George Sampson on TwitCam

I wasn't exactly looking for it, but when someone in your feed puts up their phone number and it has after it (@georgesampson live on http://twitcam.com/2u2kx) I knew it could only end badly.

Breakdancing George, remember him? Well, he looked mightily impressed by the amount of numbers that were flooding his way. When I went to investigate, he was phoning a girl at random that wanted to fling themselves at him.

The only downside is that everyone on Twitter or watching that stream could see everyone else's number. Not the best idea when your loyal fan club is under 16...
And I thought Bieber bad.

St. John Ambulance film

Love this. It only works once before it becomes an online video, but I think that's the point. Great idea from BBH.

Merton and T-Mobile

Anyone remember Merton off the Chatroulette improv videos? Of course you do. Well, now he's been paid by T-Mobile to continue his improv-ness and sing to people arriving into Gatwick Airport's South Terminal.

At 1:39 mins it could be a lot longer, and sadly a lot funnier. I don't think this has quite captured the best of Merton. Whether that was due to the people coming through the arrivals gate or some form of client censorship, I don't know. But what I can say is it's still on brand and would brighten up anyone's day after a long flight. It was also filmed yesterday and on the web today. Talk about life's for sharing (fast).

Live Twitter hiring

The geekiest way to get hired. Well done @aislondon and @polliecreatives. And, definitely the best way to spread good news fast. Were they ever going to say no? 

Nice one lads. 

Amazon targets spelling mistakes

As Black Friday approaches, Amazon is looking to steal a march on its competitors. One of the simplest and easiest ways to drive traffic from unusual sources is to play on human error.

To do this, Amazon have bought the url www.ebqy.com, which is just one teeny tiny key away from www.ebay.com when you're typing quickly. So, instead of heading off to your favourite auction site, you get sent to Amazon's Black Friday deals page instead.

Underhand tactics are always good.

Nice find by @carlmartin

Online mash up music

Girl Talk have created a mash up sample album titled 'All Day'. And, it's bloomin' awesome. It's so well done. Especially the website. The interface is slick and simple. The code behind it isn't.
Hit tip to @hellokinsella for the find.

Oh, and I found the album to download on Soundcloud. Enjoy.

Kinect Shadow Puppets

Microsoft have made their Kinect software available via open source, which means there should be lots more cool stuff like this appearing.



It's early stages, but I'm just waiting for a giant projection on a building that's along the lines of 'Hand From Above' and 'Laser Tag'. Or, for someone to make a bit of ambient... I'm thinking Batman, against a night sky.

There's also a bucket load more here. Not bad for a being a week old!

All I'm saying is that programming geeks are cool.

Yeo Valley Rap on iTunes

There's loads of Facebook groups that want to get a random song to Christmas Number 1. Here's my suggestion, why doesn't everyone buy the Yeo Valley rap song?

It's available on iTunes for a mere 79p. Bargain. 
Nice to see Yeo Valley/BBH trying to make some money out of the creative. Maybe it's contributing to paying for the extortionate airtime costs during the final of X Factor.

It would definitely be up there with Mr Blobby in terms of best Christmas song ever. Unless that is...Wagner wins.

Who's with me?

Denim Diapers

What the... how have I never seen this?

Nice use of the word "chhhhic" instead of "shit" too.

Early Learning Centre Ad

It's been out three weeks apparently, which means I'm behind the times. But I sure this ad for the Early Learning Centre over the weekend and thought it was lovely. Yes, I said the word lovely.

Perfect target audience, very apt humour, and it reminds me of so many things. Yet, it's still found a little gap in the market to spread its light hearted goodness on. Enjoy.



Pick up an award

Friday saw the last day of Internet Week Europe. I was lucky enough to enjoy two events that took place during the day. Each one will get a lovely blog post.  

The first I went to was Breakfast with Mother. Throughout the week they've been holding coffee mornings with different themes, today's theme was "Pick up an award from Mother". Quite a simple concept, turn up, chat to fellow creative types, enjoy a bacon sarnie or muffin with a drink... oh and then help yourself to one of these awards on the table. No joke. 


