ouroboros

Participatory Global Viral Video - how many more 2.0 words can you fit in and still have a failed marketing strategy?

Viral viral viral.  If you read my blog, you know I hate the term.  It isn't a term anyone agrees on, other than "viral marketing agencies" who are trying to sell it like special sauce.  For the most part, that sauce is brown, lumpy and unpredictable, like the "gravy" you get at Applebee's.  Marketers like the concept of 'viral', because to them it means "cheap media" (make a video, or app, or whatever, and distribution is FREE!), or it lets them say they "get social media" to whoever is checking off the boxes on their annual evaluation form.  But nothing is viral that PEOPLE DON'T LIKE, and figuring out WHAT PEOPLE WILL LIKE is a game everyone can play, but few play well.  Which is why most advertising SUCKS.

We've had some good hits - the Kobe jumps Aston + snakes, the FIFA Street 3 spot, etc., but it is, to a degree, a gamble.  Like a good date.

So a video folks are talking about is this one for Stride gum, found by Melissa Sconyers on the NY Nokia Search team.

It's worth a look for two reasons: (1) it shows the power of participatory community, which is actually more interesting than the concept OR the execution, and (2) it shows how jumping onto a popular video may or may not be right for a brand.  At the end of this video, do you get that this is actually a marketing vehicle for Stride gum?  I didn't.  And I knew it before I watched, then I even clicked through to Matt's site, looking for a logo or brand mention (the logo is there, at the bottom of the page, looking very Dad at the disco). 



The story of the video as Matt tells it:
He has friend shoot video of him dancing badly in Hanoi.  Stride gum sends him around the world to do the dance in a wide variety of places (normal "YouTube-viral-type-web-2.0-3.0" thing).  But AFTER that video was made and posted, people sent him their own.  And that gave him an idea.  He re-pitched Stride with a new idea.  He traveled the world again, inviting those people to join him.  Participatory viral goes global.

Read more here:
http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/about.shtml (the website is sponsored by Stride)

And please practice safe viral.

RIP, Water Horse Digital Video Outdoor WTF

Here there was once video (apparently pirated) from a Japanese news broadcaster showing the unbelievably cool outdoor digital projection of the 'water horse' creature onto a live fountain.  Sick animation.  Cool Japanese language supers.  Breathless announcer.  And now?  Only this:

 

I am so sad. They say there can be only one water horse in the world at a time...perhaps the footage lives on somewhere else, a single file, undiscovered?

Radical Transparency

If you had any questions about the transformative power of interactive media, repressive governments no longer do -  when they want to kill or crush their people, they are learning to start by killing the internet and mobile connections.  On the heels of Ukraine's mobile powered Orange revolution, the SMS powered toppling of the government in Manila, and Uganda's recent reinstatement of SMS after contested elections were sealed up, this from the AP, re Myanmar:

...soldiers in Myanmar...Friday...went after the Internet and mobile phones that have proven so vital and powerful in documenting the dramatic confrontations.

Modern technology has become the generals' worst enemy.

Though the government has cut some phone landlines, it has had less success clamping down on mobile phones, [and] the immediacy has been vital in telling the world so it can act quickly as developments unfold

"The world doesn't know where Burma is. Now they see images about the situation and want to know more." Aung Zaw said.

"Students use cell phones to SMS each other to share information," he said, referring to text messages activists use to organize demonstrations or inform one another of the locations of soldiers. "The junta can't control the technology totally, and it's a huge difference (if you can) deliver the information fast."

Is that a multimedia computing device in your pocket or are you just excited to see me?

Advertising agencies used to have an ad as the end prodcut of their efforts.  Mobile phone manufacturers had a...well, a phone.

Today we'll talk a little about Nokia.  Because Nokia's been moving FAST.  7/9 word leaks on MOSH.  7/24 Nokia acquires Twango.  8/29 N-Gage relaunches.  8/30 Nokia Music.

Some history...back when the video iPod came out, I remember thinking "wow, game changer."  Not  because it was a portable video player, but because at its core, the video iPod was a portable hard drive. A massive multi-gig storage device.  with a USB cord.  Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

And I got salivating imagining a future in which we'd walk around with our media libraries in our backpockets.  And when it was (as I hoped) wirelessly enabled, we'd head to our friends house with '300' merrily downloading to our backpocket via WiMax while we stocked up on big slurpies and red vines (= crazy delicious).  When we got to our friend's place, we'd jack in (or not, since they'd have an 'airport') and we'd watch the hi-def gore on our monster-ass-big, wall-mounted, flat screen plasma fusion video playback unit (alright, dammit, TV)...

That was before we heard rumors about Google's not quite yet materialized GDrive and with unlimited gigs of tasty storage space floating in an awe-inspiring, cross-tabbed, ad sense enabled data cloud...but that's another story.

So now, before Apple could do it, Nokia throws down, pulling an Apple on Apple.

