Zombies swarm around hastag

There are two things that seem to work well in advertising; zombies and reverse psychology.

With this in mind the Darewin Agency created a social media campaign for 'The Walking Dead' in France for the TV channel NT1. They urged viewers not to use the hashtag #walkingdeadNT1 as it was 'contaminated with a virus'. Those that did were then stalked by online zombies.

This clever ploy started with ads on the website that led to people trying it out to see what happened, obviously this then led to them telling others to use the hashtag to gain their own zombie followers. They also introduced this to Facebook, with zombies commenting on posts where the hashtag was used.

The final result was 30,000 users being "attacked" by zombies in less than two weeks, with 550,000 impressions tallied, and most importantly for the TV channel, viewers ratings were up.

Another clever marketing campaign for the TV series, that some may feel doesn't need marketing. Watch the campaign video below.

Small business owners not focusing on marketing.

In a recent survey by Pitney Bowes it was discovered that the majority of small business, from a sample of 500, did not have a marketing plan in place, with only 20% saying they did, whilst 35% admitted to dealing with marketing on an ad-hoc basis.

The study went on to find that SME's lose focus and prioritise low level tasks over marketing, including buying the stationary, cleaning and office repairs coming before marketing.

Whilst multitasking is important, it would appear that many are concentrating too much on the day-to-day running and not looking at the bigger picture. Always difficult when you are running a small business.

Those that are marketing tend to favour print ads, whilst email marketing is still strong.

Read their full report here.

Build a paper model of student housing with this free download

Architecture and design company Murado & Elvira has released a free download that allows you to build your own paper model of the Teknobyen Studentboliger, a student housing project they built for SiT in Trondheim, Norway.

The building has been nominated to the Statens Byggeskikkpris 2012, the Norwegian National Building Awards and has won the Trondheim Kommune Energispareprisen (Energy Saving Prize 2012)

The company also has a free desktop pet available to download, there are five to choose from, and represents the belief that buildings as objects can become like pets due to an empathic relationship people build with them.

Download the Free Paper Teknotoy here.

Toyota's Family Tree

To celebrate 75 years, Toyota has released a family tree for their cars.
The interactive map allows you to go through the entire range of cars they have made since the company was established in 1937 and it's plant operation began in 1938 (the first cars were released in 1936).

The timeline covers the lives of different cars they have developed and allows you to search through it based upon year, body type or model.

The spots on the tree have pop-up images of the vehicles, which are click-able, and allow you to look through the different generations of a model of car like the Land Cruiser or Avensis.

Their 75 Years of Toyota landing page also has a clever scrolling timeline which focuses on the company and it's growth over this period.

Take a look through the vehicle lineage here.

There is also a lineage page for engine type here.

Mobeam advert is a crazy musical

San Francisco based start-up company Mobeam has patented technology that will allow barcodes to be scanned from Smartphone screens at checkouts.

The point-of-sale possibilities are endless for coupons and other far more fun advertising promotions. Plus, it is better than replacing every checkout scanner in the world.  

To promote the technology, Portal A created this heavily Auto-Tuned supermarket musical, in which a frustrated cashier bursts into song over the wonders of Mobeam. It includes an obligatory rap, a talking fish and a dancing janitor. The video is silly in the extreme.  

This however is not an app you can download, it is a technology targeted at business to add to their apps. The reason for this? Modern phone screens are too high definition for normal barcode scanners to read, so the technology sends signals via an LED to the scanner to ‘trick’ it into thinking it is reading a normal barcode.

Whilst the technology will only appeal to developers and advertisers, the video will appeal to everyone. Watch it below.

Fancy a free range loaf?

Australian bread company Abbott's Village Bakery has released a new TV advert that is a bit on the unusual side. The advert sounds like it should be for lamb or some other meat product, not bread, Quite frighteningly it  shows giant loaves frolicking in fields and being fed grain.

It is all very surreal, the voice over stating "It may seem a little strange to some, but for us free range is the only way to raise bread,"

Even on their Facebook page they state, "We like to shower our loaves with love, let them roam free and grow up in their own unique little way. It's what makes every loaf special."