I was talking Jane Lucas, the co-organiser, and she claimed these were just awards that technically no longer meant anything. A good, and bad way to look at it I thought.

After all, they were roughly 10 years old, weren't golds or the biggest awards out there, weren't attached to a specific team and one wasn't even theirs!

They don't display their awards for all to see and (probably) just clog up some storage centre somewhere, so why not give them away as a good will gesture? They had to pay the entry fee, so what they do with the award it up to them.

While I was there, I met up with Dani and Paul from back in the day and finally put a few names to faces, which was awesome. As well as being let into the select club of the YCC, which if you don't know about, you should. 

Plus, Mike Coulter also bribed Mark Waites in to giving us a mini tour of the building.


And, we even invaded the boardroom for a few snaps.


For more frolics from Breakfast with Mother, check out their Flickr page.

The Apprentice Advertising Challenge

Last night saw the ad industry's favourite task. Lord Sugar's wanted both teams to create, design and then advertise a cleaning product.

One team came up with Germ-o-nator. A cleaning product that kills e.coli and influenza in gravy. And,  uses a small child to sell the squeezy Bovril coloured spray. Germ-o-nator's endline was Hasta la vista...gravy. Get it?

The other team went for Octo-Kleen. A childish looking bottle with an octopus on it. With the endline. 8 hands are better than 2. Though as spotted by @scott_tweeddale, where 8 hands are better than 2, but we only 5 on the logo.

This task really brought out some of the best on Twitter. And, really showed how everyone else perceives advertising.

One team leader thought, "sex sells everything" but as @AdamAndDan pointed out, Dr Pepper wouldn't say so. And, thanks to @akacreatives for; "when it comes to pleasuring your on-screen wife, 8 hands are DEFINITELY better than 2."


By the time they'd both made the shockingly clichéd ads we got an "octopus porn route or poisonous gravy route. Wowza."(@AdamAndDan)

At the pitch stage, we had them throwing in buzz words and @dirktherabbit put it quite nicely; "what do cleaning products have to do with MP3 players and search engines?"

But, the winner tonight was @ScottTsukuru's beauty. "Barry Scott is spinning in his grave". Perfect.

If you'd like a better round up, watch this video below. And, like e.coli and influenza, this is going viral.



All I'm saying is bring back Mr Pants man. 

Measuring Smiles

Earlier today I ended up on Chunk's website. They're a digital agency in Glasgow that have been measuring smiles since 2001. How you may ask? Well, via their background. Oh and a little counter guy on the right.
I'm guessing it has a little Twitter API as the background that measures:

:) =) :] :D vs :( =( :[ ;(

And then streams every tweet on to their black backdrop. The counter also resets every day to give a global smileage tally. 
It's a sweet little idea, but the only downside it that it runs in Flash. Please Chunk, make jQuery version and it'll make everyone, anywhere, smile.

Small print on a banner ad

When did you have to put small print on an online ad? Surely you could ask them to "click here for full terms and conditions"? Partly because this looks ridiculous!

Watford Course 2011/12

It's that time of year folks. What are you going to do next year? It's a difficult decision of whether you think you're ready to hit the advertising scene. Or, give it one more year to find that perfect partner and get those creative juices flowing like they've never done before.

One of the best post grad advertising courses is the Watford Course. I've not done it, so I could be talking out my arse, but it comes with a reputation. And, that goes along way.

Having been disappointed by what I saw at the Napier post grad course in the summer, my advice would be aim high and don't stop until you get there.

Because Tony Cullingham wants exciting individuals on his course, he's devised a series of questions that have no correct answer.

His eleven this year are:

Q1 Write a poem about broccoli.

Q2 What would I find in the the light at the end of the tunnel?

Q3 Devise a campaign strategy with executions to promote Cliff Richard as the next UK Prime Minister.

Q4 Write headlines and designs for T shirts to beworn the day after Global Flooding.

Q5 Devise as many posters as you can to sell yourself.

Q6 Why should you never underestimate a handsome bear?

Q7 Sell tarantulas as the next 'must have' pet.

Q8 Devise a digital idea for a chocolate bar.

Q9 How would you get more folk to learn the Ukulele?

