Ogilvy Verge - Front Page

LOL

Candace Kuss — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:30:55 GMT

Impossible to see this and not -- as the song asks -- blog about it.
It is my new favorite vid. But I am easily amused by industry humor. Maybe not so funny in adland?
credits:
A Silicon Valley music video by the Richter Scales.
Solo, video, arrangement and lyrics by Matt Hempey
Mixed by Bill Hare
Recorded by Jason Hunter & Charlie Forkish
Based on "We Didn't Start the Fire," by Billy Joel

Check out the Tilda viral

Katie Robinson — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:53:31 GMT

Prepare to get bitten...

Mark Gretton — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:24:11 GMT

We're all very excited about the launch of the new Ford TV show 'bite'. Every week 5 street-smart girls will be driving around the country, checking out some of the hottest trends in their Ford Ka's and Fiestas.

Whether it's Chuvitti Thai rope massage, Headphone Discos, T-shirt patisseries, new fashion boutiques or the trendiest new bands these girls will be on the case.

Every Tuesday, for 20 weeks, a new 5-8 minute show will be added to the site. We'll also have weekly features in Heat Magazine and presence on Yahoo for anyone on the look out.

WATCH THE FULL SHOW NOW at www.channel4.com/bite.

note: you may need Flash 9

Companies2Watch, part three: Google & MySpace

Candace Kuss — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:03:53 GMT

Whoo-ah! Certainly none of us thought alpha dog Google or the fair and balanced Rupert Murdoch would let new little rich kid Facebook hog all the headlines?

AP reports "Internet social networking leader MySpace is joining Google Inc.'s platform for sharing applications across the Web - a concept that threatens to undermine the rapid growth of their common rival, Facebook Inc."
The fuss this will produce is really just a good reminder that it is the importance of the social graph that our brands must understand. Sites -- Google, OpenSocial, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, ASWhatever -- are venues. People (aka that anti-empowerment, ad-centric word "consumers") go online to connect with each other. To connect with them, we must understand why more than where.

Cross posted on Brand Street.

Companies2Watch, part two: Launch Pad

Candace Kuss — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:11:55 GMT

Six companies were chosen by a panel of VCs to present on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit as part of the Launch Pad. It's always an inspiration for me to see what's out there, so check them out and tell me which you'd bet your money on.
TripIt is a new kind of online travel service that automatically organizes all your travel plans into one master online itinerary with everything you need for your trip - including travel confirmations, daily weather, local maps, city guides and more.

Spiceworks IT Desktop is free (ad-based) network management software that combines Network Inventory, Help Desk, Reporting, Monitoring and Troubleshooting, plus collaboration features.

Realius is a great new concept -- a Fantasy Real Estate game. This was the most fun of all the Launch Pad companies and in a real estate obsessed location like San Francisco (or London) could be a big hit. As this may be the only way I'll ever make a killing in real estate, I can't wait to play.

G.ho.st stands for the Global Hosted Operating SysTem, which claims to be the world's only true Web Operating System. G.ho.st aggregates all of the new Web-based software applications into a free Virtual Computer, by providing a Web desktop, a single online file system, single sign-in, sharing and collaboration. They get my vote for funky url, but I need a techpert's opinion on the product. Web applications, tho, was a running theme throughout the conference, as you might expect.

Click Forensics bills themselves as "The Leader in Click Fraud Management". Seems like this is a bigger issue than most people think. Will be interested in what Neo folks think about this company. They "believe advertisers should get what they pay for" and I know we agree with that!

CleverSet was voted Best in Show by the conference delegates. And might be of most interest to our ecommerce clients.

Their proprietary technology makes real-time merchandise recommendations based on relational behavioral modeling logic. I noticed an Amex logo on the client page of their presentation so will have to inquire if they are using them for the USA website.

Gadgets2Want

Not part of the Launch Pad, but a huge crowd favorite, was Dash. Their claim to fame is the Dash Express™, the first Internet-connected GPS device. It automatically and wirelessly updates its software and features, plus you can send an address from any computer right to your car. I must have one and I don't even have a car. (Or at very least I want in on the IPO -- the investors alone make this a company to watch ;-)

Nokia unveiled the latest and greatest device in their N series. The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. They are all about the computer in your pocket.

