Leo Burnett Chicago (and, we hear, New Zealand digital shop Resn) have created the Holiday Home Decorator for Allstate.
The site lets you enter your home address or use a standard house, and then decorate with a number of items including lights, candles, trees and presents. You can also control the intensity of the snowfall. Depending on your actions, you will be interrupted by a different kind of mayhem, which acts as an extension of a readily recognizable Allstate campaign. If you put up a bunch of lights, for example, you’ll probably get faulty wiring that causes the house to catch on fire. It’s a fun little diversion, and probably the only holiday site that will let you burn your house down. What’s not to like?
Looking for a good way to spend the next few minutes? May I recommend … (looks at camera and grins cultishly) … this amazing recruitment video for Monash College?
In a coup of ironic low-budget filmmaking, a group of students, faculty and alumni from the Melbourne, Australia, university have created "A Dave in the Life of Monash," possibly the most oddly endearing recruitment video since their fellow countrymen at Central Institute of Technology attracted students with gruesome teleportation deaths.
In the Monash video, a student named Sam wanders across campus, searching for his friend Dave. Each student he meets is glowing with over-the-top praise for the school's amenities. "He could be at one of our … (looks at camera) … many social sport competitions!" "He was heading off campus to give back to the community and get invaluable life experience in one of our … (looks at camera) … many volunteering opportunities!"
I was sold a minute in, when the student manning the cookout grill says, "I hope you like your sausages delicious and your peer groups supportive!" (One current student has taken issue with some of the claims, noting that opportunities for volunteering and joining student groups can be more limited than the school lets on. But I suppose such criticisms are the price you pay when you go so cheekily hyperbolic in your sales pitch.)
Somehow balancing superlative sarcasm with actual campus pride, the video goes to show that colleges don't have to take themselves too seriously to earn serious consideration from potential students.
“Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson has condemned homosexuality in a feature on the series’ stars that appears in GQ magazine’s January issue, giving A&E Networks a PR problem around one of its biggest hits.
The article says Mr. Robertson sees the popularity of “Duck Dynasty” as a bit of a corrective in a country losing its values, where “sin becomes fine.” Asked what’s sinful, Mr. Robertson says:
“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlersthey won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”
(TrendHunter.com) With the hype of Google Glass, there is now the Lumus DK-40 that will have consumers comparing which set of tech-infused eyewear will be a must-have in the new year.
Focus sur la série photographique de Shota Tsukamoto avec son hérisson élu le plus mignon du monde. Basé au Japon, elle met en scène de manière originale et ludique son adorable hérisson âgé de 3 ans dans “Darcy The Flying Hedgehog“. Près de 20 images à retrouver et à découvrir en détails dans la suite de l’article.
The introduction of Instagram Direct is further evidence that social networks are moving away from the idea that an app or utility should be born to do just one thing, and to do it brilliantly. While Facebook has long been a multi-purpose service, all the major social networks now are travelling in that direction, which soon will leave us with four or five nearly identical competitors.
Just this week Twitter announced the inclusion of images in mobile DMs, and Instagram announced the direct messaging of images — can you see the similarity?
This kind of feature-creep is rife among all major social channels. As Instagram shifts from photo-sharing into messaging, Foursquare has moved from geo-tagging to local search. Twitter is as often about image sharing as microblogging. Digital channels want to be all things to all people.
Nelson Mandela was Google's No. 1 global search in 2013, followed by the late film actor Paul Walker, Apple's iPhone 5S (suck it, Samsung, how does it feel to be No. 8?), the late TV actor Cory Monteith and the Harlem Shake.
Google's latest effort to chart, catalog and curate our collective zeitgeist is impressively immersive, to say the least. There's a video collage that lets you explore the top 100 searches in no particular order; a global 3-D map of top trends in cities around the world; and the 90-second video below, done in the familiar G-style with soothing white space, clack-clack typing in search boxes and image/music edits designed for maximum emotional impact. Batkid gets the final frame.
