Greg Wood: What makes me think?

The personal side of gregwood.info

DTOTD: "I'd like to buy the world a Coke..."

Today's Digital Thing Of The Day is refreshing in so many ways.

It’s refreshing to see such a beautifully crafted demo.

It’s refreshing to re-imagine a classic Coke ad in a contemporary mobile context, asking (and easily answering) the “what would we do these days?” question.

And it’s especially refreshing to see big brands (Coke and Google in this case) sharing their understanding about how the way we advertise has moved on – from being able to hit your entire audience with a single broadcast ad, to engaging, entertaining, and providing value to a disparate audience – yet it’s still the same, simple idea.

Refresh your thinking, here:

Cheers!

DTOTD: 28-02-2012: All you needed to know about Pinterest (for now).

I really like Pinterest and (unlike many other flash-in-the-pan social nonsense – http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/24/color-blind/ for example) I think it’s worth keeping an eye on. Once the invites start flowing again, I can see a ton of ways of using it to share plenty in the coming months, whether for inspiration, research, showing off, and definitely doing something mad for at least two of our clients.

But what is it?

Pinterest (not “Pint-rest”, as we’ve previously figured out, eh Michelle) is: a social-sharing self-aggregator pinboard-like tumblr-flickr hybrid site that-

[Wait, hold on, I’ve got this.]

Pinterest (and its Gentlemen’s offshoot, Gentlemint) is: a content curation platform based on the colaborative bookmarkin-

[No, no, wait – that’s digitalspeak marketingbollocks. Hold on, just let me think.]

Pinterest is: a uniquely social web and mobile service delivering an organisational model of curatio-

[...]

[Sigh]

[...]

Pinterest is: very nicely explained here:

Ugly, but interesting.

Image

I think there’s something in here, but I can’t really tell – even though I really want to grasp the idea. Maybe this infocrapic sits in a kind of “interesting but incomprehensible” nether-node on the Z-axis hovering slightly above the dark-green “ugly” tri-chordic quadrant?

PS: I’m not going to link to the place where I found this incredibly complex trainwreck of an attempt at information design. Instead, here’s a link to http://www.eyestrainheadaches.com/ -- it might be more useful.

Should you put a URL on your TV ad?

(download)

Short answer: If you want people to visit your website, then yes, it¹s
probably a good idea -- because it works. With the twin caveats that the URL
is usable and the offer is relevant, of course.

For instance: one of my (evenings, weekends) projects last year was working
with the Green Party as one of many volunteers on the media and social side
of things. The other Greg Wood and I (yes, there are two of us...) worked
with a team to create a TV ad that ran during the first Leaders¹ Debate on
TV1.

Our ad was unusual in that it pointed to the option of getting a fresh Green
perspective from a live panel offering alternative, grown up, smart
commentary and debate, to be followed by an interview with Green Party
co-leaders. The trick, though, was that none of it would be traditional
broadcast; rather it would be all live online at
http://www.greens.org.nz/greenroom/

A version of the ad ran once before the Leaders Debate, and once in the
middle. The one in the middle crashed the streaming service for a minute or
so as over 5000 people pretty much instantaneously turned from their TVs at
the same time to visit www.greens.org.nz/ ­ and the included hashtag pushed
#greenroom to #1 trending topic on Twitter for New Zealand, including tweets
like these:
* https://twitter.com/#!/pete_taylor/status/130914818919104512
* https://twitter.com/#!/juliegenter/status/130963649610256385
* https://twitter.com/#!/muzzboi/status/130923606296379393

So, yes ­ offer something of interest to your audience, and make a clean,
easy to read reference to a short URL, and you¹ll get action.

CTOTD: 19/09/11: LOOK OUT! BEHIND YOU!

I've got about a thousand small children (well it FEELS like that many, although it's probably only three or four) so I'm fairly well versed in keeping the tribe entertained with good old kiddies' games like Daddy Is A Horsey, Make Daddy Cry and of course the classic Smash The Family Jewels. But I'd have to say one of the more successfully distracting games we play is I Spy. And thanks to today’s Cool Thing Of The Day, you can play too!

McDonald’s Australia has launched a new YouTube campaign called “Time To Spy” (which is somehow an extension of their latest TVC, which I haven’t seen, and which opens a whole nother can of worms about “integrated” campaigns). In one of the cuter and better use cases for YouTube annotations, they’ve created an interactive “I Spy” kind of game through multiple videos, and a bunch of levels, as you try to spy their famous characters...

Hat tip to www.digitalbuzzblog.com <http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com>  - also worth a look.

CTOTD: 13/09/2011: Anarchy on the FB

Facebook, eh? Isn’t it great? Just such a wonderfully timewasting virtual world where thousands upon thousands of feckless youngters sign up to burble on ad nauseum about how smashed they got, or how they miss their dog, or what a b*tch their friend is for wearing the same skirt to the same wedding, or how they enrolled to vote, to stand up and be counted and have their say and change the world for the better and – hey, waittasecond!

According to the Electoral Commission about 120,000 NZers aged between 18-24 are not enrolled to vote. That’s damn near 30% of the yoof of today idly standing back and letting old fogeys like me dictate the future – after all, 95% of us elderly people are enrolled to vote. So if you're not enrolled or you know someone who isn't then get cracking. It’s ridiculously simple so long as you can remember your name, address and birthday (not so easy for some of us after last Friday, but give yourself a bit of time and it’ll all come flooding back – just like that hip flask of Jack Daniel’s, eh Hadleigh?) , and – as today’s simple Cool Thing Of The Day shows – you can even do it on Facebook in between statusing your updates and facing your friends or whatever it is you bloody kids do all day. Ah, the future — it’s in such good hands!

http://www.facebook.com/IvoteNZ?sk=app_190322544333196

Righto!

CTOTD: Not even nearly the Final Countdown

Today's Cool Thing Of The Day reminds me of something me old Dad used to
say. He reckoned human beings could cope with anything -- yes, anything --
provided they knew just how long it was they were required to cope.

So whether you need to cope for four and a bit days until your next birthday
(http://itsalmo.st/#sombodysbirthdaaaaaay), six minutes until your next beer
(http://itsalmo.st/#timeforabeer), or a whopping sixty hours until SPRING
(http://itsalmo.st/#spring_aapq7), there's a Web App for that.

Create your own coping device, here: http://itsalmo.st/