Hilarious Old Spice ad parody - Study like a Scholar, Scholar

The amazing success of the Old Spice ads have spawned a number of parodies. Here is arguably the best parody - Study like a scholar, scholar.

When ads spawn parodies, that means something!

Bryant, Pacquiao, Federer, Sharapova, Ronaldo, Liu in one Nike commercial??

This is a single 1 minute Nike commercial that stars Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Manny Pacquiao, and Xiang Liu.

I wonder how much this seemingly simple TVC cost to make. Any guesses?

Manny Pacquiao vs Ricky Hatton - Street Fighter style!

This is a blasphemy to Chuck Norris - how dare they put his character as one of the fighters in game?

The other fighters in the game include Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Bruce Lee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, James Bond, Rambo, George Bush, Tony Blair, FVR, Erap, and Ferdinand Marcos!

Now that's a game I would really play!

Obama's impact on politics & social media: Even President GMA is on Twitter.

I am not a fan of the President of the Philippines, but I like her effort to become more visible in the social media space. She's @PresidentGMA on Twitter.

This move by our local politicians to put up presences in various popular sites was led and proven strongly by none other than Barack Obama, who won the US presidential election largely due to his groundbreaking internet campaign.

2010 is election season again. Philippine politicians are looking to reapply Obama's tactics. I hope they can reapply his brains and leadership instead.

International media pwned by student's fake Wikipedia quote. FAIL.

This is startling proof of how increasingly dependent traditional media outlets are on the internet, and how they are doing this without the proper checks and balances. An Irish student recently made up a fake quote in the Wikipedia entry of musician Maurice Jarre a few hours after his death. Although the quote was spotted and removed by the Wikipedia community within a few hours, dozens of media outlets had gotten the news and used it on their articles.

So far only The Guardian admitted their mistake.

While the internet makes things faster for everyone, that doesn't mean everything available is reliable. People - especially the media! - have to be vigilant.

FAIL.


The whole article is here.

On Twitter snowstorm maps and creating unique digital experiences

For me, effective digital marketing is all about creating a service (a site, an application, whatever you want to call it) that addresses a unique need for a set of users. It has to be unique so that it stands out among many other competing brands' efforts. And it has to offer a unique service so that consumers will like the utility and aid brand recall.

One particular example that showcases a unique service - although it's not done in a digital marketing sense - is #uksnow at http://benmarsh.co.uk/snow/

We all know that the UK has been suffering severe snowstorms this year. In fact, it is the worst in 18 years. Twitter users in the UK have been tweeting about this weather so Ben thought of combining Google Maps with Twitter posts to create a Twittermap of the UK snowstorms!

It's a simple idea: Ask people to hashtag their Tweets with #uksnow, put in their geo information, and add a twitpic if possible. Voila! Those tweets feed into the Google map. These realtime tweets allow users to see how the weather is at several parts in the UK. Even a million-dollar telescope can't do that because of severe cloud conditions. That's a unique service :)

Here're the exact instructions on the site:

Tweet the first half of your postcode, and rate the amount of snow that is falling out of ten (0/10 for nothing, 5/10 for steady snow and 10/10 for arctic blizzard conditions) >> "#uksnow [FIRST-HALF-OF-POSTCODE] [SNOW-SCORE]/10", ie: "#uksnow NG9 3/10".

Add your twitpic url to the end of your tweet to show it on the map >> "#uksnow [FIRST-HALF-OF-POSTCODE] [SNOW-SCORE]/10 [TWITPIC-URL]", ie: "#uksnow NG9 3/10 http://twitpic.com/aaaaa".

Nokia Bruce Lee edition!

Amazing ad featuring "Bruce Lee." Surely, Chuck Norris couldn't help but agree...




This is a good viral initiative, and now, I'm already seeing a lot of videos and articles propagate through the internet.

I want a Bruce Lee Nokia phone!

ABS purchases 5% stake in Multiply.com for $5M USD

ABS CBN announced last Nov 17 that they are purchasing a 5% stake in Multiply.com for $5 million dollars, valuing the entire company at 100 million dollars.

Multiply is a popular social networking site in the Philippines and according to Alexa, is the 6th most popular website in the country, next only to Yahoo, Friendster, Youtube, Google.com.ph and Google. Multiply has an estimated 3 million Filipino users.

From the official announcement over at http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/ ABS stated that Multiply and ABS complement each other.

"Multiply is a natural fit for ABS-CBN. It is the social network that is most consistent to our business model because they have focused on photo, video and blog features compared to the other social networks such as Friendster and Facebook, which focus on connecting friends and running applications. This puts together content and communities around the content, whether it is ABS-CBN-branded or user-generated," he told abs-cbnNEWS.com.