I clicked 10 collage images at random, just zipping around with the cursor and not looking at the pictures, and came up with an intriguing mix: Jodi Arias No. 25 … Typhoon No. 14 … Oblivion No. 66 … Kim Kardashian baby No. 44 … Cube World No. 53 … Pacific Rim No. 27 … Jennifer Lawrence No. 23 … Gareth Bale No. 62 … Man of Steel No. 15 … North Korea No. 10. I like how people, places, things and events are weighted on a single scale, mirroring the marvelously creative, chaotic way we tend to index data in our brains.
Earlier this month, Yahoo said Miley Cyrus led its searches for 2013, while Beyoncé topped Bing's ranking of the year's most-searched celebrities—with the British royal birth leading its list of most-searched news stories.
Some commentators try to find deeper meaning, make connections and draw philosophical conclusions about society from such findings. I think it's pretty simple. We're always searching, in every sense of the word. Searching for something, nothing, anything, everything. For information, distraction, inspiration, novelty, friends, family, facts, figures, kicks, titillation. Searching for something more. Something new. Something to add meaning, if only for a few seconds, to the sum total of who and what we are.
Even when we don't type in our own names, we're still basically searching for ourselves. That or the Harlem Shake.
L’artiste brésilienne Sarah Leal nous invite à rentrer dans son univers à travers une série de photographies de mains et de visages éclairées dans l’obscurité à l’aide de produits phosphorescents. Une série de clichés intéressante appelée Glow à découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.
(TrendHunter.com) Timepieces have never been so luxurious and detailed as the Devon Tread 1G. This intricate timepiece is an inspiration draw from the Industrial Revolution. Constructed with delicate care and the…
You may not have known that shipping containers can dance.
To promote GE Transportation, agency The Barbarian Group teamed up with Reuben Wu of British electronic band Ladytron to create a song and video featuring the company's intermodal products—which help choreograph millions of containers of freight being carried by railroads, trucks and boats—at work at the CSX Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio. Wu recorded some of the sounds in the song at the terminal itself, a trick we've already seen applied to athletes by brands like Gillette and Coca-Cola. The GE video, part of its "Brilliant Machines" campaign, though, is basically industrial-grade technophilia, struggling to make freight logistics anything but incredibly boring. At its heart, the idea is a little silly, but the result itself actually ends up being pretty hypnotizing.
It's especially nice given the subject matter. Creating any kind of emotional connection to complex, dull-at-first-blush technology is a perennial problem for GE. This, at least, creates some interest. But its got some pretty stiff competition in machines you didn't know were powered by GE—especially Marty McFly's DeLorean.
Le photographe roumain Tamas Dezso nous propose des clichés d’une beauté incroyable, centrés sur un monde laissé à l’abandon, et montrant notamment des bâtiments en décomposition. Des images à couper le souffle, dont une sélection est à découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.
Se apenas uma palavra pudesse definir a edição 2013 de relatório 5 in 5, desenvolvido pela IBM, certamente seria personalização. A ideia, como já mostramos por aqui no ano passado, é apontar cinco tendências tecnológicas que deverão se tornar realidade nos próximos cinco anos nos segmentos da educação, comércio, saúde, segurança e cidades, e qual o papel que os computadores terão nisso tudo.
Na área educacional, por exemplo, as salas de aula serão capazes de aprender sobre cada aluno, personalizando o ensino. No comércio, as pessoas optarão por fazer suas compras localmente, com lojas físicas reunindo o melhor do digital e do analógico.
Nosso DNA será utilizado de maneira mais rotineira por nossos médicos, e graças a isso o câncer será tratado de uma maneira muito mais rápida e abrangente. A segurança digital será muito mais eficiente, enquanto as cidades vão nos ajudar a viver nelas.
