TMW Ideas

Discovery Channel are celebrating 20 years of 'shark week' with a really fascinating online game called Shark Runners (http://www.sharkrunners.com). The idea being that you join up, set up a boat and set sail in search of sharks. Which could be really dull, except that the sharks are real white sharks being tracked by GPS on their fins, and the site will update your email or text you when your boat gets near a real shark. I've yet to have an encounter, so I can only hope they are using video and really bringing the whole idea alive. It's interesting to see how a 'game' that works in real time will be received though. Will people be fascinated by it, or simply find it unresponsive and slow?

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From this great comic

(Click to enlarge)

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I shouldn't really put this here, as it isn't strictly speaking relevant to what we do, but

a. it's great
b. it's on youtube, so there's a vague link.

(Must thank ex-tmwer (tmwist?) Mark Gay for the link)

Speaking of youtube, The Guardian have embraced it with particular effectiveness. Each Thursday they post the best sports clips from youtube on their site. It is fairly regularly the most read page on the Guardian (Which is the most read newspaper on the web) and has a lively message board with more clips at the bottom.

I suppose this is an example of what Chris Anderson would call a long tail of content - great moments, previously buried in archives, suddenly accessible by anyone with a PC and 15 minutes to spare. No having to sit through turgid, self-congratulatory official videos. Not to mention great moments from sports you never usually watch. I suspect part of the success is down to the shared experince and the fact that you'll send it to your friends, discuss and dissect. Anyway, a great example of old media using new media to take advantage of web 2.0 in a way that probably infuriates other sections of old media. Well done the Guardian.

Finally, here's one for Monday….

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CLICK HERE…www.t-mobile.co.uk/music to see the new and improved music site for T-Mobile which encompasses both T-Mobile Street Gigs and now Transmission with T-Mobile too (Channel 4's hottest music show fronted by Steve Jones and Lauren Laverne which starts this Friday night).

The new elements are built onto the existing site which was completed in record time back in January following our digital pitch win. I'm delighted to say we've done it again, and virtually re-built the entire site in next to no time. It looks great, it sounds great, and I'm really proud to have been part of the team to deliver it.

Why not also sign-up to become a friend on our lovely new myspace page too whilst you're here…

www.myspace.com/yourtmobilemusic

Star performers (who deserve many thanks for endless late nights and stress) include…

Michelle Kelly
Ciara Meaney
Peter Mungeam
Gerard Myers
Windahl Finnigan
Millie Graham Campbell
Sam Cottrell
Luke Clark
Steven Haycock
Gareth James
Jon Menzies-Smith
Duncan Scott
Rolff Kruger
Marie Foster
Duncan Butt
Ben Winter
Sarah Guest
Chris Dale
Jamie Huxley
Stuart Mallinson
Miriam Foster

Apologies if I've missed anyone!

Watch this space for future updates about T-Mobile's home for music!

Thanks

posted on behalf of Rob Carter
Group Account Director

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???

(from i am bored)

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After some time in the wilderness, we're back! I say wilderness, we were stuck between servers and buried in some admin, but what doesn't kill us will only make us stronger.

Lot's going on in the world since we left, so instead of a retrospective of the last few months, let's look at the now and the next. A quick round up of links I liked today….

Quiksilver (spotted by Teju at Digital Fatastico.)

The new Playstation campaign - fine example of what Faris calls transmedia planning. However, I don't really see the point of the website. And thisisliving.com and .org didn't lead me there, so I had to google it to remember it's .tv. And I actually want to find the site…. (Double checked Faris and he mentioned a sign up. They didn't ask me to sign up - I feel snubbed! So I went back to the site. It recognised me, but when I entered, the flash movie failed to load. I suspect that Sony say my ugly comment below before I even posted it and have already moved against me…)

(By the way, how ugly is the Playstation 3View image? And hopefully we'll get an early review from David on the playability)

Russell is throwing a conference - must get tickets…

A great (if slightly old, in blog years) post on Adliterate - a must-read for all of us. For some of us, his thoughts on Persil may be useful…here and here

Finally, Iain is posting 10 reasons why digital is better than advertising. See if you agree.

(Not quite finally - in the spirit of comebacks, heeeeere's Elvis…)

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I have a cunning plan.

1. I?m going to legitimately post about the great new Diesel campaign
2. In doing so, I?m going to mention that it features models in pants as often as possible, in a bid to drive traffic to the site.
3. I?m going to put it in a list. I read somewhere that technorati likes lists.

