Hasta La Creative!

Usually, city rivalries related to sporting match-ups involve wacky wagers from politicians. The mayor of City X wants 100 pounds of cheese from the governor of City Y if City X wins the Super Bowl. But for the 2013 Stanley Cup between the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks, the wacky wagers are getting social and, well, smack-talky. The folks over at Arnold Boston and Leo Burnett in Chicago are using the Stanley Cup to launch their own trash-talking competition for charity: The Smackley Cup. Agency employees and random fans from all over are encouraged to tweet using #smacktalkboston or #smacktalkchicago. Once the series concludes, the agency supporting the loser of the Stanley Cup will have to donate 10 cents per tweet and retweet to a charity AND wear the opposing team’s sweater in the office the following day. That sort of masochism always makes for fun water cooler talk.

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Russia’s abysmal track record for gay rights got unnecessarily worse last year, when a court ruling banned gay parades in the country for the next 100 years. Today, Stockholm Pride and M&C Saatchi Stockholm are fighting back with gowest2013.com, a digital campaign that lets Russians celebrate gay rights on Twitter for one well-intentioned thorn in the side of the Russian government: to get “Go West” trending in Russia. How are they going to accomplish this from a Swedish website, you ask? All tweets from the website automatically change location to a Russian city. Got to love technology.

If Stockholm Pride accomplishes their goal, I’d love to see the faces of Russian government officials after “Go West” starts trending. Stalin rolls in his grave, Putin rolls in his bed, Sting makes more music videos like this. If you’re interested in contributing, you can tweet from the website to help the cause and watch as Princeton, New Jersey turns into Ufa, Russia.

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These ten briefs from Mother and creative charity IdeasTap do offer compensation (£500, or approximately $762) to each week’s winner, so as contests and internships go, 10 by 10 is one of the more lucrative opportunities for freelancers and young graduates. Each week, Mother will roll out a new assignment that needs tackling. At the end of the process, the ten winners will have their work shown, and creative bigwigs will ultimately whittle the weekly winners down to one overall winner who gets a six-week paid internship.

The first brief, according to the project website: “Mother want you come up with a concept for a Twitter feed and start it from scratch. The profile with the most followers and the best content in 10 weeks’ time wins.”  Now comes the cost-benefit analysis from potential applicants–at what point does buying fake followers from a social media service cost more than the potential earnings from winning the competition? Let’s hope the eventual winner doesn’t spend £1000 buying followers and winds up snagging the internship. Or let’s hope for it, because that would be ridiculous. Imagine the internship turns into a full-time position, all because an individual gamed the system.

Something makes me think Mother wouldn’t want that. But, according to a recent article in PC Mag, you can buy 1,000 Twitter followers for as little as $5. Let the games begin.

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Meet Andy Williams, a 30-something bearded musician who shares a name with a recently deceased beloved pop singer/actor. Williams hails from Buffalo, New York, eschews the mere notion of a 9-to-5 office gig, and plays guitar in semi-popular hardcore band Every Time I Die.

It might seem to a naive person that Williams has it all: A cool job, musical chops, great friends, adoring fans and a magnificent beard. However, Williams suffers from a debilitating addiction. While his bandmates indulge in the clinically recommended rock star diet (drugs, fast food, booze), Williams battles every day with his 23-flavored soft drink crutch, Dr. Pepper. In fact, as the above video from Dr. Pepper and Code and Theory suggests, Williams cannot even take the stage some nights without receiving his fix.

As with most cases of substance abuse, Williams’ crippling habit has racked up quite the bill over the years. It’s become so bad, in fact, that Williams is now soliciting fans to buy him cans of Dr. Pepper via Twitter. More disconcerting still is that having heard of Williams’ unique problem, Dr. Pepper has decided not to encourage the guitarist to seek the medical attention he requires. Rather, Dr. Pepper is integrated Williams’ story into their “1 of a Kind” campaign, propping up his near lifeless body against a wall and making him pose with a guitar for a giveaway.

Remember, the moment your friend gets a Dr. Pepper tattoo is the moment you start setting arrangements for an intervention. Credits after the jump.

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Just one week ago, prolific guerrilla-marketer Floyd Hayes introduced us to his latest project, “World’s Fastest Agency.” The first (to our knowledge) Twitter-based creative agency, Hayes’ new shop answered creative briefs via Twitter within 24 hours for a cool $999. Well, we knew (maybe) that it would only be a matter of time before the World’s Fastest Agency spawned an imitator or two.

Enter “Worst Fast Agency“, an anonymously run Twitter-based creative shop that pledges to do what World’s Fastest Agency does in half the time for a fraction of the price. Oh, and did we mention that it gives terrible advice? Yes, in just 12 hours, Worst Fast Agency will tweet awful marketing strategies to you for the low price of $1. It sounds almost too awful to be true.

In an anonymous tip, the shadowy founder of WFA tells us, “I just launched this company the other day, and have already received loads of requests and interactions (have actually made $$$). Sure, it is somewhat of a joke/parody, but I believe there is a market for clear, bad advice, not just bad advice masquerading as good advice.” Think about it—it’s feasible that this person has made like $20 doing this! Peep WFA’s website to read some very plausible client reviews, and tweet @WorstFastAgency to receive your own terrible advice.

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Singalongs can be messy affairs, like when that guy with the bad voice thinks he can hit soprano notes, or any Journey song comes on at a bar. A tweetalong, however, might be the perfect digital response to help us control our  unprofessional musical urges. Creatives from 360i and the Brooklyn band Rumors teamed up to create a website that might help promote “Slow Down,” a single off of the band’s album XOXO.

The site, essentially a digital singalong, compiles tweets from around the world that hashtag specific words in the song. As the song plays, different tweets pop up alongside the lyrics. And if you want to take a moment to read different tweets, scrolling over the hashtag automatically pauses the song. To continue the song, simply move the mouse again.

This isn’t the first time 360i took an innovative approach to ahead-of-the-curve content. During the Super Bowl blackout, the same Dentsu-owned firm’s creatives slid out some topical content for Oreo (more on it here). Brands have to use Twitter to stay relevant in our culture, but how they go about doing that has been hit-or-miss thus far (with more misses than hits). The success of Rumors will ultimately come down to the quality of music, but this blip on the social radar screen could earn them at least a fan or two.

FYI, Matt Wurst, director of digital communities at 360i, will be keynoting Mediabistro’s April Social Media Marketing Boot Camp. Go here for more info.

Credits:
Senior copywriter: Nick Panayotopoulos
Senior art director: Roberto Max Salas
Creative Technologist: Tore Holmberg from Your Majesty.

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