Schweppes Burst

Sit back, relax and enjoy 1m30sec of loveliness ...



Isn't that nice?

Over on Creativity Online, there's a very good interview with director Director Garth Davis who talks about making Schweppes' "Burst."

The excellent track used for the spot is called "To Build a Home" performed by The Cinematic Orchestra. This is their MySpace page.


Technorati Tags: advertising, bestof, schweppes

Modernista walks the talk


Modernista, the Boston agency I wrote about after they won the Cadillac account (which had been at Leo Burnett since 1936), has done it again.

Their planner Gareth Key announced the redesign of the agency web site, but it is far from what you'd expect.

They use Wikipedia as the agency home page, Flickr for photos, YouTube for videos and so on. In other words, they walk the talk.

Paul Isakson has a nice take on it:

Wikipedia is a site for people, by people. It's not controlled by Modernista! It is controlled by subject matter experts and people who are passionate about the independent subjects within Wikipedia's pages. In setting the Wikipedia page as their main page, Modernista! says, "People define what brands are, so we want people to have a say in defining who we are - you tell us who we are."

Normally, when you link directly to the site you get the nav module on top of the site you're on, like this.

Brilliant.



Technorati Tags: modernista, agencies, advertising

Happy Easter Bunny



Technorati Tags: holidays, funny

The Lost Ring


I'm a couple weeks late, but thanks to Michelle, I didn't miss it.

The Lost Ring is a very nice alternative reality game by Jane McGonigal done for McDonald's and the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Despoiler has an excellent post about The Lost Ring, including the fantastic mailer that was sent out as a teaser. It included a ball of yarn: "The slip of paper, which was stuffed deep inside the ball, reads on the obverse: You will soon discover an alternate reality. The adventure begins when you meet Ariadne. On the reverse, it resembles a fortune cookie…fortune: You will soon take up a new sport."

From Aleks Krotoski at the Guardian: The ARG is developing around five characters who wake up with amnesia in South Africa, England, Korea, Japan and Argentina.

Each finds a tattoo on his or her arm reading, in the global Esperanto language, "find the lost ring."

Here's the post from Boing Boing. Jane's Avant Game blog details it as well as anyone.

A few more links:
Official site
The character blogs
Player's Wiki

Jane's bio is fab, in case you're curious. She's a self-described game designer, a games researcher, and a future forecaster.

I wanna be a future forecaster ...


Technorati Tags: arg, games, jane.mcgonigal, mcdonalds, olympics

Yahoo! Buzz


Yahoo! Buzz is a social media experiment by Yahoo! that is currently visible to the public but in a closed beta to publishers in the USA.

I think it is very smart and has a lot of potential.

It is a lot like Digg (the early innovator in the category), but it has 10 times the incoming traffic, and Yahoo gets a percentage of ad-revenue from each of the sites that were promoted to the front page.

Yahoo! Buzz features the most popular stories, determined by people around the web. A story's Buzz Score is based on people’s votes, searches, emails, and more. Stories with the highest Buzz Score may be displayed on the Yahoo! homepage.

Publisher’s stories that get linked from the Yahoo home page get tons of traffic, as you can imagine. Yahoo says they’ve sent 16 million visitors to outside sites in those first two weeks based on data gathered from pilot program sites.

More here:

Yahoo Buzz is a Game Changer for Social Media; And Spells Trouble for Digg!
ReadWriteWeb

Yahoo Buzz: Yahoo Reveals Stats From The First Two Weeks
TechCrunch



Technorati Tags: social.media, yahoo, digg, buzz

Streamlined: The new ING campaign

We're having a big week at iris. We won the £10m European advertising account for Hertz earlier this week, and today we launched "Streamlined", the first part of our work for ING.


Here's the "making of" ... a 3 minute video of the ‘behind the scenes’ at the TVC shoot:



This is a significant moment for the agency - our first global integrated TVC, print & online campaign.

Here's the article in the Guardian:
Alonso takes pole position with TV ad

Here's the official press release:
ING_Global_TV_Campaign_Final.doc

Stay tuned for Phase II, when the digital campaign launches ...

Technorati Tags: ing, iris, f1, streamlined

John's first week

John Baker is having a good first week at iris ...

He and the team just won the £10m European advertising account for Hertz:

Elizabeth Norris, head of brand communications at Hertz Europe, said: "Our new organisation and our new ambitions for the brand have created the need for a more strategic and integrated approach across Europe.

"We felt Iris Worldwide was the right agency partner to help us deliver great creative that supports our heritage and expertise in the rent-a-car market, while building upon our 'Love the road' brand positioning."

Here's the lowdown:

Iris Worldwide lands £20m Hertz Europe account
Brand Republic

Iris wins Hertz £10m pan-European marketing account
Marketing Week



Technorati Tags: iris, hertz, john.baker

Bebo: The Anna Nicole-Smith factor


AOL bought Bebo today for $850 million.

Kara Swisher thinks the number is high, and without having done any analysis whatsoever, I tend to agree.

But the bigger question is, what the hell is AOL doing buying Bebo? FFS, aren't they dead yet? To me, this is the story of a has-been online brand buying the younger player. This is like when J. Howard Marshall married Anna Nicole-Smith. Not that Bebo is an ex-Playboy model or anything, but AOL feels like an 80+ year-old brand.

The problem is, under the covers, Bebo is not that hot ...

According to the several sources who were privy to Bebo’s financials, for example, Bebo’s revenues for 2006 were only $7 million with $3 million in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). In 2007, the results are still small, with $20 million in revenues and $5 million in EBITDA.

Using 2007 results, that means Time Warner’s (TWZ) AOL paid a handsome 42.5 times revenues and an incredible 160 times EBITDA.

Om also wonders why AOL would buy them. More valuation chatter is here and here. A bit on the VC money here. Here's the official press release.



Technorati Tags: social.networks, aol, bebo

Mad Men


If you're even remotely involved in the ad biz, Matthew Weiner's new series Mad Men is must see TV.

As usual, the very nice US site on AMC is 100X better than the pathetic little microsite on BBC4.

Here in the UK, the first episode airs Sunday 2nd March 2008, 10pm, on BBC Four.



Technorati Tags: tv, madmen, must.see