So good to see Peter Kay back doing John Smith’s commercials again. In this latest instalment by TBWA, London, Peter gets asked by his better half who he would choose if he could sleep with anyone in the world.
If you missed the original classic John Smith’s ads staring Peter Kay, just click here.
Normally I’m a huge fan of the Carlsberg commercials but this latest one for the England Football team entitled “Team Talk” falls a little short for me. Nice to see so many famous people though and must have taken some doing so thought I would share it non the less.
Credit to Saatchi & Saatchi, London.
Nokia recently kindly lent me a new Nokia X6 touch phone. As anyone that reads this site often will know, I am a bit of a Sony Ericsson fan, so to be honest I was a bit doubtful that I would enjoy using it. How I was wrong.
The X6 is part of Nokia’s new “Comes with Music” range, this essentially means you can download as much music as you like for free, for the duration of your phone contract (12,18, or 24 months) from the Nokia Ovi Music Store. You can store it to your phone or PC, and then keep the tracks for life legally ! I tried it out and the stores choice is pretty vast (4 million + songs), tracks are not very compressed too (approx 8Mb per song). The phone also comes with Ovi maps which is a brilliant customised aGPS navigation system from Nokia with free map updates for life.
The basic specs of the phone are as follows:
My take on the X6 is basically that if your in the market for the a Symbian type touch phone (i.e. not an iPhone or Google Android handset) then this is pretty much the best you can get right now. The touch screen uses the same tech behind the iPhone so when you touch it, it works. Having unlimited music is crazy good, downloads and sign up are easy, and the quality of the tracks is great. Free updated navigation maps for life is also a great plus, its the only navigation map that actually has my street address listed !.
A couple more things I must commend Nokia on is the slider on the side of the X6 that unlocks the screen, its such a easy solution and I found it worked much better/quicker than pressing a button and sliding a finger across the screen (the norm on other touch devices). It was also great to have a touch phone that had a battery life longer than 2 minutes, I ended up charging the phone every 3 days with 
normal use.
The Ovi store still has a little way to go till its as good as the Android market place or Apple app store, but ,most commonly used apps are present and accounted for.
Sound from the phone is good, the X6 also comes bundled with the best headphones I have ever seen/tried from a mobile phone company (see pick to the left).
Overall I’m impressed with this phone, it’s the first Nokia phone I enjoyed using. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Nokia N8 that’s due for release in Q3 this year, the phone looks similar to the X6 but will be the first phone to use Symbian^3.
To watch a clip of the phone in action see the YouTube video below.
P.S. I was going to compare this handset to the new Sony Ericsson X10 I have also been using, but don’t think its really right as they are in 2 different categories in my opinion. (Full smart phone is X10 and entry smart phone is X6). I also have yet to try the SE Vivaz, also a Symbian S60 touch phone, however since Nokia is part owner of Symbian I would be surprised if any other company could get more out of the Operating system.
Interesting approach from Coca Cola South America. They decided to use Augmented Reality Tags on the bottles to show consumers their new TV ad 2 weeks in advance. I’m impressed the agency got this through as I know how hard it can be to convince big brands to take a chance, but I fear somewhere down the line they were told to reign in their creativity.
If a brand like Coca Cola is willing to give AR a go, why not go large ? off the top of my head some sort of happiness factory game with random prizes would have been nice, or at least use some 3D graphics rather than a plain TV ad.
Incredible work from BBH for the Google Chrome web browser. These speed tests were filmed at actual web page rendering times and show the speed of the new Chrome beta (click here to download that)
The video sees Chrome pitted against a potato gun, sound waves, and lighting produced by a tesla coil !
If you’re interested in the technical details, they used two high-speed cameras shooting at 2700 fps, the internet connection was on a 15Mbps line, the computer was a MacBook Pro laptop with Windows 7 installed, and lastly an Asus 24” Monitor. Google say no special software was used for this test.
Click here to see behind-the-scenes footage of how this video was made.
Maybe its just the geek in me but I loved this TomTom Darth Vader voice recording advert. The clip was made by Pool Worldwide, Amsterdam and is part of a campaign to launch the new TomTom Star Wars voice over range for their GPS navigation systems. Other voices soon to be available include C-3PO, Yoda, and Hans Solo !
Pool and TomTom also created a brilliant microsite for the launch of the range. The site featuring voice clips, shortcuts to buy the voiceovers, free screensavers, and a Star Wars AR game where you have to use the force to lift a TomTom in the air !
Especially love the roundabound part, and Vader humming his own theme tune at the end.
James Ready Beer and Leo Burnett Toronto teamed up for this stunning billboard campaign. So simple yet so effective, they essentially combined coupons with billboards to create billboard coupons. All people had to do was take a picture of the billboard and then show the picture at the relevant store.
The discount amounts helped consumers save money, meaning more money for James Ready Beer.
would work well for direct product discounts or special offers e.g. take a pic of the billboard and get a free T-Shirt when buying a case of X brand beer/wine etc etc
Have been catching up on some blog reading and came across this great ad for Sony’s new internet enabled BRAVIA screens. The video was shot in Argentina’s Racing Club Stadium and features a host of children playing football in front of a packed World Cup stadium.
The song used in the ad is called ‘Simple World’ by Jonathan Elias.
Via: Sir Steve Clayton
My good friend and fellow gentleman Seth Rotherham over at 2oceansvibe.com is giving away a fantastic prize that has to be won by this coming Monday ( 3rd May ! ). The prize is from Sony Ericsson South Africa and consists of 2 world cup tickets to the Brazil vs Portugal match, including Flights and accommodation !
All you need to do to enter is send in a picture of “Football Madness” in South Africa, this could be you or your friends dressed up, crazy football merchandise, pictures of the stadium, kids playing football etc etc.
To enter just head over to 2oceansvibe.com (click here) and send in your entries to editor@2oceansvibe.com with the subject “Sony Ericsson 2oceansvibe Football Mayhem.”
Keep up to date with Sony Ericsson on Twitter here, and Facebook here. (If you haven’t already be sure to check out their new stunning Google android phone, the X10 here)
Open to SA peeps only. The winner will be required to leave his place of work/home on the 24th of June till the 27th of June. Winners will be announced on Monday 3rd May (this coming Monday!).
Axe continue to stun me with more blatant “sex sells” based campaigns. This one sees 10 USA colleges compete against each other to see which one can donate the most clothes for charity.
The campaign runs through their facebook group, go to http://www.facebook.com/axe to read more.
The colleges in the competition are: Boston College, Arizona State, Ohio State, University of Texas, San Diego State, UC Santa Barbara, University of Kansas, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Washington.