Digital Connections

A Bing Ice Cream Van?

I'm not sure if I get this, or maybe there is nothing to get...

 

Earlier today I spotted a Bing "Ice Cream Van" at Cardinal Place, Victoria in London.

So there is a Microsoft Bing Ice Cream van driving around London and the M4 corridor giving away Ice Cream lollies? Quite why is beyond me, but then again it did make me visit Bing.com for possibly the first time in months.

If you want to find out more then here is a map of locations to be visited with a sort of explanation here. 

A bit "random" if you ask me.

Heineken Italy: Sponsorship Activation for AC Milan vs. Real Madrid Champions League

A very nice peice of sponsorship activation by Heineken around their Champions League Sponsorship, albeit a few months old.

However, its probably not too well known in the English market.

Last October Real Madrid and AC Milan met at the Bernabeu in The Champions League group phase.

In Milan, Heineken convinced several university professors, girlfriends, and several bosses to instruct their football mad students, boyfriends and employees to go to a classical concert on that night - which they simply had to attend.

All of them couldnt say no and had to go to the classical concert rather than watch the match on TV.

The resulting campaign is a ballsy but excellently executed piece of sports sponsorship activation.

I'm unsure of the agency, but AC Milan won the match 3-2.

T-Mobile: Sing (Life's for Sharing @ Trafalgar Square)

As a cycling fan, I've previously associated T-Mobile (Team Telekom) and Deutsche Telekom with their pink flouro "wind assisted" cycling team.

The hideous pink flouro remains, but instead of the cycling - I'll now think Pink and Life’s for Sharing. The discredited cycling team having been firmly replaced by T-Mobile's collaborative advertising campaign.

Back in January, I blogged about T-Mobile's flash mob at Liverpool street station and this week I felt obliged to follow its second stage at Trafalgar Square.

On Monday 27th April, T-Mobile posted a video on YouTube summoning people to Trafalgar Square at 6pm on Thursday 30th. Twitter, flyers and e-mails harnessing the power of the internet and ensuring that within hours the message was viral, spreading almost as fast as the UK's panic about #swineflu.

Using techniques made famous by Bill Wasik's pioneering flash mobs, T-Mobile took the flash mob concept one stage further, and hosted their own "flash event", a mass karaoke singalong.

Thousands gathered at Trafalgar Square (#Trafalgar) as T-Mobile filmed part two of the 'Life's For Sharing' ad campaign. Created and co-ordinated by Saatchi & Saatchi, participants were armed with toy microphones, energised by Vernon Kaye, assisted by a sound system and enhanced by Pink. T-Mobile hosted an amazing giant karaoke - right in the heart of London.

[Full set of pictures here]

The demands of recruiting and filming a TV ad made it difficult to retain the charm and edginess of an original flash mob; however Saatchi’s & T-Mobile imitated & amplified the original technique and collaborative effect on a grand televised scale.

The public's desire to appear on the small screen remains powerful as ever, despite the ease at which anybody can appear on YouTube. Bloggers like Nick have kept the idea going, as have the traditional media whilst Saatchi's production department get down to work to deliver an ad within 48 hours.

Massive hat tip to Saatchi & Saatchi, it’s a great campaign, and the organisation was brilliant.... all with minimal presence from London’s boys in blue.

Watch the ad this Saturday, May 2nd at  9.02pm during ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent!

Playlist:

The Beatles: Hey Jude

Peter Kaye: Is this the way to Amarillo?

Brittany Spears: Baby, hit me one more time

Grease: Summer nights

Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the heart

The Foundations' "Build Me up Buttercup"

Erma Franklin: Piece of my Heart.

Pink: So What

 

Photo: PA

T-Mobile at Trafalgar Square (Thurs 30th April at 6pm)

Interesting to hear that T-Mobile are filming another flash mob tomorrow night, this time at Trafalgar Square. I blogged about the first T-mobile "life's for sharing" flash mob back in January.

The Trafalgar Square event is currently being Tweeted about here or here (if the #Trafalgar hash tag takes off) 

After their previous success, I'm curious to see how T-Mobile and Saatchi & Saatchi will handle the larger crowd numbers and expectation that the word of mouth (partially aided by all those extra twitter users) will no doubt generate.

