Digital Stuffing

I have no idea what to make of this ad from Air New Zealand except to say it makes me laugh. I’m guessing it makes lots of others laugh as well. I’m not sure what you would do if the staff actually did turn up in nothing but body paint.

That’s the only one in the weekly charts, but coming on strong today is this one for Captain Morgan, a lovely little chat up line; it does not appear to be an official upload, but it’s still pulling in the views. Right on brand message.

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.

There’s only one video in the rankings this week It’s all a bit quiet amongst the Eurovision, SNL and Enimem stuff. I bring you the making of the Samsung HD8910. Glad to see I got it right.

The perils of a Bank Holiday weekend. I half write this…and never publish. Instead, I go to a village fete, watch some MayPole dancing, have a go at a Tug of war and stay off the web for the day. Then again, it never got published as there’s no product videos in the top ranked list for the last week. Instead, here’s something I’d like to see more of. A straightforward instructional video about the symptoms of Swine Flu from the US’s Centers for Disease Control. It’s a sensible decision for a government body to use social media for information, they’re going to be able to reach people who may not usually access the TV news or newspapers. Even more importantly, they’re not relying on a journalistic interpretation, which usually has a different goal, not information for to sell more papers or get more viewers.

YouTube is still full of Britain’s Got Talent and the odd bit of Miss California. But highest rated product video is this ‘flash mob’ from Trident, with 100 Single Ladies dancing to Beyonce’s Single Ladies. Yawn. Another ‘flash-mob’, made up of the most un-casual group of people hanging around Piccadilly circus with what looks like press already invited. I would have just done this as an ‘event’ with out the pretend surprise element. It’s time to move on!

This is to promote Trident sponsoring a Beyonce concert. Add the last 4 digits of your barcode and you get entered into a ballot to get one of 3000 pairs of tickets to an exclusive concert at the London 02 arena.

That’s it, a most uninspiring list this week, with multiple versions of the same thing. I need some more creativity.

With all the posts I write about Samsung I think it’s time I got to play with one of their gadgets! But the different bits of the company keep producing great stuff for online marketing.

Here’s another one from the phone division for their new I8910 HD phone, a camera trick. I’ll have to admit, if I hadn’t been in a discussion with someone recently about something very similar it would have taken me time to guess what the trick was. What do you think it is?

They’re going to release a ‘making of’ video in a few weeks, explaining it. Meantime, join in the conjecture about how they did this.

The first challenge this week is to get though the multitude of Susan Boyle videos, of which there are a lot. She’s definitely hit the big time in terms of online (and offline) attention – she totally owns YouTube this week.

Highest ranked product video is this one from Patrick Doyle, President of Domino’s USA doing damage control after a video was uploaded of two employees adulterating pizzas. They’ve also launched a Domino’s Twitter feed which seems to be doing a good job of being conversational

Another fast food brand and another controversy, this time Burger King upsetting Mexico with its ad for the Texican Burger. Apparetnly, it’s because they are using the flag incorrectly; they’re replacing the campaign, used in Spain and the UK, as soon as is ‘commercially possible’.

Finally, the Microsoft PC ads are currently making enough of a stir to have a parody made, always the sign of an ad that has hit home one way or another. Here’s Homeless Frank trying to find himself a laptop for under $1000, from Landline TV

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.

The only ranked product video last week was one of the new Windows PC computers. They challenge people (well, actors) to go out and buy something on a budget, pushng back at Apple with their high prices. I think this is the third in the series, in previous ones they have been challenging Macs directly, with the buyer looking at them and declaring them too expensive. Here, it’s just about the features.

April Fool videos top the video rankings last week – along with a lot of Lady Gaga. In comparison to all that ‘fun’, here’s a strong video starring Keira Knightly, directed by Joe Wright, for the charity Women’s Aid. It’s not a fun ad at all.

Next up, here’s a very silly Spanish(?) video for Doritos

Weirdly, the highest ranking video last week was for DHL, although considering it only has 3635 views, something tells me there’s a little wonkiness in the algorithm. I put it last in the last as it is pretty boring!