Go to Diesel.com and you?ll land on Heidies.com. The wheeze is that Heidi and Heidi want to be super models and model Diesel?s next range of underwear. To achieve this, they have taken over Diesel.com, kidnapped the ?sales boy? (that made me laugh) and are threatening to destroy the samples of the new collection if their demands are not met.

They?re doing this in their pants. Did I mention that? Oh.

Anyway, it?s genius. For the above oft repeated reason, but they have a myspace, a youtube channel, and a flickr stream. It?s well thought out, engaging, playful, fun and achingly hip. And features models in pants. You can also send messages to them via a chat function on the homepage, and they are streaming live from the hotel room, so you can see them getting your message. Next time a client asks about a viral idea, you?ll know what to say.

Models in pants!

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BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight Home | Monday 8 January
There are times when I get thoroughly dis-heartened with all the trappings of this modern society and just want to go and live in one of those experimental communities where the participants live like neolithic humans. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this feeling and this time of year is probably a high water point for it. However, one of the things that I never get pi55ed off with is my mobile phone. I'm firmly of the belief that the phone is my servant and not my master and regularly choose not to answer a call much to the surprise of the people around me. And so to the point of this post. The BBC's Newsnight are running a series of items under the banner 'Geek Week' and last night's instalment (the first) was a fascinating and thoroughly uplifting analysis of the impact of mobile telephony on Kenyan society. Not only has the technology allowed Kenya to skip a costly infrastructure upgrade (have you seen the cost of copper these days?) which would probably never have happened anyway but it enabled a number of services that just don't exist in UK like P2P cash transfers.
Check it out on the BBC media player.
Recommended

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What I liked about this was that I saw it in a banner ad on The Guardian, assumed it would be on youtube, and lo and behold there it was (not yet top ranked, but seeing as everything else was a clip of the show, who cares? I almost got distracted into looking at a clip that had Salma Hayek in it, but nothing will ever match From Dusk Till Dawn, will it? Apart from Desperado.)

It's annoying that for all the chat we do about communication online, there is very little way to save and attach a banner ad or mpu to our blog and talk about it. Or is there?Am I being slow?

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If you like Confessions of a shopaholic you probably wont like Critique of Pure Reason.

The unsuggester checks the library details of seven million registered users and finds the books that you probably don't have or have never read. Worth a look if you want some unusual reading material for the beach next summer. A change is as good as a rest.

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The greatest rock mag in the world breaks new ground with a mobile phone application for barcode reading.Robert Price - Kerrang Magazine Now Using Mobile Barcodes.
This is a tremendous piece of technology usage. The possibiliites are endless really.

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Equation Two: “Should you call in sick?”

DS/(M+1)R (Fh/Fj - C) - $N/250 = Hooky

D = Do you have a doctor's note? (Enter 1 for “no”, 10 for “yes, but it's a forgery”)

S = How sick are you? (1-10 with 10 being “quarantined”)

M = How many days have you missed in the last month?

R = Degree of responsibility in your job (1-10 with 10 being “lives are in my hands”)

Fh = How much fun will you have if you stay at home? (1-10 with 10 being Ferris Bueller's Day Off)

Fj = How much fun will you have at work? (1-10 with 10 being “I am a personal trainer for underwear models”)

$ = Your daily wage in dollars

N = How much do you need the money? (1-10 with 10 being “I owe the mob”)

C= Chance of getting fired (If you think you have, say, a “3-in-10 chance” of getting fired if you skip work, enter 3/10)

n If Hooky is greater than 1, you should call in sick

Better living through algebra

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First is the liver if you must know.
O'Reilly is the publishing house that has lovely etchings of animals on the covers of somewhat obscure technical manuals.
They also publish a lot of online content under the Safari heading. I found this whilst researching (my new name for surfing) and thik that it is worth sharing.
O'Reilly — Safari Books Online - 059610197X - Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

The book itself is like an O'Reilly crossed with Dummies but for me the most interesting part is the introduction which is a very easy to read few pages on the psychology of learning.
Worth ten mins of your time over lunch.

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An interesting chat with Jonathan Harris, who was behind the brilliant “We feel fine”, a big favourite of ours. I'd recommend the interview, but I'd also strongly recommend looking at his work. Genius.

