Living in a digital world

Second Life Relay for Life raises US$100,000

As Rik mentioned a few days ago, this weekend saw the third annual Second Life Relay for Life organised on behalf of the American Cancer Society, with a walkathon route across 32 sims – making it what the charity described as “the largest contiguous event Second Life has ever seen”.

The great news is that the event is reported as exceeding its US$75,000 target, with total income expected to be over US$100,000 – more than double the amount raised last year.

I popped in-world for the opening ceremony and have posted a selection of snapshots here on Scribd to give you a feeling for the event.

Coming just a couple of weeks after the Guardian and Intel sponsored Secondfest Second Life music and arts festival, this is another great example of the type of international event that is possible in Second Life.

However, the big difference between the two – which for me makes the Relay for Life event stand-out head and shoulders above the commercial Secondfest – is that Second Life Relay for Life was begun by a group of Second Life residents working with the charity to re-create its ‘real world’ Relay for Life event.

These ‘grass roots’ community origins have led to the whole event being significantly richer and more engaging than the commercially sponsored Secondfest, as well as appearing (to me) to be better designed and run.

This is something that other ‘real life’ brands looking to become active in Second Life could do well to learn from. Whether charity or commercial, working with the in-world community to develop something that works for them is undoubtedly the best way to develop an effective Second Life brand presence.

July 30, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Addicted to blogging?

While reading the recent posts on Ron Shelvin’s Marketing ROI blog I spotted something he’d written about the Mingle2 blog addiction survey – and, as an fairly active blog consumer and a contributor here and to givinginadigitalworld, I just had to give it a go.

It turns-out that I’m only 61% addicted – which isn’t bad. Is it?

July 27, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Creative directors in sleaze shocker

Neat little viral from the Department of Health hoping to stem the rise in sexually transmitted diseases.

Here’s the version I sent to our creative directors, Nick Platt and Barney Cockerell.

You can make your own ‘private dick’ viral here.

July 26, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Oh no! Who’ll look after us poor creatives?

Rebecca Bennet (our grad – currently serving time in digital) writes that more and more consumers seem happy to slave away producing free content for big brands.

The appeal of user-generated content to advertisers is demonstrated by the two following campaigns:

Doritos have gone as far as dedicating a 30 second SuperBowl ad slot (costing on average $2 million) to an ad they received after running an online competition seeking user-generated ads. Here’s the winning ad:

In another campaign, Gmail, Google’s email offering, have invited consumers to add to a viral they are compiling. The idea is that the ‘M’ envelope (from the logo) gets passed around the world. Users are invited to print off a PDF of the ‘M’ envelope and make a 10 second film of them passing it on.

Google are going to put all these frames together and no doubt air the finished product on YouTube. Read more here. And this is wherre they’ve got to with the video so far:

So should creatives be worrying about forthcoming redundacy? Nah, we should be celebrating the fact that we’re still needed to come up with user-generated concepts and to design and execute the campaigns in a way that’s on-brand and engaging.

July 26, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Gold farming

Farming virtual gold is huge business in China with thousands of gamers being recruited as online bounty hunters. It’s not a new story, but it does illustrate how the virtual and the real world are increasingly blending together.

With ‘gold farming’ gamers are employed to kill virtual monsters in web games like World of Warcraft. Each monster defeated returns a yield of gold coins to the killer which allows the player to buy weapons to slay increasingly challenging monsters and reach the next level in the game. A demand has been triggered among players that do not have the time or skill to collect enough gold to project them up the levels. These same lazy gamers will pay hard cash for virtual gold in R.M.T (real money trade).

The gold is sold to an online retailer such as IGE, BroGame and Massive Online for around £2 for 100 coins. The retailer then sells them on to the gamer for as much as £14. Reselling virtual gold is around a £1.2 billion industry, of which the gold farming company sees around £60k a year.

The craze mirrors Chinese sweat shops to supply the demand of Westerners – not unlike those making clothes and toys in China. Gamers work 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, paid around 20 pence an hour and sleep above their work in cramped dorms. A second’s glance away from the screen can result in character life loss and ultimately potential profit loss.

There are many disgruntled parties damning gold farming as they say the ease and proficiency of these professional killers makes it more difficult for beginners to enter the games and work up the levels. This has resulted in collective mobs of the virtual world ganging up to kill the farmers; identified by the repetitive use of the same killing techniques.

