Aside from running the very latest update of Nokia’s Symbian software – aka ‘Symbian Belle’ – these new Belle devices all come with Near Field Communications (NFC) baked-in. Which means, you simply tap – and go.
Working with the smart guys over at NFC-Hub we produced special NFC-enabled posters, similar to the below –
– that were placed up at different locations around Hong Kong. Delivering against Nokia’s release message of ‘Try Something New’, #NokiaTSN, we thought we’d set a two day course of exactly that, with our guests trying their hands at all things news. For example, riding the Crystal Cable Car or simply taking in a Tai Chi lesson in the park.
The best part being that once the on-site posters were tapped –
– the entrants would automatically check-in on Facebook and/or Foursquare (depending on the poster used) which in turn would produce results like this:
Much fun was had indeed.
With NFC becoming more and more prevalent [see Museum integration as well as Dennis Publishing getting in on the act], expect more NFC-based shenanigans from us very soon and, if you find yourself in the 1000heads offices at any point in the future, why not tap us up?
It’s time for episode two of ‘Three Cool Things’, for a bit of background on what this post is all about, please jump back and check out episode one. In the meantime, let’s crack on.
Yes, it’s a cool piece of work. Yes, it’s a cool use of Google Maps. But the most interesting part of the whole case study? Check the voice-over at 33secs –
“A TV commercial informed Norway that a Golf BlueMotion would drive northbound from Oslo in two weeks. People were invited to place their bet on where the car would run out of fuel.”
The interest wasn’t built via their Facebook page, nor was it garnered through Twitter. This integrated campaign used ‘traditional’ media to drive eyeballs to the activity. TV to Social. Not the first, but certainly part of a new trend.
Next up, Katie Bunting showed us this video. Simply entitled ‘Eat‘.
Now, this video [and it’s two counterparts, Move and Learn], did the rounds a good month or so ago and this fact alone meant that it nearly didn’t make the ‘cool’ cut. However, Katie brought along a new insight. Over half of the ‘heads in the room had seen the video(s) but virtually none of them new why it was done or for who.
For us, this served as a healthy reminder that when your video goes viral [the three videos combined views are over 9million], most of those views will come from other blogs embedding your content and sharing with their own communities.
Which means, if you haven’t remembered to brand your video anyway, it’ll be much harder for viewers to make any kind of connection.
Finally, our third item consisted of the first half of a work in progress case study [one that we can’t share yet – not until we get the results at least], so in the meantime take a look at this work from Sao Paulo to help launch a brand new ‘turbo’ fan –
We love our outdoor work here at 1000heads and this idea is simple, understandable and completely universal.
We arrived into Mongolia’s capital early yesterday morning and boy was a it ever a long day – in the best of ways.
First, after the SIX HOURS it took to cross the border, we arrived in Ulaanbataar (UB) with relative ease. We switched over to local time (which is probably still messing with our heads) and disembarked.
Our Honcho, a mad, mad woman called Odka – “Like Vodka! But no V!” she exclaimed – greeted us and drove us into town.
Things of note
24hr banking in UB is a work of genius. The only caveat being that you have to knock on the door of the bank until the teller wakes up! Also, once inside, be ready to manoeuvre [quietly] around snoring cashiers. .
Mongolian people are awesome. Friendly, smiley and very, very hospitable. We kind of came to expect this given the warm reception we had from our fellow travellers en route but, here in their home-country, the kindness of the locals really shines. .
California Bar for breakfast? Our first non-Siberian/non-ready-made meal for over a week? Oh go on then. Classy, I know. .
General traffic-based mayhem (I may have video of this knocking around somewhere). .
Occasional bullet holes.
Overall, this city is cool. The mad, mad, mad culture clash of eastern tradition and western aspiration has created a truly remarkable vibe.
Between then and now much has happened but dinner is nearly ready and I have to go. There’s still so much to catch up on but I’ll have to save all that for later.
