Thursday 28 August 2008

Wikipedia Trends


Photo by blmurch

I found out about this new project this morning, though I can't remember at all where I read about it so I can't link back to it, sorry... (Might have been an SEO blog, I was quickly browsing through a few I didn't know about this morning).

Anyhoo, check out http://stats.grok.se

It's a pretty cool idea, you can check through traffic stats for specific Wikipedia articles, month by month. Look at trends from one article to another. For example, the Barack Obama article was viewed 1,350,292 times in June, with a huge surge on the 4th June, also matched in Google Trends for June. I think it coincides with the religious stories with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, though I'm not sure that explains it. Comparatively, the thimble article was only viewed 4,424 times, probably a relief to find out people are more interested in the American presidential candidate - apart for the thimble enthusiasts, maybe.

It started to make thing about whether clients monitor the articles concerning their brands or anything related at all. I know some do for sure, but others don't. Just checking through, I noticed a couple of brands we work for at iris that don't have any presence. Even if there are probably a limited amount of people interested in finding out more about Utterly Butterly, they may be disappointed to find out there is no information available about it on Wikipedia.

Given Wikipedia is one of the main points of reference for any internet user, I think it's important for brands and products to be present, and it could also be an additional point of presence (for traffic/awareness) for digital campaigns - keeping within Wikipedia neutrality rules and guidelines, of course.

Thursday 21 August 2008

Drinking detergent..?

I was doing some research earlier and came across the Ariel website, I'm wondering if it's normal for me to think their current home page is pretty disturbing.



Let's look at this step by step:
  1. Ariel is a washing liquid/powder and is classically branded in blue and green, because it's so clean, fresh and obviously feels/smells like the sea/sky/nature/apples/limes/etc.
  2. Way too many people in the world don't have enough or any clean drinking water, which is definitely a huge issue and Ariel seems to want to get involved. I guess the relevance can be debated, but it's a noble cause, so why not.
  3. However little clean drinking water you have, drinking detergent is not good for you.
So here we have a the pic of a kid in Africa basically appearing in a washing machine (animated blue bubbles going in a circle, pic shows up in the middle). Ariel branded, blue like no water has ever been before but interestingly the same colour as the Ariel liquid you can find at your local supermarket - or maybe same as a swimming pool. And the kid is drinking it.

Wrong.

No..?

Wednesday 20 August 2008

The real tetris

A bit more easy blogging, I just recently saw the real Tetris video, it's absolutely awesome!

Sunday 17 August 2008

Kourtrajme - The Funk Hunt

Ben and my cousin just told me about a series of French short movies I hadn't heard about and some are really awesome, mostly visual with excellent soundtracks; They called their production house call Kourtrajme - Short Movie in French "verlan" slang, basically.

The Funk Hunt is the story of a vinyl record through time and musical styles from the 7o's to pretty much nowadays. The record itself is actually the main actor in the short and the music is brilliant!

Check it here if ever the embedded version doesn't work: Part 1 Part 2





Funky!

Friday 15 August 2008

Talk about Social Media and influencers



Yesterday, one of my colleagues asked me what my favourite thing about digital was. It's a tough one, I actually love everything (or almost) but I still said if I had to choose it would probably be social media. You can't really take it out of digital solely, at least I think it's part of a bigger whole - and also because I don't really like the buzz word. Still, I think one of the most fascinating aspects of the digital space is that people have the same opinions about brands and things they had before, but now they can address the entire world standing on their virtual cardboard box, not just a couple of passers-by a Sunday morning on Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park.

And a LOT of people have really worthwhile things to say, may it be smart, witty, insightful, funny, informative... You name it. Whatever the topic, from politics to marketing via technology, fly fishing, or thimbles (Not so sure there are that many people talking about thimbles but I just thought of Eddie Izzard). People listen, and well, if you're reading this you pretty much know the gist.

Bit of a long introduction, but I came across the Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog a couple of weeks ago. Sony Ericsson is the main client of the agency I work for, so definitely interesting from that perspective. Really good blog (Granted, you do have to be interested in mobile/technology in the first place), and this is someone with a pretty consequent voice: 478 Authority on Technorati (Whatever you think of it), and over 1000 readers at the moment.

I checked my Netvibes earlier and saw a post titled "Someone needs a wake up call...". It obviously drew my attention. Really interesting and very detailed post of all the thoughts and (pretty constructive) criticism the author currently has for Sony Ericsson. Whatever one thinks of social media, this is definitely something a brand should listen to, because this is one of their most important advocates talking. You can imagine if he takes the time out to write such a long post, how many Sony Ericsson users have already given up long ago and gone to buy an LG/iPhone/Nokia/Random other handset..?

You may be already doing this, but if you're working in digital/marketing/related perhaps the brand(s) you're working on have similar strong advocates and it might be worth making sure they're being listened to.

Research reports are interesting and useful, but mostly collating the opinions of 500 to about 2000 people, and who knows in what circumstances they were asked the questions. Here we have one person (And a few contributors), actively listened to by over a thousand people and in all likelihood a bunch of other followers. It's pretty daunting to think about. I like it!

And I know what I'll be answering if someone asks me why they should be spending money and effort into their digital communications.

PS: I checked, there are blogs about thimbles. Well, they're mostly about knitting but still. Most of them also have more authority than this blog does ;o)

Thursday 14 August 2008

Music sharing with Blip.fm


Photo by Indigo Goat


I just found out about Blip.fm from Iain (via Twitter), it looks pretty crazy! Check it out! It looks like Twitter mixed with Deezer or Last.fm - I'm still loving Deezer (I was just setting up a Beethoven playlist in it - finding myself listening to more and classical and jazz music while doing strategy work - when I found out about Blip) but this looks intriguing.

I'm waiting for a bunch of songs to be uploaded on the site right now! I like the way it suggests people to follow that have played music or artists you like, I wrote a fairly long list of artists so I'm already following 31 people that will probably be playing music I like!

The funny thing is that it says I joined Blip.fm on 31st December 1969. I'm extremely proud to be a member of a site since before any kind of computers were networked at all - feels very pioneering - though in this case, I just followed Iain's Twitter call ;o)

Join me in random musical sharing!
You never know, it might even convince some of the Twitter averse out there!

Wednesday 13 August 2008

Holidays (or lack thereof)



I spent last weekend in Paris which was cool, but only quick for a friend's wedding - really need a proper holiday, though I don't really know what I'll be doing yet - or I might keep money to move house, given I'm also thinking about that...

Seriously missing some beach and particularly some sun! In the meantime, I can hang around the Corona Beach. As virtual beaches go (And marketing sites in general), it's pretty cool - check it out! But the sun still isn't real...

Wednesday 6 August 2008

Lough Derravaragh



According to Wikipedia and Google Images, this is Lough Derravagh. It's in Ireland, and it's pretty.

All right, I have to keep posting on some kind of regular basis and I'm just thinking of a kind of format for a lazy drunken type blog post, probably celebrating the sheer amount of random and trivial knowledge and information that can be gotten from the internets in a couple of clicks. For the first edition, I went for a Wikipedia Random article and Google Images of the result. Obviously not perfect, but hopefully you will bear with me while I optimise the post format and idea.

In the meantime, I'm sure you'll agree this place looks damn pretty and will give you a (slight) rest from the intellectually demanding world of advertising, digital stuff, planning, strategising, or whatever you call your favoured and complicated job discipline.

This is apparently where the kids of King Lir spent 300 years before being turned into swans - so enjoy it, you never know when or what you'll be turned into...

Sur ce, bonsoir mes amis!