Q10 How would Michaelangelo, (the Renaissance artist not the turtle), sell Edam cheese?

Q11 Enclose an A4 copy, non-returnable, of your own portfolio.

Simple right? Exactly. Get thinking, hard.

Entries need to be in the sooner the better for a place in September 2011. And, everything you need can be found here.

Jeep Puzzle

Jeep are running a competition on Twitter, which is pretty nifty and a bit odd at the same time.

Simply watch the video below and it'll explain the game for you.



My issue that I've got with this is that this game isn't supported in the new version of Twitter. New Twitter looks like this:
So, to play this game, you have to go back in time to the old version. This is done by heading up to your Twitter name, clicking the drop down menu and choosing the Leave Preview option.  


You then get the mosaic you're looking for. 
I do like the concept. And, the way you have to follow 36 Jeep branded icons to win. But, why was this game released on the 27th October, when the new Twitter skin was released on the 14th September (and made available to all by 14th Oct)? 

Surely the client didn't stall on the idea for so long that it almost went out of date? Whatever the reason, very few people will see this mosaic any more. And even if I wasn't playing the game, the chances of seeing the cool picture on one of your friends pages would would be pretty slim too. 

Nice idea, awful timing. 

Free Flight Follow Friday is back

Ok, so that's a bit of a mouthful, but #FFFF isn't.

The lovely people at The Rabbit Agency have persuaded BMI Baby to relaunch their free flight giveaway on Twitter. A very simple concept that requires people to add two more F's on the end of the popular #FF hashtag. Just like so:
Last week they gave away free flights to Munich, and this week you can head off to Prague. The free flight giveaway runs every week until the 19th November. And obviously you can't nominate yourself.

Brut takes on Old Spice

As the saying goes, if you can't compete with them, beat them up instead. Or something like that.
Brut, the mens deodorant company, have decided some men just need to "man up". And, unfortunately the Old Spice guy is one of them. Well, it's really just a guy in a towel.   
Head over to brutslap.com and you can enjoy a mime artist and the fake Old Spice guy being hit by random objects of your choosing. Allspice, Brut and a ship in a bottle (but not a horse) are the wonderful options. 
Take aim with your weapon of choice and then the video plays the slap. Sadly though, this isn't half as fun as slapometer.com where you get to do it yourself. And get a RSI in the process. 
My main issue is, isn't Brut meant to be a manly thing? So, what's with all the slapping? It should be a punch or a glassing of some sort surely...

Facebook adds 'See Friendship' section

Facebook has added a weird section to show how many bits of your data it holds. And to freak you out a bit. Other than shrinking the font size of your wall feed, it's also added a 'See friendship' button when you leave a message on another person's wall.

For example, I leave Chris a message and you can then see the 'See friendship' button.
If you click on it, it takes you to a page that contains everything you've ever done together. Including giving you a lovely photo that has just the pair of you tagged in it.
You can discover all how anyone's related by typing in
http://www.facebook.com/[username]?and=[username]&ref=nf or by typing any name into the 'Browse friendships' section on the right hand side of the page. And thankfully, it only shows your current relationship status, just incase you've dated them at one point or another and don't want their current spouse to stalk you. Or worse.

Anyone else think that's a bit weird? Especially the browsing bit.

Street View starts blurring in Germany

Street View is not a new a thing in the UK and the US, but it's pretty new to Germany (they've just released imagery for the 20 biggest cities). And, with online privacy being a big deal to many people these days, Google let home owners opt-out of the Street View service.

Using a simple online service, homeowners could ask to blur their house from the internet. And, a mere 2.89% of households chose to. Just 244,237 people opted-out from a total of 8,458,084. A fairly big number, but not in the grand scheme of things.

One of these homes was this one below.
Isn't it beautiful? Pixelation at its best.

What's brilliant is that this house has received more coverage from being blurred than the house next door, which hasn't taken up the option. And I'm sure that wasn't meant to be the point.

Surely they thought about the threat of burglars? If they blur their home, they can't see their property. But in my view, what are they hiding instead? Sometimes, what might seem a good idea at the time could back fire big time. Sorry number 14 of Hugo von Koenigsegg-Street, Oberstaufen.