Kmart continues down the almost rude route

After their 'Ship my pants' advert, Kmart and agency DraftFCB have created a new borderline ad.

This time promoting fuel prices, they use American expressions to create a rude sounding commercial with their 'Big Gas Savings' spot.

Perhaps not as funny as the previous advert, mainly as you have an idea what to expect, but it still has some funny moments and does lead you to wonder where can they take this next. 

Watch the advert below.

The 6 most excruciating interviews

The Guardian has featured on their blog a list of 6 of the most excruciating interviews, after one of their journalists had a bit of an awkward encounter with Ginger Baker.

The list features some you may remember and some you may not, including some deathly silences, awkward moments and scathing attacks, all sourced from YouTube.

Featured in the list is Bruce Willis on the One Show, wrestler the Ultimate Warrior being interviewed by Arsenio Hall, Clive Anderson interviewing The Bee Gees and David Blaine being interview by Eamone Holmes.

Take a look at the full ist here and see them for yourself.

Strange Windows 8 videos found

A collection of strange adverts promoting Windows 8 have emerged on the Internet. The videos, called 'Training Camp', are meant to highlight the capabilities and features of the Operating System.

The videos, which were originally made for the Asian market, first appeared on Microsoft's general YouTube channel by mistake, but now are openly being shared.

Watch the unusual series below.

ThingLink lands on Facebook

This week interactive image platform ThingLink officially hit Facebook. Already available for use on Twitter since November, the platform allows users to embed links to anything, meaning that you can link an image to a website and the person viewing it would not have to leave their Timeline.

The images work by having anchor points embedded on them, when a user hovers over that point they get information and with a click, they can open YouTube videos, audio clips, other websites and virtually anything else that would previously have been linked to in the description.

This could open up new avenues for brands, marketers and general users providing interactive images that will have more impact than normal posts might.

Whilst this isn't the first interactive image brand to launch their services on Facebook, Stipple launched on the network back in January, it does show a growing trend for people and brands trying to improve the level of engagement they have with their followers. One company to already try it has been Doctors Without Borders with this post.

The platforms reps have said that since it launched on Twitter, engagement on posts was increased, with some up by five times, so the scope seems to be there for it to do well on Facebook.

Is interactive imagery the next step for social marketing? Let us know what you think.

Kmart ad borders on profanity

In an unusual stance, American chain Kmart has released an ad on YouTube that plays on a certain phrase. The idea of the advert is to promote the concept of having your purchases delivered to your door direct from the store, including clothing and furniture.

The concept, created by DraftFCB Chicago, uses American colloquialisms of shipping instead of delivery, and of course pants instead of trousers.

Whilst only currently being shown on YouTube, the video has in a short time gained close to 10 million views, which could be enough for the company to decide to give it some air time on main-stream television.

The whole add is very much a clever play on words, all the while bordering on profanity, so be careful about putting the volume too loud!


Take a look at the ad below and let us know what you think.

Sheep breaks away from the herd for new ad series

Corona Light has produced a series of new ads with an unusual spokesperson; Sully the Sheep.

The character Sully first appeared in a spot for the brand last year, called "Stan", where he was part of a dream sequence, however his brief cameo was a hit with YouTube viewers and so the team at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners decided to produce four 15 second videos making him the star.

Take a look at how he gets on below.

Google Glass is here.

Recently Google gave developers the chance to get their hands on a pair of Google glasses, called Glass, or more importantly, access to the API which allows apps to interact with them. 

They also set up an oppurtunity for  "creative individuals"  to trial the glasses via a campaign on Twitter and Google+, called Project Glass.

Using the hashtag #ifihadglass they are looking for people to give a reason why they should be the first to get their hands on the glasses in 50 words or less, however the winners will still have to fork out £1,500+tax for the privilege.

To encourage people to enter Google has released a video on YouTube which shows how Glass can be used, inclduing the voice operation, which uses the line "OK glass" to begin a command; i.e. "OK glass take a picture"

The video also highlights the sort of tasks you can perform with Glass, from text messaging, video calling, photo taking to searching Google and finding a location on a map. There is also an automatic-picture-taking mode, which takes pictures at preset intervals.

