Mark Fennell V TV Station idents - a nice piece of Australian TV nostalgia

Thanks to my friend Rosey for pointing me to this nice review on TV station promos.

I love it.

Social media measurement... for FREE

Here is a very cool tool.

If your social media expert is too busy to help you out or, if your client is too poor to pay for buzzmetrics or radian6 dazzle them with a quick run on Social Mention.

It is a very simple tool that allows you to type in a brand name and search in real time across a range of social media for where it has been mentioned.

This is what they say about themselves:

Social Mention is a social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.

It allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web's social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

Social Mention currently provides a point-in-time social media search and analysis service, daily social media alerts, and a third-party API.

Of course, being free the tool does have some limitations. The first time I used it, it worked pretty quickly but since has seemed a little slow. Also, currently you can only search 'universally' not by region.

This said, I still think it useful for showing clients the volume of chatter that is occurring about their brand and also to track trends on specific subjects.

OMG: a conversation starter!

Last week I read the review of this ad on Campaign Brief but for whatever reason, I didn't watch it. Last night after a long day at work I sat down to watch a bit of TV before heading to bed, and was pleasantly suprised viewing it.

I caught it about 4 seconds in, which meant I missed the "Hey Jesus" voicover at the start but was engaged for the remaining 26 seconds by of the playful music and pace at which the images were flashing up on screen.

The visuals made me somewhat nostaligic for the first days of the school year when I would lovingly collage my new folder with snippets of pop-culture that inspired me.

I do wonder though if this ad is a case of over promising, under delivering. I find it very hard to believe that if I actually followed through on what the ad is asking me to do and search for more about Jesus, that I would be met with the upbeat, youthful environ that the ad portrays.

Irresepective, I do believe that in an era where Jesus equals Madonna's latests squeeze, the well rounded campaign (I've seen grassroots activity EVERYWHERE) does a good job of getting people to reconsider faith and the things that are important in life.

Even if it doesn't succeed in getting people to reinvent their beliefs, it is a nice conversation starter.

The Incomplete Ad

Here is a really cool print execution for the Uruguay Lynx equivelant, Axe.

As you can see, the ad appeared in print with white squares over the girl's 'naughty bits'. The aesthetics of the ad make it eye-catching enough to engage the reader to search for why it appears the way it does.

Upon searching the reader finds copy pointing the reader to text AXE to 2345 after 9 pm. After doing so the reader recieves a bounceback with an image to be placed over the existing ad. This completes the experience.

It is a really simple but smart way to intrigue the reader and create an experience memorable enough to share.

Pimp by colour

This is a really cool tool that allows you to search for images based on colour.

You click the colour on the left-hand panel and it searches flickr for matching images. You can add colours for combination images.

Simple but smart.

Being grateful

I started today feeling glum.

Not for any reason in particular but just very close to snapping for no reason at all.

Its now the end of the day and i have thought of a list of things for which I'm grateful.

1. I'm grateful for having found the ying to my yang.
2. I'm grateful that I don't have to compete in the dating world with the lithe, eagerly fashionable, young things that surround me.
3. I'm grateful that I am working in a job that allows for both brilliance & balance.
4. I am grateful that I have never been & never will be dumped via some form of digital technology.
5. I am grateful that despite having gone through my fair share the lonliness, hurt & false bravado of a break-up it will never haunt me again.
6. I am grateful for the 3pm smile that I brought to the face of a stressed co-worker upon delivery of some free Gelatissimo.
7. I am grateful to the guy who gave me his copy of Cleo because I missed out.
8. I'm grateful that I don't have a squeakily annoying voice or a booming aggressive one.
9. I'm grateful that the sun stayed up long enough for me to leave work in the light.
10. I'm grateful for being able to share these thoughts.

I obviously have a bit of a theme going on here and I think it is about growing up.

As much as it still pains me to think of all the lonley & sad times I had during my teens & early 20's maybe all the self-help books are right - you can't truly appreciate how good things are until you've experienced the bad.

I just want to put it out there & thank the universe for bringing me Matt & also for helping me to see the wood from the trees.

Quick Thinking = Smart Thinking

I love it when brands take advantage of topical issues.

We all saw Veet do it perfectly when President Bush was voted out of the hot seat in America but here is an example of a relatively 'boring' brand taking advantage of today's hot-topic, Kanye West's outburst at the MTV VMAs. It demonstrates how a brand can easily inject contextual relevance into a pre-planned media placement.