As for me, I’m going to be busy blogging the same kind of thing over at Digital Stuffing, which will be taking off this week. Hopefully you’ll come and see me there.

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Click To Play

Click To Play

Both videos with permission from Baileys/Immediate Future

Definitely a different look and message for the countries.

• The TVC is called “Music To Your Lips” , and was directed by Marie Hyon and Marco Spier at Psyop. The “Music To Your Lips” track is called ‘Boo Hoo’ and was composed by Q department
• Five models were used for the advert out of hundreds that were cast
• The US will not be running the “Music To Your Lips” advert, and will be instead going out with an advert for the new Baileys with a hint of Coffee.
• The “Coffee” advert song was composed by Hum Productions and the copyright is held by Job Striles. The song is called “Coffee”.

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Photo by RachelC

Not my usual type of event, but it was still fun. Looking at the press coverage the next day, with people like Flavor Flav and Dizzee Rascal appearing, I’m guessing it met the PR goals both in traditional press and online buzz.

But no phones available, so I never got to play with the product (although the VIPs did walk away with a new phone). Looking at what they are offering it’s pretty good. For an extra 60GBP, (on this N95)you can get all the music you want for a year AND get to keep it (as long as you have the phone and computer). That’s not a bad subscription price at all.

Screenshot from site

The phone and service has been heavily pushed over the last few weeks. I’ve seen full wraparound paper ads and plenty of outdoor. Everything comes with a theme of telling a story based on song titles and they’re running a contest based on that very idea. Tell your own story and you can win one of the phones and subscription.

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A more serious use of online marketing and the ability to share ideas across networks. Unifem (the United Nations Development Fund for Women) are pushing a campaign to Say No to Violence against Women, using widgets to collect digital signatures which will be presented to the UN Secretary General

You add your name to the widget to sign up or you can grab your code to add to your own site. It can send code directly to Facebook, Livejournal or MySpace but unfortunately the straightforward embed does not seem to work for me, as I could not get he embed code to actually work here.

What I think

First of all, I think it strange that one UN department puts together a petition for another UN department, but it is a good way of raising awareness. The widget works although the supporting sites seemed lacking in any in-depth information and I think could have been better. It also looks like they could have done some more testing so the code would work here.

The Pitch

Generic, but not offensive.

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Guitar Hero is apparently going on a World Tour and here’s a video lauding the game and how it has changed the music business, full of interviews with the musicians whose songs are in the game.

That’s all that has managed to squeeze in between the politics, music vids and the usual sex stuff.

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The branding here is subtle, with the name and a coupkle of product shots at the beginning and end, but it works well, not in your face.

screenshot from site

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American football is the most popular sport in the US, but in the rest of the world, it’s not so popular. But the National Football League, the sport’s governing body, wants to change that and has its eyes set on becoming a top 5 sport in the UK, according to the Bloomberg article. To help this aim, there’s an NFL match this weekend, one of the standard league fixtures, taking place in Wembley, between New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers. It’s apparently sold 86,000 tickets.

The issue with the game for many is its complexity - it took me a long time to realise that they change all the people on the pitch between offence and defence (that’s a consequence of them always cutting to commercials though). To help get explain the game, the NFL have launched a great site this week to explain it.

Through the heavy use of flash and video, Coach Stilo takes you through the game, the positions and the plays, with help from current players. The site has a lot of information about the sport, well presented with a funny script.

Screenshot from site

What I think

If you have a good enough net connection and the time, this is a superb site, full of information presented in an endearing way. It’s not for a quick casual look in the middle of the game as you have a question. The consequence of this is that you will probably have a bit of interest in the sport before you work your way through all the video.

It’s lushly put together, with fun characters and good guest parts from the players, plus the added value of having to interact and make some decisions as you go along. It’s got games in there, plus a contest. You play the part of a rookie player, getting the game explained. I spent far longer on the site then expected, wondering what was going to happen next. So grab some time and explore - and you could win tickets to the next Superbowl in Tampa Bay, Florida

The Pitch

Nicely done, Jim had obviously read my blog and my notes about pitches. It cut through the usual stuff I get and made sure I wrote about it this weekend.

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Now there’s a pretty great follow up, from 60Frames (not associated with Bud at all) but seeing what it is like for those characters 8 years on - Wassup 2008. It’s another example of how democratising creative tools, where anyone can learn the tools and create new stuff with them, changes how democracy and other political systems are run. (via Agency Spy)

Here’s another brilliant example of use of these tools.

http://view.break.com/592648 - Watch more free videos

Of course, here I have to put a disclaimer and say there are other political parties out there!

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Sony Ericsson have launched a new phone, the c905 Cybershot whose main selling point appears to be the 8.1megapixel camera.

• there’s a YT video about the making of the big TV commercial. They’re only releasing this video online - which begs the question where else could they release it?
  
• there’s a TV commercial somewhere, but not on the same account as the makign of video, so not hunting for it
• there’s some nice images available in the press release
• There’s a website, extolling the virtues of the site.

What do I think?

There seems to be more joined up thinking needed. Why isn’t the making of video and the ad in the same place; if the phone is all about the images, where’s the Flickr account? The site is pretty, but not effective - I can’t deep link to the bits i like. Nothing special here.

The Pitch

This is the main reason I’m writing about this - the digital aspects of the marketing are OK, pretty standard but needs more. The email I received was fine, pointing me to all the assets. My problem here is with the ’social media press release’. My perception of something under that name is different from what I was presented with. Here, you have lots of assets, such as images and videos, nothing different to any usual press pack. It extends into the ’social media world’ by having lots of ways to bookmark the press release on various sites - but why would I want to do that? The press release itself is just that, a corporate, slick massaged set of words - containing 7 instances of ‘8.1 megapixel’. You can tell that it’s gone through lot’s revisions, with focus on getting the feature out there.

My feeling is that a ’social media press release’ needs to treat me as a person, not just move traditional communications onto the web. Make me feel a real person has written this, not that it’s been done by a PR professional to corporate guidelines. Don’t add the made up quotes (ok, I don’t know if the quote in it is made up, but having seen these things been written in the past, they almost always are). Treat it differently, don;t just change the channel!

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Today I received a Sony email, pointing me towards the latest bits and pieces. You can grab a widget to add to you ’social networks and blogs’. (interesting to see they’ve ignored the idea of getting a domain, just shoving it directly on Amazon, which looks like it’s where the assets are.

You can get your iGoogle theme.

screenshot from site

And you can come the films ‘friend’ in Bebo, their network of choice for the UK, where you can watchthe trailer form YouTube.

I love that all of these things are relatively low cost, complementing the bigger contests or paid media placements. These are all about shoing your personal love for the film.

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