No Man's Blog: 10 Questions with Jonathan Harris

I can't tell you how excited am I to give you this (email) interview I held with Jonathan Harris, the artist behind such great recent projects as Yahoo! Time Capsule, We Feel Fine, Loveliness and Phylotaxis (to name but a few - you can see them all on his website). As you'll read below, not only is he a briliant artist, he is the nicest pesron as well.

With thanks to Asi.

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Another example of the way consumers aren't happy just consuming any more - they're quite happy to get involved, whether you or I or Micheal J. Fox like it or not.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to thank George for finding this site. I'd recommend Brokeback to the Future, and The Shining. But browse around.

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Now although the purpose of this blog is to discuss and nut out in public the nuances of marketing using interactive and emerging media, co-creation, online trends etc… every now and again we post stuff just coz it's intriguing, interesting or relevent to our industry as a whole. I therefore make no apologies for posting this… (be warned, it is a few mins long but's still worth watching!)

Many thanks to Livingbrands where I found this gem in an artfully titled post by the name of 'How to brief creatives'. I can't help thinking that it might also have been entitled, 'How to win pitches'.

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“We can get them to do anything…”

The serious bit - what is youtube? A series of rampant copyright infringements or a co-creative playground? Adam and Joe actually post stuff up themselves, particulrly stuff that didn't get picked up by TV series or out-takes. Is this the death of the DVD extra? Who knows? In the meantime, I'l keep reliving Brass Eye. Particularly THAT episode, which was a perfect satire of what we eventually became.

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Sales promotions often give away stuff for free - you know, that extra little bit….Free. But is it really?

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The Logo - the most precious asset a brand has…arguably. So when someone creates a tool that allows you to mess with a logo, entirely at your own discression, and then bookmark the page you create, allowing you use most of the brand's site but with your own version of the logo, should the brand be worried and send out the rottweilers, should they ignore it or should they embrace it?

Make your own here.

In these days where much of our chat is about consumers owning the brand, rather that the company owning it - how far should brands go? How much should they give? I recon this is a bit of fun harmless brand interaction, but I'm sure there are a few brand managers and legal beavers who would disagree. What do you think? Is imatation really the most sincere form of flattery?

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A Guide to the Worst Places on Earth - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com

I don't know what this type of content should be categorised as. It certainly blurs a lot of boundaries between news classification but it also makes me feel somewhat confused about 'User generated content'. A term that I think is rapidly losing any meaning it may have had when it was first coined.

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Nike's online stuff is awesome. I'm sure I won't have to tell you about Joga Bonito, but while looking for some inspiration for Flora I came across their running sites.

Run London has obviously been a huge success, but have a fresh look at the site, and particularly the community aspect. They have a genius application that allows you to plan, find and save running routes across london, using google maps as the basis. It's a great example of using assets that already exist on the web to add value to your site.

Have a look at Nike Plus as well. Nike plus is the IPod and Nike tie-up that you may have read about a month or so ago. The idea is that you get a special chip that goes into your runing shoe that acts like a pedometer. It uploads all the information about your run - distance, time etc. to your IPod. Next time you hook your IPod up to your computer, it uploads your running info, so that you have a full record of your training. This is brought to life beautifully on the website.

The genius of this is the consistent way that Nike use the website to add value to any campaign. Here you have three things
1. An essentially viral campaign based on brilliant footballers doing brilliant thing with a football, with the community aspect (the chain) as a genius way to get people involved.
2. A community based event, facilitated almost entirely the web and email - with the digital strategy driving people to store, for example. Again, the routefinder brings in the community aspect.
3. A new product, using technology to add value to people's lives, again with community brought into play on the website.

They get a big tick! (Alright, a big swoosh).

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Thanks to Lucy in Strategy for pointing the way to this…

TIME.com: 50 Coolest Websites

How do we select our finalists? We evaluate hundreds of candidates?some suggested by readers, colleagues and friends, others discovered during countless hours of surfing. Many of this year's choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips. Think we missed one? Send us your thoughts and we'll post a selection of your comments online. There's always next year.

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This is a really interesting description of new ways to manage information in the enterprise. I think TMW could do a lot worse than run a pilot trial of some of these ideas…

Headshift :: Humanising the Enterprise through Ambient Social Knowledge

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This is just gorgeous. The amazing bit is about two thirds the way through (Jeff Han on TED Talks).

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