With regard to long term plans for the partnership, it will be monetized via advertising (which are happening now) and creating a mobile version of the site.

I think that Multiply.com is a viable medium for advertising for the Philippine market, but these brands should establish an emotional relationship with, and be of real value to, their consumers. (Compare to P&G's Ted McConnell's statement on Facebook, where he says P&G probably shouldn't advertise on Facebook.) If you know of one, let me know. Majority of commercial entities in Multiply are online stores, selling stuff like clothes and shoes.

Funny commercials: Cheers Beer

This is a commercial I first saw 2 years ago, about a Thai beer brand called Cheers. I can't forget it though, and I'd like you to enjoy it too! Check out their site, too. It seems to me to be only a single page though.

wePC: Crowdsourcing the next Asus PC, powered by Intel

I would definitely score this initiative a 10 out of 10 for innovation and risk-taking.

Asus and Intel are going to you - yes, the users - for the design of an ASUS computer, with Intel chips powering it.

The gist of wePC is a user idea section where everybody can suggest what their ideal PC should have, then people can rate and comment on it.

As Chasnote mentioned, traffic has spiked for wepc, intel, and asus because of this.

Dell's best-in-class display ad

I think I should let the ad speak for itself first.

Apart from the moving video as the centerpiece of the ad, what's amazing is the RSS feed on the top, and of course it dynamically changes.

Below the video is a button that will show options to either send-to-a-friend, subscribe, embed the ad in your blog (as I am doing now) or download it.

This is the text I got from the email:

Dear ___,

___ has invited you to join ReGeneration.org. The ReGeneration is a global and dynamic movement, a group of people who are committed to sustaining the world's natural environment. Ready to make a difference? Learn about successful and innovative ideas brought to life in a wide range of industries. Read, learn and start making a difference today.

Microsoft Excel music video!

Wow, this is amazing. An AC/DC music video created in Microsoft Excel. It is not a video embed within the rows and columns of Excel, but rather an ASCII music vid!

Check it out, below.

Obama wins! (Marketer of the Year, beats John McCain, Apple)

Ad Age recently declared US Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama as the Marketer of the Year, beating giant Apple, online shoe seller Zappos.com, and even Republican nominee John McCain.

I've highlighted in my previous blog entry how efficient and pervasive Barack Obama's presence is on the net. Turns out that it wasn't just me who thought did an amazing job of building his own brand. I quote from Ad Age:

"I think he did a great job of going from a relative unknown to a household name to being a candidate for president," said Linda Clarizio, president of AOL's Platform A, the sponsor of the opening-night dinner attended by 750 where the votes were cast.
"I honestly look at [Obama's] campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers," said Angus Macaulay, VP-Rodale marketing solutions "To see what he's done, to be able to create a social network and do it in a way where it's created the tools to let people get engaged very easily. It's very easy for people to participate."
Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama's facility with engaging voters in social-media channels. "It's the fuckin' Web 2.0 thing," he said.

Seems like the only thing left for Obama is to win the election. :) It will not be easy for Obama though given the economic storm that's looming.

Can a Twitter post land you in jail (or get "yes" to marriage proposall)?

Twitter is such a powerful tool because it fosters real conversations. I guess a Twitter feed can be permissible as evidence in a few years' time? :)

Another great post from Rob Cottingham.

Take a look at this: A guy recently proposed (Yes! Marriage!) to his girlfriend over Twitter! It must've been a pretty intense 18 minutes for the guy (of waiting for his girlfriend to answer)

A Twitter write-up is coming soon...

Blogger "superheroes"

That one was from XKCD. For more realistic info, check out Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008. I'd like to highlight some key notes from that report:
1. Blogs are Pervasive and Part of Our Daily Lives - 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US, 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US, 77% of active Internet users read blogs
2. The line between blogs and mainstream media is blurring - Many mainstream news sources employ some sort of blogging (or micro-blogging, like BBC news)
3. All blogs are not created equal - This Technorati image says it best:

4. Brands "permeate the blogosphere" - in fact, "Companies are already reaching out to bloggers. One-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates." "Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate)."

I would love to see a site like mystarbucksidea in the Philippines soon :) I think it's a souped-up blog.

Lenovo's amazing Olympics web campaign

I came across a wonderful blog post by Lenovo VP of Global Web Marketing David Churbuck. (Yes, he blogs about his marketing executions and other thoughts). As many of you may know, Lenovo was a global partner of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. With this partnership in place, it is good sense to infuse the Olympics spirit in Lenovo's marketing. I believe that this particular execution counts as one of the best examples of social media marketing.

The big idea is simple, but let me use David's own words from his blog:
What [if] the main event were the athletes themselves? What if, using Google’s Blogger platform and YouTube capabilities, Lenovo could offer any athlete a way to share their Olympic experience with their fans, family, friends, even the world?

