I don’t know why I love JML, I just do. It’s something about their no-nonsense straightforward approach. As well as the fact that all their products are miracles of modern innovation!
Next time I’m confronted with a bunch of people fawning about how Innocent are soooo great I’m going to pull JML out of the bag, and talk about their joined up approach to marketing and retail kicks ass.
I love the fact that their ecommerce site has little infomercials instead of product images. It’s just like the shelf ends in Robert Dyas or Woolworths where they’ve got a little telly playing ads non-stop.
And does it work? Well I bought some Doktor Power environmentally friendly cleaner. So yes, it works.
It appears that the Hype Machine stunt that I liked yesterday sort of failed.
They couldn’t get enough people to do what they asked so they launched it anyway. Oh well. I guess that’s life. I still like the principle of what they tried to do.
New site is now live at: hypem.com still a good place to discover new music.
Brilliantly it’s not when 10,000 have looked at it cumulatively, they’re waiting for 10,000 to have the page open at the same time, which is sweet (I’m deducing this because the number is going down as well as up!).
Hype machine is an MP3 blog aggregation thing that helps you find new music. It’s good. Be interesting to see what the new site’s like, once enough people are looking at it.
With the WWF we’re building a massive paper plane and massive paper boat. We’re then going to fly / sail them (somehow) to the Houses of Parliament. If you sign up to the online petition your name will be included on the boat and plane.
A bit more detail:
The whole thing has been designed to pressure the government to strengthen the climate change bill. Currently the bill is a good thing. But it needs to be better.
Why a plane and a boat? Well currently aviation and shipping are left out of the bill. And they are the fastest growing sources of emissions. This can’t be right. So we’re using them as symbols to represent the weakness in the bill.
The site’s growing daily. And we’re reporting on the whole thing as we go. We really don’t know how big we’re going to be able to make these things and how we’re going to get them to parliament. There will be more information on how it’s going to work as we figure it out. And it’s not bull, we really are sorting it out on the fly.
Which might be just a little bit risky. But it makes for a more interesting project. Not sure how everyone will feel if we only end up with a small plane being pushed to parliament in a rusty shopping trolley though…
Here’s hoping it won’t come to that.
I’ve just realised that after my ranting about blogger outreach I can’t really tell anyone about this unless I’m very very careful. So if you’re a blogger or contributor to anything I’d really appreciate it if you’d spread the word. It is for a good cause after all ;-)
Someone (who shall remain nameless) sent me a link to some images on Flickr that were perhaps slightly more ‘saucy’ than normal. Not a lot, just a bit.
What I loved (not the pictures incidentally) was Flickr’s ‘turn on my safety fliter’ message. Hope you can read it below (if not click it to see full size):
Right now you can’t move in London without seeing some kind of ad for Nike Supersonic.
According to the blog spam I got the other day:
“Nike is launching an exclusive invitation only event for 3,000 people in London to push their pace through the sound barrier with Nike+ Supersonic. 1,000 runners and 2,000 of their guests. One night of music fuelled speed.
On the night of 17 November 2007 at a secret London venue, London’s fastest 1,000 will sprint a floodlit 1K course, cheered on by 2,000 of their mates, ending with an invite-only, exclusive gig.
Contenders compete for tickets at four weekly 100m speed trials across London throughout October, starting on the 12th in Finsbury Park. Each trial will feature live DJs, athletes, celebrities and Nike gear. The fastest 1,000 runners from the trials will get the opportunity to compete with two guest passes.
Pre-registration for trials, videos, ring and alert-tones can be downloaded at www.nikesupersonic.com which will continue to be updated with more information for the next couple of months.”
I’d had a word with myself about not writing negative things about campaigns and only writing nice things. But being as I got a horrible piece of blogger outreach only a day or two after my post, I feel like I’ve been given permission to comment. And comment I shall. (I’ve tried to be as balanced as I can).
What I like about the campaign is their use of MySpace. Setting the microsite inside MySpace does some good things. It makes it connectible and commentable and sits it inside a ‘relevant’ social network.
Unfortunately the microsite is nothing more than a big flash movie with not much to it. A very nicely produced flash intro. Really very nice. But it does feel a bit, well, shallow. Oh and there’s some downloads.
They’ve also done a great job of getting it ‘out there’ (aside from the impersonal and heavy handed blogger stuff). But even that seems to have worked given the coverage they’ve got. Being a big sexy brand like Nike means you can get away with a lot…
But the online stuff isn’t bad. It’s what’s missing from the campaign that I feel a bit funny about. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a replacement for, or an evolution of, Run London. But to me it feels like neither.
Like many people I’m a big fan of Run London and lots of the stuff that was done around it (especially some of the online and mobile things). But what made Run London brilliant was the sense of empowerment and the fact that it was based around an insight and an event that ALL runners could feel inspired by.
Supersonic feels really ‘elite’. As a rubbish runner it has no relevance to me. I don’t want to go and turn up to an event and fail. Nobody likes to fail, and I’m guessing that only people who think that they’re good enough to run 100m very fast will bother to turn up.
Even the design feels ‘elite’. Using light graffiti and moody effects makes the whole thing feel a bit ‘techno sphincter’ (sorry that’s a phrase one of our clients brilliantly used to describe that macho matrix-esque design aesthetic)
Maybe there’s reasons why mass participation isn’t the objective this time around, but the whole thing leaves me cold. A real shame when the Run London stuff had me all warmed up.
I thought it looked like a really cool integrated campaign for Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo Wii. What I took out of the ad was that you’d get to play networked Big Brain against other families and the winners would get their kids educations paid for. Which I thought sounded cool.
But it turns out that families have to go to certain shopping centres and compete on stage against each other just like a standard quiz show.
Personally I thought that family based console network gameplay for prizes seemed like a great way to get families playing (and learning together). But I suppose a big noisy stand in Bluewater Shopping Centre on a Sunday does different things…
If you’ve not seen it yet Street View in Google Maps is amazing. Lifehacker reports that it’s now in 15 US cities (and it’s coming soon to the UK judging by the fact that we saw a Google cam car driving round London the other day).
I’ve you’ve not mucked around with it, get on a map of NY or Chicago and have a play with Street View. It’s almost more impressive than Google Earth.
While I was playing I came across this:
And wondered what’s the value of a bus side inside Google maps? It’s lot more appealing to me than the Coke Zero ads in the UK ;-)
I’m doing some pitchy type stuff and ran out of inspiration so I typed into Google “most creative website ever” hoping that I’d find something to inspire me.
I’ve seen it before earlier in the year, but I’d forgotten how simply brilliant it is. If you’ve not seen it before you ought to take a peek. It might not be the most creative site ever, but it remains really rather charming…
Like many people I’m a big fan of 
