Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 innovation (editor = jérémy dumont, strategic planner, france)

Mothers, Mobiles, Movements

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-chekkit out. Toyota Yaris has lauched Smallville Legends: Justice and Doom via Saatchi & Saatchi, LA. The campaign centres around custom-built digital comic books produced by DC Comics, which will air as content wraps before and after Smallville on The CW network. The extensive campaign will run for the length of the five-week series, also offering exclusive new Smallville content including revelations and back stories at www.cwtv.com/justice. Further involvement blurs the lines between fiction and reality in the form of challenges related to episodes, with clues distributed by street teams, a mobile campaign and sweepstakes to win a Yaris. Kim McCullough, Toyota’s corporate manager marketing communications commented: ‘The independent-spirited Yaris audience loves digging deep into TV shows like ‘Smallville’. We’re inviting them to engage with this interactive storytelling experience in order to reveal new and surprising details of the show’s mythology.’

MindShare Entertainment has announced ‘In the Motherhood’, a series of webisodes for Sprint and Unilever, which aim to take branded entertainment and user-generated content to the next level. Suave products will be integrated into the content, which features Leah Remini and is directed by Peter Lauer of Malcolm in the Middle fame. According to David Lang, managing partner for MindShare Entertainment, ‘While their products are on opposite ends of the spectrum, both brands share a keen understanding of mom’s life and offer solutions to help her stay connected and look her best.’ http://inthemotherhood.msn.com.
Have a look at the KAB Man (Keep America Beautiful) website (http://kabman.org/) for details of America’s largest volunteer community improvement organisation. The pseudo-superhero fights against litter and graffiti and promotes recycling in three episodes conceived by Goodby Silverstein.

One step closer to Japan! Nokia and MasterCard have created a global initiative to turn our mobile phones into wallets. The technology uses wireless readers to charge phones, along the lines of London’s Oystercard technology for public transport. Phones in the scheme will use a Near Field Communication chip with trials of the service starting in October. Via PSFK. http://www.psfk.com/2007/04/nokia_mastercar.html.

In politics, Yahoo!, The Huffington Post and Slate have announced plans to co-host two online only presidential debates in the run up to America’s 2008 election. Internet users will be able to pose questions through text or video submissions, followed by a vote on the performances of each participant. Nothing like some instant feedback! This is on the back of the web’s increasingly important role in politics, with various politicians from Hilary Clinton to France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen touting themselves across MySpace, Second Life and YouTube.
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=239007

We posted this a while ago, but it’s good enough to do again. If you’re not one of the 2.2m people who’ve already had their minds well and truly blown, take a look at this clip for a brilliant insight into Web 2.0. Produced by Michael Wesch, assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas University it defines how web 2.0 is a space for dialogue, and examines its implications.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

Heads. Sand. Bury.

London, we’re depressed. We’re not ones to bitch, but in the space of one issue of Campaign magazine, we’ve come across a lot of reasons to be down in the dumps. Exhibit A - a Letter to the Editor from George Prest, Creative at Lowe, saying that foreign D&AD juries ‘wouldn’t know a decent ad if it jumped up and bit them on the schnitzel’. The reason for his protest? A Nike press and poster ad featuring Wayne Rooney had been cruelly overlooked. THE INJUSTICE.

Exhibit B – new IPA president Moray MacLennan explaining that ‘the UK beat the US to the number one slot in the world ratings for creative excellence.’ Whilst we respect Mr. Maclennan immensely, we also feel the need to point out that the UK’s triumph was in the Gunn Report – TV and print only. As Campaign itself pointed out late last year, in the digital equivalent The Won Report, UK agencies fared terribly, with only Glue breaking the top twenty.

And, perhaps, most infuriatingly, Campaign 2007 ‘Faces to Watch’ Poppy Wilcox and Lauren Benstead (Publicis) dishing out the following gem on a web film for Joost: ‘How is it different to ‘what we already have’ TV? Maybe if we knew exactly what Joost was, it’d work, but we don’t so it doesn’t.’

Oh, girls. Whatever you think about the film, please locate your brains. Go to Google. Learn about the future of your industry. And then – only then – open your mouths.