For more info read the full article in the New York Times.

July 25, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Exploring rich media advertising- live streaming

We have all heard about this ad infinitum: Advertising is getting more sophisticated though the use of emerging media technology and services on offer.

But it’s one thing to know it, and another thing to be able to actively make the most of this fact.

Well I am happy to report that here at our agency we can take advantage of some of these new Flash-y techniques through our relationship with a leading ad-server which allows for larger than normal file sizes.

Have a look at this example created for a Hollywood studio to advertise their latest Jim Carey movie, Number 23. Yes, it is streaming video through an ad unit, but also better still is that they are streaming rotating confessions from people off the street, who happen to be in a bar in Washington DC.

The plotline for the movie is based around confessions, so this seems a nifty and simple way to get this message across without using a usual piece of footage from the movie.

So, without further ado, please visit this page and press the red play button within the ad unit…..and don’t forget to turn up the volume.

Remember, this is simply an example (and, incidentally, not one we’ve created), but if you came across this ad unit while surfing the Web, everytime you played the ad, you should get a newly streamed confession. Brilliantly addictive!

July 25, 2007 Posted by alexst | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Picturetown – Web 2.0 campaign (and savvy media use) for Nikon D40

Nikon have launched a campaign for their new D40 digital camera. This seems to me an almost perfect digital campaign (agency = McCann Erickson).

How do you show that your fancy new camera lets anyone take great pictures. Simple give 200 away to the inhabitants of a small town in South Carolina, Georgetown. Rename the town ‘Picturetown’ and let the inhabitants of the town upload their photo’s to a whizzy website.

Perfect. Then as part of your communications startegy buy media on the most popular photo-sharing websites, like Flickr.

Voila, a totally integrated media-creative solution, that’s sales driven, features user-generated content (web 2.0 – tick), and best of all, dramatises a really simple proposition in compelling fashion. It’s like a case study from a digital marketing MBA – and if such a thing doesn’t exist, it should.

Each photographer/inhabitant, as well uploading their pics, gets space to talk about the camera and how much they enjoyed working with it. As one blogger says, “I know it’s a commercial site, but I spent a full hour the other night exploring it.” The campaign even inspired one old inhabitant of the town to return home for a reunion with his estranged father. Beat that you 30 second ads. Although in the spirit of integration the agency did produce some TV spots to drive traffic – you can read more about the full campaign here.

Here are some of the Picturetown pages:

July 25, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

This type of campaign is what the web was built for.

A short video case study of a SNCF 360 campaign produced by our network cousins at DDB Paris. A hoax campaign for a transatlantic rail tunnel that blazed through the web and blogosphere. The results are particularly impressive – in terms of ticket sales, etc.

July 23, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Brazilian design flair from Collectivo

Over the past few years, there’s been much written in the press about the incredible creative being produced by agencies in Brazil.

This work from Sao Paulo design studio, Collectivo, demonstrates the energy, media neutrality and craft skills that seem a given in much of the work coming out of Latin America. Collectivo seem to be supremely confident whether they’re creating animations, branding, websites or illustrations.

And here’s some recent digital work from Brazil that did well at Cannes:

A nice banner by Africa Propaganda for the Mitsibushi Eclipse. An eco-friendly website by the same agency. And a banner they did for a rural tv channel. And one for a flu medicine.

A ‘sexy’ banner by McCann Erickson Brazil.

A politically dubious but nicely crafted banner by DDB Brasil. Another quite saucy banner from the network.

A drink-driving banner from Agencia Click.

July 23, 2007 Posted by riksta | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Very neat 2007 web trend map

For a fresh view on the World Wide Web, take a look at the 2007 version of the fascinating Web Trend Map by Japanese strategic design agency Information Architects. It’s basically a tube map of the 200 most successful websites around, all neatly illustrated on key trend lines.

With Information Architects being Japanese, the map was originally based on the Tokyo metro map (which seems to owe more than a nod to Harry Beck’s London Underground original) and still includes a variety of Tokyo insider jokes – for anyone who happens to know Tokyo.

There’s a whole lot of detail in the map, so well worth downloading the biggest version available from their website if you want to avoid serious eye strain.

July 22, 2007 Posted by Bryan | Uncategorized | 3 Comments