Thursday, March 27, 2014

Burger King's Motel Stunt in New Zealand


BK branded a motel, and groups of friends could visit and eat the new TenderCrisp Chicken Burgers, effectively cheating on the Beef.  Once at the hotel people had to check in on Facebook, and share photos of them eating the Chicken.  The hotel was fully branded to BK, but had no beds!

I love this pre-roll, featuring the voice of the man who narrates Cheaters on TV.



Full info here

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Chromecast


Google released Chromecast in the UK last week.

Chromecast is a dongle that fits in the HDMI slot of a TV, and to all intents and purposes turns a TV into an internet-enabled TV for just £30.  The dongle connects to your wifi and then allows you to send content to it from a phone, tablet or computer, including YouTube, iPlayer, and Netflix.

I've had mine for nearly a week now and I love it.  At £30 it's about the same price as the Freeview boxes when they became popular, and I think that it could have nearly as big an impact.

Last night a friend and I sat on the sofa, taking it in turns to play YouTube videos on my TV (a 1970s documentary about British Hell's Angels, the trailer for 20 Feet From Stardom, some episodes of The Muppet Show...) and it was such great fun.  (I know you've been able to do this for ages on gaming consoles and on Cable, but I don't have either of those.)

It's clear that some wrangling went on prior to launch in the UK.  The BBC is there with iPlayer, but there's no 4oD, no Sky (& Sky's 'First Episodes' on YouTube are blocked), and no LoveFilm (owned by Amazon, who will have their own dongle out soon).  My only other negative is that you're expected to keep it plugged in all the time - there's no on/off switch - but I'd recommend you unplug it, and plug it in when you need to use it.

For me, though, it's pretty revolutionary.  I watch mainly BBC shows, and so it's perfect for my needs.  It puts a new perspective on the BBC's decision to take BBC3 off digital broadcast - you can still watch shows on TV very easily via this.  Also, it gives the lie to Noel Edmonds' assertion that the BBC is sleepwalking into the future - they clearly know far more about the future than he does (especially as he describes us as 'living in a world of Google and Microsoft')

I won't be cancelling Sky yet - their 'Sky Atlantic' strategy has got me hooked on both True Detective and Girls, which I can't get elsewhere (& obviously the new series Mad Men is coming), but it's taken me closer to cancelling it.

If it were November I'd be buying them for friends and family as Christmas presents.  (My friend bought her own last night on Amazon on her phone).

"My 90 year old grandmother tries the Oculus Rift"

Perfect...



(I've posted this the day after Facebook announced plans to buy Oculus VR for $2bn)

Monday, March 24, 2014

Evian x Spider Man

You have to wonder who has the most to gain - Spider Man in tying with a series of ads that is guaranteed (on past performance) to get >40m views on YouTube, or Evian, in getting the kudos of a link with what will probably be one of the summer's biggest films.



& this is just the teaser...

Update - & here's the full ad:


Thursday, March 20, 2014

BA's outdoor ad incorporates live flight data

This ad, from late last year, uses live data on flights to trigger the figures pointing at planes, and thenn say which flight it is.



More info here

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Android Wear

I'm sure this Google ad for a *mahoooosive* watch is going to look hilarious in ten years time when they show it on TV clip shows, but it's got some nice examples of how you could use a smart watch



In other Google news, the ChromeCast went on sale in the UK today (& I've ordered mine already)

Friday, March 14, 2014

Asos x Benefit Makeup x Citroen

An interesting new brand partnership...



See the page at Asos here

Burberry announces its new campaign on Instagram

Instagram is so influential within some audiences that Burberry has effectively used it to issue a press release:


The text read:

"Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne shot by @MarioTestino - behind the scenes of a new #Burberry fragrance campaign coming later this year"

Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Data-driven design at Gov.UK

Last night I was lucky enough to hear Russell Davies of the Government Digital Service (GDS) talk about how they re-worked the UK government's websites, at a Google Firestarters event.

The GDS's websites process 1.3 billion transactions (inc queries, I think) across 660 services, so designing and running the websites is clearly very challenging - or as he'd put it, 'it's not complicated, it's just hard'

One example that I loved was how they re-designed the page that shows bank holidays.  Previously the page listed all of the bank holidays throughout the year, but analysis of the search data showed that what the majority of people wanted to know was the date of the next one.


So they redesigned the page to show that prominently, and list the other information below that.

A lot of people talk about data analysis and using this to make decisions, but this is a perfect and simple example of it in action.
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