HSBC Rugby Lions Training Ads 2009

Tomorrow (Saturday 30th May) sees the start of the 2009 British & Irish Lions Rugby tour of South Africa, and so this week has seen the release of a brilliant series of ads by partner HSBC. The ads sees the players taking it in turns to train the lions of the Savannah in the skills they would need on the pitch, passing, tackling etc (seen below).



The ads featured in this week's BestadsonTV podcast, follows the launch of HSBC's online campaign to promote and build support for its sponsorship earlier in the month. This involved an tool on the British and Irish Lions website that allowed fans to add their names to a giant Lions shirt that will be taken on tour with the team.




Enjoy!

Gillette: How To Shave Your Groin!!

Yes this post will probably be as weird and uncomfortable as it sounds, but I'm going to go ahead with it anyway. Gillette in the US have realised a new campaign based on the correct way to shave various areas of your body, including... you got it... your groin (Shown below).





The series of videos are hosted on the Gillette 'How to bodyshave' website, and includes tips on general body shaving including head, chest, armpits and so on. Although can also be seen on the Gillette YouTube channel which is worth looking at if only for the range of comments and debate around the videos.





I think despite the uncomfortable and wincing feeling you'd get when thinking about 5 razor shape blades pressed against your family jewels, this is providing a service which fits very nicely with the brand. Plus it gives them the chance to have a bit of fun with a subject most blokes would shy away from, for example this lovely screenshot (above) taken by David Kiefaber over at Ad Freak.com. Enjoy!

Google Streetview Guerrilla ads Amsterdam

Google has claimed the streets of Amsterdam in order to promote the functionality of their Google Street view application. The activity (shown below) consist of stencils on the streets and Outdoor posters in bus stops where people can see how it all works. The activity promotes the Street view service in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Groningen, which launched roughly the same time as it did here in the UK (March 2009).



Pic 1 - Google Street View (Street Stencil)



Pic 2 - Google Street View (Bus Stop)



Pic 3 - Google Street View Amsterdam


One more quick note for all of those curious, whilst on the subject of Amsterdam and Google Street View... yes you can view the famous Red Light District (Redlight District Amsterdam on Google Street View).


Via adsoftheworld.com


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WSOP - PokerRoad Nation Twitter Tool

Well The World Series of Poker begins today in Las Vegas, with thousands of players, taking part in over 50 events, over the next two months, which as imagined can be pretty hard to follow at times. It has been reported on Twitters Blog that to give some clarity to the madness and help followers of the WSOP keep up-to-date with the latest news, Poker Pro and Twitterer Joe Sebok has created a new tool which aggregates relevant tweets for users.



PokerRoad Nation aggregates tweets from professional players such as Barry Greenstein and Annie Duke, as well as amateurs, and allows users to filter the tweets relevant to them, in order to see updates about a specific WSOP events or specific players. This is a great way of keeping track of the WSOP and allows users to view exactly what they want, when they want.

EA: Sims 3 Wish Susan Boyle Good Luck for Saturday Night

You know you've made it when probably one of the largest computer game franchises wishes you all the best by creating an avatar in your honour. Well this is exactly what's happened to Susan Boyle who is competing in the Britain's Got Talent Final this Saturday (30th May 2009), and has had a short good luck video made of her by EA and their upcoming Sims 3 (Shown below).



Good Luck Susan, from The Sims 3!


The clip shows Susan Boyle on her way to the Britain's Got Talent Final (driven in a pink limousine) being bombarded by good luck wishes, including one over the phone by Queen Elizabeth and President Barack Obama.


Pic 1 - Good Luck Susan, from The Sims 3!



Pic 2 - Good Luck Susan, from The Sims 3!

Wonderbra: Friends - Facebook ad

This was quite a nice press ad I saw this week from Wonderbra, showing the affect its line could have on your social life, using the friend request typography we would recognise from Facebook.



This may not be their usual style of ad and some may argue that it's a bit behind the times which it may invariably be, but this aside, I quite like its simplicity.



Via scaryideas

Big Brother 10 - It's back!!

Yep it's that time again where the Channel 4 blipverts are already warning us to run for the hills, go on holiday, or cryogenically freeze ourself for the next three months. But we must pause for a second, this year may be different for a couple of reasons.

1) Apparently it is rumored to be the last year of Big Brother this year.
2) The housemates are all apparently young! Which means no oldies in there to control them and stop them ruining their lives (reference 'Kinger bottle' episode)
3) The social media space is now bigger than ever and growing every day! This means that not only will there be overnight (and unavoidable) stars, villains, clowns, scandals etc. It means that this could be the most out of control the show has ever got (worth tuning in for maybe)!