Anssi Vanjoki, an EVP at Nokia says the number one question in the world used to be: "How are you?" Now it is: "Where are you?" So he says, "computers should be in pockets not on desktops..." I think they should and will be everywhere, but Anssi was a most interesting speaker and would be great to have at our next Verge. And maybe he'd bring us some of these sweet devices. I am not much of a gadget geek, but I totally fell in love.

Companies2Watch, part one: Revolution Money

Candace Kuss — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:36:33 GMT

Some ad folks think understanding Silicon Valley start-ups is tangential to our creative jobs, but it is undoubtedly critical to our clients. I hadn't heard about Revolution Money before I saw them at the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit. But -- having spent the bulk of the last two years working with American Express -- this company whose press release proclaims "PayPal Meets MasterCard Without The High Fees" certainly captured my attention.
They announce: "Revolution Money (is) an innovative new payment platform created to transform the payment industry by drastically altering the economics through Internet-based technology, generating significant consumer and merchant benefits. Revolution Money offers consumers one of the most secure credit cards with significantly lower interchange fees for merchants and the first free online money transfer service."

Internet VCs love words like transform, disrupt and revolution, so only time will tell if Revolution Money succeeds in ..." flipping the industry on its head." But a payment system that cuts interchange fees to 0.5 percent would indeed offer major savings for merchants. And (theoretically) these cost savings get passed on to their customers.

Revolution LLC labels current industry leaders like Amex, MC, Visa (and even digital darling PayPal) "incumbents". Which is a brilliant bit of framing, imho, as the word has a not so hidden taint if you follow American politics. Incumbents are the fat cats ready to be toppled by the people. Their product addresses hot topics like identity theft too. RevolutionCard is the industry's first anonymous, PIN-protected credit card. There is no name or number on the card itself.

The board has serious creds. Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman emeritus of AOL and Revolution Money Chairman, didn't announce a big ad campaign or direct mail CDs to acquire customers. He expects that merchants will do much of the marketing for them, because they want that savings. (Might be that ad folks have a stake in this game after all.)

You can download the Revolution Money ppt here. (Find perennial favorite Mary Meeker's Internet Trends and other Summit presentations here.)

OGILVY BOOKMARK CLUB 25/10/07

Fran Hazeldine — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:00:09 GMT

To see ALL of this week's bookmarks visit the Ogilvy Bookmark Club tag page at http://del.icio.us/tag/ogilvy-bookmark-club.

Want to join in?

- Register a del.icio.us social-bookmarking account and get the one-click browser button at https://secure.del.icio.us/register

- Learn how to do the bookmarking and tagging thing at http://del.icio.us/help/saving

- Contribute to the Bookmark Club by tagging your del.icio.us bookmarks 'ogilvy-bookmark-club' (don't forget the hyphens!)

Here's this week's Top 15:

1. Edge-Serpentine Gallery: FORMULAE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY Another fantastic collaborative science project from the Edge community

2. eBay: Shop Victoriously
Branded content series from Ebay.

3. Riven by class and no social mobility - Britain in 2007 | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited · No change in 10 years of Labour rule · 89% say they are judged by class · Poll shows deep North-South gap

4. gurgle.com - Pregnancy and Parenting Resource Mothercare gets its community site just right, packing in plentiful content and a solid community elements.

5. Usability of 50% of UK's Top High Street Retailer Sites Worse than '06 - MarketingVOX Surprising (and falling) levels of online competency amongst high street retailers.

6. Fuel For Life Factory - The fragrance by Diesel - Customize your fragrance Diesel experiments with customisation, allowing site visitors to choose the colour of the product's leather packaging and the logo design (?!!), then order it to be delivered in time for xmas.

7. Facebook Flyers Experiments with Psychographic Targeting - MarketingVOX Psychographic targeting is here, courtesy of Facebook.

8. YouTube - levelHead: A 3D Spatial Memory Game Clever web-cam-utilising game that combines real world action with virtual world effect.

