I didn’t even realise that earlier yesterday Apple announced the new iPod nano touch, and iPod Touch!
Above is the new iPod nano advert, the new nano is fully multi touch operated, has a built in FM radio, and will no doubt be incredible, store a billion songs and movies, plus make you breakfast. The new iPod touch does the same but includes video calling over WiFi, HD video recording, plus it will take you for walks when you need some exercise, and make you breakfast, lunch, and supper, everyday, for life!
Google Chrome has been my default web browser for some time now and this digital campaign by Milk+Koblin, showcases Chrome’s ability to run HTML5. The campaign is an interactive video directed by Chris Milk, and shows off some of the new features this web hypertext standard can provide such as custom rendered google maps, video, 3D animation, and canvassing amongst other features. The site is called “The Wilderness Downtown” and plays a personalised video featuring Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait”.
During the video you get to make your own personalised card that will be printed out with paper that supposedly contain tree seeds and then handed out to people at Arcade fires upcoming music tour. If you plant the card a tree will grow!.
Make sure you download Google Chrome here to see it for yourself, its worth it.
Jeremy Irons stars as the narrator in this mockumentary for a Non-profit organisation called Heal The Bay. The campaign was made by DDB, Los Angeles, and tracks the journey of a plastic bag from LA to the Pacific Ocean.
The campaign has been made to try help urge the residents of California to pass the AB 1998 act that would make it illegal to give away single use plastic bags at stores across the state. Instead people would have a choice of using recyclable bags, or paying a small fee to purchase a single use plastic bag, therefore helping cut plastic bag pollution and the associated clean up costs.
I was going to write about this nice cinema ad for Orange from Jack Black, but as I detest Orange (They tried to get me to pay a £700 phone bill that was an error, then threatened to sue me, then cut me off after 6 years of loyal patronage) I instead thought I would take the time to write about this somewhat controversial new campaign for Tropitone bronzer.
The copy in English translates as “NON-WHITES” and harks back to apartheid days in South Africa, Tropitone then spray painted their logo with an ad for sunless bronzer next to the benches on the pavement, suggesting that once you use the product you will no longer have white skin!
Interesting approach from Johannesburg ad agency morrisjones. Thoughts ?
Ogilvy, London, have produced this nice simple overview on the evolution of advertising. The 3 minute clip shows the transition of advertising from a one way message platform, to evolving into a mobile two way communication industry.
It reminds me a lot of this fantastic Nokia commercial that was shot in 2007 and looks at the different screens we have used to consume information over the years. The future is mobile.
Lovely spot for the new VW Golf, from Try, Oslo. The story tell of a man who suspects his wife is up to no good, however the new VW Golf proves to be a huge distraction.
Cadbury Tumbles are being re-launched and are going large. Cadbury agency “Promise”, JHB, created the above ad featuring Tumbles chocolates going around an obstacle course featuring lots of boys toys like model cars, crossbows, fireworks, and even a garden gnome.
Personally I would have loved to see the girl fall in the water at the end, but regardless I am all of a sudden hungry for some chocolate.
Below are some fun facts for the above campaign:
The ad was shot in a single take and the machine actually worked • 17 000 Tumbles were weighed to get 8 suitably sized balls to trigger the machine •It took 6 weeks to build the machine • The tracks for the cars expanded and contracted due to changes in temperature, thus the room had to remain at a constant temperature for the machine to work • The balloons had to be filled with the correct amount of helium for each take in order for the machine to function correctly • The Tumble snapped up by the dog in the final scene was in fact a doggy treat as our fury friends do not eat chocolate!
The Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) has launched a great interactive campaign to inspire Americans to book a holiday to Canada. They placed touch screen murals in the streets of New York, Chicago and LA, and displayed content pulled from Twitter to display real-time updates from and about Canada.
To help with the launch of the new Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mini pro phone, SE have launched their first augmented reality campaign. The campaign highlights some of the key features of the phone and allows you to link the AR tags to your facebook page to show exactly how the phone would look with your own content / contacts. To try it out just go to http://www.sonyericsson.com/makeitreal. In addition if you try it out you will also stand a chance to win an X10 mini pro phone for yourself.
If your looking at an iPhone alternative I can personally recommend the X10, I have had one myself now for a few months and has been a joy to live with, Sony Ericsson combined with the Google android OS is a stunning combination.
Facebook yesterday launched their latest much talked about competitor to location based app, to compete with the market leaders Foursquare.
Places at present is only available on the iPhone via the Facebook app, and from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and your based in the USA, support for the rest of the world be be rolled out over the coming weeks / months. At present it is pretty basic so it seems they have rushed a stable release, and one would assume they will roll out more features as they move forward.
Places as it stands now has the following features:
Places is integrated into your Facebook profile
Check in and your update will appear on the Place page, your friends’ News Feeds and your Wall (depending on privacy settings).
Uses Google maps for locations
Lets you see where your friends most recent “check ins” are (depending on privacy setting chosen by the user.
Allows you to leave time stamped tips / comments about venues
Will let you check in with friends from one phone (i.e. negating you all to have to check in individually)
Allows you to find nearby places
Check ins are only shared with your friends unless you select it to be made public
Your location is worked out either via GPS or cell phone triangulation
Places will provide you with a time stamped history of all the Places you have gone to.
As a basic app at present its lacking compared to the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla. It does not link to twitter yet, and there are no tools businesses can use for their locations to see traffic or reward / incentivise people checking in. There are also no badges to unlock for regular users, this may seems like a small thing but it makes foursquare almost like a game in some aspect and incentives users to use the app more often.
At the Places launch conference yesterday in Paulo Alto, California, representatives from Foursquare and other existing competitors announced ways in which they’d be leveraging the Places API to allows their users to check in and publish their data through their Facebook feed and transfer their badges and pins.
Overall though its early days for Facebook’s Places, more features will be rolled out over the coming months, also integrating their brilliant Facebook ads feature will no doubt allow marketers to target people even more precisely than ever before, as well as earn Facebook some more tidy revenue.
Facebook now has well over 500 million users and continues to grow, providing a huge existing potential customer base. This is one Facebook app I would recommend to follow closely.
To read more on Places from Facebook themselves click here or go to the places web page here
