Probably one of the best projects I have ever had the fortune to work on. I still can't believe that we managed to find a man that was born without a body, but thanks to this film, he found a body and has fulfilled the dream of dancing. Enjoy.
Been away for a while. I hopefully will find time enough again to post.
Was sent a link to this really nice 'history of media consumption' by Thomas Baekdal that very simply shows the radical changes in media, and makes it's predictions for the next 20 years. Impressively presented too.
Read it here
Diesel has just launched a new series of videos that are equally disturbing as they are funny. The series of unusual videos will make you cringe, wince and quite possibly wretch, as part of Diesel's latest twisted interactive entertainment experience. (Watch the videos at the end of this post).
Pete The Meat puppet probably relegates Chucky into second place as the most scary doll in the world. This hilarious music video plots the rise to success of a modern day Pinnochio made of meat, and his even more rapid spiraling decline into depravity. Be prepared to throw up as you see him chew on his own leg in a state of desperate hunger.
Each of the videos takes audience participation and community generated content to an entirely disturbing new territory.
Sailing even closer to the bone of good taste is Hair Bath. Like most people I am sure, I think there is something pretty disgusting about hair once it has been cut from your head. But to see someone quite literally bathing in a bath full of the stuff... and rubbing it all over their face! Weirder still than a naked girl bathing in hair, is that the girl claims the hair was sent in by visitors to the Diesel website.
Dance Party on the other hand is equally dark, but in less of a stomach turning way. Either its rye parody of reality talent shows, or the awkward semi-naked misfit dancers pulling some pretty odd dance moves, or maybe both, had me laughing out loud. There are more episodes being uploaded each week, so stay tuned to see who will win the contest.
View more videos at Diesel.com
Pete The Meat Puppet - With handy karaoke lyrics
Dance Party - An Underground Endurance Dance Contest
Hair Bath - Will you send her in some of your hair?
Some stills from the videos.
Just in case you hadn't already heard about Diesel's biggest ever party, Diesel have just released a viral video to promote their 30th anniversary party. The Diesel viral video, entitled SFW (safe for work) themed video is pretty hardcore as it takes old porn videos, but in typical subversive style they have carefully placed animations over the top to transform the previously 'adult' scenes' into humorous and innocent alternatives. Check out the video here - BUT BE WARNED, WHILE BEING SAFE FOR WORK, IT IS NOT FOR THE EASILY OFFENDED!
Diesel SFW XXX - Watch more free videos
Anyone can get a ticket, but their availability is limited. Check out the Diesel XXX site for more information. The ambitious event is taking place in 17 countries on the same day and the eclectic line up includes N.E.R.D., Mark Ronson, Pedro Winter, Mr Oizo & M.I.A. who has come out of retirement to play. This adds to the already buzzing rumor that Diesel are releasing a special limited edition pair of jeans for €30.
Agent Provocateur, has completely revamped their website. It is not the most difficult thing to draw attention to, when you have the opportunity to legitimately show your product on scantily clad young models, but gent Provocateur do it with class and attitude in every area. They are leaders when it comes to innovating with video online, and are no newbies to video on their site. This time however they have the luxury of the web catching up with their ideas. The new x-rated style site delivers an emersive video experience. The erotic and dark theme has a combined look and feel of vintage horror and cult erotic movies - See end of this post for video. Sexy full screen action which also features an equally kitsch soundtrack.
The interactive video invites visitors to create their own path through the erotic story, and eventually decide the fate of the stories ‘Young Virgin’ protagonist. The main print campaign image also contains a hidden secret mystery to be solved. After a well made and evocative brand building experience there is a stylish online store to capitalise on all the visitors the site will have provoked.
The leading luxury lingerie brand is clearly investing heavily in online, and the site reflects and increased focus on the web, aimed at capitalising on the huge success of online sales through their site.
This campaign image contains a hidden message. Solve it to win the competition.
This shocking discovery of a serial killer in London seems to have every one living in fear. None more that one of my colleagues, Kimm Kroll who shares the same name as one of the names written on the killers apparent targets list found at the scene of one of the crimes. It is such a distinctive name, I just hope it is not actually my friend!! I hope that the catch this killer soon.
More information on the killings can be read here.
Thomas Hawk provides a very useful, informative and well written list of things you can do to help increase visibility of your images in the Flickr image hosting and photo sharing community site. Read it here.
This is really amazing. Watch this video of Light Grafitti. Purportedly a new phenomenon (and I can imagine that there is a creative challenge to go out and make your own version of this video), it involves drawing with light and capturing the image with a long exposure on a digital SLR camera. A popular thing to do, especially as a kid using sparklers was to write your name in the dark, and this basically takes that concept and runs with it. The thing that interests me, is that the post that I found this on (from Trendhunter) refers to Maglite, and I wonder if they actually helped create this. If that is the case, I give Maglite huge credit, as it is surely going to get a lot of YouTube views, and spark a whole raft of remakes!
