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Archive for January, 2008

Customized Energy Bars

28 Jan 2008

A while ago I posted about those yummy customizable M&Ms you could order and surprize friends or business relations with. But in the light of ‘healthy futures’ and ‘powerful messages’, what can be more fun than creating your own energy bar and have a custom name printed on the wrapper? I mean, the message is pretty clear: chocolate is for wussies and sweethearts. Energy bars are so much more of a statement than practically anything you’ve ever been able to customize. And it really shows you either have a powerful product to promote while you wish a good physical condition to your target audience by bringing them something they can use.

There’s not much more to add. Start creating your own bars, and send out a message that makes sense!

Visit YouBars
Thanks, Dave

 

Video Seeding For Professionals

28 Jan 2008

I remember that whenever I had to do some ‘casual seeding’ for a promo video for an agency, I had a document with all the usernames and passwords of the sites I would dump the file to. It would take me up to a day to drill down that list, surf to the site and log in, upload the video, wait for the encoding and then bookmark the url of the clip to track the number of views afterwards. I know seeding promotonial clips has taken a downfall a bit, since not all communities are that keen on ‘being abused’ by ‘yet another agency that wants to score’ with a clip in the hopes it goes viral. So. Here is a solution that can make some people very pissed, but at the same time would come in very handy for an agency to start the seeding and save a lot of time.
In comes Hey!Spread

First thing to do the ‘undercover work’ is to have some sleeping accounts. Just go to the sites listed below and register for an account. You better start making those on beforehand, even when you don’t have a clip to seed. You can put some ‘general’ funny clips on the account and pretend to be a regular user. It’s good to have a history on a site. The longer the better. It’s good to have some activity on that account as well, it will add up to your credibility. Write down all the usernames and passwords and then head over to the Hey!Spread website.

With a simple login, you get access to their service, name your movie, tag it and start the uploading. Hey!Spread will upload your movie to:

All the links above go directly to the registration page of the sites, so in case you don’t have a username/password on that site yet, you don’t have to look for the signup page.

Hey!Spread also allows you to add a watermark to the video file, in case you want to brand it for an official release or something. As soon as you start uploading your file, all you have to do is sit back and relax. The only thing you have to wait for is the processing time of each individual video site. When everything is uploaded, you get the URL to the location of the uploaded clip. Just copy-paste that list, put it in an e-mail or a Word document, and go check the views if you need to harvest the results.

As a bonus, you can use the Hey!Spread API which allows you to propose Hey!Spread in white label as a innovative and addictive feature to your users or clients. Allow them to mass-distribute video content over the best video platforms at any time, but still be the solution provider that came up with this brilliant plan for your customer!

Have fun.

 

DIY Paleontology

28 Jan 2008

To send New Year greetings for 2008, the communications team at the dinosaur museum in Brussels sent colleagues and main sponsors a highly original package. Inside was a block of plaster and a hammer & chisel with an invitation to amateur paleontologists to dig, not for the bones of a mighty T-Rex, but to find the museum’s greeting card.

Dinosaur Museum Greeting Card

Agency: McCann Erickson Belgium
Account Director: Talia Hendlisz
Creatives: Gregory Defay, Quentin Gascard
Thanks for the pointer, Tanguy

 

Cool Online Catalog Promo

28 Jan 2008

Take a look at this super sweet catalog from the Dutch Hema store :) Apparently they’ve launched their online department, and I must say the site is really a very cool experience. At first glance it looks like a regular e-shop, but if you wait a few seconds… you’ll be amazed. I love the way they did this!

New Hema Store

Visit the product promo site :)

 
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Posted in General

 

Cyanide Free Romania

27 Jan 2008

Time for environmental action! The “Coalition for a Cyanide Free Romania” is a civil society initiative that was formed to support a legislative proposal to ban cyanide in mining in Romania. Its concerns are based on social, economic and environmental grounds. Obviously that is a cause worth mentioning, and I’ve been asked to contribute to the general buzz, which of course I will. The campaign kicked off with a few x-mas cards that have been sent around, and it was also supported by spreading the stickers below.

Cyanide Does Not Make You Stronger

Agency: Next, Romania
Campaign website
Hugs for Andrei Chirica, PR coordinator

Christmas cards are added after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

 

Plane Crash Turns Out To Be Planned

27 Jan 2008

The first time I saw this clip I thought it was a real video, like the one I’ve seen earlier of a holiday resort that had a beach right before the start of the runway of the airport. Then when I saw the plane turn I began to suspect something fishy, but I never really expected the clip to turn out the way it did!

Video: Have A Nice Trip

This is in fact a commercial for X-Travel, a Dutch site aimed for teens and youngster who are looking to plan a vacation. It’s a clip that promoted a campaign where teens could ’start their own airline company’ meaning that if they would check in 6 friends, they could win a free vacation for all. Tempting idea, and an appealing video for that specific target audience.

 

Fun With Food

27 Jan 2008

If spend quite some time with my little hero the last couple of weeks, and to be honest I’m always amazed how fast they learn. One thing that’s proven to be a really funny time of the day is dinner (or lunch or breakfast, for that matter). I remember that when I was young, my mom always used to make plane noises as she moved the little spoon or fork in the general direction of my mouth. A tactic I’ve been using too to entertain while doing the necessary thing. Very recently, Arnoud sent me a picture of a really neat gadget that could be of great assistance, but I haven’t been able to locate the online store that sells it, so to compensate, I’ve made paper wings and attached it to the plastic spoon I’ve been using to feed that little devil. Anyways, I just wanted to show the original idea that inspired me to create my own:

Fork Plane

Like I said above, it’s easy to make some things like this yourself with two paper wings and a little bit of tape, but when I ever come across this one, I’ll buy it for sure.

 

Creative With Adwords

18 Jan 2008

One of the leading car rental companies in Europe is Sixt. In Germany or Switzerland, and more recently at Schiphol airport in The Netherlands as well, I saw their brand gain traction and become more present. They always find cool ways to do offline marketing stunts, as I have previously covered a few times [hanging car, don't forget]. But also in the online market, they have found ways to be remarkable when they experimented with a new way to make their Google Adwords ads stand out from the crowd.

Adwords

Pretty clever.

Thanks for the pointer, Paul.