Ad wars - Mac Vs PC continues

These are the times when it's great to sit back and be a consumer. I posted a while ago on the new Microsoft PC adverts, which I think are really cool, and also on the South Park take-offs, which are cool in their own unique way. Now, here's the latest from from Mac camp.

Interesting that this is all happening around the PDC and Microsoft showing off Windows 7 and Azure. As Microsoft prepare to take on Google with cloud computing, Apple is busy highlighting the perceived shortcomings of Vista. Is this a war of two fronts that Microsoft might end up losing? Nope, but it's entertaining.

MyTake - The current economic climate is going to force a much harder game from marketeers where the focus is going to be on product, product and product. More specifically, why your product is better than your competitors and what their product is doing wrong. In the end, the consumer will be in quite a good spot, but then again, so will companies that have strong products.

Nokia sets the bench mark

I don’t usually write about out-and-out marketing initiatives, but I happen to think hat this is a good one. Global handset manufacturer and collective group of Finish boffins, Nokia, has produced a number of benches complete with their new “comes with music” handsets integrated and placed them in cities around the UK. The really cool thing is that the music is different from city to city.   

In Liverpool, the handsets have lots of Beatles tracks and in my home town of Birmingham (Brum to those in the know) the mighty (mighty) Sabbath feature heavily. We still love you Ozzie. Also, in order to protect them from theft and drunken student pranks, the benches come complete with a security guard and a performer.     

MyTake – I thought experiential marketing had died on its arse (English term for ass) because of the associated costs, but apparently not. I think that this is good move by Nokia and will help get their brand out there and associated with music. One of the biggest rules with product marketing is that the power is in the product. How many times have you been talking to a friend and they tell you “you’ve gotta try it”? 

If Hollywood worked for McCain

I got forwarded this today by my friend Ed, yep, this Ed.  I have to say, it's great when you see this type of thing being done - it shows that election fever is getting higher and higher.

I particularly like the John Woo ad, especially the slow-mo shots and running towards each other with guns yet somehow nobody gets hurt?

MyTake - Stay tuned for more of this stuff. I have already seen a few campaign badges going round featuring a Bulldog with lipstick and another one where Palin has the top billing over McCain.  There's going to be a million and one opinions during this election and the net is going to provide a great output for them. Hopefully we'll get a few more of these 

Oh, check out the Vlad and Boris song for Mrs Palin.... nice hair do

Introducing...Sackboy

There aren’t many game characters that truly last the test of time, in fact I can only think of a handful: Mario, Sonic, Lara Croft, Master Chief…… But according to Sony PlayStation, the newest kid on the block might be a little rag doll by the name of Sackboy. Developed by a little known UK outfit called Media Molecule, Sackboy is the hero of Little Big Planet and Sony has pinned their reputation on this little guy becoming the next big thing in gaming. 

Being pushed around in the console market by Nintendo, PlayStation are looking for Sackboy to help claw back some of the more casual gamers that Nintendo has charmed with the ever-popular Wii console. The game is remarkably straight forward – echoing the look and feel of a bygone era, you move left and right, jump over things and collect stuff as you go – sound familiar? The killer app for the game is the social networking element, which lets you design your own levels and customising characters that you can share with friends.   

MyTake – The Wii captured hearts with its quirky controls and the customisable gameplay, bringing back a greater sense of “clean fun” to gaming which encouraged more people to get in to gaming. In addition, it cannot be forgotten that Playstation were the pioneers when it came to attracting non-gamers through titles such as SingStar. Having said that, it is very, very difficult to come up with a character that you can be confident in and put your brand reputation behind. Watch this space..and this video….cute, isn’t he? 

Twitter Turnbull

Kevin 07 isn’t exactly up there with the current Obama campaign, but for people in Australia it was pretty exciting to see politics embrace the online space…even if we did have the then Prime Minister John Howard starting all his YouTube broadcasts with “Good morning”. Malcolm Turnbull is probably the most savvy when it comes to the online space and special credit goes to him for leaving a negative comment on his site when every other politician removed any trace of negatively from theirs.  

