Greenpeace, known for its outspoken criticism of corporate giants destroying the planet, harnessed the power of social media for its campaign against Nestle’s use of rainforest-destroying palm oil in their Kit Kat bars. A gory parody ad for said Kit Kat was created by Greenpeace and posted on YouTube, and despite Nestle’s request for it to be removed, soon went viral, getting over 1.5 million views.
Nestle felt the brunt of public anger on its official Facebook page, where ‘fans’ berated the brand for contributing to the destruction of the rainforest and the subsequent effect on the orang-utans living there.
As a result of the massive public outcry, delivered primarily through social media, Nestle promised to implement a comprehensive ‘zero deforestation’ plan. So, maybe step by step, the power of social media and the way it can be used to put pressure on corporations can help to save the world.
It’ll come as no surprise to hear that social media has drastically changed the way people gain fame and gain income. Aside from the thousands of middle aged twitter users offering up their ‘wealth maximising e-book‘, entrepreneurial creative types are harnessing their video cameras and taking to YouTube to shift some units.
Increasingly YouTube is being used as the platform to launch viral songs that tap into a pre-existing meme. A video about double rainbows has since generated over 9m views and dozens of musical remixes. A tripped out post-dentistry kid has been mashed up to a breakbeat dynamo.
More often than not, these remix tracks are made by random coat-tail-riders eager to harness the meme, appear in the YouTube suggestions, get loads of views, revenue share by allowing ads next to their videos and make a buck.
Rare is the talent that can come up with the meme zeitgeist, remix it something that’s bloody funny and sell off the back of it.
The darlings of Sloane square, and creators of the YouTube video ‘gap yah’ Unexpected items are back with a trance remix of their hit clip, also available on iTunes.
I watched it, and then I, like, chundered EVERYWHERE!
I’ve never liked spam. Not even as a kid, it was flaccid and tasteless and I just couldn’t see the point of it.
Well that hasn’t changed, and as progress would have it, I’m jibing at its electronic namesake now…
Thanks to a filter built like Cerberus, I don’t get too much of it on email or Twitter, but I get slammed with it at home on the landline.
Most of this telespam is pre-recorded messages for kitchens/broadband/gas.. or even worse – 20 seconds of silence stacking up on the answer machine. (I’m beginning to feel a little sorry for the answer machine and have taken to putting my own messages on it, just so it hears a real voice once in a while.)
Anyway, spam on the phone is just really annoying. And I think it could get a lot more intense for everyone with the growth of geo-location services.
Right now, innovative opt-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla are relatively small, but they’re growing rapidly (Foursquare has grown to 2m users globally in under two years). With Facebook set to launch geo–location services imminently, a lot more consumers are going to be providing and receiving updates about where they, and their fellow humans are.
Brands of course are getting in on the action, with some big names likes Dominos, Debenhams and Starbucks running campaigns on Foursquare to good effect by rewarding loyal early-adopting consumers. McDonalds are also rumored to be one the first brands to trial Facebook’s service.
This emerging area offers big opportunities for brands to stand out on the high street and connect with consumers in what’s been dubbed the ‘last six feet’. It will also provide brand owners with invaluable data about who visits, when and where.
With location based ad spend predicted to grow to $4.1bn annually within five years, there’s a real danger consumers are going to be spammed by unscrupulous or naive companies who’ll fail to respect consumers privacy in an effort to get their attention.
So here’s the brief; get yourself a smart, sharp and thoroughly streetwise approach and you’ll find yourself making hay, not spam, in a hot new marketing channel.
You’ve got to hand it to Google, they definitely don’t rest on their laurels. They’ve given us google maps, streetview, location-sensitive mobile information, a free email system and access to a ludicrously fast search engine. All for free.
YouTube has clearly been woven into the same cloth since it joined the Google mothership, being innovative through streaming live concerts and creating a virtual orchestras.
They haven’t stopped there, the latest project is called ‘Life in A Day‘ and naturally, it’s quite ambitious.
“Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.”
Pretty cool huh. Will be very interesting to see what the final product is like, and what proportion of submissions feature kittens or nudity. I feel sorry for whoever has to sort through the rushes…
Have you ever pondered, upon a wistful summer’s afternoon, how London would look if its geographic landscape was directly linked to the volume of tweets produced? No..? Neither had I to be honest but now that DigitalUrban have gone and done it I’m beginning to wonder how it ever slipped my mind.
