Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

This is a fantastic example of some outside the box thinking on connecting the offline, mobile, and online experience with customized products. By now I am sure you are all familiar with the NIKEiD program. The next evolution is using MMS on your cell phone to help you pick and match your outfit. The technology behind this isn't too complicated, but the experience design is interesting: see something that catches your eye, snap a picture, Nike sends you the matching shoes overlaid on your picture, and of course linking over to ordering online too! This technology and experience could apply to all kinds of clothing and retail products with strong color choices and a relatively minimal infrastructure.

Masterminded by AKQA, London, NIKE PHOTOiD is a brand new mobile application which allows users to customize their own set of sneakers according to their physical surroundings. You simply take a picture of something on your camera phone (it could be anything from a piece of graffiti to an ice cream sundae) and then send this pic off to a shortcode via MMS. The NIKEiD website then picks out the two strongest colours from your image and uses them to colour your custom sneakers. Within a minute, you are sent a link with your design superimposed over the original source of pantone inspiration.

You can then save this image as wallpaper for your mobile, send it to a mate or, by entering the unique DESIGNiD at NIKEiD.com, link directly to your design to complete and actually purchase the sneakers. As one particularly over-excited sneaker-freak in our office inquired with a faint hint of dribble at the corner of his mouth: 'So I could take a picture of a grassy meadow and then it would text me a link to buy my very own Nike Grassy Meadows?' Yeap chap - that's about the long and short of it...

Via Contagious.

Dean McRobie

Last night I got a firsthand glimpse of a very cool video streaming app from startup Qik.
 
Qik is a mobile streaming video service with a social angle that is currently available for Nokia and windows mobile phones (see their site FAQ). However, they are developing the service for use with iPhones and what I saw last night was that alpha in development.
 
On the iPhone, the app is activated from an icon link and from there you hold your phone like a camera while recording video that is stored on the qik.com site for you or other users to view.  When we tested it last night, our stream happened to load up on their front page as a currently running stream - so we were watching our stream in real time (about a 3 second delay) - very cool!
 
Using the iPhone 1.0's lens optics and processor, the video quality was good but not great (about 5-7 fps, quality dependent on ambient lighting); however the audio was surprisingly good (kudos to the iPhone mic?).  Besides seeing ourselves on the qik.com homepage, we were also immediately able to access the file created from a directory of videos just created.  Making and viewing a video was a seamless, instant user experience.
 
From a content distribution POV, this service is even easier to use than YouTube and like the site says, will have a million uses.  Like YouTube, there is already a global user base (check out the integrated geotagging for videos).  Already on the site are quite a few known 'lifecasters' and podcasters, ranging from pro to (extremely) amateur.  Another great feature is live chat. It's the most elegant implementation of "video+phone" I've seen yet. I'm not sure if their iPhone app will be as robust for viewing as for video creation (e.g., the YouTube app on the iPhone) but we will see.
 
Color me very, very impressed with this service, its implementation so far and its potential impact on our media culture that is rapidly changing to bottom-up and many-to-many.  This is going to be big!

http://www.qik.com
 
Jay Bain

Animoto is in beta but it's very very cool..  Essentially you upload a bunch of static images, choose a song of your choice (or upload your own) and Animoto produces a video based on what you've uploaded..  The images have some very nice motion effects and is all synced very nicely with the soundtrack you selected or uploaded...

I read about this site from one of my newsletter subscriptions and so I took 5 minutes and played with it.  Very easy to use. My only negative is the wait time while it puts your video together for you - but i'ts hardly a valid complaint as it's worth the wait.  The site allows you to watch videos/movie trailers while your waiting for your final result..    With that said - I'll definitely be back.

I only created a small (< 30 secs) version but you have the option to create full length video's as well.

My first animoto can be found here. 

Enjoy!

Patrick Dunphy

p.s.  Pardon the cheesiness..  Yours truly is getting married this summer.  ;)

There are a lot of blogs about gadget out there, however this one is a bit different - more than a blog, it is a real-time updated billboard of gadgets and stuff.

If you are a fan of gadgets, design and other stuff check it out.

http://www.oobject.com/

Baron Conway

Clorox has taken an innovative experiential approach to promoting Green Works, a new line on plant-based household cleaning products. They hired Reverse Graffiti Artist Paul Curtis (aka Moose) to "paint' the inside of the Broadway Tunnel, which runs through Russian Hill into San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. 

By removing the soot and grime from public spaces to create the outlines of nature, Moose makes a poignant statement about pollution in urban spaces and our reversal of the natural world. 

The video is a tiny bit heavy-handed in the product placement, but it still seems like a major departure for Clorox, which is not featured in connection with the project at all. 