The glasses are the next step in wearable technology, allowing the user to record everything they do, as well as interacting with others via video, although the headset doesn't actually have lenses in front of your eyes, just a small screen (viewable via a mirrored glass block) above and to the right of the wearer's right eye. Whilst not the only wearable technology in development (other companies including Microsoft has been developing their own versoin of Glass), the Google Glass is the one closest to completion, having first been announced last year, and featured in our blog last April.

Find out more at the Glass Website and watch the video below.

Dumb way to die

Having recently featured a flight safety video on our blog we could not resist this public safety information animation for Melbourne Metro.

They wanted to point out some of the mindboggling acts of stupidity on and around their network that could have had fatal consequences. McCann turned to musician Ollie McGill and animator Julian Frost to create this memorable animated short called Dumb Ways To Die.

With 21 million views on YouTube it seems to have been popular.

Enjoy!

Amazing YouTube stats in an animated video

Google data arts and digital production company Punk & Butler have taken some pretty incredible stats and turned them into an animated film demonstrating the volume of video being uploaded onto YouTube. Apparently one hour of video is uploaded every second.

A bit of fun but some interesting stats.

New Old Spice Advert tells men to "Smell Better Than Yourself"

Old Spice is back with another unique advertisement. This time the scents of Old Spice turn embarrassingly normal guys into face model champions who smell like adventure and fine cutlery, encouraging men across the world to "Smell Better Than Yourself." See the video below or click here.

Written Word Speaks Volumes for the Brand

New research suggests that ’likes’ and clicking links online are not enough to ensure long-term sales. Brands need to get people typing comments and more involved with content if they are to turn them into actual customers.The consumers who most actively use branded social media content are the ones most likely to maintain a relationship with those brands in future, claims new research for Marketing Week.

Seventy-eight per cent of people visiting and interacting with a brand’s Facebook page are likely to continue the relationship by visiting its website or considering it for purchase. Just thirty-four per cent of the people who say they are unlikely to interact with a brand’s social media presence on Facebook are likely to do the same.With the role of social media under question, Starcom MediaVest Group’s strategic development director Jim Kite explains: “The deeper the interaction with social media, the greater the likelihood of moving the consumer from enquiry to brand preference.”

The research draws on a study using a representative sample of 6,000 regular Facebook, YouTube and Twitter users in June. They were asked to spend several minutes interacting with content on brands’ Facebook and YouTube pages in product categories where they had already registered an interest. Respondents were asked to participate in activities requiring a range of involvement, from watching videos, posting comments, playing games and following brands on Twitter or tweeting about them.

The study claims that it is not just being aware of brands on social media platforms that leads people to continue that relationship or buy goods. It is the level of interaction or “doing something” with branded content that has a bearing.

To read the full article visit Marketing Week.

Research suggests that video content increases press release usage

A recent newsletter that the Think Tank PR team received contained research showing that a press release with video content is three times more likely to be published. And that started a discussion in the team.

The research was based on a sample of 124 news releases that included related video content that were distributed and tracked by RealWire during the period September 2010 and July 2011. The combined editorial and blog coverage these releases achieved was compared to the results of 965 news releases that didn’t include video content.

Adam Parker, RealWire’s chief executive, commented: “The coverage analysis implies that including video content with a news release dramatically increases its impact. In part this may be related to its ability to make your story stand out and at the same time provide another form of content for people to find and share in relation to it. Certainly with YouTube being the second most popular search engine it is not surprising that in over 94 per cent of the releases studied that included video, PROs opted to host their related video on a social media sharing site and then embed the content in their release page.”

However Parker is not convinced that this is the whole story. “Another reason for the enhanced coverage could be that video content often seems to accompany news releases that are broader in interest and more conversational in nature compared to the majority of corporate announcements. This suggests that it isn’t simply the act of adding a video that potentially leads to improved coverage in many cases, but also the nature of the underlying story itself.”

And therein lies the key – to misquote a phrase “it’s the story stupid”. While we now need to consider with each story or announcement the possibilities of bringing it to life using all available channels and techniques, it’s still a matter of judging what the right channels are to best get the specific message across, and of course combining that successfully with content.

Have you say.