Note: this is not your average email, but we’ll come to that shortly.
If you’ve not seen the film before (I haven’t), it’s about a teenage girl (the amazing Saoirse Ronan) who has been trained by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to basically be a complete bad-ass. Think Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass [but slightly older and with less pink wig-ness] and you’re probably halfway there.
Anyway, like I said, she’s been trained to be THE PERFECT ASSASSIN and then well, from what I can see from the trailer, Cate Blanchett turns up and the proverbial really hits the fan.
Speaking of which, the trailer is worth a look –
What do you think? I missed this at the cinema as I had only just got back from my mad trip across Siberia, but it does actually look quite good. IMDb gives it a solid 7/10 and, I think I probably will pick this up at some point also.
So, why am I blogging about it? Given that a) I haven’t actually seen it yet and b) although the film looks good, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of epicmasterpiece that normally drives me to put e-pen to e-paper.
Well, it’s that email I mentioned at the top. It would seem that HMV and Universal have teamed up to create a rather awesome Foursquare-based treasure hunt across three major cities in the UK (London, Birmingham and Manchester) that kicks off this weekend.
Based around the central themes of the film, each hunt contains six codes that need cracking and from there you end up with six locations that need checking into.
The prize for completing said task? Er.. a weekend in Berlin! Sweet.
If you’re any of the above cities, your orders are available c/o The Galinka Project (but be quick, you only have until Monday). In the meantime, I have codes to crack.
As part of our active membership of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Social Media Council, it’s our duty to discuss, debate and disclose details and information about the issues facing the industry today.
Effective immediately, we’ll be contributing a monthly column to the IAB UK Social blog pages and that kicks off today with this blog post covering off the ASA’s new remit, Tiger Woods’ sponsorship with Nike and acceptance of modern day commercially arranged endorsements.
This morning, Mashable is reporting the launch of Ticketmaster‘s latest layer of Facebook integration, a move that allows users to see exactly where their Facebook friends will be sitting at various different events and gigs across the globe.
Live on over 9000 events across the Ticketmaster website, the new interactive map enables seat tagging, which will post to your Facebook wall requesting (or nudging) your friends to do the same.
Got that? No? Try watching this 80 second explanation –
Social ticketing is something we’ve talked about before here at the ‘heads, but that was more around using social media to reward regular attendees with loyalty points and bonuses. What Ticketmaster have done here – really quite well – is taken the Facebook social graph API and applied it to their own site.
In a similar way that Trip Advisor change the structure of what you’re looking at depending on your friends’ purchasing decisions after their experiences, Ticketmaster has taken a step forward by showing the purchasing decision before the experience. Enabling friends to buy tickets whenever they want instead of waiting and waiting until they’re able to get their tickets at the same time.
“How much are we seeing of social brought into commerce rather commerce being brought into social?”
Setting up shop in a Facebook tab is [relatively] easy by comparison, so why not consider changing your customers’ web experience based upon their Facebook preferences as they travel around your website?Â
To top it off, Ticketmaster’s research suggests that every time a ticket purchase is shared through social, that converts to an extra five dollars in additional ticket sales. Social media integration moving the sales needle? Perfection. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the future.
Irrespective of your feelings around the Ticketmaster brand, this new feature is smart, useful and ultimately beneficial to the end customer. Well done.
He and I had met before but it’s always good to refresh connections and, a month or so later, he asked if I could take part in a new MEX pathway entitled ‘Inspiring new forms of creative expression through mobile devices’.
“Sounds great Marek, but I’m off to Siberia next month and well, I won’t really be around to contribute properly.”
“That’s fine.” he said “Just present at the event when you’re back in May.”
So I did.
And in fact, I probably gave a better presentation because of it: chilled out (after a whole month away from the internet), wearing a t-shirt and – probably for the first time ever – presenting in trainers.
Getting back to the event, the questions Marek posed as part of the pathway were as follows:
How does ubiquitous access to new sensors such as touchscreens, gestural input and location tracking change the expression of human creativity?
What does artistic experimentation at the boundaries of digital technology teach us about mainstream user experience requirements of the future?
How does mass person-to-person communications facilitate new creative experiences through co-operative working?
Will person-to-person communications enriched with new channels, such as haptics, emerge as a new form of artistic expression in itself?
Are the text-based ‘Status Updates’ espoused by Facebook and Twitter the zenith of emotional expression or can human moods be better expressed?
My presentation (and the ideas around the answers I gave) can be seen in full below but, I implore you, click through to the actual Slideshare page so you can read the corresponding speaker notes. It doesn’t really make sense without them…
One thing I do want to focus on, however, is slide 17, MEX Pathway point number three [quick click through]:
How does mass person-to-person communications facilitate new creative experiences through co-operative working?
The answer I gave in my talk (or at least the one word that came to mind when I the question was posed), was ‘Meme‘. The two slides that followed explored the idea of the web-based meme going mobile. To quote:
“What about memes on mobile? I snap this, send it you, you change it, send it back.. An instant meme app? Yes please. Where do I sign?”
Alright, so perhaps it isn’t exactly the meme-based application that I was hoping for and/or predicting, but it’s pretty darn close. Theme-based sharing even. And, if you recall what the original pathway set out to cover – Inspiring new forms of creative expression through mobile devices – this app nails it.
Bizarrely, for an app developed by Google, it’s only available on iPhone right now, but I’m sure this will change over time. And when it does, I’ll be ready and waiting – because having my friends help drive my mobile creativity is something I’m really actually quite looking forward to.
Up until this point however, unless you’ve been in or around our office at 5pm on a Friday, you wouldn’t ever know what actually we get up to.
It’s time for that to change.
#3CT, as it is known internally, is our way of shutting the laptops, sitting down together and sharing the three coolest things we’ve seen that week. From now on, every Monday* we’ll be sharing (where possible**) those things from the week before with you too – hopefully kick-starting your morning and your week with some awesome creativity.
Sometimes it’s our own work, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s new stuff, sometimes it’s old. Sometimes it has no relevance to word of mouth whatsoever but has simply sparked ideas in our ‘heads.
Welcome to #3CT.
First up, Hatim Zakout wanted to show us this awesome video from Cadbury, showing off their augmented reality partnership with Blippar.
Working in-line with their 2012 Olympics-based Spots v Stripes campaign, the AR in this video is cool for a whole ton of reasons. But why we like it is that it takes an everyday object that you wouldn’t normally look twice at (the chocolate bar) and turns it into a campaign-focused augmented reality game.
Very cool.
Second, Emma Parsons took the company through the great work currently being demonstrated by the Bulmers ‘Experimenters Wanted‘ campaign.
A cursory glance at the Bulmers homepage right now will show you an abundance of different executions all trying to encourage experimentation, with rewards available for the brave-hearted. All of this in the name of their new drink, ‘No.17’.
Why is this cool? Well (and there was some discussion around this), some ‘heads thought that it tried to do too much -Â however, others felt that doing all of these different ideas lived up to the exact principles that the campaign is trying to endorse; be different, try something new. Good work Bulmers, definitely cool.
Finally, for our third cool thing, Michael Quinn wanted to talk to us about KLM and their recent ‘Tile Yourself‘ campaign. We’ve talked about KLM before here at 1000heads, and their work is constantly referred to as some of the best in the business. ‘Tile Yourself’ is awesome also.
The above is merely the launch video. To watch the whole ‘this is what we did’, you have to head over to the Facebook application page which is still live. On Friday we talked about how while this is a huge idea, it is also uniquely KLM. The Delft blue portrait element just works for the brand, perfectly.
Also, picking up on the case study video, there is a danger in digital/social media marketing that when creating campaigns (especially on Facebook) of ‘the legacy problem’ – what to do with an app/page/group (delete where appropriate) when the work is done.
