Digital Stuffing

There’s a few product videos last week. Highest ranking was this from adidas, with David Beckham and Kevin Garnett playing footbasketball

TurboTax has Tay Zonday, of Chocolate Rain fame, pimping out the brand’s Super Status competition as well as his latest song

Nordstrom, a new name to me for online videos, have this one about boyfriend jeans. This video is not your usual type to be highly viewed, so I’m guessing there was an ad buy to promote it.

The Blackberry Bullet is the hero of this ad, taking on Apple, or rather an apple. This is a repost, not from the original brand

Samsung have gone big with the cute animals with this video for the S8300 Ultratouch phone. I think my favourites are the bunny workout and the chick dancefloor. Oh, and the evil hdgehog. This is the one product video around – so enjoy!

Many of the videos in the YouTube lists for last week are TV grabs from the US Air plane ditching in the water, there’s plenty of copies from different news broadcasts. The highest ranked product video is this one from T-Mobile. Filmed on Thursday 15th, on the TV on Friday, Saatchi’s use the idea of a flashmob to bring a few minutes of manic dancing to Liverpool St station, the location for many a previous real flashmob. Here, they work with the station (well, I assume they did) to get the music played over the system so everyone can here it – and join in. The video below is not actually the one with the most YouTube views but is a higher quality version from the T-Mobile Channel Life’s for Sharing
. The higher views are from a grab of the ad shown on TV; JonJonBaker suddenly had a hit on his hands with the ad and got luckier with the search results. Although looking at the numbers later, the official version is increasing its views, probably due to the ads on the YouTube:

TMobile Dance (Screenshot from site)

They reached out to local bloggers such as @flashboy to get them to come along and did a heavy outreach to bloggers with the video later:

Twitter about T-Mobile Ad

And has annoyed some people such as @qwghlm

Another Twitter about the T-Mobile Ad

Ulike Chris, I like this, I smile when I watch it. Yes, the flashmob thing has been done before and this is a blatant rip-off of the Improv Everywhere events but it’s done well here, it’s fun and you can see people getting involved. However, I feel they could have been slightly more transparent with what they are saying in the YouTube commentary:

Watch the moment hundreds of commuters danced in a train station and see how they pulled off the event with exclusive footage from behind the scenes

Given they give you rehearsal footage it’s obviously not a random group of commuters as is implied, it’s a group of professionals. They could put the right slant on this and give credit where credit is due for the idea. Interestingly in the blog post from Richard, a commenter discusses having seen scripts where they use the freeze idea, from Improv, so there’s been a few attempts at this.

With what looked like none of the same PR push, a Spanish ad for what Eristoff Black Vodka is up there as well. I was going to take a look at the brand, but it has such an annoyingly, huge, slow loading flash file that I gave up looking for product information as it took too long to find things. A brand that definitely needs to rethink the digital part of the marketing.

I’ve been asked this question a few times this week, but with all the running around, back and forth to Paris plus evening things arranged I’ve not had chance to let you know who was chosen to win the Netbook by the judging panel. it took a little bit of discussion as we all had our favourites.

Honourable mentions have to go to Dungeekin, Hugh Garry, Tom Morris, Garfield Southall, Charles O’Neill and James Cox, who all got talked about in our first round of voting.

But the winner was Ben O’Steen, who we all liked because of his multi-media usage. So the Vodafone Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is on its way to him.

Thank you all for entering, we had fun reading your proposals. Hope you enjoyed it as well.

The floor of Waterloo station has a number of (rapidly dirtying) posters/stickers on the floor, as well as hanging from the roof. The phone is being sold as the social network phone, with Facebook, Windows Live and Skype updates all built in. I wasn’t too impressed by the other floor stickers though, this being just one example.

There were a lot like this, all the random trivia from a day in the life, the sort of thing the average journalist or blog commentator complains about, how useless all this social media is, which is then discussed endlessly by bloggers and journalists who complain that the other media or blogger just does not get it (see Paul Carr’s latest in the Guardian for a perfect example!). But in reality, that sort of thing is what a lot of people do write, they’re connecting with friends, with a level of ambient intimacy that just lets you know what’s going on, the same sort of thing you’d mutter to them if you were in the same room. So here, the ad creators were right, even if it initially annoys.

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 Idea

Dell and Vodafone have teamed up to provide you a new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook, which has wifi AND embedded mobile broadband, which I think is a pretty cool idea, even if it ties you to a supplier, but the deal is about the same price as some of their dongles

To help promote this, they’ve equipped LiveGuy with one of the netbooks and, from tomorrow, they’ve set him off round the UK to test out the service. He’s going to be giving away up to 4 of the Inspirons every day, if you can find him – 3 in person and 1 online. They’ve even got Lewis Hamilton in on the act

Liveguy is on a complete social media binge, with his Facebook, Twitter Feed, YouTube and Picassa images. You can follow him throughout his two week trip that takes him through most of major UK cities. Through all these channels plus the blog, he’ll be giving enough clues so you can track him down. They’re also linking with bloggers in each of the cities they’re going through, to drive up some local interest.

Liveguy from Vodafone (screenshot from site)

What I think

This is a pretty slick campaign, with all the right buttons pressed. They’ve got live action combined with digital with plenty of opportunities to win things, a good combination. The product itself looks like a good deal, assuming the connection speed works well and the netbook is useful enough. I like what they are plannign to do, now to watch the execution.

The Guardian have a write up of a new mobile site for the Royal Marines* (best viewed on a phone, but it still works in your browser). It’s a promotion tied in with the new James Bond movie, where in 120 cinemas they are offering a bluetooth message to go to mobile site to take a look at what you need to be a marine. It’s one of the richer mobile sites I’ve seen, offering the chance to sign up for more news, watch videos, download images and work your way through a whole load of FAQs. A good way to connect with the target audience.

Royal Marines State of Mind

*This came from my employers, but I had nothing to do with it, it was well underway before I joined.