The truth is that as with ever year the 'Interest' Vs. 'do I really care' ratio fluctuates on a minute by minute basis. But I will be watching to see how Channel 4 uses the social space to its advantage, especially as their website currently only shows a countdown and the logos of YouTube, Bebo, Twitter, Facebook. Although saying this I feel that they have not used this to their full advantage during the build up, relentlessly regurgitating links to their trailers, however I suppose we'll see how this years story unravels.

COD Modern Warfare 2 Trailer Released

Just a quick update because yes as the XBOX fans among you would have seen this week, the trailer of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to COD4: Modern Warfare 'the best selling game of 2007', has been released. This can be viewed below, as a nice further teaser before any more reveals hopefully to take place at E3 in June.

Loop-the-Loop by Dunlop World Record

This is pretty damn cool, and especially because it's carried out by a brand that fits perfectly. I think every boy must have this dream whilst playing with his Hot Wheels, to carry out a loop-the-loop in a real car, and now its a reality. Dunlop as you can see in the video below in an idea conceived by both Dunlop and Fifth Gear, have carried out a loop-the-loop World Record, without the aid of a safety net.



Loop-the-Loop by Dunlop World Record


Dunlop backed up the record attempt with a website with further details, and then much more footage of the event once the countdown was completed, as well as room for all comments. Quite a simple site which works in my opinion.





"When this baby hits 88MPH, you're gonna see some serious shit!" Enjoy!

YouTube - "20 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute!!"

As incredible as it seems the title of this post is correct, according to YouTube's blog today, there is now 20 Hours of video content uploaded to YouTube every single minute. The equivalent of Hollywood releasing over 86,000 new full-length movies into cinemas each week. This has increased from just 6 hours in 2007, and 15 hours in January of this year. You can view the whole article here 'Zoinks! 20 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute!'.





Despite wondering what the hell could possibly be uploaded that warrants 20 hours every minute (above for example), it is still a very impressive figure. It also begs the question that with their continued work on developing ease of upload and video response what will this figure be by the end of the year.

Drench - Pheasant Rodeo ad

Sometimes there's no better way to start the day than to watch a random 60 second ad featuring a cowboy riding a giant bird as part of a campaign for flavoured water, and luckily for us Drench have giving us exactly that. Their new TV creative for new 'Juicy Drench' (shown below) features a rather random but excellent Pheasant Rodeo set against the music of Black Box with 'Right on Time'.



Drench - Pheasant Rodeo 'Stay on top of your game'


To mark the launch of the new campaign Drench took their giant pheasant rodeo on a trip to Covent Garden, where newly crowned Miss Great Britain, Sophie Gradon, gave recreating the ad a go (Shown below). Personally I think I prefer it, although I can't quite put my finger on why!



Drench - Miss Great Britain takes on the drench Pheasant Rodeo


The Pheasant Rodeo execution follows their previous ad which featured Brains from the Thunderbirds dancing to 'Rhythm is a Dancer' by Snap.



Drench - 'Brains'


Who would have thought water could be soooo much fun... not me that's for sure! Enjoy!

NHS - Teen Pregnancy Viral Video for 'Hey Babe' Camapign

I saw in Metro today that the NHS in Leicester has seeded a viral on the subject of Teen Pregnancy in the form of a video on YouTube, showing a teenage school girl giving birth on a school playing field. I then read that YouTube had apparently banned the video due to "terms of use violation". In the true nature of a viral video, things aren't as easy to stop once they are out there, and so here is one copy that got away. Warning: Graphic Content!



If this becomes no longer available (as I'm very sure it will be soon), the ad is also available on the campaign website www.hey-babe.co.uk.



I would be very interested to know whether anyone else thinks that this is perhaps a little bit too much, and whether a more subtle approach could have been taken to drive home the same message. I know the aim of this rather graphic vid was probably more along the lines of driving PR, but even so.

Slap Chop 'Rap Chop' featuring Vince

Since watching this earlier in the week, I haven't been able to get 'Rap Chop' featuring Vince out of my head, so I thought I'd share it, remixed from an infomercial for the Slap Chop. If you liked the Cilit Bang Remix you will love this!


'Rap Chop' featuring Vince - DJ Steve Porter






Enjoy!

Sky HDTV: Airport Invasion TV

OK so how do you demonstrate the lifelike clarity of Sky HDTV? Well creating a guerrilla 'channel hopping' experience for everyone at Sao Paulo Airport might do it. A nice example of doing something a bit out of the ordinary in a public space.




