HONG KONG – Cathay Pacific has launched the new global advertising campaign to accompany one of the brand’s biggest ever product design projects, led by the rollout of the airline’s new business class.
BEIJING – Jerry Buhlmann (pictured), the newly appointed global chief executive of Aegis Media, has revealed his plans to accelerate the company’s business in Asia-Pacific with a focus on digital media.
BANGKOK – Team United Tigers, headed by mentor and OMD Asia-Pacific MD Maggie Choi, has emerged victorious at MediaWorks IV, following a grueling two-day process to meet the brief set by client Asia Miles.
TAIPEI – Sean Chang (pictured), managing director of OMD Taiwan, will be departing at the end of May, after four years with the agency.
LONDON – The British Heart Foundation has appointed Grey to handle its £5m creative account following a four-way pitch against WCRS, Mother and The Red Brick Road.
LOS ANGELES – A US woman, accused of pretending to be a teenage boy on MySpace and driving a 13-year-old girl to suicide after sending her cruel messages, has been indicted on federal charges.
LONDON – WPP and Yahoo! have joined forces to develop a digital media trading platform, aimed at improving the efficiency of buying display ads across the internet.
SINGAPORE – Mobile content provider YuuZoo and Microsoft’s MSN have signed an exclusive partnership to develop mobile services for users across Asia.
SHANGHAI – Martell Noblige cognac plans to launch an online campaign in China based around video, word of mouth and social networking after appointing Nurun to run the account.
LONDON – The London Marathon has unveiled Virgin as its new title sponsor from 2010.
Advertising agency: Host/Happy Soldiers, Sydney, Australia
Advertising agency: Host/Happy Soldiers, Sydney, Australia
Advertising agency: Host/Happy Soldiers, Sydney, Australia
Advertising agency: Host/Happy Soldiers, Sydney, Australia
SINGAPORE – Animax has launched a new project called LaMB, an animated entertainment show that will offer product placement opportunities for advertisers.
SINGAPORE – Hill & Knowlton has promoted Southeast Asia’s regional director of technology Wong Voal Voal (pictured) to oversee the Asia-Pacific practice, filling the gap left by the departure of Faith Brewitt last year.
First of all a little present. I’ve got one free pass for a reader interested in attending Mediabistro Circus which takes place in New York on May 20 and 21. The two-day conference focuses on the digital platforms and trends that are changing media today. Just send me an email (reg at this domain’s address) explaining why you’d like to go and i’ll forward the details of the most charming/desperate/convincing reader to the organizers of the event.
An overview of the programme: May 20: the publishing industry’s transition to new media, successful business models, blog power and finally video and social media. May 21: mobile media, the editor of digital news for the New York Times discussing the passage to online publication and user experience design (believe it or not i’m taking part to that panel!)
Scenes from the 2007 edition of Conflux
Next! One of my favourite events on this planet is Conflux, the festival of psychogeography which gathers artists, technologists, psychogeographers, urban explorers and experience designers from around the world in New York every year.
The organizers have recently opened their call for project. Deadline for submission is May 31.
I got into a discussion today with a friend about the Nike and Adidas campaigns and how they address the sport of soccer. I was well-aware of the recent Nike campaign, “Take it to the next level,” but I wasn’t as familiar with what Adidas was up to putting forth. Well I looked around (and watched) and have to say I’m impressed. Adidas produced a documentary surrounding Kaká, Messi, Gerrard and Beckham meeting local football teams in Andorra, San Marino and the Isles of Scilly as part of the film project “Dream Big”.
The production quality of the project is awesome and the feeling that it creates is truly heartwarming. Adidas sending out sports stars to these small cities creates a sense of global awareness and conscience. The concept of “Dream Big” is a strong message that speaks for both Adidas and youth culture in general.
Check out the full-length documentary on youtube: part one and part two.
As if it weren’t enough that buying a domain name requires all sorts of linguistic acrobatics, creating an account with popular social networks and other online utilities is starting to be taxing as well. Pages at myspace.com/McDonald’s, GAP, Applebee’s, IBM, Xerox, Microsoft, Sony, iPhone and many others have little to do with the respective brands apart from the page owners’ usernames. Common dictionary words are long gone as well; here’s, for example “/sex” on MySpace and YouTube.
You don’t hear about username squatting much, although there was a blog post last year comparing twittersquatting to the domain name rush of the 1990s. Why is it important? Three reasons.
1. Convenience. MySpace.com/myblendtec is less obvious than /blendtec, which is taken by someone other than the socially successful blender maker.
2. Danger of misrepresentation. It is easy to recognize /billgates and /microsoft as obvious parodies, but hijacking an online identity of someone less famous can’t be too hard.
3. Search traffic. Perhaps not a threat to bigger companies, but part of the search traffic for brands with limited online presence and for common words can be derailed to pages on MySpace, videos on YouTube (and stories on Digg, but that’s a different story). I don’t have a good “bad” example off the top of my head, but see how CBS YouTube channel ranks way above many of the network affiliates’ sites. And if you search for “tequila”, MySpace celeb Tila Tequila comes up above many businesses with the word in their names.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
