Why not have a little fun? Volkswagen has launched an effort to put the FUN back in to our lives with Thefuntheory.com This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest
way to change people’s behavior for the better.
In a world where everything is sold as a task, VW is looking for FUN solutions to world problems. Could this piano staircase get you to take the stairs instead of the escalator? Watch and see the transformation.
Can you say viral hit???? This video has received 7,301,080 views. This surprisingly simple idea transforms the mundane into FUN.
What I love about this "Social" experiment is that it is thought and action provoking. VW is facilitating world FUN, through consumer engagement with its branded theory. One of the boldest parts of the campaign is the subtly of the VW branding. Each one of the FUN entries is ended with a VW logo. Thats it! But that's a lot when you consider that just one of the videos has 7,301,080 views. If VW attempted to pay for this type of reach it would cost them millions.
Earned media comes with risky yet good ideas. (risky - because no other brand in the category is doing anything like this. Good, because they let go of their brand, use emotional and behavioral insights and allow the consumer to have a bit of fun with the brand.) They have done an amazing job of owning fun in their category while extending a global conversation that could inspire others.
If you have a way to take the mundane or simple and make it FUN you should submit it for a prize. Your
entry can be presented with a written explanation plus a visualization of the idea itself. It could be a simple sketch, photos
or a film of a prototype. Put the fun back in to the world with VW at http://thefuntheory.com.
Do you think this campaign sets a new standard for brand building through online video and social media?
I love a flash mob. Some say they are sooo done. I am not one of those people. I have to say that this flash mob really brought a smile to my face when I realized that it was another T-Mobile event. With all the horrible crap going on in the world it is nice when a brand just wants you to have a smile and share it.
When I saw what T-Mobile did on Oprah - I was blown away. If you watched Oprah's 24th season kickoff party, which took place in on the mag mile in Chicago you could can see how people shared an incredible experience that makes you want to smile. This is really content worth sharing. (just search YouTube and see how many videos were made)
Do you remember the T-Mobile dance at Liverpool Street Station for T-Mobile's Life's for Sharing campaign? And who can forget the Trafalgare square karaoke, where 13,500 people sang Hey Jude. It seems to me that T-mobile's flash mob still works.
Have you had a recent flash mob experience that you want to share? If so leave me a comment.
I invite you to join me in for a Digital 101 at Noon on Friday. Social Media 101: Discover the power of your voice will be an introductory course and forum where we will cover behavioral trends to the technology tools and the brands and people who are using social media.
You can choose any marked location on the map to track the her trips via video, photos and read her remarks. It looks like the site aggregates images from all over the web. Follow our SOS @ http://ow.ly/hJed
This would offer a fun way for a brand to track and highlight conversations, recommendations, pics and video that people create. It might also be a new way for a brand not to be tethered to just one social media platform.
His art crossed barriers, his fashion allowed us to appear militant and
pop at the same time, his fusion of sounds and collaborative work style
saved parts of the music industry in the 80's and gave MTV an injection
of legitimacy.
His product endorsements and original scores drove fans to purchase millions of products. He helped define the cola wars. He also helped raise the bar when it came to producing advertising that had an entertaining production quality.
The impact of his death was amplified by social media. 10-years ago, we would have learned of MJ's passing via TV, or a friend or coworker. Yesterday, our knowledge was
immediate. With my tweet deck open and my iPhone on my desk the news came in waves. First it was a video from a tourist on a starline bus who uploaded a video of the ambulance leaving Jackson's home. Then it was an avalanche of tweets and links that updated his condition on a real time basis.
The global coordination of fans mourning in public was fascinating. The photo above was taken by my daughter. We used twitter to see where fans were converging in our neighborhood. (We found groups of stunned MJ fans in Harlem, Times Square and Chelsea)
Even more fascinating was the "private" behaviors that drove iTunes to slow, amazon to clog and twitter search to fail. Yesterday afternoon showed both the power and frailty of the digital medium. Celeb-news site, TMZ.com (AOL/Time Warner owned), secured the scoop when it was first to
report that Jackson had died — but the site then crashed several times,
unable to cope with millions of visitors flooding to it.
One of the most fascinating tweets today was when P-Diddy tweeted a link to a tribute song that features The Game, Usher, Mario Winans and Boyz2Men to name a few. Diddy's tweet to approximately 1.3 million Twitter followers has made “Better On The Other Side” the most popular link on Twitter today. (it has almost 2000 retweets).You can download the song at BOX.net a file sharing site.
The rapid changing information added to Wiki's across the net triggered this message to appear on Jackson's Wikipedia page: This article is about a person who has recently died.
Some information, such as that pertaining to the circumstances of the
person's death and surrounding events, may change rapidly as more facts
become known.
