Last week a post I did on Kulula’s new aircraft livery caused a traffic jam on my site after being linked to by BoingBoing (one of the world most popular blogs). Luckily I happen to know Kulula’s fantastic advertising & PR agency (King James & Atmosphere of Cape Town), I quickly contacted them and they kindly made up a fun banner to place next to the post in the sidebar of this site. So far the post has been viewed well over 150,000 times on my site alone and counting, and although all my analytics tools failed when the main traffic hit I can see that Kulula had thousands of click throughs to their site, not bad free global exposure.

Today I received the official press release and it looks like more fun paint jobs are being done for their new Boeing 737-800’s, read below to find out more and click on the pictures to enlarge;

“kulula’s latest plane design has been a worldwide hit after being seen by plane-spotters en-route to South Africa. Photos of the new livery dubbed “Flying 101” have since been viewed by millions having appeared on some of the world’s leading blogs, spurring a frenzy of online comments. All this before it even touched down in South Africa.

The design covers the planes exterior in a tongue-in-cheek guide to the various parts of the planes interior, such as the “Mile-high initiation chamber”. The plane is just one of a fleet expansion of eight state-of-the-art Boeing 737-800s (each with a unique livery). As these planes will be replacing the 737-400’s currently used in kulula’s fleet, South Africans can look forward to spotting the new 800’s during this year.

“The “Flying 101” was conceptualised and designed by kulula’s in-house design department. This branding idea is a result of our 2010 strategy to demystify air travel for our fans,” comments Nadine Damen, kulula Marketing Manager.

“Initially spotted by plane-spotters across the globe, our “Flying 101” plane has become famous on the world wide web before touching South African soil,” continues Damen. “We’ve been amazed by the number of blogs that have posted “Flying 101” images as well as the large number of people talking about the new branding on Twitter.”

The first Boeing, branded with the “Flying 101,” landed in Johannesburg on Monday, 8th February 2010 and will start operating from 13th February 2010.  The second Boeing is currently undergoing its transformation and will appear to kulula fans much like an oversized container box, with the words “this way up” printed on its side, is scheduled to start operating on the 8th February 2010.”

Nice innovative work from Atmosphere PR agency for  local airline Kulula. They have started to offer a monthly 30 minute podcast to give their customers something enjoyable to listen to on domestic flights. At present its in a trial period but if it works they plan to do some exiting things like possibly streaming it via Bluetooth at Kulula pod banner points (A banner with a localised Bluetooth data transmitter installed to stream the content).

The first podcast features SA blogging legend Seth Rotherham from 2OceansVibe.com, Brad Armitage of exclusive beer emporium & Union, Thierry Cassuto from satirical SA news show Z News, and a fab interview and acoustic set from The Kings of Vegas.

To download it go to Kulula.com and right click on the download link, or have a little listen below.
Kulula.com Podcast V1.0

     Yesterday was like a mini Christmas day for me. It started off with being invited to the Cape Town Whiskey festival, then when I picked up the tickets from Atmosphere I received a limited edition Chocolate Steri Stumpie Levi T-shirt !. That’s not it though, I then came home to relax by the pool and have a glass of fine wine, but before I got to the door I was handed a package by a delivery man that contained a VW Citi Golf farewell send off pack (The Citi golf is like a MK1 VW Golf that has been made in SA for 25 years and sold to generations of teens as their first car). Anyway so later last night I popped over to try out some of the fine Whiskey and ended up having a great night (my Scottish grandfather would have been proud of me). Bushmills exceeded my expectations in more ways than one, Firstly its a pretty good drop, secondly they gave me a promo pack with a bottle of Bushmills and 2 whiskey glasses, and they even let me engrave the bottle there and then ! legends, check out the pictures above to see for yourself, (you may like the engraving I got them to do: “Enjoy irresponsibly”) Notes:

• Bushmills are also giving away an E-Type Jaguar, click here to find out how to win
• The Whiskey festival is on now, is worth a visit if your in South Africa: Click here to book
• The VW goodbye City Golf  tour will be starting soon in South Africa, to find out more click here
• Steri Stumpie only has a few limited edition custom Levi T-shirts left: Click here to find out more

(Hat tip to Amy and Tess for hooking me up)

As I was saying on Monday I was very kindly invited to see the launch on ZA News. The show is essentially a South African version of the old hit UK political comedy puppet show Spitting Image.

Created by Executive Producer Thierry Cassuto, with some help from local political cartoonist legend Jonathan Shapiro (aka Zapiro) the premier showing was just fantastic.

Huge respect has to go to kulula.com (the airline) and Mail & Guardian online for getting behind the guys and letting ZA News finally get off the ground. Thanks to Atmosphere I have managed to put together some nice pics from the launch below.

The show will be published every week day from now on. To watch latest episodes just visit www.zanews.co.za

   Fun week so far and its only getting in to Tuesday ! This morning the cool cats from Atmosphere have kindly invited me to the launch of a new TV political comedy show called ZA news at the fab Grand Daddy Hotel in CT. Some people may remember the show was originally called Znews but after the local state run TV station SABC refused to air it for allegedly “lacking balance” it was never aired and so sat derelict. However the great guys at Kulula and Mail & Guardian have picked up the show so now we can see what cartoonist legend Jonathan Shapiro & co can get up to when given some puppets and air time. This time however the show will be online and free for all !!!! Will let you know how it goes, am being joined by local hero Matthew Buckland for the launch. In other news my favourite phone people over at Sony Ericsson have launched a partnership with SA band legends “The Parlotones”. To celebrate it, all new W995’s (the same I have) now will come with exclusive Parlotones content, think pre-release new album (before anyone else), video interviews, themes etc etc !!! The W995 also recently won “Best Product in the European Music Phone category” at the prestigious EISA awards so not only do you get great content but now you know it will sound legendary too. On a related note congrats to the Parlotones for releasing their own branded wine called “Giant Mistake”, my good friends Sir Justin Hartman and Sir Stii have assured me its music for your taste buds, so if you see it around why not give it a try. Will be interesting to see how many other bands follow suite with personalised wine. Check out the website, some pretty good content on it for a wine website, nice to some innovation again in the wine space.