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 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) ...

They do things differently in the east: a Rhino-sized stunt for Japanese zoo

Now the folk I’ve asked are fifty-fifty on whether this is a stunt or whether this “rhino escape drill” was carried out in earnest. 

My money is on stunt. And a belter at that.

For those who didn’t catch this gem (and if you didn’t, which rock have you been under lately?), a certain zoo in Japan has captured global media attention with its “drill” for the event that one of its rhinos figured out how to escape from its pen ...

The genius of this stunt for me is, in part, the bravery of the zoo investing in an idea that, if nothing else, has cost a pretty penny in man-power.

But it’s also an idea that should teach us all that the trick of a great PR stunt for an attraction is that fine balance between being mental enough to make people smile and being taken seriously enough.

Just so that the media take it at face-value and broadcast it with, at once, an earnest “look what these nutters have done” and at precisely the same time, a knowing wink that suggests that they are somehow in on the gag.

It should remind us all that, just sometimes, the silliest of thoughts can take off and capture the imagination. And that no one in this business should shy away from lateral thinking when it comes to creative ideas.

Simple genius.

A pun-tastic product provides fertile territory for egg-based stunt

Sometimes, there’s a pretty solid argument that says, if you find a great pun and work back from there to the PR idea that might deliver it, you’ve probably got the makings of a great campaign.

There were two such puns involved here.

First you have “March Fourth” as the name for an event that features people walking to support wounded soldiers that takes place on … yep, 4 March 2012. Lovely.

Then you have “Eggs for Soldiers,” the product that made page three of the METRO amongst a pretty clean sweep of the tabloid media last week.

This was the little gem that they rolled into the Imperial War Museum for the photo-stunt …

Now if I’m honest, I actually think that this is one of those “let’s make a ‘making of’ film” ideas that has gone slightly awry.

Based on the by the YouTube comments, folk are a bit disappointed that they’ve shown that the egg box tank is actually a bloody great wooden frame merely covered in egg boxes – it’s a reminder that sometimes it’s better not to show your audience how the magic trick worked.

That aside, Eggs for Soldiers (pun number two) has pulled a blinder with this one. The product is a cracker for sure – great name, bang-on cause from a media point-of-view.

But the trick that I doff my cap to is the construction of their story.

The product alone would get them only so far through PR. So the insight was to create an event (in March Fourth) that would get people talking and to PR that instead.

However, the coup de grace was that they then managed – in promoting their sponsorship – to work the product back in via the stunt.

The tank’s a stunt for a charity walk (a less commercial sell when it comes to hitting the news desks and explaining why you’re making tanks out of egg boxes), but the picture works the product back in front-and-centre.

I imagine that if they’d phoned the desks to say they’d built a tank to do nothing more than promote some eggs, they’d have got less coverage altogether.

In building a stronger narrative around what remains a great core story and picture, the team behind this campaign has achieved infinitely better results than otherwise they might have done.

A smart idea for sure. But even smarter is the way it’s been sold.

Some top quality advertising aimed at da yoof from Oz ...

This is actually brilliant. Want to know how to appeal to da yoof with bugger all budget? This tells you most of what you need to know, we reckon ...

Basically, remove big budgets, bands, celebrity, sex. Insert humour, a cracking little script, some tastelessness and a spot of the unexpected.

It's ... well ... a snap ...

Ultrabook uses a "pop up theatre" to celebrate launch

I don't know about you, but this just slightly misses the mark.

I think it's the jar between the slick content of the theatre and the slightly down-home and hoke actors and filming. Cure idea altogether. Just not sure that it quite comes together as a single piece ...