"Nokia said on Wednesday that it would soon introduce its own digital music service, along with an easier-to-use Apple-style mobile interface and an Apple-style touchscreen handset.

The Nokia Music Store, to open this year, will let users download songs from the Internet to their computers or directly to mobile phones over wireless networks, which Apple’s recently released iPhone cannot do.

In offering direct downloads, the Nokia Music Store goes beyond iTunes, which requires users to download songs to their personal computers before transferring them to an iPod, music player or an iPhone.

The music store also potentially puts Nokia into conflict with operators of mobile networks, which in many cases have developed music services of their own.

“Now Nokia is saying, ‘You guys had your chance to run music stores, or whatever, and it didn’t work, so now we’re going to give consumers what they want,’ ” said Paul Jackson, an analyst at Forrester Research.

And folks were wondering what they were up to when Nokia acquired Loud Eye?  OOOOOOOOOOohhh.  It's ON.

As an OEM, Nokia's been working to develop software and services accessible outside Carriers' walled gardens for some time. Which those carriers haven't appreciated.  Unsurprisingly, those carriers like owning their customers and charging everyone a toll to access them.   And some have tried to slap around Nokia for its efforts.

But is a smackdown in the wind?  Nokia's ex-president is part of a management team piloting a project in Europe under the name of  Blyk, which is effectively an ad subsidized FREE mobile carrier targeting 16-24 year olds.  Here's what Business Week had to say about Blyk:

"If the company's approach proves successful, it could dramatically affect the mobile phone industry and pose a serious threat to existing operators."

"It's going to change the business model for mobile telephony in a big way." says Falk Müller-Veerse, managing partner at Cartagena Capital, a Munich-based boutique investment bank specializing in the mobile phone industry.

Oh, and did someone say "Gaming"?  heeeeeeeeeeeeeere's N-Gage!  It's back, and it's better - much better.  More than a device, its a system playing across N-series ass-kickers starting in November and rolling out to S60's...well...not soon enough, but it'll be worth the wait.  EA has already said they are in for this one, so expect this to get interesting.

In an impressive feat of corporate transformation enacted on a global scale, Nokia is becoming more than a manufacturer.  It's a data company.  A company about mobile software and services.

A device has gone from being an end point to being the start of a beautiful relationship.

And you can put that in your pocket.

TXTual Healing

Can't get enough of that Digital OOH?  here's one for you from PDX's fresh Tenny P: TXTual healing

http://www.txtualhealing.com/action.html

per Tenny, "It's basically an interactive form of graffiti based on SMS text messaging. Maybe not as visually intriguing as laser tagging, but the mobile aspect of it is pretty cool, since so many teens and young adults already know how to text."

The simple explanation is: users sends SMS message by cellphone, receiving computer converts it through to mobile projector that beams image. The whole system is mobile and with the right projector/beamer, quite bright.

Here's a shot of how it looked in NY - users could populate the text balloons.

Here's a video that demonstrates the process of posting to the bubbles. You send a text message from your mobile to a mobile paired to a computer. It's all autotmatic and there's no filter.

Comprehensive DIY instructions on mobile projecting.

news/ digiOOH

• Nice synopsis in Bus2.0 on next 25 tech companies to watch http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0702/gallery.nextnet.biz2/  .  Joost, (http://www.joost.com) featured in the article, is a peer to peer (P2P) sharing site by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, and we are already in discussions with them and Nike on potential opportunities/executions

·         Video of beamvertising (with nice technobeat) campaignin Rotterdam for 'sportlife' gum

(thanks for the link, Michele!)

Wii and Graffiti? Wii ask?

That crazy Wii seems to draw a crowd...

WiiTube’s name should be self-explanatory: it’s a niche video site for Wii videos. Not to be confused with WiiToob, which launched a few weeks back and offers a big interface for interacting with YouTube videos on your Wii, WiiTube is a brand new site that’s more concerned with videos about the Wii than providing a bigger interface for viewing on a console.

WiiTube is a particularly nice attempt - it includes ratings, tags, profile pages, commenting and special sections for cheats, clips of your awesome Wii skills and trailers of upcoming games. Videos aren’t uploaded to Wiitube, though - instead, you just add the embed code from YouTube, Google Video, Break.com, Metacafe and other popular sites.

In some ways, sites that do this (Flixya is another one) are leeching bandwidth but keeping the ad revenue - if they’re using Adsense, then perhaps GoogTube isn’t too worried, though.

L.A.S.E.R. Tag

Within the next 10 years, defense contractors expect to be able to a solid state laser mounted on a Hummer that can put a hole in a sheet of metal from several miles away. Dutch graffiti writers got the jump on them with this Hymermobil-mounted L.A.S.E.R. Tagging system.  See it in action, and get your socks knocked off by clicking here. Drive-In GIF Theater in Rotterdam

Produced by the GRL. Here's over sixty uncurated 22 x 41 pixel animations submitted via email from writers, artists, activists, jokers, lunatics and 13 year-olds.

click here for the feature presentation