The firm New Media Strategies notes
that Jackson’s Wikipedia page logged 1.8 million visitors yesterday,
compared to its daily average of just 20,000. According to Mashable it also saw a whopping
650 edits as users updated the entry furiously as news broke.
If you attempted to search anything last night you probably noticed that the connection speeds felt like 56k modem slow. For 35 minutes, millions of people who googled
Jackson’s name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of
results. CNET reported that Google believed it was under attack
when the news first broke. Google said that there had been a “volcanic” surge in interest in
Michael Jackson, with most of the top 100 searches related to the singer.
Facebook reported that Jackson’s page was
attracting about 20 fans a second, and fast becoming one of the top pages in
all of Facebook. (@ 2:42AM it has 1,228,072 fans)
Once again, real people reporting a story, revealed yet another tale of the traditional news media playing catch-up with the digital. However, it took the traditional outlets to lend their credibility to real people reporting. Together, Broadcast + Digital + Mobile showed how the established players such as TMZ.com / AOL / CNN have finally worked
out how to tap into the power of convergence.
What we know for sure is that no matter your opinion of MJ's private matters (accusations of molestation, childlike behavior and plastic surgery) he never stopped helping change the way we listened and participated in the creation of his music and persona. Jackson was the intersection of art, philanthropy and social movement.
I cannot imagine a brand being able to coordinate a product or service launch, update or invention being as powerful as what Michael Jackson's persona did. We should study the trend to understand how to attempt to replicate it in our marketing lives.
Last night the mediums and the messages converged and exploded. What was your contribution or experience to the #michaeljackson effect?
LG has launched a fantastic promotional site. The new Smart Light monitor site offers you a front seat to in depth discovery while taking on a worthy cause. LG's technology works like an owls sight. Its predictive features are integrated into this well designed site.
When you play with the site's functionality and navigation you realize that the site holds the promise of the product incredibly natural ways.
The curios clue finder ties in a social media streams by taking in feeds from Flickr photo pools and YouTube content that allow the user to experience detailed discoveries. This functionality is perfectly designed as it does not attempt to "build community", which is a mistake that many brands make.
The design aggregates existing content and uses it to entertain and inform the user. In my opinion, this the way we should be looking at utilizing social media platforms and their functionality.
When you visit the showroom the site offers one of time most beautifully designed demonstrations of technology that I have seen in a long time. The Cinema mode is captivating. It made me want to trade in my Apple display for the Smart Light monitor.
What would a 2.0 site be with out a widget for bloggers? Now most of you know that I think that in the past year widgets have just been abused. A widget is there to facilitate the spread a good idea - it is not the idea. This one gives me a real reason for displaying it on my blog. If I can save one animal it was worth posting it.
The only criticisms I have of the site is that the writing could have been stronger by explaining the humanitarian reason for deeper engagement, the site and content is not coming up in search engines as well as it could have and in the widget section the drop down menu used to select your country is a bit over designed and hard to get to your country easily.
Who says your brand needs a big ol' web site? Evidently Skittles has realized that media everywhere applies to their brand.
The collapsible application allows you to scurry around the social networking pages and groups that skittles has set up.
This seems like a great way to organize your "earned" media. While this may be the future of the web for brands who are not transactional destinations - the execution has left out an important social component. Sharing. too bad that the app does not let you post it, embed it, or share a link to it.
Hurray for skittles! I think that this is a good way to redefine your brand by the conversations that people are having about you.
I love this...Help Trojan donate 1,000,000 condoms!
The site is loaded with great content. Evolve One, Evolve All has it all - widgets, celeb. interviews and an area that allows you to upload your video (or just go live from the web cam). The effort seems to generating all types of content for the brand.
Allstate and the U.S. Olympic Committee joined hands to create a site and program that could lead to an Olympic bid for the city of Chicago. The Allstate "Design a Chicago Playground Contest"
allowed participating children to submit their ideas on how to build a
virtual, U.S. Olympic-themed playground. The winning designs may also
"inspire" an actual park to be built in Chicago.
When you visit http://www.yourplayground.org, you will find an interface that lets kids and adults use a step-by-step tablet to create their own park. The site was
initially conceived as a contest where the top vote-getter
would have their design actually built within Jesse Owens Park on
Chicago's South Side. Winners won't be announced until March. You can view a gallery of entries for inspiration
and try their hand at building a playground all their own.
This is where I encountered a series of impressive stories of failure that lead to innovation. I found the campaign bold, a real change, as Honda opened themselves up to real learning inspired by consumers.
Hopefully the web developer will use The Power of Dreams to learn to properly compress and serve the video at full screen, as it kept my processor spinning. The poor handling of the video took away from my viewing experience.
Another area of Innovation was this mobility content.
Photos from the road, the day, the meetings and a few ironic random finds. Catch up with me on my adventures! This is a visual time line of my life ON: The Road.
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