors for the Sydney Running Festival, over 31,000 people came together and ran at the festival, and it really has that festival feel, from old to young no matter how fit you are it's about your best or as Blackmores like to put it: 'B your Best' .

People shared their experience by tagging their pictures with BSRF08 which was then streamed onto the official Blackmore's site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/BSRF08/show/
over 7,000 'Challenges' were taken over the 8 week training program: http://beyourbest.blackmores.com.au/ that was tailored to your level of fitness, with training tips and recommended runs, you could even go round the course with our webcam that was condensed into a 5 minute time line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwHMbOjh_I

Runners also who participated in the Sydney Running Festival were able to see
themselves cross the finish line by entering their bib number or name. They could also forward on their 'moment of glory' to their families and friends, a real Web 2.0 experience:
http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/

Ideas Ideas Ideas

One thing as a creative person you can never do is switch off when it comes to thinking of ideas, inspiration can come from anywhere, I always carry my camera and at least 4 pens,(just in case I run out of battery juice from the camera or one of the pens decides to run dry). I drive Paula my wife mad with the bits of paper with scribbles and notes to myself that she finds in my pockets, that's the joy of using a digital camera just shoot and squirt, upload onto your Flickr account and you have a reference that you can turn to when you need inspiration for that next campaign, I also like to call it 'mulling' my account manager likes to refer to it as; 'he's in la la land again' but that's what we do, we look at different ways that will capture people's attention, take these pictures I saw when I was wandering around in Melbourne, eye catching and could one day come in useful for an idea.