Joost – for the horribly uninitiated – is DVD quality Internet TV based on a peer-2-peer sharing network. For advertisers (are you listening?)it means longer form branded content with little media spend, and large communities of engaged, connected viewers for more targeted and innovative brand exercises. It’s really important. It means advertising will have to change.

It’s a shame that this apparent obsession with a 50 year-old TV model could leave some of the larger London agencies out in the cold, as clients increasingly turn to nimbler specialists who understand how to engage with people at the warmer, more rewarding end of the media consumption scale. Come on, London. Have your Galileo moment. The net is the new sun, ok?

We caught up with Aaron Hinchon, Senior Creative of Albion London who are the brains behind the Joost campaign and drove the world domination of Skype, to get his take on the controversy. He told Contagious:

‘A lot of these propositions – Skype, Joost, Kazaa – can be tough to understand at first. Technology still scares people – we know that. However, once they get their heads around it, they see it for what it is – really exciting. Joost is not about taking over TV – it’s about celebrating the best things about it.

‘Our web film was initially it was designed to sit on the front page of the website surrounded by additional information, but we’ve allowed it to be seeded on YouTube too. It’s part of an extensive, far-reaching PR campaign – and the more people who are discussing it, the better. Anything that draws attention to an amazing product is fine with us.’

Click on the link below to view the spot. And PLEASE, London – sort it out. Until then, we’ll be over here, having a two-way conversation with a brick wall.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IcwG0jUFxU

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

Wildfire Conference

So – after our endless banging on, the Wildfire Conference finally took place this week in the heart of London’s trendily scuzzy East End. And do you know what? It rocked. It actually did. So please forgive us this little summary of what was said, what was done, and how nice it is to feel like you’re in the middle of something useful, inspiring and entertaining in equal measure.

We were overawed by extreme sports filmmaker Matt Dickinson drawing parallels between facing the future and scaling Mount Everest! Rishad Tobaccowala taught us how to apply the sexy improvisation of the Jazz movement to our always-on world! Miguel from Camper took us through his family photo album to prove that the best brands are always the ones with the best stories! The one-man saviour of the planning blog, Russell Davies, gave a masterclass in how to be interesting and useful and compelling, and Johnny Vulcan, the man who coined the phrase ‘Branded Utility’ taught us how to be good people! Gaming genius Jordan Weisman threw open the kind of thinking that can keep 3m people engaged, involved and entertained! Reuben Steiger of Millions of Us and an ex-Linden blew our minds completely by explaining the role of virtual worlds in connecting an increasingly atomised society! Trend guru extraordinaire Tom Savigar explained the changing nature of identity in the digital age, how teenagers morph like chameleons into a thousand different people! And most importantly, we laughed our asses off at Ze Frank’s twenty minute stand-up routine about airline safety. What more could you want?

Without blowing our own trumpet (well, maybe just a bit), we’re completely staggered by the quality of speakers we managed to get together. If you were there, we’d love to hear your feedback. Who floated your boat? Were you crazy for Ze or overjoyed for Ajaz? Raving about Reuben or ranting for Russell? Drop us a line to let us know at hello@contagiousmagazine.com. 

The other thing we realised was this – if there is any word that’s overused in this world of endless get-togethers, of thousands of words, of a million press releases, it’s the word ‘inspiring’. When was the last time you were genuinely, honestly and truthfully inspired by an industry event? Well, we were this week. And we kind of liked it.

Huge thanks to Wildfire’s awesome hosts Leo Burnett, the troupers at Gyro and of course, our legendary speakers for making it an event to remember.

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

Salone del Mobile

The highly anticipated Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan is one of the most prestigious furniture fairs on the planet. Running from the 18th to the 23th of April, this year’s event took place in the new 200,000 square metre exhibition area of Rho, designed by acclaimed architect Massimiliano Fuksas.

Squeezing 2,500 exhibitors from 40 different countries into the massive avantgarde environment, there were numerous exhibitions, installations and parties taking place across the city including the ‘Fuori Salone’ and ‘Via Tortona’, perfect spots to discover the underground movement and the latest trends.

The Fuori Salone expression is used to define the vast range of events animating the whole city during the event. The term, coined in the nineties, represents an alternative solution that takes the furniture collections’ out of the ordinary ‘salone’ area and into a new, more theatrical dimension, with events and parties.