Lindt: Gold Bunny Eggsperiential Campaign @ Westfield

As I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I'm not an advocate of the UK's so called experiential marketing industry.

The industry attempts to convince clients that "brand ambassadors" are engaging target consumers in a positive "brand experience" whilst communicating brand and product benefits. 

Absolute rubbish .. this is akin to calling a window cleaner a "vision technician".

What really happens is that a few out of pocket students are rounded up, asked to remove their earrings & cover their tattoos with a cheap uniform and instructed to hand out leaflets/samples to anybody they can find.

That's after brand ambassadors/students and event managers have "taxed" the brand of any valuable product.... anything remaining is either thrown away or dumped in a warehouse.

All of this is overcharged, ROI is rarely measured or calculated and clients would do far better putting their budgets into digital, direct or traditional advertising.

Unless the client can pull this off......

 

This Easter weekend, Lindt hosted the "Gold Bunny World" at The Westfield Shopping Centre and it was absolutely brilliant - one of the best brand experiences, in a shopping centre, that I've ever witnessed.

Situated in the atrium, outside the Nike and Apple stores, it featured a maze created from real hedgerow, stilt walkers, a pop up shop selling gold wrapped chocolate rabbits (with £1 from every sale going to GOSH), and colouring in activities and other events for children - not to mention the giant gold bunny.

If the agency that pulled this off want to give me a wave and drop me an email, then I'm more than happy to credit them for what is an excellent piece of work.

[Photo Credit: Henry Bloomfield @Flickr]

Innovative Flash Mob Based Campaign by T-Mobile

Generally I'm not a fan of flash mobs - usually a bit gimmicky due to lack of a decent creative idea, but this one from T-Mobile (Saatchi & S) really does stand out as a very good and part of a larger integrated campaign.

“Life is for Sharing” has been T-Mobile’s strapline since June 08, based on a couple of key insights into our “digital generation” - relationships and collaboration.

Sadly T-Mobile haven’t made much impact with the “Life’s for Sharing” campaign, unlike O2‘s “We’re better, connected”. I’m not sure of the actual figures but it appears that T-Mobile are lagging well behind O2, Vodafone, 3, and Orange when it comes to building their UK brands.

The new campaign has all the right ingredients for T-Mobile to kick on further, hopefully Saatchi & Saatchi’s efforts won’t be in vain.

The three-minute flash mob ad premiered during an entire ad break during Channel 4’s 'Celebrity Big Brother' on Friday night, less than 48 hours after filming. It was subsequently posted on a tailored YouTube site.

What makes the campaign so good?

It ticks four of the boxes that brands need to adopt when targeting the “digital generation” (under 30’s basically) namely collaboration, entertainment, speed and innovation.

Collaboration is at the heart of web 2.0. The “digital generation“ are natural collaborators developing relationships and sharing information and their experiences. The T-Mobile ad is already being discussed amongst bloggers and on websites. There’s a customised YouTube channel all set up and ready for video sharing, an aspect of the campaign expected to accompany the 30 second edits. Not to mention the commuters at Liverpool Street who were recording live images, mms’ing, txt’ing and calling mates about what they were witnessing.

Liverpool Street station, traditionally a transport hub for London’s commuters was for 3 minutes turned into a 350 person dance studio. The entire event was subsequently turned into a 3 minute ad break during Celebrity Big Brother. To quote Paul Weller, “That’s entertainment”.

Live event to TV ad in 48 hours, speedy turnaround times from Saatchi’s production department, and exactly what the “digital generation” expects.

A stand alone flash mob isn’t innovative by any stretch of the imagination, but this is an innovative integrated on and offline campaign. The dance routine, the execution, the turnaround time, the understanding of the ”digital” target audience and the strategic planning … that’s what makes this T-Mobile campaign so innovative.

Time will tell whether this T-Mobile is a true success, who knows maybe Saatchi’s can finally drag T-Mobile out of the “mobile doldrums”.