Digital Stuffing

I like what we did here. I’d have loved to have played games whilst out at sea, but couldn’t get on the shoot

After a launch earlier in the year that fell down at the last minute, Quest TV have regathered themselves and are trying again tomorrow, as part of the re-launch and re-tune of the Freeview channels/

They’ve sent me a few key facts for your enjoyment.

• Quest is a new entertainment channel launching on 30th September on Freeview
• Quest is on Freeview Channel 38
• The channel will transmit daily from 10am – midnight
• The programming will be a mix of quality drama, outdoor adventure series, documentary series and user-generated video clip shows

As part of the outreach programme, it looks like they have connected back with the bloggers who went to the first launch and offered them some more information, such as this promo for Rescue Me, a fun US drama created by and starring Denis Leary. Hope you enjoy it this time round

Click To Play

Deep Focus, definitely one of the more interesting agencies around, bring us their latest web tool Mad Men Yourself. Nothing groundbreaking, it’s a ‘create your avatar’ app, with lots of options to choose from to create an image of the 60′s.

Mad Men Yourself selector (screenshot from site)

The whole thing is nicely done, with plenty of choices and some lovely touches throughout. One of my favourites is the use of the slide carousel to choose your scene, associated with one of my favourites scenes from the first series. There are a few niggles, with some of the choices being too small to see properly although the biggest one for me was about lack of payoff at the end – where do I go to see more about the series. It’s there, but not called out. (the new one starts 16th Aug in the US)

Madmen scene selector (screenshot from site)

At the end of the process, you get the option to download 3 versions, one for your twitter or other small avatars, one perfectly sized for your phone and the other for the computer. I’m expecting to spot a few of them around the web over the next few days.

Madmen Yourself (download from app)

I’ve finally caught up with the Prototype Experience, a promo for a new console game that has been exciting so many marketers on the blogs. It looks like a great game, one I’ll end up buying (and as usual playing really, really, badly) so it worked for me as a enticement to purchase.

But I was sold on the gameplay description and the trailers, not the actual experiential elements. They’re a little less successful in my case, but I’ve seen they are definitely catching the eye of many.

The experience is a variation on uploading your photos and appearing as part of the trailer/video. The difference here is that you don”t choose which photos to upload but that it grabs them from Facebook. To take part, you have to link your Facebook profile to the game page, using Facebook Connect, a variation on OAuth where you don’t have to give out your password to anyone.

Prototype Login (screenshot from site)

It then runs a trailer for the game, pulling your photos in from the service and interspersing them throughout the action. they also include all your details, the personal information. As I only have 1 image on Facebook, I thought they wouldn’t have much luck but what it does it goes and trawls your connection and brings in their photos as well. You can’t share the video or embed it anywhere as far as I can see, so I think they’re mainly avoiding the copyright and privacy issues that this ‘borrowing’ of images and use of personal details entails, but I was surprised that the system would do this.

After watching the personalised trailer, you get to answer some questions to win a game copy and an XBox360 and then you’re then asked to spread the word, using your choice of network – Facebook or Twitter. This seems to be a requirement of the competition entry, but as I can’t see any terms and conditions, I’m not sure

Prototype Spreadability (screenshot from site)

This is the second campaign I’ve seen this week that has built in the ability to autopost to your status stream, so it’s looking like it’s this quarter’s hot trend. It’s a savvy call to action, although if too many in your network do it, I can see it not quite having the desired impact. Making it compulsary is problematic; the experience should be good enough to get people to want to share it, not making them do it because you don’t trust your stuff is good enough for sharing.

Elsewhere on the site, you can get a story overivew, see some trailers and get some great artworks to download. Most importantly, you can pre-order, but only from specific retailers (Smartoys which is French, fnac, Game Mania, both Belgium.Dutch). So despite being able to see the site in English and it being big in English blogs, you can’t actually by in the UK. The site has been done in Belgium by Sponge and 1MD, so it looks like it is for that market only, although there’s no indication until you’re deep into that it does not apply to you, but again, no T&Cs so I’m not sure if I can enter or not.

Prototype Scene (screenshot from site)

I like poetry, or at least some poetry. I prefer short stuff, nothing too difficult; I dip in and out of the various anthologies I have, working through my favourites. At the moment, I’m loving the promos the BBC are running for their Poetry season. They continue the tradition of bring poetry to all, mainstream focused and just good fun. As well as the TV proms, they’ve also put together some specific web one.

First, we have Jerusalem by William Blake, turned into the strange quotes from a footballer. Although I’m not sure you’d have all these people watching a press conference, the strangeness definitely fits.

We’ve also got The King Blues, quoting Byron, a moment of stillness and contemplation in the midst of a rock gig. (you can also find the video on their MySpace)

As well as the two above, the BBC YouTube channel has a whole bunch of interviews with various celebrities, talking about how poetry has influenced them.