Impressing the visitors with his latest installation-design, Spain’s Jaime Hayon (aided by his wife) created for Bisazza a huge toy representing the wooden puppet Pinocchio. Luxury Italian mosaic specialists Bisazza collaborated with emerging stars in the design world, looking for a unique way to present the company’s heritage. Also Marcel Wanders, the Dutch star from Droog Design showed off his personal flooring tile prints, oversize bells and delicate packaging bringing a surrealist ironic blow in the grey polluted Milan air. ‘In this installation, I wanted to go beyond the sentiments and needs of daily life to create a sense of wonder and find a new space for design,’ said Wanders.The surrealist macro trend continues with hidden objects, including the bizarre chair that eats a suitcase from Campeggi or the secret statuette inside the paper book by Takeo.

While new designs by giants Poltrona Frau, Moroso, Flos, Kartell, Cappellini and Edra showed a collective sense of innovation, big noise was made by design master Tom Dixon in the eco-green arena. For the sixth consecutive year Swarovski Crystal Palace asked top creatives to reinvent the chandelier with astonishing results, especially from Patricia Urquiola and Hussein Chalayan.

In the Salone Satellite, the area reserved for emerging young designers, other trends were spotted. The focus of attention here was definitely on eco products and experiments in folded furniture made by only one piece of metal. Something that caught my eye was a bed sharing service to help attendees who can’t afford hotel accommodation in Milan. Last but not least, British-based design house &made had obviously read the article on ‘branded utility’ in the last issue of Contagious, and offered delegates a free taxi service. Nice touch.
http://www.cosmit.it/tool/home.php?s=0,2,67,71,75

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

Let’s Green This City

Who said Green can’t be aesthetically pleasing? Production studio Mekanism and agency Venables Bell & Partners, both based in San Francisco, have created the rather beautiful Let’s Green This City campaign for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).

The site aims to help San Francisco to become the greenest city in the States, with the help of live action/animation films hosted online, covering topics such as recycling, biking to work, fuel options, solar energy and light bulbs at www.letsgreenthiscity.com.

The site links to partners to help San Francisco achieve this utopia, including car share sites, electronic recycling and even green office suppliers. A calendar also shows green events such as films and workshops taking place around the city.

Mekanism partner and creative director Ian Kovalik comments: ‘The big idea is that this site is a User Manual for greening your life. It’s a really good example of how Mekanism can help a company with a strong vision like PG&E deliver the right user experience and desired call to action, in a fun, innovative and interactive way.’

So, in advance of moving to San Francisco to enjoy a healthier, happier and greener life, in the meantime we’ll have to enjoy the films and think local green thoughts – Sydney’s Earth Hour stance against climate change is extending to the UK and many Gurrilla Gardening projects in London instigated by gardening renegades are now supported by local councils - so it's not all doom! http://earthhour.smh.com.au/   www.guerrillagardening.org. Mekanism might just be in the running for ‘greenest production studio in the business’ as another recent campaign for BP via Ogilvy and Mather New York aims to make things ‘A Little Better’ in the US. A bunch of cute animated critters support the global petrochemical corporation’s commitment online, at retail level, in outdoor ads and merchandise, supporting the global integrated branding effort.
www.alittlebettergasstation.com 

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands

Move over Microsoft. Google is officially the world’s number one brand, according to this year’s BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands awards held in London this week.

Google leapt six places to the top of the pile, usurping Microsoft, which moves down into third place behind General Electric ($61,880m) and followed by Coca-Cola, valued at $44,134 million.

Produced by market research and consulting firm Millward Brown Optimor and sponsored by The Financial Times, the BRANDZ Top 100 balances consumer brand interest with financial measures to give an overall value. The awards are separated into two categories: global brands and UK brands, with market performance metrics and financial data obtained from Datamonitor and Bloomberg. The study interviewed more than one million consumers globally and covers 39,000 brands.

With Google’s recent cash antics it comes as no surprise to see the online behemoth topping the global table, especially after this month’s $3.1million acquisition of internet ad service DoubleClick and the high profile takeover of last year’s UGC phenomenon YouTube. As a result Google’s brand value has risen from $37,445 million to $66,434 million. In comparison, Microsoft dropped from $62,039 million to $54,951 million.