But, what’s the news? Well, Malcolm Turnbull is the first Australian politician to start using Twitter. He hasn’t been on it long and has only posted eight times, examples include “is in parliament”, “is learning about twitter”, “is in question time” and “is addressing the nation”. It wasn’t until his seventh post that he (his staff) realised that Twitter is in fact not your Facebook status update and decided to drop the word “is” from the start of every post, by post eight he/they finally twigged that Twitter is about sharing things and posted a link to his address on the financial crisis.   

Yet, a couple of things still bother me about this. The first is the fact that all the updates are done from the web, which must mean he either has a laptop connected to the net with him at all times, or he’s not actually posting himself. The second thing, he has 413 followers and isn’t following a single person – kinda missed the point there, didn’t you guys.    

MyTake – I applaud good examples of brands, companies and politicians getting involved with social media as it’s a really good way to talk to an online audience. However, the Turnbull team need to realise that social media is about a two-way conversation, not just pumping out message after message. Take a look at the Barack Obama Twitter feed, he/they are following 103,116 people. Now, while I’m sure Barack isn’t tweeting himself (of maybe his is) this is more in keeping with the Twitterverse as it’s positioned as the campaign tweeting. 

Obama's got game revisited

Who’s going to win the US election? We’ll, there appears to only be one team actually treating it like a race for the most important political position in the world, and that’s the Obama campaign. At work, I sit very near a good mannered US citizen by the name of Ed (read his blog here) who I always talk to when I want update on the US election…mainly because he explains everything in simple terms that I can understand, but also because I get to learn American phrases such as “that dog don’t hunt”. 

The latest bit of news that Ed shared with me was that the Obama campaign has started advertising in online video games, namely Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 using Microsoft’s Live network. The adverts are actually on billboards along side the road in the game and advertise the campaign’s website VoteForChange.com. A quote from an EA rep (who makes the game) reads: "Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates. Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.” 

MyTake – The Obama campaign is busy nailing the few last nails in the coffin of the McCain campaign. Not only is Obama himself cleaning up in the debates, his team are kicking every goal possible in the online space. Trust me, they are going to write a text book on this election and generation of Communications students will learn about it. 

Mac Vs PC...and Linux

I don't actually have a reason for this post other than the fact that I think these (the videos below) are pretty funny. I'm a pro PC and pro Mac guys and I love my PC and my Mac, but the boys from South Park have got a point....

 MyTake - a good advert can sporn many parodies and good parodies tend to go viral. If you've got a good idea at the center of your advertising campaign, the that can inspire a whole host of reactions and interpretations and it's these interpretations that spread your ideas far and wide. 

Facebook stops the news

I love my Facebook page and I probably get more chance to play with it because my work in digital PR involves a whole host of social networks. Having said that, it seems that a certain newsreader for 3AW loves their Facebook page a bit too much. According to the stories doing the rounds, during a broadcast a few weekends ago the newsreader was busy reading her Facebook updates and forgot to read the news.

When the newsreader was asked what went wrong, they claimed they were having “computer issues”…ahhh, those pesky “computer issues”…… After investigating the claims, the IT team found out that the newsreader was more interested in reading their facebook updates than the news. Oppps….but that’s not the end. How did station management deal with the incident? They sent an email to all staff telling them that Facebook was off-limits unless it was being used for research. Right…. So the next time it happens, it isn’t “computer issues”, it’s "research". 

MyTake – The reason I picked this story is to demonstrate the increasing relevance that news about your friends, i.e. your Facebook page, has. In this story, the actual news took second billing to news about the newsreaders friends. Alright, it’s a bit of an outrageous example, but we're spending more time online and in social networks than we are engaging with other mediums. I wonder what the newsreader’s status update was, I’d like to take a guess: “3AW Newsreader is…so busted”

The Digital natives are coming to a corner near you

For those that regularly read my blog, you'll know that my soapbox is technology and families, especially parents getting involved with their kids online lives. I think that it's hugely important that we as parents get involved with our kids lives and as these are becoming increasingly integrated with technology and the web, we need to go and "play" there so to speak.

For some of us, it's not a problem, because we work in the digital space or have a love of all things tech, but for others it's a little harder. So, thanks go to Microsoft for launching Kid's Corner, a new online destination for both parents and kids. Your can read more about it on Frank Arrigo's blog, which is where I heard about it.