The background
The hackneyed strategy for Olympics sponsors, according to David, was to build an interactive program driven by a PR story or a raffle. However, for Lenovo, that was not enough: in fact, to David, it was a checklist item, not a strategy. As a "young brand seeking recognition as a global technology innovator on a global scale" David concluded that Lenovo needs more.

Note that the athletes mentioned here are not just the superstars like Michael Phelps or Shawn Johnson, but they focus more on the "normal" athlete - the no-named athlete to the media, the athlete who will not win a medal.

The execution - let me share the online components (of course, traditional media was there)
1. Equipping the athlete bloggers - To enable the athletes to blog, Lenovo gave away over 100 IdeaPad laptops and a video device. The qualification is that the athlete is passionate and a credible contender.

Chasnote reported,
Lenovo has created 100 athletes’ blogs in an attempt to align itself with some less mainstream sports, such as field hockey and modern pentathlon. It gave the athletes laptops and video cameras to chronicle their preparation for the games. We wanted to do something that shows our tech prowess, not something that uses the Web as billboard,’ said David Churbuck...

2. A microsite at http://2008.lenovo.com called the "Lenovo Olympic Podiumpowered by iGoogle gadget technology. It's basically an iGoogle page with content focused on the Olympics. As the official Lenovo blog stated,

The Podium is a highly customizable experience built on iGoogle gadget technology, where a user, once signed in, can change the appearance and layout of the page and add custom modules, or gadgets, or related content. Existing Google account holders will automatically sign in to the system The team has focused on the creation of gadgets that stream content dynamically from:

News sources

Olympic athlete bloggers – we’re recruiting more than 100 athletes to blog on our new IdeaPad line of notebooks

Map interfaces using mashups of Google Maps and the Olympic Torch Relay route and the Beijing Olympic venues

YouTube videos related to the Games

Picasa photos from the Games

3. A Facebook campaign that allows people to identify with their countries, check medal tallies, and read blogs of athletes. It's shown strong success: downloaded more than 200,000 times.
Facebook allows for a wide spectrum of branded activity. On one end, you can just go for simple banner ads that can reach many people (impressions) but will have very little interactivity. Or one can create a specialized application that has high engagement and equity but will only reach very few people. I feel Lenovo has done amazing in this aspect, managing to hit it somewhere in the middle, with high reach and also high engagement. From an equity standpoint, it showed Lenovo's tech prowess (they enabled the athletes to blog). Also, this campaign has generated a lot of buzz (this blog is an example! and months after the 8/8/08!)

I believe it is hard to outdo what Lenovo did, but this shows the potential of partnering with well-recognized activities.

The blog is dead...

Blogging is dead, and "lifestreaming" is in.

I found a very nice presentation that talks this by Yong Fook, founder of opensourcefood and project lead of Sweetcron.

He says that 66% of blogs are dead and majority of what's existing now are commercial blogs. He points to several things:

• Blogging has matured (Think Techcrunch or Robert Scoble's blog)
  
• "More distractions (Think youtube, flickr, social networks, the whole array! And my favorite, Kongregate)
• Short attention span of people (How long do people stay on a site before clicking away anyway?)

Because of these, Yong Fook introduces the "lifestream"which basically pulls activity from many sites and conveniently shows them in one place. Examples would be Friendfeed and Sweetcron.

I see this as the general trend towards Web3.0: of being able to get all sorts of stuff from all sorts of places and aggregating them together. Popular services will be open and people can use the APIs freely to empower their own sites and make things easier for the site visitors (this may be hard for corporate sites). It will also make much use of new capabilities like geo-locating (Mozilla just released Geode!).

With that being said, let me share his entertaining presentation!

The Blog is Dead!

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social activity)

Social Media for Marketers

Funny Post from Social Signal:

You would be entertained to see this presentation, look particularly at Slide 6:

Branding 2.0 & Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing media)

What the f**k is social media?

Digital marketing is closely intertwined with social media.

While conventional marketing is more a mass-communication endeavor, done via TV, radio or print, digital marketing is ideally a one-to-one and two-way activity, where the brand or the company offers personalized content for the consumer and the consumer can interact readily. The revolutions that are the internet and mobile technologies make this possible.

So, because of the democratization of voice, consumers can also much more freely talk about the brands they use (or hate or love). Social media or Web 2.0 enable that.

With that short introductory spiel, let me share with you a fascinating presentation I found in Slideshare which talks precisely how powerful social media is in the context of marketing.

In my opinion, at this stage though in the Philippines, social media is very difficult to harness. Let me know what you think, thanks!

What The F**K is Social Media?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing)