Why Joost Isn't Just Your Average 'YouTube Killer'

If you haven't already, meet the newest player in the broadband-video space, Joost which is backed by the founders of Kazaa and Skype. Oh, and meet its ad model, too.

See the above article from Advetising Age and todays from the New York Times.

Beatbox Mixer

http://www.beatboxmixer.com
Great page/online tool because it involves the user.
The user creates a song and has the option to have the mix sent to an email adresse. With the email you get an URL to your mix (that youcan foward etc.).


It's viral!!! Listen to my mix. It's simply bad!! http://www.beatboxmixer.com/?edit=6ed1f53c-638f-4b00-8683-cf1a395604f8

Is this the end of the superstar era ?

Not a marketing idea, but a very interesting article written by British journalist, Neil McCormick, for the Daily Telegraph broadsheet newspaper........

Is This The End Of the Superstar Era?

Mini Builds Expansive Campaign Around Quirky Webisodes

Check out the new innovative Mini campaign that covers a broad range of media. It has at its foundation a series of online short films and integrates six online episodes, 15 second video on demand spots for mobile, ipod video downloads, event marketing, a mock music video, DVD releases, teaser in theatre movie trailers, quirky outdoor and integrated creative magazine advertsing. This is going to be a very interesting campaign to watch as it is rolls out in the months ahead.

Feed Your PSP

The PSP platform is creating interesting new opportunities for packaging content other than games. It's been a few months since Lonely Planet launched their series of City Guides for the console, but now there's another source of on-the-go gadget-fodder.

FeedYourPSP is a brand new online magazine created for download directly to a PSP. Regularly updated, the site will feature everything from celebrity interviews to short films, from learning how to play Urban Croquet to going behind the scenes with bands like Hard-Fi.


The current issue has:

• Advice on how to get your festival kicks in the winter
• Pro-level grass cutting tips from the groundsmen of a Premiership football club
• An investigation into the Nu Rave scene
• A review of the recent Air Guitar championships.

If that doesn't grab you, there's also an archive of content you can dip into when you fancy. The sheer eclecticism of these snack-sized reports should keep even those with the most limited of attention-spans entertained during those tedious commutes home...

Sounds interesting. If this catches on, it could be a tool to send teaser clips of new artists or singles/videos or info.

Tea Partay

A viral campaign for Smirnoff Raw Tea, based on a "hiphop" video feat. Prep-Unit, the New England Gangsters. A creative way of getting the message out by using Youtube etc.

Over 2 million views so far!

Personalized Big Brand Mash-ups

Big brands are catching on... it's all about personalization on the web.

Combining the hands-on user-generated approach with in-your-face advertising, mash-ups are proving to be an effective marketing tool for the web-savvy public. From interactive games to making your own commercials and ad soundtracks, the concept of mash-ups taps into the creative streak of modern audiences.

‘Becoming an M&M’ allows users to put together their own little M&M character and watch him/her feature in a variety of movies and arcade games.

Similarly, Nikemashup.com promotes the ‘Second Coming’ campaign for the Nike AF25 Basketball trainer, in which people are given an array of clips, close-ups and a soundtrack to cut and splice together a unique version of the recent Wieden + Kennedy commercial, featuring 10 Nike-sponsored basketball players battling it out in an abandoned airbase hangar.

I've also seen a new online campaign for the Motorola RAZR phone, collaborating with Discovery TV show Miami Ink to produce an interactive site where visitors can design covers for the Motorola RAZR using a selection of tattoo designs. The prize for the best design is a RAZR phone decorated with your own creative etchings.




This "mash-up" concept has become so popular that an on-line agency called ViTrue has created an entire site dedicated to user generated commercials, acting as a platform to other video mash-ups sites. The site also hosts tools for editing your videos including AdMixer, a program for users to piece together their own TV commercials.

Very cool. We need to do some mash-ups with our artists!

Thailand Is For Lovers--Happy Valentines Day

Hats off to Thailand for showing more love than any other country!

MSN, Control Room to Present Another Live 8

Concert News Comes Amid Talk Partnership Isn't Paying Off

An intersting article on MSN and the Control Room deal. Strong rumors of a Live 8 concert being organised for July 7 '07 with Al Gore's involvement.

"Track it Down" teams up with "Kiss 100"

Track it Down has teamed up with Kiss 100 to offer tracks that are being played directly from artist shows. The new service will allow listeners to buy tracks played by specialist DJs such as Carl Cox and John Digweed via the website totalkiss.com.

Who's Really Viewing YouTube

And You Might Be Surprised at What They're Watching

By Mike Vorhaus SVP-managing director, new media and strategy for Frank N. Magid Associates. Article from Ad Age Digital

Published: February 12, 2007

As online video takes hold in America, many people seem to be under the impression that only young people are drawn to this type of content and that the videos are mostly generated by consumers.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. More than 44% of online Americans (ages 12 to 64) use online video weekly -- this has clearly become a mainstream distribution channel for video. And the No. 1 type of video viewed is news, followed by weather and movie clips, all of which are types of content produced by professionals, not by consumers (although often this video is consumer-distributed, meaning consumers are posting it to video-sharing sites).

The demographic watching online video most frequently is males ages 25 to 34; 64% of them watch online video at least once a week. But it's not just limited to young viewers. Among males 55 to 64 years old, 43% watch online video weekly. Among the females the rates are lower with 49% of female teens watching online video weekly and only 27% of females 55 to 64 watching online video weekly.

#1 YOUTUBE VIDEO OF ALL TIME

A must see: EVOLUTION OF DANCE.

Advertsing Awards Winner

A great advert from the recent Advertising Awards.
Great creative, wonderful positive emotion for the product.
I won't give it away, check it out.

Steve Jobs: "Thoughts on Music"

Interesting article posted on the Apple site today. Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on music". It fits perfectly into the panel discussion RMG had in NY last week.

New Mobile Handsets

There are a lot of great new music/entertainment handsets launching this year. And as we all know handsets and devices drive digital consumption. I had a chance to play with two good new devices recently. Nokia held an event last weekend where a bunch of got to play with their new n-series phone (N95). The handset is the best entertainment device that Nokia has created to date and it will be announced at 3GSM in Barcelona this coming week.



SonyEricsson also recently released a new handset. The Walkman Series 950. It is a very slick looking handset that has a touchscreen and 4GB of internal memory. The iPhone will certainly bring a new awareness of OTA (over the air) downloads to the masses but the fact that SonyEricsson, Nokia, and Samsung (to name a few) are releasing good music-player handsets will be a very good thing in assuring that the mobile music space evolves in a way where this is not an iPod-like dominance.

Microsoft Vista Puzzle

Created for Microsoft Vista by the fiendishly clever souls at 42 Entertainment, a global puzzle challenge titled Vanishing is offering a tempting array of tech goodies.

The challenge is titled "Vanishing Point".

The scene was set in December when special puzzle boxes were sent out to bloggers to be solved with the help of a USB key and a note from puzzle mistress Loki. (For the uninitiated, Loki is the Norse God of mischief. Of course.)

The site explains that each week, twelve puzzles will be posted along with footage of an unusual real world event. Each puzzle consists of an online element and a real world element which must be combined to arrive at the correct answer. To join your fellow players and take part in a puzzle challenge spanning the planet, you can either show up at the physical location when a countdown hits zero, or check online to view recorded footage of the event.

The Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas was the first of these real world events, with messages projected into the night sky above the Bellagio Hotel and Casino. Countdown timers, GPS codes and faded pictures have been posted to the website as clues to the next stage of the game, which is already generating significant buzz for the brand. Whether it can overcome the lingering skepticism about Vista's capabilities remains to be seen.

Want to catch up fast? Laughingsquid has a brilliant breakdown of the game here: http://laughingsquid.com/microsofts-vanishing-point-game/

I think it's an awesome example of smart viral marketing... getting the tech geeks into the product first!

Imagination

Check out General Electric’s ‘Imagination Theatre’ - a series of three live action and animated short films conceived by BBDO New York, including a beautiful manga-esque cartoon entitled Samurai. The films are available as Video on Demand and debuted in November and December on Time Warner’s Digital Cable’s ‘Movie Trailers on Demand’ channel. The films have gathered momentum supported by teaser adverts on TV as well as wild postings in New York and spoof film posters in ‘Entertainment Weekly’.

All the ads drive viewers to the GE site www.ge.com/imaginationtheater where the films can be viewed online, although they are also available on YouTube.

The project was conceived by BBDO as a way of allowing consumers to become more engaged and involved with the brand, choosing when they view content rather than having it pushed upon them. It also works well against the TIVO trend of FFWding commercials.

I think it's a great usage of all of the new ways to reach people now, as well as something creative and surprising.

Budweiser is doing something similar as well. They've developed a series of animated humorous shorts for Bud Select. The shorts reflect the antics of the Bud Select logo, now broken down into five little characters. They’re racking up hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube and are surprisingly yet refreshingly irreverent.

All the clips are also hosted online at a bespoke site, www.crowntown.tv ‘Hot Tub’ is my favourite.

Whether this is an indicator of the kind of original content we’ll be able to expect from forthcoming online entertainment hub bud.tv is still unclear, but it’s not a bad start.

STARDOLL.COM

BEYONCE (yes I dressed her) ON STARDOLL.COM!

Check out Stardoll, a Swedish site that’s just exploding with close to 5 000 000 members (60% in the US, 30% Germany… UK, Poland, Sweden etc.) targeting girls 7-16... who as we all know rule the world of music and fashion trends worldwide.

Like a Myspace or Facebook, Stardoll is a word of mouth phenomenon. And it is travelling from school yard to school yard all over the world. Rapidly.

The site simply lets the user dress up star “paper” dolls in different outfits, design personal dolls, decorate their own space and basically just hang out with friends. It’s also possible to buy virtual clothing items and accessories for real money. The next natural step is, ta da, music!

Stardoll is already talking to managements and record labels in the US, hoping to make it possible for the users to design their own space/room with not only virtual furniture, posters and teddy bears… but with real music playing in your virtual stereo.

So far Stardoll has no advertising or any other commercial message, other than their own limited edition virtual clothing brand (!!!), but that’s about to change. Take a few minutes to check it out: www.stardoll.com.

SecondLife

An artist press junket in SecondLife? Album playback? Virtual performance? Would it work? Reuters has a virtual journalist.

Reuters interviews at the World Economic Forum, Davos
Fri Jan 19, 2007 4:01am PST
By Adam Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Reuters will conduct a series of interviews with artists, politicians and executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, in front of a live Second Life audience.

Reuters Bureau Chief Adam Pasick will talk with guests including Linden Lab Chairman Mitch Kapor, author and entrepreneur John Battelle, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, and musician Peter Gabriel during the WEF, which takes place Jan. 24-28. They will have their own customized avatars and will take questions from residents.

Attendance in the Reuters Auditorium will be limited to 50 on a first-come, first-served basis. A live audio and video feed will be available for residents to stream onto their own land or view on the Reuters Second Life News Center.

The most recent schedule is available on the Reuters/Second Life homepage. Questions can be submitted in advance via email to adamreuters@gmail.com.

Stimulation = Creativity

There is so much information on the web nowadays... none of us have enough time. Enter PopUrls, a meta-site that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from 15 consensus filters, and top thumbnail images from the social sites Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video. The hive mind on one screen.

Here's how I use it. On one page I can scan the latest headlines of what the web collectively thinks is either popular or interesting. A simple mouse over the headline will cleverly reveal a small box of expanded text on the article. If I want even more, a click will open the original entry in the filter. In five minutes I can scan 18 social site sources thoroughly. I get an excellent feel for what is new, what people are looking at, and what is worth following up on (a small amount of overlap between sources helps). It's not just news, it's imagery, music, trends... it's stimulation and culture direction.

The design of PopUrls is brilliant. There's two flavors, black on white or white on black. Function drives form, buttons are minimal. It feels like a well-designed command post for a concise debriefing.

There's no better way to watch the world changing. I've posted the link in the side bar as well.