On the BBC site, you can vote for your favourite poet (my vote went to Yeats), find out about the many programmes they are doing on the subject or the live events. According to the email I received, there’s also supposed to be a widget I can embed, but that seems to have failed to arrive at the moment.

What I think

The email pitch was nicely done, polite, all the information required, from someone I’d previously met. Definitely not a mass emailing there. The videos are lovely, then again it’s the BBC, so you’d expect that.

The site itself acts as a hub to all the other content that is being offered, an information hub. At the moment, the only interactivity is the voting. I’ll take a look at the promised widget when it arrives. A solid site, nothing spectacular, but supporting the season well.

Here’s yet another ‘flashmob dancing’ video, this time from the Centraal Station in Antwerp, in what looks like an ad for a TV show to find a Maria (I’m guessing for the stage musical, similar to what happened in the UK).

Yes, it’s another one, they’re becoming unoriginal, but for some reason, I still like them, as do many of the commenters on the video People get surprised and have some fun watching them, even when it seems that almost all the people in the place are there for the dancing – the cameras seemed to have to look hard for spectators in this one.

However, where’s the follow up, where’s the website. I’m not sure this asset is working as hard as it could be to let people know what it is for and when the TV show is without some online content to support it.

I’m getting mildly excited about the new Watchmen film, enough so that I’m contemplating buying the book to see what all the fuss is about, why everyone praises it. Which is a pretty interesting choice for me as I never find graphic novels that interesting as an input device. As befits a genre movie, they have a lot of online activity going on, much of it over at The New Frontiersman, a great source of images, films and text in the alternate world of the Watchmen. Many of the assets are available on other channels as well, such as YouTube, the New Frontiersman photostream at Flickr, the Twitter account and the Friendfeed account.

So you won’t miss anything, they’ve also got this cool embed TV player, that will bring you the latest from the ‘verse.

Another lovely little piece of content is the ‘widget’, which brings you the more ‘official’ stuff instead the extended reality content

What do I think

You couldn’t do a film like this without all of the extra stuff, given the target audience. However, I think what has been done is very good and is garnering a lot of online excitement as the quality is excellent. It’s not an add on as so many are, but fundamental to the story. As Adam from Rubber Republic says in his email to me:

…this really shows how online platforms shouldn’t merely promote a film but actually be a crucial of part of the narrative, extending and respecting the graphic novel’s rich backstory, offering the online audience added layers, access to the source materials and dimensions there are in the original ‘Watchmen’ masterpiece.

Exactly what should be done with this type of the campaign, something that is so often forgotten or just ignored. The web should not just be used to push the content that will end up on the screen but to add to it and be a piece of entertainment/storytelling in its own right.

I get a news article about Top Gear through RSS today from NMA, probably derived form a press release from somewhere. I quite like Top Gear, so I thought I’d take a look.

Top Gear has launched an online viral campaign to promote the recently relaunched TopGear.com.

1. Don’t call it a viral campaign. You can’t plan for anything like that, you can put all the pieces in place and it can still flop- you can say later that something spread in the manner of a viral infection. And why would you want to start an bad infection of something. Yes, it’s a common complaint of mine, but I like to bring it up occasionally. At least they’re not calling it a successful viral campaign, which I’ve seen in some press releases.

2. Why does the NMA online never add links? I’ve put my own in there.

The films, seeded on the Top Gear YouTube channel and on Facebook groups for Top Gear and Stig,

3. Where is it? Where’s the campaign? There’s a news story out and I see nothing on the sites which seem to be the videos mentioned. The BBC have over 100 videos on the Top Gear channel, but nothing as described. I’m assuming the Facebook fan page is the correct one, although the fact that it links to a YouTube video that has been taken down by BBC WorldWide makes me question that, but there is nothing to suggest another group is more official.

If you’re going to chase press for a digital campaign, it really should be working before you talk about it.

Lego Miniman is 30 years old this year and they have a site and video celebrating the fact. As seems to be rage a tthe moment, you can paste your face into the video and them embed them into your site. Well, I’d embed it but the video has an annoying autoplay, so if you want to take a look at my personalised video, take a look here

The Go Mini Man Go site is at heart a blog and they’re regularly updating it with lots of Lego news. I quite like the timeline as well, where you can see 100′s of Mini Men

Lego MiniMan (Screenshot from site)

Breathing Places is a BBC programme ( I assume aimed at children) that focuses on wildlife and the environment and what you can do to understand them and help them. As part of the Christmas drive it’s produced this very surreal, creepy video. I say creepy, because that’s how i find it. I was spending too much time on the weird mouths than the actual message of the video. But I’m guessing not everyone thinks that as it’s doing a pretty good view rate on YouTube.