It would seem that they want to come across as a speciality or artisan style baker, producing 'farmhouse' style breads, all the while taking time and care to produce a better tasting product, even if it does bleat at you and jump around the room!

Take a look at the advert below.

Five great creative promotional items

Buzzfeed has produced an amazing collection of creative promotional items from the past 5 years.

The list includes;
Dumbbell Frisbees by Iams in Australia (2009), a comical and clever way to spread the message "Iams makes your dog strong"

A giant marijuana cigarette to promote the TV series "Weeds" in Sweden (2008). Inside the 'spliff' was a bouquet of hemp plants and a message about the show.

A rubber eraser USB by Alzheimer's New Zealand (2010), building on the association of memory loss with Alzheimer's, the functional eraser was hollowed out for a USB stick and distributed to politicians and organisations to raise awareness.

A special sofa by Nivea in USA (2008), promoting a new product during Miami fashion week. Several of these were installed in various locations 

A car with googly eyes by the Federal Ministry of Transport in Germany (2009). A clever campaign to raise awareness of drink-driving, these blood-shot googly eye beetles were driven around alcohol fueled public events.

They are all great examples of creative marketing at its best, taking the basic message of each product and developing a memorable way to promote it.

Write the 'perfect' tweet

With the growing number of people using Twitter  it's no wonder that Gerry Morgan, of US-based blog Marketing Think, produced this great little infographic on how to write the perfect tweet.

The blueprint covers all the basic content - links, hashtags, and mentions, in terms of both the ideal placement within a tweet and their uses. Some of the more relevant tips to take away from this could be leaving 20 characters at the end of your tweet for people to comment when they retweet, the importance of formatting, like using headlines or calls to action, and finally passing the "perfect tweet filter".

This a great piece for anyone who uses twitter but the post was targeted at marketeers, advertisers and PR professionals, talking about engaging and informing audiences.

So regardless of what you use twitter for, have a read, take some notes and let us know if there is anything you feel he missed.

Read more about the perfect tweet here.

Zaha Hadid to Develop Plans for New London Airport

In the latest move forward for a new airport for London Boris Johnson has appointed Zaha Hadid Architects, along with aviation experts, to develop designs for a multi runway hub, to be built in the southeast.

Zaha Hadid will submit plans that will also help make recommendations on the location of the airport, which the Mayor of London sees as vital to rejuvenating the British economy and to solve the current aviation crisis.

Other organisations asked to prepare plans, as part of an airport design and infrastructure panel, were Atkins, a British design and engineering company, and Pascall & Watson architects, who worked on St. Pancras international and Heathrow Terminal 5.

Find out more via the full press release here.

Advert targeting Doctors can only be heard with stethoscope

Africa Health Placements and South African agency Boomtown collaborated on an innovative direct mailer, targeted specifically at doctors.

Africa is currently suffering from a lack of medical personnel, in particular doctors, so to encourage foreign doctors to work in Africa they sent a special mailer that could only be heard by doctors. The mailer had a pressure sensitive pad, with a label stating "place stethoscope here". Once the pad was activated the device played a low level MP3 that could only be heard with the help of the medical device.

The advertisement won a silver Clio Healthcare award, which rewards creative excellence in advertising in the medical industry. Check out the video below for more info about the campaign.

Superbrands of 2013

Superbrands UK has announced their annual league tables for brands in the UK.

The league tables are based upon many different factors from sector reports to blogs to public nominations, and are narrowed down to a preliminary shortlist of 1700.

Through ratings given by judges and then a public vote this number is whittled down to 500 'Superbrands'. These are then seeded in order of ratings, which results in the main 
B2C (business to customer) table and a B2B (business to business) table.

All those involved in the voting process are asked to bear in mind the following definition: ‘A Superbrand has established the finest reputation in its field. It offers customers significant emotional and/or tangible advantages over its competitors, which customers want and recognise.’

