Digital Stuffing

The Tube has had a lot of these ads in the last few weeks, in both the big version shown here and the smaller, on-train version. There’s also been TV advertising this weekend, to promote their Christmas appeal in support of Save the Children which starts today..

On The Times site, there’s just a small promo on the front page through to the main appeal section. When you hit this page, I’m quite disappointed. At first glance, there’s no ready explanation and no call to action – this is all to raise money and I have to search for a way to do that.

The Times Christmas Appeal (screenshot from site)

Compare this to what I see in the browser when I go to the Save the Children page, which is a lot more direct in its call to donate..

Save the Children (screenshot from site)

So what else does this digital campaign offer us:

• Articles about the conditions in Kingsville, the town at the centre of the appeal, and about Davina McCall’s trip there
• A interactive map, with videos and lots of information, combined with lots of video of Davina in the village.
• An overview of what they are doing
• A general message board to discuss the campaign
• Biographies and updates from the people in the village and ways for you to leave a message for them and receive a reply

It’s all about letting us get to know these people, understand them and empathise them, to raise money in a time where western donors feel the need to save. They’re only asking for a pound though, just a small amount from every Times reader – as the first poster to the message board says:

Credit crunch? this really puts things in perspective.. Let’s hope the children of kingsville get the chance to survive and prosper

I mostly like this campaign, the online and offline interconnectedness, with regular stories in the paper to keep the idea front of mind backed up with information on the site and a way to interact. A good charity digital appeal, nothing too exciting, but solid.

You may have caught Vodafone Live Guy over the last few weeks, doing his tour of the country giving away some Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbooks with built in mobile broadband. I’ve been following his progress over the last 2 weeks, trying to guess where he is and occasionally getting it right, I just never managed to get out and chase him round and was never lucky with the online chase (too many meetings to play in time)

If you missed him too, here’s chance to get your hands on the new netbook. Through the nice people at Outside Line and Vodafone, I’ve got one of the Dells to give away.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (used with permission from Outside Line/Vodafone)

The Contest: Using the built-in mobile broadband or the wifi, you can use the netbook all over the place, without having to lug a big laptop around or remember your dongle. So, tell me the most unusual place you’d want to use your Inspiron Mini 9 if you won it – and why. The winner will be judged on originality and wit.

How to enter: Tell me the most unusual place you plan to use your netbook and why, in the comments below – you can add your entry there or add a link to your blog post, video or comic strip, whatever medium you want to use. Please note that comments are moderated, so there’s a good chance you won’t see your comment immediately and depending on how far away from a computer it may be a while. If you get concerned, email me!

Entries close: 12 noon GMT on Friday 5 December 2008

Judges: as this is a subjective contest, I’ve got some judges to help me. Ewan Spence is the first, the Eurovision-loving, mobile-geek-blogging, kilt-wearing Scotsman. Second is Lex De Wynter, a colleague who knows a completely different set of people.

Judging Criteria: As I said before, the key criteria are originality and wit. Make us smile, make us marvel, either from your choice of location or your presentation. The winner will be the one that all 3 judges agree is our favourite.

The Prize: A Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook, running Windows XP, with built-in mobile broadband. The computer will come with 3 months pre-paid connection with Vodafone, after which you will have the opportunity to extend; if not, you’ve still got the wifi-enabled computer. (a normal contract is 24 months starting at 25GBP)

The Rules

There has to be rules.

• Contest is open to UK residents only. It will be only be shipped to the UK and the service is UK based.
• Judges decision is final.
• Digital Stuffing (ie me) is not responsible for any issues with service or the device. Your ‘contract’ will be with Vodafone.
• The prize will be sent to you direct by Outsideline/Vodafone – I’ll never see it. If there are any issues with delivery, I’ll let you know.
• The prize winner will be announced here on Sunday 7th December 2008
• No purchase required
• You must have a valid email address so you are contactable to get details if you win. Enter your email address in the comment field – the only one who sees it is me.

The BBC started a new series this Sunday, heavily promoted. Survivors, a re-make of the 70′s series, follows the story of a group of people who were not killed by a mysterious virus that appears to have wiped out almost everyone. There was a lot of Twitter chat about the episode, especially with people wondering about what they would do in the circumstances – I wrote about what I would do if a survivor on the other blog. To go with such a high profile series, the BBC have launched their traditional complementary website with an added ‘interactive experience’.

The main site is pretty basic. It has episode listings, character (and actor) bios and clips. The main focus of creativity has obviously gone on the game/interactive element.

Survivors - screenshot from site

The quality of the application is really nice, superb images, flash that flows extremely well, everything feeling really shiny. But once you get beyond the surface, the cracks begin to show. In effect, you have 2 main components. The first is a ‘which character am I’. These are very common, going round and round the blogs, multi-choice quizzes to inform you which superhero or character from your favourite show you are. Here they’ve glossed it up, in a cool flash interface, with sound clips and great images but at it’s heart it’s still that multi-choice quiz. Unfortunately, it’s a quiz with a dodgy algorithm as this morning, everyone in the UK was Abby. Not sure if that’s what they expected, especially as my completely non-scientific review of tweets makes me think she’s one of the least sympathetic characters. I always though the idea of these quizzes was to get some difference!