Topping the UK table for another year was Vodafone, racking up a total brand value of $21,107 million, followed by HSBC and the fast expanding empire that is Tesco. Other noticeable changes this year include a spirited recovery for retailer Marks and Spencer. Baskingin the glory of a high profile marketing blitz out of RKCR/Y&R, M&S’ debut in the UK top 10 proves how advertising campaigns can impact a brand by increasing its brand value threefold (192%) to $9,509 million, the highest riser over the last year in value growth.

The aggregate value of all brands in the Top 100 increased by 10.6% in one year, from $1.44 trillion in 2006 to $1.6 trillion in 2007. ‘Success stories from this year's BRANDZ™ Top 100 demonstrate that winning brands leverage major market trends effectively to create business value,’ said Joanna Seddon, global CEO Millward Brown Optimor. ‘Strong brands are capable of extending into areas of opportunity to access new revenue streams and to help businesses respond to market changes.’
www.millwardbrown.com/mboptimor
www.brandz.com

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

Chocolate, Sheep, Widgets

This week’s been a good one for strange and wonderful things. First up, a HUGE thankyou to everyone who attended the Iris and Contagious Under the Influence event in Borough Market yesterday, which was, as promised, both informative and messy in equal measure. Top marks to Hannah, Katie, Grant and Luke and the rest of the team at Iris for such a wonderful event. The Contagious logo was on a beer bottle! We’ve arrived…. www.irisnation.com/undertheinfluence

Last few tickets for our Wildfire conference happening April 24th-25th in London! The speakers are out of this world, so hurry hurry. www.wildfiretheconference.com

Cute online piece for KitKat Peanut Butter Chunky from JWT London, in which you’re allowed to ‘punish’ those nice people at KitKat if the Chunky’s not to your taste. You can also punish them even if you love it, which is fortunate. *Chows down on KitKat Peanut Butter Chunky* www.peanutchunky.co.uk

Great piece in the Washington Post about the rise and rise of widgets. Branded utility, people – we keep telling you, it’s where the world is headed. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800750.html

The McFly2015 trainer campaign continues! Sneaker activist Al Cabino steps up his online petition to get Marty McFly’s Nike trainers from the future into production: www.mcfly2015.com

Awesome art project that involves lots and lots of digital sheep drawn by workers on Amazon’s odd whatever-you-need service Mechanical Turk. Strangely hypnotic, and no doubt wonderful for insomniacs. www.thesheepmarket.com

Tip-off from the awesome Anne-Fay at www.bigshinything.com.

A weird but definitely wondeful branding site from Dentsu in Tokyo for Japanese telecoms company KDDI. The site collects user's videos and images, and then strings them all together into a series of longer movies. http://eye.kddi.com

Uberhip designer Alexander McQueen and Puma hook up in the latest in a series of high profile design collaborations. The result? The ManCat. Miaow. It's all terribly chic, underlining French luxury goods maker PPR SA's efforts to buy Puma out this week.  www.trendhunter.com/trends/alexander-mcqueen-and-puma-2007-collection

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

There's a Thing in My Pocket

As far as hotly anticipated gadgets go, the Nokia N95 is up there with the best. Whereas previous models in the successful NSeries have been marketed more as phones, as music devices or as video cameras, the N95 is doing away with all boxes whatsoever in favour of a more integrated approach to functionality, and marketing. This thing does EVERYTHING.

The launch campaign broke last week across TV, cinema, print, outdoor, retail, and experiential, all of which is based around the strapline, ‘Nokia N95. It’s what computers have become.’ Although it’s fronted by some lovely traditional work (click the image to the right to view the TV ad by Lowe London) it’s how they’ve amplified this campaign that really floated the Contagious boat.

Ambient work housed around the UK sees the ‘Mobile Museum of ExtinctTechnology’ showcasing tongue-in-cheek illustrations of situations that now, thankfully, have been relegated to the past courtesy of the N95. For example, one execution shows an eighties yuppie screaming into his mobile phone in a crowded wine bar, another a hapless employee stranded in his office after hours.

