Barclaycard Rollercoaster - the follow up to the waterslide

The new Barclaycard TV advert promoting their contactless payment launches this weekend with a big TV spot during Dancing on Ice.

It features a man commuting to work in New York on a rollercoaster, following up from the guy who left work via a waterslide in the previous, highliy successful, Barclays advert.



The soundtrack is 'More Than a Feeling' by Boston, a good bit of 70s rock. The ad is by Bartle Bogle Hegarty and is very slick.

I wonder if there will be a Barclaycard Rollercoaster iPhone Application to follow up the branded Waterslide app which was downloaded over 9.8 million times. Based on that phenomenal success I think I'd be more surprised if there wasn't one.

I'm struggling to find much control from Barclays over the other aspects of the Social Media campaign. There are a few groupd on Facebook celebrating the waterslide but it isn't clear if any are official, and I can't find the new ad, which I took from Brand Republic, on You Tube. I suspect they may be ready today ahead of Sunday's launch.

Footballs made from Aid packages - Great, Timely Design

As the world's gaze once again turns on providing aid to a region in jeopardy, this amazing piece of design from Unplug Design stood out for me.

The sentiment behind making footballs out of discarded aid packages is explained below in a neat diagram.



And the original packages and subsequent footballs look as below. Probably the last thing on anyone's mind in Haiti, but I'm sure there will be many instances where this sort of endeavour would be just the ticket.



Nicked from PSFK.

Francesco Totti thinks a Broadband Router is a Toaster

This is a Vodafone ad from Italy featuring famous Italian footballer Francesco Totti. It plays on the idea of 'Broadband for everyone' with the fact that 'tutti' is everyone, and of course he is Totti. Very clever.



Less clever is the suggestion that he thinks a router is a toaster. it doesn't even have a slot, Francesco, you crazy fool.

Fernando Torres Pepsi Commercial - Very Surreal

David Beckham and co star in Adidas Star Wars Collection Promo

3D Rugby from O2 - A European Sporting first

Last week, ESPN announced at CES that they would be broadcasting a number of matches from the 2010 World Cup in 3D.

This week, O2 have announced (I have to say I knew already as I work on the account) that they are continuing their relationship with England Rugby by screening England's first two Six Nations matches in cinemas, also in 3D.

I've not seen anything in 3D Television since a visit to Alton Towers about 10 years ago, but I've heard great things about 3D TV from those who have seen demos.

The England Rugby Team certainly seem impressed anyway:



Love the Kanye West 3D glasses - much better than the old ones you used to get sellotaped to the front of a magazine.

Am I the only one who thinks that a lot of the technology we're seeing so far this year looks like a particularly ambitious episode of Tomorrow's World?



3DRugbyLive.com

Nike True City - Foursquare for hipsters?

I was going to post some screengrabs and the like from the new Nike True City iPhone App, but this video by AKQA says everything I could a lot better.



I've had a play around with the app and am now itching to go to Paris with a bit of time to wander round, as well as check out the places on my doorstep I'm not cool enough to know about.

There's a lot of added value here for a tool which essentially only really has the benefit for the advertiser of having a 'buzz' section which counts down the time until a particular new product 'drops'.



There's likely to be a bit of an initial stampede of people claiming landmarks, businesses that want to be associated with this sort of crowd sticking their names down, and attempts by the likes of me to become one of the 'Insiders', if only because they're all kitted out in Nike gear.

I'll be interested to see if this will get the uptake it probably deserves, or if it sits more as an example of polished work. There's even QR interactivity. About the only thing missing is Augmented Reality.

Two things I learned about newspapers on the way home

First, you don't shift a lot of Metros when the morning trains are screwed.



Second, you can still be innovative with newspaper ads, and the newspaper will still whack your innovative ad way back in the paper so as few people as possible will see it. Apologies for the piss poor picture and the ex-Press Buyer cynicism. Either way kudos to American Express, and please approve my application for an Air Miles card.

Muscle Milk's Augmented Reality Shaq Bottle

I'm going to stop going on about Augmented Reality soon, but not until I find a Coca Cola bottle with Wayne Rooney doing keepy-uppies on the top of it.



This is an Augmented Reality campaign for Muscle Milk in Ohio, where Shaquille O'Neal plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Apparently you focus the webcam on the number 33 on the bottle, and he sings a song about the wonders of Ohio. That alone would be worth seeing.

Via TechCrunch.

Nike True City iPhone App Launches Early

Despite the buzz video below, the Nike True City iPhone Application has landed in the App store a day early. I'm quite excited about the possibilities, as it claims to 'Make The Hidden Visible' by tapping into a network of 'tastemakers', or cool people as you and I know them.

Nike True City from NikeSportswear on Vimeo.

London, Berlin, Milan, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Paris are featured, and events and product launches from Nike as well as adding in other Social Media functionality and allowing contributors to become 'insiders'.

Judging by the length of time it's taking to download the app, it's going to be hefty. I'll try and play with it and get some screenshots up later.

Axe - Clean Your Balls

I'm not sure if this is official or a spoof as it's from Funny or Die, but it is heavily Axe Branded. If I could call the number from the UK, I'd be all over it. For research purposes only, obviously.

Yodelizer, yodelizer, yodelizer, ooh you're a yodelizer

The headline's a tribute to Britney Spears. If you didn't know that, you lost touch with pop music in 2009 and need to have a word with yourself.

The product, if you will, is the Yahoo! Yodelizer. It's born out of the Y!OU! ad campaign, below, which had a bit of a jingle at the end, basically belting out the brand name:



Now you can have a go at making a better Yahoo! 'yodel' with the Yahoo! Yodelizer. It's along the same lines as things like the iDaft, which is an iPhone app as well as online.



The Yodelizer has a wide range of 'Ya' and 'Hoo' sounds, some of which are pretty meek, some pretty wild. Make your own Yahoo! Yodel and then share it via the usual channels. Knock yourself out.

Bobby George helps darts fans flog their gold

It's the second of the two World Darts finals on Sunday, the BDO Lakeside World Championships. I've seen little of either but I did catch a glimpse of a replay of the PDC World Championship final when I was at the gym the other day.

The only reason I mention this is, if you've seen much in the way of darts, there's a chap called Bobby George who is a player turned pundit. He's very much of the Big Ron Atkinson school of punditry, a caricature who talks in riddles. He's even got his own bit on the BBC Sport website. His main 'thing' is that he is literally dripping in gold, a sort of Cockney Mr T if you will.

Big Ron - May or may not have cashed in his gold

During the Sky coverage, I saw an ad for the increasingly popular phenomenon of sending your gold off in exchange for cash. It's a sort of pen pal pawn shop, if you will. Guess who was the star of the ad?



This is a different, and considerably less interesting, angle from Cash 4 Gold in the US, where they took the combination of bling and destitution and asked Ed McMahon (no, me neither) and MC Hammer to send themselves up. They also aimed a bit higher with an ad in the famed Superbowl slot.



However, the juxtaposition of an ad, starring a larger than life darts personality, pushing a service for those who may have random bits of gold knocking about and have fallen on hard times, during a darts event, in the middle of the afternoon is pretty damn good targeting, if you ask me.

The Journey of Courageousness - A good metaphor

I was fortunate enough, almost exactly a year ago, to be involved in the launch of the Compare The Meerkat campaign.

I'm no longer involved with the account, but have very fond memories of working on it and keep a keen eye on its progress, not that one has to look far for meerkat news.

The new ad, a typically slick and rather ambitious 60 second 'meerkat adventure film' is called The Journey of Courageousness. It seems a pretty appropriate title given the leap of faith that was required to plump for the meerkat idea in the first place.



To compare meerkats, click here.

Egg-mented Reality - Creme Egg Season is here!

Cadbury's Creme Eggs, and their seasonal partner Mini Eggs, have always had what could be described as advertising with character.

This year, the folks responsible for Creme Egg have taken the seasonal nature of the product and created an actual 'Creme Egg Season'. It combines what appears to be a 3D TV creative with a strong and comprehensive online presence which looks like including everyone's favourite new technology, Augmented Reality.

The first port of call is the excellently named Goo Tube. There have been a number of executions of the egg-centric ads, which were tweaked cleverly for the Twisted bars. The new ad shows the gala premiere of Creme Egg Season.



There's also a counter to the end of the Creme Egg Season on the site. Cadbury's pushed the Wispa Gold as a limited period product and got a lot of buzz around it. Creme Eggs are limited every year, so there's mileage in this.



The theme of the site is 'Your Country Needs Goo', and there's an animated comic strip about a lost batch of Creme Eggs that have to be recovered before April 4th.



There is a hint of an online game where finding eggs with codes unlocks prizes on the Creme Egg site, as can codes on actual eggs if I'm understanding the rules below correctly:



There's a playable Great Eggscape game and a downloadable mobile game, but the most exciting aspects of this are yet to be revealed, but are teased on the Creme Egg Site. The now obligatory Creme Egg iPhone Application, if the games on the site are anything to go by, should be pretty slick.

