Although it no longer has the surprise factor it had, as it’s been done many, many times since, its still probably the biggest and most prominant of these types of promotions. But what sort of ads does it produce? Nothing brilliant in my opinion – then again, few ads are these days. Mildly amusing in a slapdash humour way.

I think I like the grandmother and baby one best, closely followed by the dudes with their voice controlled phone, although i think that would be better without the clising scene. The rest, nothing really to shout home about.

To promote the launch of their mobile broadband in the Netherlands, they’ve conceived a race between the dongle download speed and Lewis Hamilton in a F1 car (from 2 years ago). they’re looking for 28,800 people to join in and connect with the Vodafone vs Hamilton Facebook app. At an average of 10kb per profile picture, they’ll attempt to download all of the images quicker than the car can race 2.7km. Now obviously, the distances and numbers have been calculated so that I’m pretty sure the download will win, but it’s certainly a great idea to promote the speed of the new service.

They have a cool visualisation of all the profile pics, with a 3D rotating car made up of the pictures and it’s incentivised, at least for Dutch members, with prizes of computer and free Mobile broadband service. (Although personally, I think I’d rather attend the race!)

• It’s a great idea perfectly expressing speed and leveraging the sponsorship
• Although it’s a Dutch promotion, it’s open to anyone to contribute to the race, so having a wider branding reach than just the new product launch. Vodafone have mobile broadband in many countries, so it works just as well for them
• There’s a risk if they don’t reach the numbers required. As of now, they have 4.7k participants, only 16% of the required and it’s 11 days to go. I’m sure they’re promoting through social ads and in-market collateral, as well as the auto-posts to Facebook Wall. The latter is a minor annoyance, as they are posting without informing specifically what they will say

Updated 13 Sept

I watched this today. or at least tried to. Here’s what happened:

• The McLaren twitter feed, @thefifthdriver was giving news about the race happening before it was due to start on Facebook.
• When it eventually started, we were subjected to 25 mins of images of Hamilton sitting in his car, with a commentary bascially telling us that we were waiting for clearances etc (I think, My Dutch isn’t brilliant).
• There was a very quick sequence of the car racing the digital version, before switching back to the ‘live’ feed.
• The Facebook app then stopped broadcasting and declared the results. Facebook 0, Hamilton 2, although with copy that states that Facebook won. (result later changed to 1-2) and the copy changed to reflect the result that Hamilton won

So, great idea, badly executed with the stream. I’ve no idea what happened. I’ll get the edited highlights later, but it was supposed to be live!

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One of the sponsors this year, is Actimel, one of the ‘pro-biotic’ drinking yoghurt with lots of live bacteria, and they’ve been busy setting up Twitter and Facebook profiles promoting the cycle ride.

Twitter

It’s a fairly new account at ActimelUK and the main focus is a contest, where you can win a trip to Paris the weekend of the ride, where I’m guessing you’ll get to see the final part of the ride. You just have to follow them and tweet to them about what your morning would not be complete without, (coffee, it has to be coffee) to be entered into the random draw. The account is chatty, responding to entries and comments whilst slowly following people to get the word out.

Facebook

You can also enter the contest via their Actimel Facebook page. On their the conversation is a lot more product focused than the Twitter feed, although it seems to have a change of policy or writer recently as the earlier posts were more random.

This seems like early steps into social media marketing for the brand and so far they’re heading in the right direction, taking it easy, not doign follow spam and trying to find their voice. It’s not an easy product to work out how to use social media, as how many people really want to talk about a yoghurt drink, but by focusing on the associated benefits and a great sponsorship, they’re on the right track

As well as the contest, if you already have tickets, you can take advantage of their GlastoNav an augmented reality app, which will display events and locations on the site. It’s definitely available for the iPhone and probably for other smartphones, but they’ve not yet confirmed listings. They’re providing charging stations on site as well.

So it’s a mixture of a digital contest, mobile app and on-site experiential offering, there’s going to be a blog at some point; there’s no facebook page except for the ‘Like’ button. There’s also no mobile version of the site, nor embeddable widget, so it’s been slimmed down a lot since last year. Another area that’s been changed is the promotion. Last year, personal email, this year, an impersonal press release from M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment. Still a good contest, it just feels a lot less friendly and quirky than last year, the brand putting up shutters.

Update: I’ve received an email from the team apologising for the lack of contact; they’re working their way through emails at the moment and not got to me yet. Having had to do this in the past, I can understand the time taken to do a good job with outreach. So, they are being personal still which is great, far better to do this than stick with press release language.

I’m loving this video. Not only is it a great speech, you get the fun of trying to spot who all the sports stars are. From Carlsberg, they’ve been running a contest to get your inspirational talks over at England Team Talk on You Tube for their World Cup promotion. Submit your inspiration and passionate 30 second talk before 30 June and you can win a crate of Carlsberg, which they promise to deliver before all the football is over. This is the second part of the contest; the first round of submission had the prize of a day at Wembley to meet players and deliver your talk in person.

The Viral Factory have produced a video are helping to promote this contest,; it’s definitely a unique video, mildly amusing I’m guessing mainly men were involved in the creative process, as it definitely seems to be focused on a particular male challenge. The video was produced by 1861United,Italy.

It’s shown on the front of the site as well. However, I really wish they wouldn’t do this – calling something viral when it’s not really racked up the views (around 4k at the moment) is a little flase advertising.

Orange are again doing their Spot the Bull competition, giving away tickets to Glastonbury if you can predict where a bull will be in a field at a certain time of day. I played this last year and it was good fun; it got launched yesterday, starting off with an email, I’m guessing to all of last year’s participants. Later on, I got a lot more information about the competition from Poke.

