Youtube Hits by Judit & Judit - Spoofing Top You Tube Videos

This speaks for itself.

HT to Mastercom.

The 80s-izer from Russell Athletic

Here's me scoring a touchdown, watched and cheered by t'other half:



Amazingly, this isn't actual footage. It's a new viral.

Russell Athletic is the sort of brand you probably thought you'd forgotten. Well you'd better get remembering them, because they're putting a bit of effort in. They are, after all, the original American sportswear brand.

The 80s-izer appeals to me in that I am vain and I love the 80s. I am at this moment thinking about how to fashion a costume to go as David Bowie's Goblin King in Labyrinth to this weekend's Halloween event.

The site is pretty nice, focusing on the college heritage of the brand:



There is a choice in the Movie Maker tab of four Elf Yourself-esque scenarios along the retro 80s theme for you to get involved with: Breakdancing, American Football, Muscle Beach and Jazzercise. I can't work out if Jazzercise is my new favourite word or if I hate it.



Once you've chosen your scene, you get to render you or one of your loved ones as anything from a 'body-popping beat boy' to a cheerleader. You know the drill:



What is new as far as I'm aware is the ability to embed the videos. They're easily shareable across the whole social suite, and there's some genuine charm in the videos, although this may be less true of those that don't feature my face.

In addition, elsewhere on the site there's also a timeline of events in the company's history, and a bit of a lookbook of the new range.

Frank PR are responsible. Well done them.

Of course I'm going to give you another video example. Here's me doing a bit of breakdancing, with my tongue out.



And here's me and the missus on Muscle Beach. Again, I have to stress this isn't real.

Slap Nick Griffin

I read here about a campaign, I believe by Albion, that offers everyone the chance to do what a lot of people have been wanting to do for some time.

www.slapnickgriffin.co.uk lets you do what you might expect, namely slap Nick Griffin, and is proving pretty prolific, as you can see from the screen grab below. Over 14 million shots have been taken at the puddingy mug of Britain's least favourite politician, an achievement at the moment and no mistake.



There's a burgeoning range of comments on the You Tube tutorial, which you can watch below. I was mildly concerned it might seem like I was posting a Nick Griffin speech on my blog, but I absolutely am not endorsing anything other than hearty slapping.



Enjoy.

A rival to The Best Job In the World?

I saw this, of all places, in a pub toilet. Despite other evidence to the contrary, I don't make a habit of taking photos in public toilets, but I took a quick snap as there was nobody else around.



This is an ad for Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel, and plays on the cliched 'Earn up to £££ per year!' type ads, with the attraction of the show listed among the Job Description.

It also put me in mind of the award-winning campaign for Queensland Tourism, which resulted in Brit Ben Southall landing the Island Reef Job after an enormous response to an ad for The Best Job In the World.

Interestingly another tourism campaign which generated a lot of coverage was that for Denmark, which featured a controversial You Tube video. They are also advertising opportunities to work in Denmark against searches for 'the greatest job in the world', which is quite a boast but likely to be cheap volume.



I haven't seen any PPC ads for Deadliest Catch, but the creative would lend itself to something similar, particularly for an awareness Google Content Campaign, or to generate a bit of buzz among those who might stumble across it.

Twitter Search - An early thought

I was a little disappointed with the news that broke last week regarding Google and Bing indexing Tweets. It seemed somewhat rushed and ill-considered. At the risk of being the same, I have held back my early thoughts until being jogged to do so by a couple of thoughtful pieces I read.



For a start, as a paid search practitioner by day, there was no sort of consideration for how this will impact on the PPC side, from a reputation-management point of view. I am an advocate of trying to get some sort of RSS capability into AdWords to allow for dynamism of the sort that can lead to PR mishaps (the phoney battle between Labour and The Sun via PPC of a few weeks back, for example, and the same newspaper's use of dead celebrities as a source of traffic), but which would present all sorts of opportunities if managed carefully. Bringing in Social Search would be easier to leverage with this sort of added versatility.

I also had high hopes for Twitter as its own, monetisable, Search engine. Twitter Search has suffered from being almost too real-time. Once a new topic starts trending, half the most recent tweets concern 'What is xxx?' and shameless use of it to try to garner more followers. My idea would have been to try to come up with an algorithm relating to the authority of the user, to split out authority from recency and then to present opportunities for promotion around a 'legacy' on Twitter. Tweets tend only to actually have a life as long as your followers' feed, or any retweets. Sure, there are over 5 billion tweets knocking about, but the actual shelf life is shorter. Adding a legacy to the tweets of those with 'authority' might create some actual value. Unless it was what Lily Allen had for breakfast.

@graemewood discussed the SEO implications for Brands of not being on Twitter - ie that they now have no excuse not to be and may miss out. He also points to the ability of Twitter to filter out the inevitable DR spam by its very nature.

As a further SEO consideration, I remember talk a while back about Twitter Search indexing the content of pages linked to in tweets. Unless I'm sadly mistaken I haven't seen any evidence of this, but if Twitter and Google could get something reciprocal going on, it might become possible within Twitter (possibly in exchange for some space to serve ads?).

Overall, despite agreeing with Graeme's assertion that essentially nothing has changed, I was encouraged, by @davidcushman, who wrote on Faster Future about the significance of Twitter in search. He emphasises the aspect of opening up the network and adding 'nodes', of the march that Twitter could be stealing on Facebook, and is generally very positive about the whole thing. I can't help thinking this is a great viewpoint from a theoretical perspective, and am going back to the drawing board.

