Spinning Around

Nike makes it count for those who bid the Kilometres they run ...

Thought that this was an absolute cracker of an idea, to be honest.

Nike in Mexico came up with the idea that, instead of bidding with dollars (or pesos or whatever), users of Nike Plus should be able to big in auctions with the miles that they run. Or kilometers as they've gone metric and use the American spelling of the word. What a cracking idea, I thought ...

Pimkie snaps real people’s colours to tell you what to wear across European cities

Just thought that this was cute. I hadn’t seen it and so I thought that it was worth sharing around the place.

Pimkie, that iconic European fashion label, has come up with a cracking little app that will “forecast” colours in three major cities (Paris, Milan and Antwerp – how Anterwerp got into that list, the lord alone knows).

It scans people in fashionable areas and logs the accent colours that they’re wearing to show you which are “on trend” in each different destination.

Cute. Pointless of course. But cute.

Uniqlo’s wake-up call goes global in a matter of minutes

Now I’ve always defined a stunt as a creation that can’t justify its cost on the basis of its direct connections with a consumer (the number of people who will see an event/object, the number of people who will view a film or ad, the number of people who will interact with a game, app, piece of content).

Stunts rely on the word-of-mouth and the editorial coverage they generate to justify their cost.

However, what some smart brands have realised is that, if they really think about it hard, they can create digital experiences that not only get people writing about them and talking about them digitally, they are also so slick and well thought through that they will also justify their cost in the number of people who engage with them (rather than just hear about them).

Uniqlo as a brand is a past master of just this sort of thing.

Its latest piece of work is an alarm clock app … Doesn’t sound promising? Well watch this and I’ll be back in a minute to explain …

Right. You’ve watched that. I’ve made a cup of tea. I shall continue …

Uniqlo has created a more peaceful, not to mention social, way to wake up.

The Japanese retailer unleashed the iOS and Android alarm clock that generates a selection of music based on the weather, time, and day of the week.

What’s more, you can link the app to your Facebook and Twitter accounts to alert your social groups to the exact time, weather conditions, and temperature under which you finally mustered the energy to roll over and shut off the alarm.

The whole thing has gone gangbusters online.

Why?

Because it’s a brilliant little idea that takes something that we’re all used to and makes it … better. Which is the Uniqlo proposition made manifest in marketing, I guess.

But more than that, they’ve nailed their media. The fashion guys write about it because it’s media. The culture writers because it’s hip and and-so-Japanese. The trends writers because it’s new and different. The tech writers because it’s an iOS and Android app and that’s what they do. The design folk cover it because it’s rather beautiful. The music hacks because it’s got a belting sound track.

The genius of this then is that it’s an idea that has had every media opportunity “baked in” to its very creation.

And that is the definition of a great “stunt” product. It manages to cross the line and become something so good that it doesn’t justify its own existence in terms of its buzz, but is actually a creation so good that people want to own it, share it and keep it – rather than just talk about it.

Work. Of. Genius.

JWT's Wi-FiCTION ... the coolest thing brought back from a week at D&AD

I've been loitering about at the judging of the D&AD Awards 2012 - their fiftieth awards. That means that I've seen a lot of the best creative work from across the globe.

When I got back, I showed this around the office. They all fell in love. All I can say is that I hope that it delights you as much as it did Me. Because I think that it's one of the best ideas that I've seen for a very, very long time.

From the folk that brought you "push the button for drama" came this beauty

The very talented folk who made the "Push Button for Drama" spot. Now officially the most shared piece of content of all time (or somesuch accolade) made the clip below.

Actually, they made it before they made the experiential ad that made them famous hit screens.

And very clever it is too. Highlighting an altogether more serious issue.

A kinda Smart idea from the little car people of Argentina

I just thought that this was vaguely cute.

Smart Argentina (or rather their agency) has created a sort of Twitter flipbook.

As an idea, it's really cute. To be honest, as a user-experience, it's a pain in the backside - you have to go to their Twitter page, load the whole damn thing up (about twenty pages of it) and then go back to the top and tap the J key a LOT).

Irritating.

That said, the theory of it is lovely ...

And by the time the experience has been done properly and YouTubed, you kinda get a sense of what it should look like ...