MyTake - Read Frank's post on this, because he's hit the nail on the head. Our kids are "Digital natives" and get this anyway, they need our encouragement and support. WE need to remain relevant to them and do our jobs as parents. Make sure you check out some of the links on Frank's post as they're pretty good examples of how we parents can interact with our digital natives! 

The phone that changed the world just might win the US election

OK, a lofty claim, but the iPhone might do just that for the Obama campaign. A new application developed for Apple’s runaway success allows users to rally the troops in so called swing states. Called "Call Friends", the idea is simple – you call your friends around the country in order to get as much support as possible. The application puts a structure and tracking mechanism around this idea, letting users make notes on who they have called, where they live, how they will be voting and even if they need a reminder on election day. 

But…there’s more. The app also provides up to date information and news from campaign HQ, plus a whole host of talking pints, video and photos to help convince in the most stubborn of pals. Obama, as I have previously posted, is very active in the online space and this could be the thing that tips it over the edge, alongside his other activities on YouTube and Facebook. 

MyTake – You go where the audience is, and guess what, they’re online. The iPhone blew the mobile web market wide open with its easy-to-use software, big screen, speed and more importantly, the SDK.  This is probably the smartest move to date by either party, tunneling through from the web to the phone, opening up the range of influence and taking that right up to the voting booth in the hands of countless voters. 

You say you want a revolution

Hasn’t this “debate” been going on for over a decade now?  What am I talking about? Online music. News out of the UK is that Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Kaiser Chiefs and The Verve have started a pressure group called Featured Artists' Coalition, the aim of which is to keep the rights to their music and get more of a say in how their music is sold….“online… cough”.   

More and more artists have been dipping their toes in the digital pond, with great success, which has caused them to ask questions of their record labels and music publishers. Some of the biggest pro-online bands include the likes of Radiohead, while we all know where our heavy metal pals Metallica stood until recently. There are obviously other objectives of the Coalition, namely to get more money for artists and performers, but it’s a big sign of things to come from the music industry.   

MyTake – Funnily enough, I think that the music industry, i.e. the record labels and music publishers, are actually in a good position here. They have so much marketing experience, global reach and most likely huge databases of consumers at their finger tips. The model of yesterday isn’t going to work anymore and the industry needs to look at new revenue models as the artists and performers will increasingly want more of the revenue from direct sales and consumers want to pay less for music – so where is the sweet-spot for the industry? Sell, sell and resell your content and make it easily available to your intended audience, look at new opportunities to expose your artists to new groups and offer them a wide variety of content. The making of an album could spawn several pieces of content that could be sold either to the consumer or funded through advertising – the hi-def song, the low-def song, the making of, the lyrics, album design…the list goes on. 

I'll leave you with this snippet from Sky News UK about Radiohead's "bold" online move. Were they first of many?....Probably 

Ladies and gentlemen...The Trons!

We’ve had iBand, now here’s………The Trons! Who are they then, you ask? Well they are/it is a band of robots or automated musicians if you will. The brainchild of an electronic engineer from Hamilton NZ called Greg Locke, the band is actually made up of parts that his mates have given him, or stuff that he’s managed to scrounge together. 

The Trons consist of a keyboard player, a drummer, two guitarists and what can only be described as a “warbler”. Greg already has a MySpace page for the band and even uploaded a few tunes to YouTube, which is where he secured the band’s first international gig. Apparently, the PR firm for Mercedes-Benz got in touch with him and asked if The Trons would be interested in performing at the Paris Auto Show. But this wasn’t the first gig for the Kiwi bots, they have already toured New Zealand’s South Island. 

MyTake – Some men look at their garden and think, I’ll dig a flower bed…..some men look at their shed and think, I’ll build a tool rack…This bloke look at his bedroom and thought, I’ll build a band to entertain me. Greg Locke, we salute you. Yes, it’s an example of innovation at its purest, but it also demonstrates that technology and software is becoming more and more accessible and that we’re all only an idea (and maybe a few beers) away from our very own Robert band. Check out the video below.