The last time I heard viral and feet mentioned in the same sentence I had to buy some cream for athletes foot. This time thankfully it is a lot more fun than a fungal infection.
Diesel’s latest online campaign for their Freezy Sneaker shoes takes a 1970’s video of a Finnish Disco Celebrity, mashed up to promote a new sneaker design, that is decidedly 80’s. Try and make sense of that.
Don’t blame it on the sunshine. Don’t blame it on the moonlight. Don’t blame it on the good times. Don’t even blame it on the boogie. Blame it on Aarlf Smaks, This native Finnish disco dancemeister was ‘THE’ man that any self respecting disco-goer aspired to be like, and is single handedly to blame for the way your dad deploys those sexy moves on the dance floor (the ones that obviously got your Mum so hot all those years back). So maybe, just maybe, he is in a strange way responsible for your being born?
While part of the emerging trend of video remixing, in this case the remix and music was created by Hexostatic - Diesel’s choice of Aarlf Smaks to promote their new Freezy Sneakers pokes a big glittery finger in the eye of the current trend of big name celebrity product endorsement. That said, if this campaign video goes viral Aarlf may just may get again?
I remember being shown the original film by an old Finnish colleague of mine, and it made me laugh so much at the time. I am glad that some how Diesel have been able to bring this video into a piece of communication.
Oh yeah, I hope it has a viral effect, rather than a fungal effect, but either way it still makes my feet itch for some reason.
It commonly felt that we are moving towards a future where technology rules the day and will make everones lives perfect, and there is an increasing fascination with technology and predicting how it will change our lives for the better. The current Diesel campaign takes a wry look at this imagined future and suggests otherwise...maybe the technology will be better (or not as the case maybe), but where there are humans involved, there will always be room for error...as the strapline states, we are only 'Human Afterall'. Be it human error or emotional, the future is a place where man is still man, and technology will take second place to the human condition.
Where there's transport, there are sure to be breakdowns. Kids that break your clone's capsule, rather than just the window that usually gets smashed. Do you really think that assembling your teleport cabnet from Ikea in 100 years time is going to be any easier than the KLIMPT desk you struggled with last year? See below some images from the campaign, that I am glad to have participated in the creation of.
See here some images from the campaign, and read on for more about the viral videos of the campaign.
The campaign is also being taken online with a series of viral videos that show that our relationship with technology may not be that different - with the guy who has to stumble out of his future home pod to go to the pharmacy for condoms and falls fail to his crashed voice recognition security door, leaving his hot date waiting inside. Another illustrates the possible dangers when using what will be no doubt the latest iPhone in the year 2050.
Teleporter
Voice Recognition
Space Dinner
This season has had a distinctly futuristic tone to it - with a spectacular holographic fashion show (watch it here), and the introduction of Diesel's Sister Yes shades that have integrated camera, phone, GPS maps, video playback...oh and can see into the future??? I kid you not...check out the shades here.
The Shades With Integrated Phone & Personal Assistant
The Holographic Show
The BBC reports today that while advertising spend in 2006 suffered as a whole, investment in online advertising over the same period increased by 41%.
TV advertising itself experienced a 4.7% fall in spending to £3.9bn.
The report added that online advertising actually grabbed a record market share of 12.4% in the second half of 2006, as expenditure topped £1.098bn.
UK's online ad market share is almost double the global average of 5.8%, the report added.
Recruitment spent the most on web advertising - increasing expenditure by 2.7% - followed by finance and technology.
Read more here.
This is a really beautiful animation created by Univeral Everything for Audi Australia to announce the launch of the new Audi TT. It is wonderful in the fact that it does not actually show the car itself, but through the abstract and fresh modern elements the video really conveys the sleek and aerodynamic car design and leaves people wanting to actually see the car. The particles were actually generated by a specially created softwear to dynamically recreate a simulation of a wind tunnel. I am not sure that it lives upto its viral name, but it is certainly a stunning piece. The animation is too long in my opinion with the final part dragging on. The particles may have been better off forming the famous rings that make up the Audi logo. Check out more work by Univeral Everything here.
An industry of intense competition and innovation, the mobile market is going to get it's next interesting model. Free mobile phone calls.
While some talk plans have the possibility to supplement the plan with free calls, Blyk a pan-European free mobile operator is launching the first totally free mobile talk plan in the UK market in mid-2007, with other markets to follow. The service is aimed specifically for young people and is funded by advertising.
BLYK will buy traffic from the major mobile phone carriers and give it for free to it's users, but they will have to read and also respond to a certain amount of advertising.