Fowler x Horrors gorgeousness as he directs their latest promo

Thought that we would give this a shout because it's been made by H&G's favourite drawer of pictures and painter of scenes with help and assistance from sometime collaborator Emma "Miss Cakehead" Thomas. Illustrator, model-maker and man about town Pete Fowler has directed this slot for the Horrors' Changing The Rain. Amazing ...

Having a craic at the races as Paddy Power stunt makes hay while the sun rises

In reviewing my collection of favourite stunts from the week gone by, pondering which to write about while sitting, as I tend to, in Starbucks of a Sunday afternoon, there is one that stands out from the past seven days.

It might be the most obvious selection. But only because it is so damn good.

So it is that I come to highlight for those who may not have seen it, Paddy Power’s latest, epic-scale stunt: putting a rider on the White Horse of Uffington.

Now here we have a brand with a formidable reputation when it comes to cunning stuntery.

Perhaps with a nod to fellow countryman O’Leary, they have a flagrant disregard for authority and “the rules” in their approach to brand promotion. Paddy Power has been creating word-of-mouth since they launched on these shores in 2001 – indeed those with long memories might remember their opener: print ads “so brutal” they were banned.

They followed that with their “Hollywood sign” as a two-fingered salute to the official Ryder Cup sponsors (which, incidentally, they were ordered to take down, thereby creating yet more news for themselves).

They (or at least Taylor Herring on their behalf) have been at it again.

On this occasion, with this gem …

Now those with reasonable memories will stroke their chins and acknowledge the genius before briefly whinging that this is a rip off idea: “Homer Simpson meets Cern Abas Giant by Beatwax way back in 2008,” they will say.

To that I say “bollocks”.

Some ideas are truly stand out original.

But many of the best campaigns are those that take an idea that has worked and build on it – re-creating it for a new generation of news desk hacks who are green and have short memories of such things.

They are also ideas that set aside the petty desires of creative folk to tread eternally new ground and are simply a take on a previous idea that is as good – if not better – than their predecessors.

Why’s it work?

For sure because it has front – a certain Irish cheekiness, if you will.

Undoubtedly because it had risk attached – always bound to appeal to the gamblers of the turf.

Without question because it has scale – of an epic nature.

And, of course, it has wit.

But most important, it has not wimped out at the last jump.

Many are the clients who would fall in love with the idea and promptly suggest that – in the face of lawyers, English Heritage opprobrium, the Daily Mail-ism of potential backlash – it would be “safer” if they picked a different hill and made their own Uffington Horse.

This idea – and its ultimate success – tells me once that there are two maxims that can be forgotten all-too-easily in an industry where everyone is feeling the economic pressure: that it is sometimes better to ask forgiveness than permission and that, in this game and at a time when the war for consumer attention is fierce, it is better to feel the fear and do it anyway than it is never to feel fear in the first place.

This is a first class education in those two lessons. Anyone contemplating a career in PR would do well to learn them.

This article was first published on PR Moment roughly two days ago - they get first dibs, naturally. But we thought that we would put it up here too. Just in case anyone missed it, I guess.

Top quality piece of tilt-shift film ... The City of Samba

Every now and then I wank on about comms on this blog. I should likely do more of it. But try to reserve that for my weekly sctick on PR Moment these days - have a look at PR Antics on a weekly basis if you're at all interested.

However, that does mean that I know get to wildly over-indulge myself by posting beautiful things that infest the interweb that, one day, will come in very handy (probably, otherwise I'm just kidding myself that spending time doing this is in any way productive or work-related).

Anyway, came across this rather lovely titl-shift film of Carnival. FF to two minutes for the top-drawer bits.

The project is a collaboration between Jarbas Agnelli and Keith Loutit.

The project was filmed over the course of 2011, with the key Carnival sequence made back in February. They released it to coincide with Carnival 2012.

The film is in fact made up of 169,000 photos from 416 time-lapse sequences, according to Agnelli.

It's bloody lovely, if you ask me.

A spot of creative terrorism that raised a wide smile this morning

Every now and then, a "job application" campaign is so stunningly clever that it goes viral to some degree or another. This is one of those occasions.

These fellas - Australian creative team GrinterSpencer - have suffered just that fate.

Their "Creative Ransom" basically involved buying the URLs for the names of Mebourne's top creative directors and then holding those pages "ransom" until they got a meeting.

This is their story (and it's well worth a watch) ...