Se tudo isso parece muito louco, confira os infográficos animados do 5 in 5 2013 e prepare-se para o futuro.
À primeira vista, Squarehub App pode parecer mais uma tentativa de transferir toda e qualquer conversa para o meio digital. Porém, o aplicativo foi criado justamente com essa questão em mente, tendo como objetivo ajudar pais e filhos a se conectarem mais, nos momentos em que as distintas ferramentas de cada geração acabam interferindo na comunicação.
Squarehub App surgiu para ficar no lugar dos calendários e post-its que ficam espalhados pela geladeira.
CEO Dave Cotterconta que a ideia do projeto surgiu por necessidade própria. Pai divorciado, Cotter tinha dificuldade de gerenciar a comunicação, logística e conexão com seus filhos, tendo membros da família com hábitos tão diferentes entre si, além de viverem em casas diferentes.
Squarehub App surgiu para ficar no lugar dos calendários e post-its que ficam espalhados pela geladeira. Com a necessidade de ser acessível a todos, um dos principais desafios foi criar um design simples, prático e intuitivo para que qualquer pessoa, independente da experiência e idade, pudesse usar sem dificuldades. Assim, conceitos de navegação e estruturação de conteúdo ganharam maior importância do que a estética em si.
Outro desafio foi conseguir integrar todo o tipo de comunicação que acontece entre os membros da família. Enquanto os pais costumam usar o email com bastante frequência, os jovens preferem o Facebook e SMS. Já as crianças costumam se conectar enquanto jogam no iPad/iPod.
Por isso, todo o conteúdo, ambientes, mensagens, ferramentas e recursos de compartilhamento são acessíveis online em qualquer plataforma por meio de notificações, sem a necessidade de baixar o app.
Assim, enquanto muitas das ferramentas, redes e dispositivos são apontadas como interferências e distrações na comunicação familiar, parece que alguns projetos como o Squarehub visam usar essa tecnologia justamente para acabar com as barreiras e gaps que são deixados entre as gerações.
Para quem ainda tem dúvidas, algumas histórias de como o app tem ajudado as famílias podem ser lidas aqui.
Squarehub App está disponível para iOSeAndroid de graça.
The number of mergers and acquisitions in the media sector is set to increase in 2014 as the wider economic outlook improves and the continuing pace of change means businesses cannot adapt fast enough with organic growth alone, according to a report.
(TrendHunter.com) These DIY projects for bookworms will surely attract any arts and crafts enthusiast who simply adores and appreciates books and novels.
When it comes to DIY crafts, opting to create something that…
Toyota says the so-called multicultural consumer is the new mainstream, not a niche.
To do a better job marketing to these consumers, Toyota will announce today it’s aligning its disparate multicultural marketing agencies into a new team dubbed “Total Toyota” or T2.
Toyota’s longtime ad agency, Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, will take the lead on T2, according to Jack Hollis, VP-marketing for Toyota Motor Sales USA in Torrance, Calif.
Thomson Holidays, the TUI Travel-owned travel brand, is launching an “epic” marketing campaign demonstrating the importance of taking holidays, in a bid to challenge consumers’ perceptions of the travel brand.
(TrendHunter.com) If it weren’t for its title, the photo series Colored People by JKB Fletcher, a photographer based in Melbourne, Australia, could easily be categorized as a series of paintings. In a way, they…
Last week, on the heels of its Volvo account loss, Arnold promoted Pam Hamlin from president of Arnold, Boston, to global president, replacing global CEO Robert LePlae.
It’s an obvious next step for Ms. Hamlin, who has been at the agency for 15 years and is no stranger to the impact of a major loss — she was promoted to president in Boston in 2006, only a few months after the shop lost decade-long client Volkswagen. She talks to Ad Age about what she’s learned from that situation and her vision for the future of Arnold.
Ad Age: Both of your promotions to leadership roles at Arnold came after marquee automotive account losses. How do you move the agency past that kind of loss?
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