The intriguing 'Egg-mented Reality' could be a big talking point. I've already talked this week about the Adidas Augmented Reality Trainers and, athough it's not as easy to see how the Creme Egg Augmented Reality might work at this stage, predictions that 2010 would be the year of Augmented Reality are certainly looking a good bet at this stage.

HT to Digital Examples.

Parrot AR.Drone - When video games become reality and my brain explodes

It's only the 6th of January so this is essentially a meaningless statement, but I have yet to see anything this year that has impressed me as much as what you'll see in the video below. If it's real and I get to see one in action, it would rival the most impressive things I've been as an adult.



It's a kick-ass helicopter, or quadricopter to give it its proper name, that is controlled via an iPhone or iPod Touch. Stick that in your Nexus One and smoke it.



The AR stands for Augmented Reality, details of the games involved with the AR.Drone, playable again via the iPhone, are on the Parrot AR.Drone site.

They aren't messing about either. Parrot, who have built a reputation around wireless and bluetooth concepts, have spent four years researching and developing the AR.Drone. They've also released a Software Development Kit so that other games using the frontal camera can be created prior to launch.



This just looks like the most fun. It's my 30th birthday soon and I want one.

HT to recombu.

Choose your Brand Ambassador Carefully

If you have seen any commercial television in the last week, you'll have seen this Thomas Cook Ad featuring the lovely face and hushed tones of Louise Redknapp and her distinctly less silky-voiced husband, footballer turned pundit and all-round-nice-guy Jamie Redknapp.



Fair enough. It's January, everyone's booking a holiday and we should expect to be targeted with advertising. Jamie and Louise Redknapp are a well known couple and make things look a bit glamorous, right? Well, Louise does.

Jamie is popular with the fairer sex and seems like a good bloke, but not necessarily that good a flight companion if you believe this article last June in The Sun.

"Travel with Thomas Cook, especially if you're banned from other airlines"

Is this ideal for a holiday company? Do Thomas Cook not do holidays to the sort of destination, for the sort of people, Redknapp and Gray were allegedly disparaging?

I appreciate this isn't the biggest scandal of all time, but it was something, as a football fan who also manages to inhale a load of useless information, I instantly associated with Redknapp on seeing him reclining in a ludicrously roomy flight seat.

Still, at least he isn't whoring around the whole family connection to several different advertisers.



I don't want to make it seem like the age-old use of a famous face to generate a bit of reflected glory for your brand has suddenly become a bad thing, but the increasing glare of the media has managed to bring controversy to brands associated with big names like Kate Moss (which was always a risk, to be fair), Thierry Henry (perhaps unfairly) and even, and most spectacularly, the most bankable Brand Ambassador Tiger Woods (a good couple of months for the Gillette Marketing Department).

Just don't get me started on Kerry Katona...

Augmented Reality Trainers from Adidas - Right on Trend for 2010

Adidas are launching the next step of Augmented Reality products with a range of Augmented Reality trainers set to debut in the USA next month. This is quite exciting news.

I'd been umming and ahhing over whether to re-introduce trainer-themed content to this blog in an effort to give myself more to write about and create momentum. Adidas Originals have made the decision for me, though, and my first post of 2010 is about trainers, but also about one of the hottest predicted trends of 2010, Augmented Reality.

Basically Adidas have turned the humble sneaker into an Augmented Reality device. A code embedded in the tongue, when used through a webcam on the Adidas site, will create a virtual 3D neighbourhood where your trainer should be.

Adidas Augmented Reality Trainers

Without being able to see what the actual sneaker looks like, which is of course pretty important if you want to spend between $65 and $95 on a pair, this looks quite cool even if it had no functionality, just as a curiosity or a value-add.

Consider that there will be games introduced in the next few months, developed by xForm, that will allow you to use these environments as a gaming platform, and it becomes a different matter.

Un-Augmented Reality - A Pair of Trainers

As if I needed an excuse to collect more different pairs of Adidas Originals (I bought the pair above today while on a trip to buy a gift for my girlfriend), the potential for different Augmented reality environments within different models, allowing for varying gaming experiences, makes for quite a unique sell.

There is a danger that every product will carry an Augmented reality code, that there will be a novelty use, and that we will ultimately tire of it simply being something clever rather than something useful. The pace of development, particularly in it being delivered to the consumer, is strong, however, and I can envisage a lot of posts in 2010 detailing far less 'showy' applications of AR.

The news bit of this was nicked off Net Imperative