But it’s with the music that things start to get REALLY interesting. The enigmatic voiceover from the commercial (provided by actor Harry Dean Stanton, fact fans) has been distributed to various supastar DJs in the dance community to remix, including the wonderful Rui da Silva. The result is a number of tracks featuring the Nokia aural branding, seeded onto dancefloors worldwide – a fantastic way to reinforce a message spawned in traditional media and amplified in non-traditional.
Rachel Wright, marketing manager at Nokia, told Contagious: ‘The campaign has been developed to reflect this diversity and bring the experiences it offers to life. Music’s one great way to reflect the enthusiasm of that experience.’

A couple of weeks ago we also highlighted Great Pockets, a website designed by the Swedish-based FarFar to show how outdated it is to be trying to cram all your gadgets into one pocket when an N95 would do just as well. www.greatpockets.com.

Creative on the central campaign came from R/GA, Lowe, Jack Morton and Draft.

Take THAT, the iPhone. YEAH.

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

What are you 'Just Doing'?

Reebok are up to no good at the moment, launching a super-cheeky campaign which pokes fun at rivals Nike whilst aiming to ‘put the fun back into running’. At the centre of the campaign is a community-driven website, www.goruneasy.com. It’s an online haunt for runners which allows them to share their routes (insert obligatory Google Maps tie-in here) as well as tips and playlists. It’s not as sophisticated or as seamless as Nike+, but it already seems to have attracted a dedicated community of athletes sharing the pain and the heartache of life as an exercise enthusiast. The site was built by Molecular and Carat Fusion.

Spurring the campaign is a series of controversial print and poster ads showing overexerted athletes chucking their guts up along with the words 'What are you just doing? Run easy.' Ouch. Obviously, the controversial subject matter has guaranteed a fair amount of press coverage in the mainstream media, neatly bringing Reebok’s ‘take it easy’ positioning to the wider audience it’s clearly targeting.

Whilst we can’t condone this kind of interbrand prodding (now now, children – play nice) we can sure as hell appreciate the sentiment. Surely if everyone ‘just did it’ all at once, the world would implode in one giant endorphin rush, showering toned abs and sculpted thighs far and wide. What happened to just going for a leisurely jog? That’s more our kind of thing, particularly as we can’t run to the shop for a KitKat Peanut Butter Chunky at the moment without wheezing. Damn you, Easter eggs.

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/

Kah Ra Shin

Are you misunderstood? Does nobody know how ANGRY you are? Well, now’s your chance to let it all out. To promote the new Burnout Dominator game EA have teamed up with Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam to produce a new interactive website based around a made-up martial art movement called Kah Ra Shin. The movement allegedly started in Tibet in the 19th Century when an angry peasant boy in a fit of rage snapped a baby goat’s leg and found it calmed his nerves…(Maybe Rizlas weren't around in those days). As such, Kah Rah Shin calls for practitioners to gain ‘inner peace through outer violence’ and shows how to use this very special art in everyday stressful situations at home, in traffic jams, and – we suspect most importantly – in the office.

The ancient Tibetan art of Zen-like meditation couldn’t be further removed from the mindless car carnage featured in EA’s Burnout game but fret not! There is a connection, albeit a rather tenuous one. Copywriter Mike Farr explains: ‘What everyone loves about EA’s Burnout™ Dominator is its pure and unabashed celebration of destruction. The truth is, it feels good to smash into things at high speed. And after a stressful day at the office there is something even pleasantly cathartic about it. The worldwide global phenomenon, Kah Ra Shin, and its mantra, ‘Inner Peace Through Outer Violence’ was born from this insight.’

The site houses various interactive features and videos including the ‘upload your scream section’ where users can submit videos of themselves screaming their heads off at the camera. The short clips are presented on a big scrolling video montage which makes for some entertaining viewing.If you are fed up with the manic screaming (probably after a minute or so) you can then also see some video testimonies from people explaining how Kah Ra Shin helped them in life. They’re all bonkers, of course. There are also tutorial videos teaching students ‘The way of the scream’, and how to incorporate this bizarre philosophy into your daily lives. One of them, not surprisingly, is to play Burnout Dominator.

The campaign has been backed up with viral marketing linking people to the site via banners, emails, and print based adverts featuring a car crumpled up against the wall/magazine page, and is the first online campaign from Wieden since they poached digital whizkid Joakim Borgstrom from hot Spanish shop Double Yoo.

We like it! Now come here, I need to vent….
http://www.kahrashin.com/

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com