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06/ 1/2007

Streaming Out of A Bubble

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Put an unknown band in a plastic bubble on NY’s West Side Highway, throw the switch on 24 cameras, and let people watch whatever camera they want at any time of the day or night as the band records an album, snoozes, shaves their bodies… do you get interesting content?  I don’t know. Intermittently. 

Dr. Pepper’s new campaign takes that risk.  Built by our friends at Code & Theory, they take another interesting risk: this is the first time, to my knowledge, that such a massive amount of streaming video has been delivered through flash.  The conservative play was to use Windows Media Player, but the user experience is much better with the more customizable flash player and when you’re dealing with this amount of video and so many choices, the user experience could easily have gotten too messy to succeed.  I still don’t know if the campaign succeeds – right now all I can find is half a guy and some other guy’s shoulder – but I’m impressed with the way it was built.

 

http://www.drpepperbubble.com/

Matt Rosenberg

06/ 4/2007

New Street View Feature for Google Maps

Google%20Street%20View.jpg Google announced the release of a new addition to its Google Maps platform at the Where 2.0 conference this week. The Street View feature enables users to view 360 degrees of static street-level images. In a Street View enabled area users are able to navigate and zoom to 16x without leaving the image window. The first phase of the rollout covers five US cities – New York, San Francisco along with much of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, Miami, Denver, and Las Vegas. If you live in one of these areas you can likely go online and take a look at a 3-D image of you home or office.

The 360 degree images which make the service possible were created using an eleven-lens, GPS enabled camera developed by Immersive Media. The Calgary-based company is capable of mapping large areas by mounting the camera on the roof of a car. Google describes the technology as “immersive photography.”

Microsoft’s recently launched Bird’s Eye Views feature for its Virtual Earth and Live Search platforms provides  similarly disconcerting ability to zoom in on static images of your home, business, or vital pieces of infrastructure . The two services are comparable with the main distinction being that the MS offering is from a 45 degree, north-facing, bird’s eye view.

Now, as marketers, all we need is a hybrid map for businesses or special offers. Think dynamic information superimposed on an image of a storefront or office. A tool that allows users to confine search to a visually selected area would also be nice. With steady improvements in web-based mapping functionality expect to see an explosion of location-based mashups very soon.

Thanks Anna and David.

Dan Neumann

Breaking through Asia's Clutter

CP%20in%20Tokyo.jpg I have always admired the creativity of out of home advertising in Asia, specifically in Tokyo.  It's an electronically vibrant city with an overwhelming amount of advertising spattered almost everywhere; advertisers are forced to develop executions which truly break through the clutter. 

To accomplish this, advertisers often develop ways to integrate real products into everyday life.  I wanted to share this image from a recent train journey with you. 

Chris Portella

CORRECTION: The photo is actually taken of me on a train in Seoul, not Tokyo.  My fellow travelers and I took an overwhelming amount of pictures which I mixed up.  Thanks for your comments everyone!  Overall, I was exposed, moved and impressed by out of home advertising in both countries and look forward to seeing what they think of next. 

06/ 5/2007

Meals Together

mealstogether.jpgMeals Together is branded entertainment site for the food brands of the Clorox Company- KC Masterpiece, Hidden Valley Ranch, Kingsford Charcoal, Glad.  Keeping the brands relevant is a tough strategic challenge for a company better known for its cleaning products- even their corporate website shows a bleach bottle wiping grimy handprints from a bathtub.

So the soft sell of “here’s how to have more meals at home” is a smart approach.  The site is actually pretty light in terms of video content, but clever uses of cuts and smart use of factoids as interstitials makes the site appear richer and deeper in content than it actually is.

On the other hand, I think the sitcom vision of the family – White, two perfect kids, fat, dopey dad and skinny, too-attractive-for-him wife – is getting pretty tired.  Admittedly the site is trying to resurrect the Norman Rockwell vision of meals at home, but something closer to real people would have been nice.

I’m not in the target demo, but it’s hard not to wonder if the housewife at home on her PC wouldn’t find the experience…boring.  Our own research shows that these kinds of women look to the Web as an escape at the end of the day, after the kids have gone to bed.  In keeping with this finding, Georgia Pacific and Unilever have taken much more light-hearted, entertaining, and dare I say viral approaches to reaching women. Meals Together was developed by Tribal DDB San Francisco.  Thanks to Organic alumnus Kristian Schwartz.

Misha Cornes

Visualizing the "Power Struggle" on Wikipedia

wikipediaimages.jpgBruce Herr and Todd Holloway of Indiana University, Bloomington have created an interesting visual representation of the most actively edited articles on Wikipedia.   The hotlist shows the idiosyncratic priorities of Wikipedians: Adolf Hitler, Nintendo, Jesus, Britney Spears.