The judging panel gives each brand a rating from 1-10, but members are not allowed to vote on brands they work with, competitor brands or those they are unfamiliar with, and the lowest scoring brands are removed from the shortlist.

In addition, the voters are asked to judge brands against the following three factors: quality, reliability and distinction.

The league tables show that Google, Apple and British Airways are highly rated as both B2C and B2B brands; making the top 10 of both tables. Apple lost out to Rolex for the top spot in the consumer table, but was able to snatch it in the business table. The full tables are below, and you can read the full results here.

The B2C Superbrands are
1. Rolex
2. Apple
3. Microsoft
4. British Airways
5. Coca-Cola
6. Google
7. Hilton
8. Heathrow Airport
9. Kellogg’s
10. Mercedes-Benz
11. BMW
12. Heinz
13. BBC
14. Facebook
15. Lego
16. Disney
17. Marks & Spencer
18. BP
19. Dulux
20. Nescafé

Whilst the B2B Superbrands are:
1. Apple
2. British Airways
3. Google
4. Visa
5. Virgin Atlantic
6. IBM
7. Shell
8. Microsoft
9. London Stock Exchange Group
10. Mastercard
11. BP
12: BT
13. Bosch
14. Samsung
15. FedEx
16. Rolls-Royce Group
17. Royal Mail
18. PayPal
19. GlaxoSmithKline
20. DHL

Mustard ad wins at the Oscars

The Oscars are normally remembered for the winners, those who should have won and the dresses. Grey Poupon has added commercials to that list.

The mustard company released a trailer for a special 'mini movie' that follows on from its 1981 commercial titled "Pardon me".

In the original and well known ad that ran through the 80s and 90s, two cars pull up next to each other, and the occupant of one car asks the occupant of the other car for some mustard, to be handed a jar of Grey Poupon.

The follow on called "the Lost Footage" involves a 007-esqe car chase as a result of the mustard not being returned. The 30 second 'trailer' ran during the Oscars whilst the full length short was up on their website at the same time.

Clever and funny. Take a look at both adverts and the short movie below.

New Grande Stade announced

The French Rugby Federation (FFR) has unveiled the winning design for the new French national rugby stadium. 

The ‘Grande Stade’ will be built using the designs of Populous and Ateliers 2/3/4/, and will be much more than just a rugby stadium; as well as hosting all the French rugby home matches, it will accommodate conventions, shows and a broad range of other sporting events thanks to its multi-purpose design. 

The design boasts a retractable pitch, to ensure the best possible playing surface for matches, and a retractable roof, which will help to create an intense atmosphere for sporting fixtures as well as creating the largest roofed entertainment venue in Europe, with a planned seating capacity of 82,000.

The new venue will be built South of Paris, with the architecture alluding to the hospitality and shelter of a town, with solid white stone masses on the exterior resembling the rock quarries of the region, contrasted by the variety of thriving public spaces and multi-level lounges within the structure.

Stunning underground hotel planned for Shanghai

A new hotel is being built that will extend 328 feet underground, but fear not it will still have a view. 

The Shimao Intercontinental Hotel, is being built in an abandoned quarry near the base of Tianmashan Mountain in the Songjiang district of Shanghai.

The hotel will accommodate 380 rooms over 19 floors, with three of those being above ground, whilst the remainder are built against the face of the 100 meter deep quarry.

The concept is to mimic a waterfall with a glass atrium that will span from the ground-level all the way down into the quarry and was designed by the British engineering firm Atkins Global. It will also blend into the surrounding area via green roofs at the ground level, which will double up as insulation.

To increase the wow factor of the future 5-star resort there are no plans to drain the water from the bottom of the quarry. Instead they will use it as a man-made lake for water sports.

There will also be underwater public areas, including a 10-meter-deep aquarium, alongside the standard amenities you would expect from a luxury hotel; cafes, restaurants, swimming pools, shops and sporting facilities.

Whilst the hotel wont meet the original opening date of May 2009, it is scheduled to be open from late 2014 to early 2015.