KLM have countered that by simply leaving the app URL active and have made it the only place where one can see the case study video of what they did.
A great lesson in social media marketing best practice.
That’s it for #3CT for this week, thanks for stopping by.
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*Yes, I know it’s Tuesday. But rules are there to be broken, right? **Sometimes we’ll share new (top secret) facts and (NDA’d) figures, or the latest cut of a soon-to-be-released video/case study. Obviously we can’t share these but, when this happens, we’ll always try and find a replacement.
[that’s Jonathan, over my left shoulder – don’t ask about the hats]
I met Jonathan first in Russia on my first night in Moscow back in April. He was halfway through a six month trip and had big plans. We ran into each other again in Mongolia and (along with a few others in our group) we discovered we pretty much had the same schedule ahead of us for the seven days or so [taking in camping out in the desert, catching the train to China and then hanging out in Beijing].
Anyway, I got back from my trip in May, Jonathan got back yesterday.
This post, entitled ‘HOME’ (and reposted with his permission) is what he’s just published and I actually love it.
A lot of people have asked me recently what I’ve learnt or found in the last 6 months living like a gypsy ‘on the road’. Well, I haven’t discovered the meaning of life, I haven’t realised that the world is a beautiful place, I still don’t understand religion and I still don’t get the appeal of a tan. What I have found is a restored faith in the human race, pieced together by every individual that has gone out of their way to help me get so far. The couch-surfers around the world who put me up for a night or few, the drivers who gave me a ride when I was stood with my thumb up on the side of the road in the rain, the families that invited me to live with them and those that fed me despite being too poor to get a solid roof above their heads. The people that turned my map the right way round, the people who patiently tried to teach me a part of their language and culture, those that put up with my constant complaining everywhere I went, and everyone else who smiled at the pasty tourist far too far from home. Sure, there are a lot of dickheads in the world, but they are greatly outnumbered by amazing people.
The Cambodians have a saying ‘when glass floats’ which means when evil prevails over good. Glass will never float. That’s what I’ve learnt.
Distrupt! Be out of the ordinary! Be human! Surprise! Delight! Think about the offline!
Or Our Top Five List of Awesome ‘Retail’ Posters
Disrupt! Be out of the ordinary! Be human! Surprise! Delight! Think about the offline!
^ Welcome to 1000heads.com. We preach about all of the above and much, much more. When it comes to adopting a human tone of voice, we yell our thoughts and beliefs from the rooftops.
Often we find the best examples of this away from our computers and out on the streets around us. Today, we’d like to show off five awesome examples of randomness that we’ve spotted and/or come up with that have made us smile, sparked a conversation and ultimately, enticed us in-store to make a purchase.
First up, as it’s a Monday, we’ll start with something cute. This sign should read: ‘Kitten for sale’, but it doesn’t, it says this –
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I spotted this one only last night on my way home from work. Inspiration (and humour) is everywhere, you just have to look up.
Next, your bar is closed. First of all, why? Second, how do you communicate it? B@1 has the answer –
These guys are up front about the lack of cocktails on this particular evening and, as fellow hard-working human beings, we totally understand the difficulties giving all of the staff a night off and this communicates it brilliantly. Fair play.
Returning to that journey to and from work, it’s not often you spot furniture just left around in the street. What’s even more infrequent is spotting this kind of note attached:
“I need a new home! I’m a super sofa bed.”
Of this, I am a fan. According to my neighbours this sofa was snapped up within hours of it being left out like this and, even though dumping furniture like this is probably illegal, putting a human face on it all suddenly changes your perspective.
This next one we spotted on Twitter this morning, c/o ‘Professor Snape‘. We don’t know what store this was snapped in but, as creative ideas around empty shelving areas go, this one is definitely one of our favourites.
As part of our active membership of the 
whatleydude.com 