The service will no doubt allow advertisers very targeted opportunities and initially the service will be perceived as very popular with the young market it is aimed at. However with mobile calls and services coming down in price and with VOIP coming more and more to mobiles the appeal of free calls may not be so attractive. Especially considering the invasive nature of mobile marketing and the effort users will no doubt have to go to to respond and acknowledge the ads. Advertisers are gettting more and more savy to users following up on their ads and will no doubt expect the platform to encourage people to enguage with the advertising. I can imagine teenagers reluctantly clicking rapidly through their inbox of 20 ads, not taking the time to take not of any of the messages. I hope that BLYK have some new innovative ideas for less intrusive advertising for this platform to ensure their success. This model reminds me a lot of the free ISP's of the late 90's - rapid changes int he mobile industry could just make this new service obsolete very quickly.
Source: Springwise
Read more: BLYK
Sony is to launch a new 3D virtual wolrd community, similar to Second Life where users will be able to create a pesonal avitar, explore a high quality 3D world, purchase space and personalise it with purchased or made objects. Sony’s ‘home’ community will be hotly anticipated, as the machine has extremely powerful processing power, so the experience should be visually far more impressive than that of Second Life.
Sony’s move is a response to the recent explosion of social networking and so called web 2.0 sites that are eating into the time spent playing on games consoles. But to be seen will be just how they will learn from Second Life and other social networking sites to make the experience truely compelling and advantagous to the user.
Each person will have their own appartment to which they can invite friends and in which they can chat, play and share video, music and other content that they have on their Playstation. Their trophies from completing games will be hung on their walls. This is very likely to take the experiences that have made MySpace so popular, but deliver them in a far more compelling and enguaging way.
No doubt seeing how brands have been keen to jump on the Second Life phenomenon, there will be a queue of companies looking for new ways to be featured in Home. Appealing to the commercial potential for advertising within this 'game' Sony have designed it so that dynamic advertising can be delivered through the virtual environment including hi quality video.
The software will be downloadable for free, and is due to launch in late 2007.
I think that this one will be a very important one to watch when it kicks off later this year.
Read on here on BBC, but read more here
John Battelle of Searchblog poses an interesting new model for online advertising, where site publishers could select the ads that they want to serve on their site, picking the most relevant ads, and ones that with a Cost Per Click payment would generate them the most money.
This kind of model is more relevant to bloggers, than big commercial sites. This is interesting territory that is ripe for development - major publishers and media have relationships with advertisers and enguage in a complex relationship. Bloggers will no doubt want more control over the ads that they serve and the power to negotiate and leverage their sites more effectively.
The model presented means a lot more work on behalf of the publisher, who actively has to select the ads, would have to monitor their performance etc etc. I am not sure just how much time most bloggers would have to do this. The payments would all need to be managed by a single ad supplier, as it would be too much to open a dialogue with too many advertisers.
I think that allowing publishers to select appropriate ads for their site, combined with software algorythmns will ultimately provide the advertiser with more relevant placement.
Read the article here...
iLike is a relatively young music community based software service, having only just reached the rip old age of four months, but I predict that this is going to become a very popular service, and the principles on which it is based will be adopted by many other music services.
It is wonderfully designed service with a very fresh, clean and modern interface. The service itself is very simple in concept - to help you organise and share your music, allow you to interact with people who share similar music tastes and recommend new music. While many other sites and services are setting out to do similar if not exactly the same things, iLike combines so many of the best concepts and in such a well designed package that it stands out from the rest.
iLike sets out to introduce you to music that you will like but have not yet listened to and combines several simple methods.
First you must create a profile which can be shared among the rest of the iLike community. You start by manually describing the genres and actual musician that you like. This creates a crude profile of your music tastes. But by downloading a small software gadget that analyses what you play in iTunes or Windows Media Player the service it able to get a realtime view of your music preferences, initially taking a snap shot of your music library and then starts an ongoing analysis of your music listening habits in the most logical way, by making a note of every time you listen to music on your computer or iPod. Continuing to build up and ever more perfect picture of your listening habits.
Users of iTunes software also have the benefit of having a user interface directly in the iTunes browser, that gives you access to your profile and community features of iLike. It shows you similar songs to the ones that you are currenly playing - so if you like Muse but want something similar, simply start playing one of your Muse tracks and it come immediatly back with recommendations similar to Muse. The recommendations all link to 30 second previews accessed via the iTunes store. You can also rate the songs in your library so iLike can determine which ones you like over others. Being embeded in iTunes and so always there when you are playing your music, with no need to remember to login to a website is a strong feature. We all have far too many sites to surf, to remember to come back to so many sites we have registered with. Once registered you are likely to continue to use the service as it is also very unintrusively implemented. The concept of dedicated software to access web content is going to be a strong trend in future.