If this was a true web app - which I think they are looking to turn it into, then it could result in a whole new way at searching for random information on Wikipedia!

The full article is on Todd’s blog, A Beautiful WWW.

Baron Conway

Blades of Glory

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Reinventing a tired category in the face of aggressive competition.
 
Solving the problem by mining nuggets of customer insight. Converting that insight into a design idea inspired by popular culture. Customizing the design and marketing strategies to different market segments.  

Sounds very familiar. 

Check out this BusinessWeek case study about the redesign of the Norelco razor. I found it very relevant to how we create online experiences.

Adam Turinas

The "Organic" Business Card

anotherbloomindesigner2.jpgCheck out this business card from London graphic designer Jamie Wieck. It's a simple clean design, and most importantly, it grows!! I don’t know if its truly organic, but it does make your card stand out.

Frank Ribitch

JCrew Video

jcrew.jpgWe’ve been having some interesting conversations inside Organic about the video intro piece on J.Crew.com.  It’s a nicely executed lifestyle video that succeeds in building associations and emotional values around the brand, particularly with its home video feel.

The question is, does it complement the shopping experience by creating a context for the brand, or it does it distract the user from actually getting in and buying the clothes?  

It seems J.Crew and other fashion merchandisers are missing an incredible opportunity to build even greater desire on their shopping sites with integrated, lower-funnel storytelling. In other words, it would be cool to click a little video icon next to the shirt I'm interested in, and see a short, entertaining video showing how it can be worn, etc. Maybe the entire collective of short video snippets create a larger story, enticing me to click on items I might not have considered otherwise. Or better yet, see video of customers wearing the merchandise (threadless.com does this well with patron photography and message boards). I suspect there's more of this coming - all the way to point-of-sale. Thanks to Marita and Tomas.

Adam Wilson

LaLa.com - Play and Share CDs & iTunes

lala.jpgListen to your iTunes library anywhere, online for free, including synching with your iPod!

I am not sure if this is really going to work as promised, and the interface is not great. However if they pull this off it will transform how we could be listening to our music libraries!

The share functionality makes some assumptions around fair use - i.e. that you and those you are sharing with legitimately own every song in your library,

It is in beta so it's not always that stable, but check it out.

http://www.lala.com/

Baron Conway

Amon Tobin ­Field Recording Excursion

amontobin-grp2-0902.jpgAt first glance, this looks like another one of those tired sci-fi themed websites. But then, looks can be deceiving...

DJ and musician Amon Tobin launches a website that allows his audience to interact with his music (and sounds) in a whole new realm. The title of this site says it all — it's an excursion to an immersive audio-visual environment.

Choose the HD version and then explore the field using the radar in the top left to find several different creatures (which are the big blips that show up on your radar). Once you get the hang of using the radar, finding the creatures is much easier. And once you have locked them into your line of vision, you can explore their different sounds.

Listen to all six sounds from each creature to unlock the complete sample, and see the creature perform for you. Each performance is unique and intriguing.

http://www.amontobin.com/field/

Yee Peng Chia 

06/ 6/2007

Exceptional Service from Lacoste

lacoste3.jpgI recently bought a t-shirt at  the Lacoste store in Soho. It was a pleasant experience with a knowledgeable and helpful salesperson. However besides that, it was a short and somewhat forgettable. At the end of the purchase the cashier asked for my postal address. I'm not sure why I surrendered it, as I normally never give such data away. But I did. Again, even that part was forgettable.
 
Usually, the next thing that would happen might be a promotion email (either way too soon or many months later), or a quarterly catalogue arrives on my door, or a perfume sample etc. Instead, a week or so later, a very cute hand written "Thank You" note appears in my mail box sent by normal post. It was written by Benjamin, the sales person. It was short, nice, fun, referenced my "red" shirt and offered to help again for any future needs. Not over the top in anyway.
 
The personal touch is a great way to win business; I want to go back, I want to shop there again, I want to give him another chance to connect with me, I'm feeling the draw already, I'm pondering my next trip to New York.

Continue reading "Exceptional Service from Lacoste" »

Microsoft Gets Funny --The Stu Osborn show

stu%20osborn.bmpI’m a big fan of merging advertising and entertainment online. In an uncharacteristically Microsoft move, Microsoft has done a good job of interjecting humor into their marketing. They’ve created a video and microsite for a parody talk show featuring a stiff host and bumbling ex-CEO-turned-author as the guest.  

www.StuOsbornShow.com

The piece features Fred Willard and Michael Hitchcock, who have stared in several Christopher Guest movies, including Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. According to the Wikipedia entry (yes, there is a corresponding Wikipedia entry for the campaign, but no MySpace profile), the piece was actually directed by Christopher Guest.