Having already gained exposure in the Metro, no doubt sandwiched between lurid celebrity gossip and dubious reportage, this cartographic marvel is comprised of tweets from a 30km radius of London. It was created using Tweet-O-Meter, an app which showcases the amount of ‘tweets per minute’ from twelve major cities.
Undoubtedly my favourite element of the map is the kitsch names given to the peaks and deserts. The summit of the map occurs at ‘Soho Mountain’ whereas my hometown of ‘Sunbury-on-Thames Dunes’ is lagging far behind. Looks very much like I need to purchase a firm pair of hiking boots and get tweeting.
Before even typing a word, this post has taken me about half an hour. I’ll call this initial process ‘research and testing’ – I’m not sure management will be convinced though. they’ll call it ‘playing video games at work’.
I’m happy to split the difference. It’s been a very enjoyable half hour.
eBoy has made a name for himself through creating witty pixelated landscapes which symbolise the modern digital age. Delighfully retro, they tap into the nostalgia of simpler, lower-rez PC graphics. Images that many of us grew up whiling away the hours in front of – a time when 8-bits was all we needed.
FixPix works like all the best iPhone apps do, by being something that couldn’t possibly exist on another platform, iPad aside. Using the accelerometer you arrange layers to fix the three dimensional image, restoring perspective and in the process revealing some bizarre graphical mishaps.
Simple, visual, funny and new. Well worth staying a little late after work for.
… things can get a little strange when you get it wrong…
Museum of London this week launched an iPhone app which lets users view their art collection in a very new and original way. The app, developed by creative agency Brothers and Sisters, guides users around London through geo tags in Google Maps shown via their iPhone screen. It plots most locations existing in the museum’s art collection:
Once standing on one of the hotspots the app displays photos and paintings from that location, giving you an idea of what it used to look like:
You can also bring up information about that particular area:
Even though I don’t own an iPhone (waiting for the new 4G, HD or whatever it will be called…) I desperately want to try out this app! Not being a London native (it seems very few people in London are), I would probably learn a lot from it. Who knows, maybe it would also wake up a potential inner historian slumbering in me?
If you’re one of the 27.5m people who, like me, saw Avatar in the cinema, hopefully you took the opportunity to see it in 3D.
If you did, like me, you were probably blown away by the 3D technology and the immersive effect of the visuals – perhaps followed by a bout of post Avatar ‘blues’.
On Wednesday, Samsung officially launched their 3D TV offering in the UK. By the afternoon, all the stock in John Lewis had been cleared out by uber-keen early adopters. Being the first manufacturer to market is a fairly big deal.
i-level have been working on the UK digital strategy for this launch, with the mega TV ad officially aired during the half time break of the Champions league semi-final last night.
With such a generation-defining launch, Samsung were able to capitalise on increased buzz through releasing the ad early on the internet through a YouTube takeover.
Samsung are also exclusively showing it on the Xbox live platform
For the last two weeks i-level and Samsung have been building the excitement through a teaser campaign across the AOL network and YouTube pre-rolls that pointed users towards landing pages displaying a countdown timer. This has been supported by 10” TV adverts and a large search presence.
We’re really excited to have worked with Samsung in launch on YouTube and Xbox. Furthermore, including copy directing users to YouTube in all of their Press ads is a significant shift for the brand who traditionally launch their adverts on TV in the first instance.
Lomography (the people who bring you cameras like the LC-A+ and Diana+) are teaming up with Gowalla (a geo service who bring you wonderful Twitter updates like “Mike is at the station”…) for this year’s South by South West Festival.
From what I can understand, they’re going to be taking advantage of Gowalla’s items (a little like virtual gifting) to leave virtual Lomography equipment around South by South West locations. Simple enough.
But they’re also going to be leaving real Lomography kit around SXSW for people to find with the help of Gowalla.
This is a good idea and we’ve thought about doing similar things before. The key thing here is that SXSW and Lomography link up pretty well in terms of the kind of people that are interested, and Gowalla is a network “developed deep in the heart of Texas”. So it’s pretty much a good match all round.
If you’re wondering about the relevance, I took this on a Diana F+!
We’ve been discussing what makes a good viral of late. It would seem that (obviously) a key factor is relevancy – make a video of stuff that people are watching right now and you’re more likely to be swept up in a nice little meme.