Enjoy!

Twitter Most influential List

This was a neat little article released in the middle of last week naming the most influential Twitterers in the world. Put together by agency JCPR, their 'Twitter index' was based on an algorithm, rating the number of followers each user has, as well as the interest their posts generate among followers, including the number of times their name is mentioned and how many times they are 'retweeted' by others. The list is as follows:

The Top 20 Influential Twitters, according to JCPR:
Jonathan Ross (@Wossy)
Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton)
Stephen Fry (@StephenFry)
Ashton Kutcher (@AplusK)
Graham Linehan (@Glinner)
Demi Moore (@MrsKutcher)
CNN (@CNNbrk)
Lance Armstrong (@LanceArmstrong)
New York Times (@NYTimes)
Wil Wheaton (@Wilw)
Shaquille O'Neal (@The_Real_Shaq)
Downing Street (@DowningStreet)
Jason Bradbury (@JasonBradbury)
Philip Schofield (@Schofe)
Soulja Boy (@SouljaBoyTellEm)
Jimmy Fallon (@JimmyFallon)
Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
John Mayer (@JohnCMayer)
Michael Arrington (@TechCrunch)
Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest)


Unfortunately I fell just outside this, but then again there’s always next year!!


Another interesting Twitter Influential list can be found here: www.twitalyzer.com which includes 100 names, and is regularly updated using measures of average influence, their signal-to-noise ratio, their generosity, velocity, and clout (you can even drill down by country if need be).


You can follow me here @funkadelicad

Builder's Breakfast Crowned Walkers "Do us a flavour" winner

It has been announced that after 4 or so months of being on our shelves, a winner to the Walkers "Do us a flavour" competition has been announced. According to Brand Republic over a million people entered the competition with Builder's Breakfast eventually picking up 232,336 votes, more than 10,000 in front of Onion Bhaji, which came in second. Fish & Chips came in third with 218,270 votes, followed by Crispy Duck & Hoisin (176,184), Cajun Squirrel (116,777) and Chilli & Chocolate (114,775).



The prize for the creator of the winning flavour of the competition which was originally launched in campaign kicked off in July 2008, not only won £50,000 presented by Heston Blumenthal (above), but will receive 1 per cent of future sales. Not bad considering over 1.2 million people entered, including myself (Spicy Italian Meatball). The campaign included a raft of media activity mainly focused around a bespoke video channel, ‘Do us a flavour TV' on Yahoo!, and an impressive number of TV creative to name just a few.

Samsung - Camera Trick Challenge Revealed

This is an update to a post put up 3 weeks ago regarding a Samsung viral for their new I8910 HD phone, using its 8 megapixel camera that can record and output video in HD format. The Challenge: The Video was shot in one take, with no post production or special effects of any kind. Everything we see in the above video was apparently done "in-camera". Samsung's challenge to us is to figure out how they did it. The Original video is below:



Original Video - Samsung - YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge


Well now Samsung have released the follow up video explaining all, including some amusing answers they received from the YouTube community.



Revealed - Samsung - YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge


The original post is here: Samsung - YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge


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T-Mobile karaoke aired during Britain's Got Talent

Ok, so on Thursday (April 30th) there was a lot of speculation over what was going down on the T-Mobile front, and I for one was particularly curious to find out how they were going to differentiate their next social engagement 'Life is for sharing' project from all of the copycats we have been seeing recently. Well hats off to T-Mobile, because they've done it again. T-Mobile's hosted a large-scale karaoke event in Trafalgar Square hosted by presenter Vernon Kay attracting an estimated 13,500 people, and included a guest appearance from popstar Pink.



T-Mobile karaoke - Full Length Video


The ad (see above) including The Beatles' Hey Jude and Britney Spears' Baby One More Time, was aired during last night's Britain's Got Talent with a longer version available on the T-Mobile 'Life is for sharing' YouTube Channel. For anyone interested on how it was put together, Campaign have put together a behind the scenes video (below).



Campaign.TV - The Making of The T-Mobile karaoke advert

Unfortunately I couldn't go down on the day and had to see the event unfold on Twitter (Which in itself was a pretty weird experience, with roughly 2-3 updates every 5 seconds... see chart below).


T-Mobile - Mentions Chart


The experience was also captured by the blogging community with the first one I noticed from Nick viewed here. I was also wondering whether anyone was actually lucky enough to see themselves in the ad last night? Or any thoughts on how they felt about the event itself?