Survivors Map (screenshot from site)

The other part of the experience is the commenting – as you answer the questions, you get asked why you think that and invited to place a comment. They’re then mapped up, so you can see an sampling as you explore. But there’s nothing else there, there’s no way to connect with other people, to explore the option. This could have been a far richer source of commentary; I think they missed out an opportunity for people to think about what they would do and explore options. Everyone thinks they’d survive, even if very few do. We’re overdue a pandemic anyway and knowing what could happen is useful or even just exploring behaviour in a more localised disaster. The Red Cross do this well, I’ve even seen the BBC do it well in their interactive piece for Spooks Code 9.

Overall I’m disappointed with this; first impressions were great and then I was left wanting more, so much more. I’m guessing this was commissioned late in the development, especially as it was not ready for the Sunday first episode, as it’s very superficial, put on top of the show and not part of it from the beginning. I think there could have been more value in the supporting online experience if they’d gone more basic – forego the flash and spend the money on a debate and moderation!

A few weeks ago, at Playful, Roo Reynolds demonstrate how to turn his plastic guitar into a real guitar, or at least an instrument you can play your own music on instead of just following the onscreen cues.

Roo Reyolds plays “Hotel California” from Tom Armitage on Vimeo.

The Idea

The popularity of the games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero may be leading to an increase in sales for the real instruments, a situation the Guitar Centre is trying to capitalise on. They’ve pulled together a nice site where you can personalise a video e-card, by uploading your face or just adding your name, to let your nearest and dearest know that all you want for Christmas is a Real Guitar.

A real Guitar (screenshot from site)

You have 4 videos to choose from, from a cheesy song through to a lovely arty one, so go ahead and decide which one suits you.

What I think

I like the site design, I like the choice of options and I like the very, very cheesy song. It’s topical and works well in the current craze for music games, it has a single purpose and keeps to that. I was a little disappointed that there were not many easter eggs on the site, as the design is perfect for that, but the one that is there at least gives you 10% off your guitar.

The Pitch

A great pitch to the right email with the right sort of information from Cohn&Wolfe (someone I don’t think I’ve heard from before). This was not a full social media Press Release, but a short note that pointed me inthe right direction. I liked the fact that they also pointed me to a similar site as a way to extend the story, more tips for me to follow. The site was Elf Yourself, the subject of a post I’ve not finished yet!

The top rated product video is absolutely brilliant. It’s Guitar Hero in the real world. Using a bike and lots of marks on the road, the game is recreated with superb timing and lots of practice. The video has been generating a lot of discussion this week about whether it is real or not and the conclusion seems to be yes, it was all laid out on the road and timed to perfection. It’s all to support the release of Guitar Hero World Tour.

Close behind in the rankings is this World of Warcraft promotion from Ozzy Osbourne, trading on his name as the Prince of Darkness.

You Tube launched it’s ‘Live’ programme on Saturday night and this promo from the Will it Blend got watched a lot in the lead up. The team were appearing live to blend something or other

In a strange moment on serendipity, this commercial (or at least a shortened version) was on the telly as I got to it in the rankings. It’s for the game Singing Lips, on multiple platforms

So there we have it, a week dominated by games, just in time for Christmas.

The Idea

TGI Fridays are busy promoting their new loyalty card, Give Me More Stripes. Sign up for the card and you’ll earn points for all money spent, that can be redeemed later for food. When you first sign up, you get given a desert voucher and a ‘skip to the front of the line’ offer. They’re also going to extend the offer over time to things like tastings.

As part of the promotion, they’ve built a widget - Get Striped - where you load up your photo and add the TGI stripes for it.

What I think

It did not start well, with the Stripe card home page having a really annoying carousel feature with bad UI. Click on an arrow to make it go around, I’d expect it to move the next one, but no, it just carries on without any indication of what I’m looking at.

TGI Friday Card Carousel (Screenshot from Site)

One question about the programme itself - you earn points and the SEND YOU A VOUCHER??? What? Why not an SMS, why not directly from the card. Why stick to a paper version when there are far easier ways to manage this?

There's a strange disconnect between the programme on the main TGI site and the promotion, there's no link between them. If I go to the Get Striped page, I land on the widget and then have access to all the other bits around the card, although once I switch away, there's no link back. If I go to the card page, there's no links to the widget. It looks like there are 2 completely different flash files; there's been no overview of site navigation so it all works together.

The same lack of UI appears on the widget itself. You can choose a face shape (all of which look male), then choose to add the facial features or upload your own image. Anyone know where the upload button is on the widget below?

TGI Friday Stripe widget (screenshot from site)

When you click on one of the face 'parts' it gives you the option to upload your image...then you have to go through all the sections and add your own back to it. This is where I got stuck - the idea of the widget is to make up a face out of different stripes, different bits of faces. I was just looking to upload my own face and do something with it. I went back to read the instructions and it did not make it any clearer. But, eventually got it - can you guess which bit is me?

TGI Friday Get Striped (screenshot from site)

You could have a lot of fun with this, especially if you have headshots of your friends, you can mix and match them, do some great guessing games. But it just seems too hard, the benefits are not clear and the 'what do I do' barrier a little too steep. A good idea for a good product, let down by parts of the execution.

The Pitch

The pitch was good - short, friendly and to the point. It's an agency I had received stuff from before (AttentionUSA), but instead of just being stuck on a list, they'd actually re-visited the site and knew I was blogging in a new venue. This is far better than many of the emails I've received this month, so full marks to them