Last week I organised the second Audi Cape Town MVP day. The general idea if you missed my last post on it, is to get Audi cars into the hands of SA’s most influential people in the digital space and have some fun while we are at it. The members are hand picked, and we only allow 8 people at a time to keep it select and private. MVP (Most Valuable Player) status gets you invited to excusive Audi events and track days along with a few preferential other things. This time the following fantastic people were in attendance: Lili Radloff, Justin Hartman, Matthew Buckland, Bradley Voges, Charl Norman, Joe Botha, and Sue Rutherford.

The weather was yet again fantastic and the legendary Chapmans peak drive was open, so we popped over to Bob Skinstad’s wonderful Toad restaurant in Noordhoek for a fab late breakfast snack, then we gave away a special test drive in the new Audi S4 and the fantastic Audi R8 V10 to two lucky people. Next we drove for lunch at the Cape Grace and were treated to a wonderful meal from Audi Centre Cape Town.

The cars we used this time were the Q5, Q7, A5, TT and a bonus test drive for two in an S4 and an R8 V10. My favourite for the day had to be the Q5 3.2 Quattro, I cant believe how sporty and solid the drive was and its pretty stunning looking too, especially considering I normally loath small SUV’s.

I have added a selection of pictures from the day below, for more pics check out Joe Botha’s pictures here and here.

For the last year I have been using a Dell M1530 XPS laptop as my main computer, meanwhile all around me my other friends have been converting to the dark side (Apple ). Above is a new promo video for windows 7 from Dell (via friend and legend Steve Clayton)

Here are a few reasons why I’m happy to stay a PC guy:

• As a chap that helps run an education company for online marketing, I feel it’s helpful in numerous ways to use the same brand of operating system that over 90% of the people that we teach use themselves.
• Windows 7 has been a pleasure to use for the last 4-5 months even in release candidate version. It’s much faster than Vista and in my experience XP, and even some friends Mac’s, its easy to use, visually nice, and works with all my numerous random bits of software.
• Microsoft have now finally released a fantastic free antivirus software suite called “Microsoft Security Essentials”. Have been using it now for a few months and its the least intrusive (both notification wise and processing power wise)  anti virus software I have used.
• Great software, mostly free such as Windows Live Writer (for blogging), Photosynth, Silverlight, Microsoft Tags, and Live Mesh, inspire me and give me great hope for an even brighter future for the company.

Feel free to disagree but I’m one happy PC.

At Huddlemind we are launching the first in a series of courses that we will run each month from now on called Huddles. The idea behind them is to make each course themed, interactive, unique and most of all incredibly useful to you. The first of these courses is entitled “Word of Mouse”, and is all about how to successfully tell your brand / product story online. Over the last few years I have learned a lot through the campaigns I have run or helped out on, some did well, others not so well, and a few have been epic wins. I would like to share with you 5 things I have found help the most with Word of Mouse marketing.  

  The first Huddle is taking place in Cape Town on the 11th of September. To find out more click here. For booking enquiries Email Sandy@huddlemind.com or call us on +27 21 433 0886

The Brandz Top 100 report has been done yearly since 2006 by Millward Brown Optimor, part of the WPP group. The report shows the worlds top 100 most popular brands with their relevant value, and is based on over 1million consumer interviews in more than 30 countries, as well as using financial analysis from Bloomberg and Data monitor. (click the picture above to zoom in) The brand values published are based on the intrinsic value of the brand, derived from its ability to generate demand. This past year has seen 15 new brands enter the report and the total value of the Top 100 brands has increased by 2 percent to just under $2 trillion dollars. General trends seem to suggest that due to the current economic turmoil brand categories that have done well tend to have been the smaller luxury item brands like Nintendo and Johnnie Walker as well as brands that can offer great value such as Amazon. One other popular trend has been the increase of slightly more heath conscious brands like Colgate, Subway and Bud light. Tech brands have continued to do well with 7 out of the top 10 coming from that category, also worth pointing out is that the biggest-growing category has been from mobile operator brands. The great losers this year have been brands to do with cars, financial institutions, and insurance. This has been mostly to do with consumers tending to be more wise with their spending and using less credit.   Brand category #WIN since last year

• +28% Mobile Operators
• +24% Soft Drinks
• +18% Coffee
• +16% Fast Food
• +15% Beer
• +10% Luxury

  Brand category #FAIL since last year

• -48% Insurance
• -22% Cars
• -11% Financial Institutions
• -9% Apparel
• -5% Motor Fuel

To view the full report click here for the BrandZ of 2009 report or if you really want to be cool you can download the Brandz top 100 iPhone app.

The 2009 SA Blog Awards is well underway and everyone will be in for a treat this year (because its being pimped by Huddlemind).

The finalists will be decided on the 18th of march and then its only 1 1/2 weeks of final voting with the spectacular awards ceremony being held at the new and hot Chevelle Night Club in Cape Town on the 3rd April.

This year so far we have had a record number of blogs sign up and have attracted some great sponsors including getting 24.com to support the community by putting up some hard cash to become the title sponsor of the event.

We have a great line up of prizes this year too so be sure to get in some last minute votes if you haven’t already.

Below are just some of the prizes lined up this year:

• All winners receive personalised engraved gold plated Dog Tags (judges get silver ones)
• Audi R8 Test drive around the cape
• Stuff Magazine subscriptions
• Springleap T-Shirts
• Vida e caffe vouchers and loyalty cards
• Glaceau Vitamin water (pre-release)
• KIKA-SACK balls (perfect for a bit of pre world cup fun)
• Quirk e-marketing text books
• Stormhoek wine

(for new prizes and news follow us at twitter @sablogawards)

Power judges this year include some of the brightest and sexiest people in the SA media space including people like Vinny Lingham, Allan Kent, Fred Roed, Rob Stokes, Heather Ford, Eric Hersman and Tyler Reed.

For full details and to sign up to what will be one of the best parties of the year go to www.sablogawards.com there are only 150 spaces available so sign up quick to avoid been teased forever.

P.S. Please help us pimp all our sponsors as much as they make these awards possible and fun.