If you enjoy the Christopher Guest movies—which many of us do—you’re going to click the banner featuring these well known, funny actors. The microsite is high on entertainment, and low on the advertising. I think the intent of the campaign is to showcase a new MSN video sharing product called Soapbox, but that’s not at all apparent from the site. In any event, the site is quite amusing and definitely worth a click.

Jake Bennett

 

LiveScribe Smart Pen

livescribesmartpen.jpg

LiveScribe is like a tablet PC, without the tablet...or the PC.  I worked on it with my previous employer, Elastic Creative. Personal involvement aside, I think it has potential to be a great technology. It's basically a pen that digital records everything you write, as well as audio that might accompany your writing from, say, a university lecture.

The pen uses a custom paper that the company will sell at prices near standard paper. The custom paper can also be printed on certain standard printers.

http://www.livescribe.com/

Anthony Enos

20 Versions of Vanity Fair

vanityfair.jpgI've worked in online advertising for the past 7 years and have grown to appreciate the medium for its effectiveness in storytelling, animation and interactivity. More and more I find that traditional ads are borrowing from the online ad principles to create experiences offline. There are often "sequenced" ads in magazines - spread out across several pages. This month, Vanity Fair is running a series of 20 different covers featuring Africa.

http://www.vanityfair.com/

To me this is another example of how the inspiration of interactive advertising has eaffected the offline world. One cover just isn't good enough when you can tell a larger story and reach a wider audience with twenty.

Kelley Barry 

Logo in Crisis

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So. Let’s see. This is what 400,000 British Pounds buys you these days. With the hubbub reaching a crescendo across the pond, it’s time to start laughing at the spectacle of overpaid designers going all retro ‘80s New York Subway tag with the frickin’ Olympic Games Logo in a hamfisted effort to make the games relevant for young people. Or so the news reports state. Right before they get to the positively scathing words.

One report (Fox News, natch!) goes so far as to say that the animated version found online can cause seizures. Elsewhere, a BBC interviewee gave this take as a measure of the logo’s unhipness (best read in an Ali G. voice): “the equivalent of yer Dad dancing at a party, down wiv the kids innit.” But so far the winning description for me has to be the BBC Sport-penned version: “It looks like a logo designed for young people by old people who don’t understand young people.” 

But whatever you think of it, at least graphic design is front and center in the consciousness of Britons and many others. Wolff-Olins, the logo’s designer, may not be digging the scrutiny, but at least their name is blazing from inbox to inbox faster than Ben Johnson.

Needless to say, this forest fire rages on. A petition is currently circulating to flat reject the logo. Meanwhile, the always-entertaining Sun commissioned a monkey, a blind lady and a 12-year-old boy to make logos—in two hours—as a demonstration of displeasure. After the jump, here are a few of the better takes from other Organics from our internal e-mail thread.

Daniel Turman, with mad props to Kelley Barry for starting the conversation!
 

Continue reading "Logo in Crisis" »

06/ 7/2007

Hello from Nancy Pelosi

nancypelosi.jpgA few months ago I signed a petition (http://www.savetheinternet.com) in support of preserving net neutrality.  Shortly after I received an auto-response message from my congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, explaining her position.  And I thought that was that.

I just received another (auto) message from Nancy Pelosi informing me that she voted against the Advanced Telecommunications & Opportunities Reform Act because “of its failure to include net neutrality, build-out, anti-discrimination, and local control protections”.

She (well, her staffer) went on to explain her support for an amendment that would include “protections to ensure that all consumers are able to access any content they wish with the same broadband speed and performance.  Without net neutrality, the current experience that Internet users enjoy today is in jeopardy as telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway. This strikes at the heart of the free and
equal nature of the Internet”.

Even though these messages were “canned”, it is very uncommon for our politicians to keep their constituents informed on their voting records outside of an election year.  It is even less common for politicians to explain the content of our Bills and corresponding Amendments.  As a former, jaded Washingtonian, I am pleasantly surprised.  

Kudos Madam Speaker!  

Stacey Levine

Eyes on Darfur

eyesondarfur.jpg

Amnesty International launched this site that uses satellite imagery of Darfur to show villages that have been destroyed by militias and ones that are in danger of being destroyed. The goal is to allow anyone in the world to bear witness to the conflict and to see with their own eyes the evidence of the destruction and displacement.