Watch this space.

This time in 2054, we'll be millionaires

Get your numbers here.

Google Social Search - Bad News for Facebook, and for AskPeopleYouKnow.com

Google Social Search has been announced on the Google Blog and is already generating a lot of noise around Twitter, hopping into the Hot Trends.

I came across, but have not had full chance yet to play with, an interesting idea called AskPeopleYouKnow.com a little while ago. It looked interesting, but appears to have been wholeheartedly usurped by Google Social Search, which is the same thing but, you know, accessible on your regular Google Search page, using your increasingly connected Google profile, and a hell of a lot simpler.

Here's the usual heavily-accented Google Social Search description video:



And here's Matt Cutts explaining how Google Social Search works, referencing Twitter, your Blogger blog, Friendfeed and the 'Social Circle' - interestingly there is no mention of Facebook, which seems to be falling behind in this integration of Social Media into mainstream Search Engines:



One thing that seems key to Google Social Search is to refine who you're following on Twitter - you get all of your followees' followees in your Social Circle, so could clog up what might otherwise be valuable results. Alternatively you could reasonably indiscriminately, or cleverly and tactically, expand your range of sources.

Putting a text message on a building - Great viral and marriage proposal from Staples

Along the same lines as recent virals for Samsung, with LED Sheep and Honda with car headlights, Staples are making large scale stunts out of the humble office block.



This is from the Netherlands, and there's an accompanying website www.lovetheoffice.nl which, through my limited (ie non-existent) grasp of Dutch appears to encourage you to upload your own entries in order to win a holiday. There are a number of examples there already.

Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin vs Question Time

A bit of levity from Cassetteboy via @graemed.

Reviving a tired format - Thomson's Flight Safety Video

I've just got back from a thoroughly relaxing holiday in Mexico, refreshed and resolved to get back into the swing of things blog-wise.

A great excuse to do so came in the form of the safety announcement on the return flight of our Thomson holiday, which was an great example of how a little bit of creativity and effort can make a massive difference.

The video below is well worth a watch. It's your standard safety announcement. We've all heard it every time we've flown, and I know I had become one of those people who didn't even lower their newspaper. When I have, the flight attendants (and this is only in my experience, which is largely of a lowish-cost nature, I am sure it is not true of all flight attendants) have seemed equally as indifferent to the actual point of the rigmarole.



There are numerous areas where companies like Thomson can make little but memorable differences to people's holiday experiences, and they force competitors to raise their game as well. There's a practical application in this case as it leaves the full cabin crew to continue preparations for the flight (or discuss loudly and at length the sexual orientation of all male cabin crew in the fleet, in this instance) and the surprise of the difference made everyone pay attention.

In the case of raising the mundane above the usual, the applications are seemingly endless for any brand. Humour will tend to play some role. A good example of this is the (admittedly now slightly tired itself) Orange Cinema Gold Spot.

Putting little messages on the packaging of different products within your range, to give them their own little identity, would also come under this 'simple but effective' umbrella. To use another aviation example, Virgin Atlantic did this with the packs containing your standard socks and sleeping mask. It's the sort of thing you are more likely to keep, and that might help make you come back.

A friend's company, the runaway success that is Rollasole, has this kind of attention to detail. There's a different passage in each different colour of pump. It probably goes unread by the majority of customers, particularly as the product is aimed at the 'end of the night' crowd, but it's there, and it shows care.



I know the Thomson example isn't especially new, a hazard of taking a rather late summer holiday. Ironically I think if the kids in the Thomson Flight Safety Video, rather than the rather disinterested adult cabin crew we got, had been in charge, I might have had a better flying experience.

Never underestimate the power of a great story

An ambitious and brilliantly clever ad from Canal Plus.



HT to Ryan

I'll Scream Your Tweets - This guy will scream your tweets

Fresh from Nick Burcher blogging about the #Livestrong Nike Tour de France Chalkbot, which chalked Twitter messages along the route of the Tour de France, a decidedly more 'home-spun' idea comes from South Africa.



An enterprising chap called Sam has posted a blog, http://illscreamyourtweets.com/, which invites users to send Tweets to @ScreamUrTweets.



Once a week, Sam will ascend Table Mountain and, quite simply, scream your tweets. Simple but, to anyone within earshot, probably pretty effective.

Oh, and he'll post them on You Tube too:

I'll Scream Your Tweets Episode One



I'll Scream Your Tweets Episode Two



I'll Scream Your Tweets has even been picked up by Current TV:



It doesn't yet have a huge number of followers, but it will get a lot of interest no doubt, having already been picked up by a local newspaper as well.

It is attracting a range of Tweets, from advertising niche products:



To personal messages:



It would be an interesting way to propose as well. Only kidding.

HT to Blog Blog.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media by David Cushman

This is a comprehensive presentation to explain the what, why and wherefore of Social Media.

It also features a very prophetic quote I was unaware of from Brian Eno way back in 1991:

Future TV will be made with
simple equipment
unqualified people
small budgets
and bad taste

Adjust your set as much as you like

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know Aboout Social Media

View more presentations from david cushman.

Read more from the author, David Cushman, here.

Interesting Use of Twitter

Are you a boss being encouraged by your employees to use Twitter? here's why:



From here via @Mazi.

New ComparetheMeerkat.com Ad - This time with added Jacuzzi