9. Walk on the wired side: jacket that lets parents keep track of children | Technology | The Guardian · GPS technology provides updates every 10 seconds · Firm says garment gives young more independence

10. Omega the brainier way to spend an evening Bizarre pop-up fishfinger restaurant from Birds Eye to promote the new Omega 3 variant.

11. Unveiled: radical prescription for our health crisis - Independent Online Edition > Health Obesity, alcohol abuse, smoking: Britain is among the most unhealthy countries in Europe. Now a pioneering NHS adviser is proposing a revolutionary cure for our ills

12. BMW Welt BMW Welt: brand communication that'll be around for 30 years, not 30 seconds.

13. Games which aren't fun but are useful | Technology | The Guardian 'Serious games' that use gaming technology and techniques have emerged as the useful training tool VR was hoped to be.

14. Every novel on Man Booker Prize shortlist to be available free for online readers - Times Online Negotiations are under way with the British Council and publishers over digitising the novels and reaching parts - particularly in Africa and Asia - that the actual books would not otherwise reach

15. FFFFOUND! Simple and innovative social bookmarking site for images.

Branding 2.0

Candace Kuss — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:58:20 GMT

In a world of buzzwords, none is bigger in ours right now than Web 2.0. When marketing folks start flinging tech terms around it is usually gratuitous, but this label was actually invented to market a conference.
The smart folks at O'Reilly Media wanted their new web technology conference in 2004 to avoid the taint from the so called dot com crash, hence the version number 2. Once coined, they got to own the definition as well.

In a world where people find your brand via Google, owning a term that comes to define a whole wave of innovation is pretty powerful. Marketing genius, imho, even if unpredicted. Being at this conference for me isn't an Ogilvy thing, but it makes me feel like I did when I first got into interactive. I'll list a few of the cool things I am learning about in my next post.

Cross posted on Brand Street.

Verge London 2007

Verge — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:25:59 GMT

It was a fun full day. We are editing and adding video clips now. The Bob clip is the most popular so far.
Program PDF

9.45 COFFEE & SHOWCASE
video

11.00 INTRODUCTION:
Mike Dodds - Managing Director, OgilvyOne &
Guy Lambert - Managing Director, Ogilvy Advertising

11.10 KEYNOTE:
Rory Sutherland - Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK

L I S T E N

11.30 HOST: Jon Steel - Planning Director, WPP
video

11.35 KEYNOTE: Bob Garfield - Columnist
presentation | video interview

12.00 CASE STUDIES:

Richard Wheaton - Managing Director, neo@Ogilvy
video | presentation

Bill Kircos - Group Manager, Product, Technology Public Relations, Intel
presentation | video interview

12.45 PANEL: Jon Steel, moderator

L U N C H

E X P E R I M E N T

2.15 HOST: Patou Nuytemans - EAME Digital Director, OgilvyOne Worldwide
video

2.20 KEYNOTE: Jessica Greenwood - Deputy Editor, Contagious

2.45 CASE STUDIES:

Caroline Slootveg - Director of Digital Marketing and New Media, Unilever
presentation | In the Motherhood video

Alan Flack - UK Strategic Brand Manager, IBM
presentation

Michael Tchao - General Manager, Nike Techlab
video interview

3.30 PANEL: Patou Nuytemans, moderator

E N G A G E

4.30 HOST: John Baker - Managing Partner, Head of Interactive OgilvyOne
video

4.35 KEYNOTE: Sam Smith - Head of the Future Media Audiences, BBC
presentation

5.00 CASE STUDIES:

Rufus Olins - Managing Director, Haymarket Brand Media
video | presentation

Clive Peoples - Head of Customer Communications, Expedia.co.uk
presentation

Aaron Coldiron - Senior Marketing Manager, Microsoft Vista
video interview

5.45 PANEL: John Baker, moderator

6.00 SUMMARY:
Mike Dodds - Managing Director, OgilvyOne &
Guy Lambert - Managing Director, Ogilvy Advertising

D R I N K S

D I N N E R
The Terrace Restaurant, British Library

Rory on Stripping Out Overhead

Verge London 2007 — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:01:29 GMT

Listen: Jon Steel

Verge London 2007 — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:20:30 GMT

Jon Steel is the Planning Director at WPP and the author of Truth, Lies & Advertising and Perfect Pitch.