• They’re using a new bull this year, called Desmond, a 5 year-old Charolais Apparently last year’s bull was a little quiet, they’re hoping for more action this year.
• In another change, they’ve adjusted the tech they’re using. Instead of a complicated set up using GPS and satellites to follow the bull action, they’ve got people in the ground, posting the position every 5 minutes and getting great pictures using a mini-dv camera. In a further extension, they’re also tweeting throughout at spotthebull
• They’ve gone mobile this year; go to the same URL on your phone’s web browser and get a sweet mobile version of the site. You can play direct from your phone or SMS your chosen square. There’s also a html version
• Return visits are encouraged. Statistical information is being built up around where the bull will be over the day, plus the tweets will let you know what Desmond’s favourite places are. You can start to predict the bull’s behaviour. Another tip is to play at weekends, which were quieter last year so you have a higher chance.
• There’s an embeddable widget, which brings all the bull action to your blog or profile.

What I think

It’s a successful mechanic for a competition, that obviously worked well last year, enough for them to bring it back. What I’m most impressed about is how ‘solid’ the campaign is, with all the elements connected. There’s a html version, a very nice mobile version, a chance to connect with SMS, the sharable elements. They’ve connected all the dots from a digital perspective. My biggest issue is with the flash version, which is heavy, takes a while to load and slows down the browser. It’s very, very good, but just a little too much of it. All in all, I love this campaign/

As a blogger, they connected with me well, a polite first enquiry about writing about it, then a whole load of imformation that is just lovely. It was done by the Poke team, so thanks to Dylan for the info.

Let’s see what’s wrong with this.

• The only contact I recall having with Samsung is when I registered by new TV. Although I ticked the ‘send me news’ box, the sending of a a football based email suggests to me their segmentation is not brilliant. (I could be wrong about this; I;ve written about Samsung a few times before so I may have given them my email for a different sign up)
• The email asks me to ‘click here to enter’. I do and get taken to the generic welcome page for their fan section ‘The Terraces’, with an autoplay video. Where’s the competition? If you want me to click through, take me where I think I’m going.
• Click on the most obvious video and I get a 30second promo (I guess by some footballer) talking about uploading images. But where?
• Eventually work out that at the bottom of the page is a series of images and a form to submit my own. But the calls to action, the call to upload images, the sell about the prize, the reasons why I may want to do this are all missing. I landed on this page and had no idea what I was supposed to do. Putting the briefest of messages in a video puts a barrier up. Maybe I have no sound, nor the time to watch it. Having the call to action in text is always a better option than video alone.

Don;t get me wrong, I think this is a good competition and prize for someone who loves football and Chelsea, but I just think it’s missing a lot in the consumer journey from email to site that would not take too much to fix the next time.

Today is the day to ‘celebrate’ Earth Hour, or rather mark it. The World Wide Fund for Nature promotes this day as one ” for people to unite and make a bold statement to show they are concerned about climate change and convincing the world’s leaders that it is possible to take positive action”.

As 8.30pm rolls across the globe, there’s a call for lights out, in your home and in the streets. It’s the lead trend in Twitter, starting off in Australia with many talking about what they have turned off and through the day. Flickr is another great source of information, with images being added throughout the day.

Image used under CC from Earth Hour Global

The WWF are doing a brilliant job of marketing this, getting well known landmarks to turn off their lights, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Eiffel Tower and the London Eye. Individually we’re all asked to turn off our own lights. It’s all about getting people thinking about it – it’s easier to do one gesture of turning the lights off for an hour than to not put the TV on standbye, but over time, these behaviours will start to become the norm. They’ve got advertising, national press and blogger outreach, all to raise the awareness. They’ve even got Google, which is one of the most visited web pages to put a link onto the home page,. something they rarely do, linking through to a page of useful resources, including this one about efficient computing

So what are you doing this evening? Turning your lights off, turning all the electrical items off and just relying on candlelight? You can even turn off my site if you want…just pull the light switch up in that top right corner

Clients: Get thousands of minds thinking about your brief and only pay for what you use.
Creatives: Get paid for your best ideas with no long term commitment from you.

So brands are basically crowd-sourcing the creative process and probably paying a reduced amount of money then employing an agency. I’m ambivalent about the concept, I can see that for a brand it is a great way to get a huge variety of new ideas and for creatives it means they may be able to work on brands they normally would not because they don’t have the brief. Subverting the agency process can be a good idea, I’d be curious to see if the brand think they miss something or if this a sustainable process. You don’t actually have to produce any materials for the entries to the brioef, it’s just the idea that they are after.

The last bounty was for Levi’s who paid a grand total of $3000 for the idea, which is pretty cheap but fromt he brand but may be more than the creative would normally get, so it can be a win-win for both parties.

The current brief is for Red Bull, which I think is a pretty exciting brand to work on. For a bounty of $5000 you get this challenge:

Red Bull has been available for 21 years in several countries and has always remained the number 1 Energy Drink since its launch. Drinking Red Bull in your favourite club, bar or restaurant symbolises fun, activity, open–mindedness, and an eagerness to meet people. We want you to develop a concept for a new Red Bull drinking ritual that captures all these values.

I’m guessing they want to move away from the vodka-Reb Bull tag and introduce something different.

They’re also announcing the winner of the last brief, which was for BMW cars. Gary Willmott, of creative production company Urbian, won $3,000 for his idea to answer this brief:

BMW – asked for ideas to create a branded BMW activation and mechanic that would entice potential new drivers to opt in for future BMW communication

I’d tell you more, but the press release (which is embargoed until now) has little information on what was actually presented and lots of puff about the concept!

What I think

As a pitch, it was a little short on social media aspects, I got a press release which was short on details and a link to the site. As an idea, I liked it; I’d not seen it before but I can see the advantages for both parties. The proof is in the development and I’d love to see how the previous winning ideas have been executed.