Interesting are the complex algorthms that they use to determine what you would like to listen to. The most successful services in the future will be those that have alorythmns that are able to search massive quantities of data and deliver you only a few, but highly relevant results. While is can be easy to relate certain bands with others, the software that calculates your recommended suggestions is far more complecated.
iLike also harnesses the community of users and networks you to people that share similar tastes in music. By being able to easily browse other peoples libraries that share similar bands, it bives you a less mathematical and more human way to discover new music. You can build up lists of friends and see what they are listening to, what is most popular and recommend tracks to them.
This is the future of tracking and understanding trends and analysing music consumption. Bands can find out exactly who is listening to their music and which songs are played the most. This must be really interesting to base understanding on the actual listening rather than on record sales.
iLike seems very heavily geared at providing an excellent service, with the aim of generating revenue from providing traffic and sales to the iTunes store. The strong links between iLike is also apparent in it's design, as it seems to have been designed specifically to fit in with the iTunes software. I ask how long will it be before iTunes buys iLike or releases their own version of this community software.
A really great aspect of iLike is that it not only recommends establish artists, but is a forum discovering new music talent. Capitalising on the content of their sister site Garage Band, it acts as a filter on the many thousands of unsigned artists that have submitted their music to Garage Band. So through iLike you are also recommended new unsigned bands who's music is easily downloaded for free with one click straight to your iTunes library.
The service requires so little effort, yet delivers good value. you do not need to make friends, build pages, maintain blog etc, but you can do all of these things with it if you wish.
Download iLike and join the community HERE.
Social awareness and ethical marketing arrives at one of the biggest marketing and advertising arenas - Formula One.
Normally sporting hundred of corporate logos from sponsors keen to be seen associated with the high octain sport, this years Honda F1 car it will have only an image of the world wrapping around it's high tech body. Reflecting the general trend in eco awareness and ethical issues, Honda's campaign is probably the biggest to tackle the issue of global warming.
Honda appears to be reinvesting it's traditional marketing dollars back into it's own F1 project - sponsoring their own car, not with their own branding, but with an eco awareness campaign. Their desire is to raise awareness of global warming and at the same time capitalise on the interest generated and raise awareness of their own efforts aimed at developing more eco friendly technology.
The car itself is quite stunning, with its large and totally un-Formual 1 livery, and is guaranteed to generate reaction and hence should fulfil Honda's objectives. Visitors to the MyEarthDream.com URL, the only text to apear on the car, are encouraged to make a pledge to help stop global warming and donate to a charity set up by Honda to support eco causes. Visitors that pledge will be rewarded by having their name printed onto one of the actual F1 race cars.
No doubt what Honda may miss out on in sponsorship invvestment they should recoup in PR. That said, I am sure that there will be many sponsors who while not featured on the car itself, will captialise from association with the car.
The site is very simple and well designed. View it here.
The Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA), a band of long time residents of Second Life are demanding political rights and to be polled on changes to the virtual world. In an attempt to draw attention to their cause they have undertaken different campaigns, and one of the most recent was a terror attack against some of the new flock of big brands that are popping up with marketing actions in the popular 3D world.
Carrying out what they call military actions, they have targeted potential customers that entered American Apparel's Second Life store, shooting them and forcing them out of the store. Unlike the real world, American Apparel were able to disable the software that enabled such interaction within their zone. This is unfortunately where Second Life mimicing 'first life' ends.
The SLLA claim to have nothing against American Apparel, appearing to want to use a large brand as a means to drive stronger awareness to their cause.
An interview by Wayne Porter of ReveNews with the SLLA can be read here.
Heard on Popbitch and Marketing Vox.
The BBC reports of two interesting announcements today.
Viacom, owner of many TV shows including MTV's Pimp My Ride will allow web users to embed clips of their shows into their own web sites. Previously sites such as YouTube have been requested to remove such content, but in a change of strategy, Viacom wants to encourage users to embed cips into their sites, and eventually reduce the reliance on YouTube as a means to view clips.
Making content available and as easy to share as possible will start to exploit the public word of mouth as a media, rather than relying on more traditional means of distributing content.
More
Vodaphone has also just announced a service to allow people to update and manage their YouTube accounts via their moble phones. I predict a strong increase in video blogging and that in the not too distant future that it will be standard practice to document and share video and images taken on mobile devices, and share them via services as Youtube and Flickr.
More
NOTHING CAN EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!
Maybe hyperbowl, (maybe not!!)...I let you decide!
A maid comes in the room and starts taking pictures of the three - The girls in panda suits, the guy dressed as a pink dinosaur. Mayhem ensues.
The people posting...and there were tons went crazy! A digital orgasm.
The models took their own images...and I think they are amazing!
Just look at the guys images on Flickr - tell me if they arn't better than Terry Richardson!
I love it.
See ALL the images here!
But tune in and follow the insanity here!
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