“Thanks to high resolution satellite imagery, human rights advocates can now document abuses anywhere in the world - even in countries that are sealed off from on-the-ground researchers. All from 280 miles above the Earth's surface.


To make the Eyes on Darfur project possible, Amnesty International acquired commercially-available high resolution satellite imagery. The images were obtained in GeoTIFF format and imported into ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS for viewing and analysis. The analysis of the images was undertaken by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to determine the extent of damage to the structures visible in each image.”
 
It’s a startlingly simple concept that effectively harnesses two advanced technologies (satellite imaging and the internet) to serve a noble cause.

Here's  the URL again: http://eyesondarfur.org

-Whitney Browne

Air Jordan XX2

nikeXX2.jpgThis latest edition of the Air Jordan brand deploys full-screen 3D using the open source Flash library Papervision3D. See beautiful shots of basketball players (and sneakers) suspended in motion within a navigational 3D space (hint: click the up arrow). Navigate sideways (left and right arrows) for video.
This is a fine example of a new generation of websites that take advantage of the capabilities of Flash Player 9, to deliver a fully immersive experience by taking the user outside of the boundaries of the browser window.

http://www.jumpman23.com/xx2/ 

Yee Peng Chia 

The Seven Wonders of Canada

saugeen_shores.jpgCBC radio often holds contests to get radio listeners to call in or email commentary on a variety of things. This contest though took flight.  Through the cbc.ca site people were asked to submit their "wonder of Canada".  There were over a million votes, and 25,000 entries.  Not large scale numbers in US terms, but in Canadian terms, a huge success. Especially for a publicly funded radio contest.
What started as a lark, has now become a veritable check list living and breathing online for people to plan their vacations.  Some of the entries are truly breath-taking and are replete with audio submissions.

Brings a tear to this canuck's eye.....

Vito Greto

http://www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/results.html

Universal Search

ask3.jpgDoes a searcher always know what they want and in what format?  The answer is: “maybe”.  Search Engines continue to test the type of content consumers are interested in digesting as consumer adoption increases in broadband, rich(er) media, and consumer generated content.  Search Engines have and continue to invest in building on channels and additional products and are now directing/forcing users to engage. 

Two weeks ago, Google announced their roll-out of “Universal Search” which would integrate Google’s various vertical search apps into the main Google.com interface (video, image, web, news, base, etc).  Google also has been testing for some time on integration of Google news as the top results when major news was available, which trumped all other natural search results and would effectively push down some results onto other pages.

This week Ask announced their new Ask3D interface which was a 1-year project to revamp the outdated look and functionality.  Ask3D is already being marketed (saw a spot on NBC primetime).  The new Ask3D interface is similar in strategy as Google “Universal Search” in the sense that a single result will populate content related to various channels (video, images, blogs).  Ask3D is also composed of human edited results for a guided experience to help narrow or expand your search.  Ask3D is pulling in natural results targeting a users IP address.  Ask continues to be one of Google’s bigger AdSense partners meaning Ask runs Google advertisements in exchange for revenue share.  However, the contract ends CY 2007 and is up for review.  Google publicly stated Ask needs to increase their searches and uniques meanwhile Ask is struggling to find a means to monetize on it’s own.

Phil Shih

 

 

06/ 8/2007

Yummy Cooking 2.0

rouxbe2.jpg

As a bit of a foodie and an experimental chef, I find myself online almost daily looking for exciting new recipes to try. The first place I hit up is AllRecipes.com, which does a great job on wealth of content and community features. I can search for recipes via ingredients I have in the kitchen, rate recipes I’ve tried, read reviews of recipes, see pictures, browse categories, create a virtual recipe box, and even print out a usefully organized shopping list. What more could you ask for?

Well, recently I stumbled upon Rouxbe.com, a cross between an online cooking show and recipe resource. With its professionally shot videos that are heavy on high quality close-ups, it provides elegant instructional and inspirational qualities that are not available anywhere on AllRecipes. The site is loaded with your typical fun features like downloads, bookmarking, commenting, etc and some not-so-typical features such as separate music and VO track volumes. But what I am more excited about are the features that show a higher level of thought paid to the end user.
 

Continue reading "Yummy Cooking 2.0" »

Exceptional Service from Hotels.com

hotels2.com.bmpIn this day and age, all we hear about (and seem to experience) is horrible customer service, especially over the phone. 

Today I had to call Hotels.com directly, because I was having some issues on the site. I only had to press one option before I got to speak to a live person, a miracle in itself! When the time came to pay over the phone, Joe, my service agent, kindly informed me that there were some problems with my card. After trying it again, he asked if I had booked