Rory on Diamonds

Verge London 2007 — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:03:41 GMT

Adding to the Onslaught

Candace Kuss — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:33:29 GMT

Kudos to O&M Toronto. And have to admire how fast this one is spreading. AdAge and the blogs are all on it. All of course mostly talk about how it will compare to big sister Evolution.

Linking in with Ogilvy Healthworld

Candace Kuss — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 13:00:17 GMT

Tales from the Network, part one:
I got to crash the Ogilvy Healthworld 2007 creative summit last week. Which was a rare treat - not just because of the inspiring location on the shores of the Bosphorus, but because I got to mingle with their talented creative directors from across Europe and North America. My job was to share insights into interactive marketing and ways to think about digital creative.

Since many people asked for copies of my presentation to revisit the examples we talked about, I decided take the links out of evil ppt and put them online where they belong.
Starting point
The creative criteria for online concepts starts the same as for offline. Unexpected, engaging, entertaining, emotional, and insightful. All of course still apply. But then there are additional criteria we have to think about. We should be multi-level and multimedia. Useful, educational, actionable, sharable. But the secret to the best digital work is really just the definition of interactive: two way, customizable, changeable, user initiated and controlled.

There is a best of breed example for the VW Rabbit that I like for the way it shows how the same concept that produces a charming tee vee ad can expand into a more engaging addictive interactive ad. Guess which execution won a Lion? (btw, BannerBlog is a good site to see online ads from different categories.)

Another car ad you could spend quite a lot of time with is this one. It appears as a standard MPU size message, but click "Yes" and you get guided through descriptive testimonial videos for eight different Pontiac models. It is like a hassle-free trip to the dealer through a rabbit hole of 300 x 250 pixels.

Parce qu'il est le Canada, il y a une version française aussi.

Click your way to Cannes
For creatives looking to bring their brands to life online, studying Web 2.0 applications and innovations from the art and tech sector can produce award winning ideas.

Post Secret, an art project blog by Frank Warren, became popular enough to capture in a series of books. The concept of revealing secrets also won a Gold Lion for Method Soap's confessional site Come Clean.

Mashup the classic game play of Monopoly and the production values of the iconic video game, Myst, and what do you get? Get the Glass, a 2007 Cannes Gold Cyber Lion winner and digital triumph for the Got Milk gang. (It is a sign of the times that all the tee vee spots created for this campaign were drive to site. Cute spots, but again, they didn't win the Lion ;-)

Line Rider, an Internet phenomenon Flash game created by fsk, had to inspire the adidas ad that won a Cannes Gold Cyber Lion. But, imho (and close to 5 million views), it isn't as good as the user generated Jagged Peak Adventure.

Searching for inspiration
Meet Ms. Dewey, Microsoft's sexy cyber librarian. She's amusing the first time, annoyingly slow if you're actually looking for something.

This visual search Amazon mashup can actually help you find a book.

Flickrball is one of the fun, experimential sites built around Flickr.

Another is retrievr . While this awesome artistic site seems cool for coolness sake, Like.com shows how visual search has clear commerical application.

What would David do?
I think that if David Ogilvy were alive today, he'd Twitter. This micro-blogging application promotes a pithy writing style because you only get 140 charactures to tell the world what you are doing or thinking. It is the darling of the digerati and has spawned its own mashups, like the haiku hypnotic global map twittervision.

Follow me to try it out and please add me as a friend so you can give me a poke on Facebook.

Questions, comments, additional links welcome. Simply Register now to contribute.

In the Motherhood: Case study from Caroline Slootveg

Verge London 2007 — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:44:18 GMT

Caroline from Unilever's presentation uses the case study of Suave beauty products especially for mums. This clip shows the first online series by mums, for mums and about mums. Mums write & vote - 10 winning stories are turned into webisodes, hosted on MSN and in partnership with Sprint.