It must have been a tough internal battle about whether or not to put the Clorox logo on the packaging (it's there in small format).  Because while Clorox=clean, bleach does not connote environmentally friendly (Burt's Bees, for example, doesn't carry the Clorox name).  Maybe the Clorox brand is there to counter the common skepticism that a green product "actually cleans".  Thanks to Laughing Squid.

Misha Cornes

Every once in a while, we'd get pulled into some hipster-looking websites hawking potent potables. First things first, there's always this ubiquitous age verification system. Meaning you must be of a legal drinking age before entering the site.

Like most beer brewers, Heineken adheres to voluntary guidelines published by the Beer Institute. Heineken requires visitors to enter a date of birth before they can access any of its websites. Visitors who submit dates that fall within the last 21 years are not admitted.

If anything, who enjoys hitting those three pull-down bars (month/day/year)? Not me. It's too time-consuming. Like most visitors, I usually opt for this obvious shortcut: 01/01/80.

Thanks to Heineken's newest microsite. This one is a breeze. I will never fib my age again.

http://heinekendraughtkeg.com/

Kevin McCaul

If you want a new way to order customized T-Shirts check out this website. The site is simple to use - 3 easy steps... They say each shirt is wrapped refresh and comes with a bag of chips.
 
http://www.tshirtdeli.com/
 
Only available online or visit the 2 locations in Chicago.
 
Beth Bica 

I love reading Rob Walker's Consumed column, a blend of business journalism and cultural anthropology, that appears weekly in The New York Times Magazine.  Next week he has a new book out, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.

Based on the previews, the basic thesis is that the CGM movement makes brands more, not less relevant to consumers. They are embracing brands more than ever as they co-opt, remix, and rebroadcast their own interpretations of what a brand stands for.  I'll post a review when it comes out.

In the meantime, enjoy this piece on the "lady's Taser".  With the new C2 model, Taser is coming full circle on it's original business plan - to arm the average citizen.  The marketing execution is clumsy, but the idea is sound - now that Taser has established a (controversial) reputation in the professional law enforcement marketplace, why not create a Taser that's "tough enough for a man, but made for a woman"?

Be sure to check out this video of a 95-lb "Jane Doe" (with Taser) vs. a professional ultimate fighter.

http://www.taser.com

Misha Cornes

Artist/designer Aya Karpinska has developed an iPhone application that is actually a suite of children's stories. The application utilizes the multi-touch capability of iPhone and is a great example of how interactive technologies on the mobile devices would affect the authorship and readership alike.
 
The title of the application is Shadows Never Sleep. It will be available for download in June. In the mean time, you may check out its browser based demo and video here:
 
http://www.technekai.com/shadow/
 
The genre of electronic literature received a huge boost with the popularization of hypertext. It seems the new wave of networked communication devices such as Kindle and iPhone­ may bring forth even more innovations due to their connectivity, intimacy, adjacency and immediacy. For people who would like to learn more about electronic writing, seek out N. Katherine Hayles' book:
 
Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary
 
Fang-Yu Lin

They're both tags attributed to Disney on the Brand Tags site...  Ed Cotton (of InfluxInsights.com) posted on this inquiry into brand impressions.  Noah Brier, a strategist with Naked Communications, has taken advantage of the collaborative nature of tagging to embark on "a collective experiment in brand perception." At Brand Tags, visitors are presented with a brand and an input box where they can tag the brand with the first thing that pops into their head.  When you've done a few, check out the full list of brands, each with its tag cloud of first impressions. 

Now obviously this isn't a rigorous brand perception methodology, but it is an interesting idea.  For most of the large brands, the biggest tags are the ones you'd expect.  Evil, crap, boring, and the like were common.  (Disney even got 'evil' at a fairly high volume, though it was overshadowed by cartoons, children, kids, fun and of course Mickey Mouse - overall a pretty good branding story there...)

The more interesting results were the smaller tags; "Leash" in the BlackBerry list, "Olympic Rings" for Audi, "Coffee" for Guiness.  Apple shows up as a tag for other brands like Dyson and Flickr.  Brand names come up more strongly for some companies than others.

On its own, it's simply an interesting experiment.  But I could see this approach being useful as part of a larger research approach.  It seems like a great way to get some initial, quick, directional feedback that could provide some insights to drive deeper research.  Start with a brand tag question in a survey, follow up with ongoing dialog.  Compare perceptions of different segments, at different life-cycles or against competitive brands.  Get an informal read on employee perceptions.

As companies come to grips that they aren't in control of the brand and they become increasingly transparent, increasingly conversational, this kind of exercise might even start to show up on a company's home page... Who are we? You tell us.

And who is Wendell?

David Lewis