Hasta La Creative!

Our friend, Catharine P. Taylor, wants the virtual you to go clubbing and then report back in the morning.

Check that. Coca-Cola wants you to do so. Catharine P. Taylor wants to report on the action, or lack thereof.

image courtesy of Mashable

Here’s what she’s saying so far:

…if you believe that one thing social media marketing needs is great apps from major advertisers, it’s as good a place as any to start. Admittedly, the Burn Alter Ego (application) promotes Burn, an energy drink that is only available in Europe, Brazil and Morocco, but anyone is allowed to play.

Here’s how it works: once you’ve downloaded the application and set up your alter ego, it goes clubbing (which sounds rather attractive to me because I don’t get out a lot) and promises to post to its own blog in the a.m. Mine went out for the first time last night, and apparently spent some quality time using the Xerox machine to make copies of body parts (none all that naughty, unless you count my avatar’s bum). Those who download the app receive this warning: “If reading about drunken nights, nakedness, and crazy decisions make you uncomfortable, delete this application and go back to your knitting.” Cool! Well, I don’t knit, anyway.

You can set up your avatar to go out with friends who also have Burn Alter Egos or meet new friends while it’s out, and the more it goes out, the more options it will have in terms of wardrobe, furniture for the flat, and so forth. I’ve set up mine to find new friends mostly because I barely know anyone who has loaded it so far, but wouldn’t mind it if a few of us Social Media Insider avatars went out together in the next few weeks to see what our blogs would report to us in the morning.

Stafford Green, Head of Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola Europe, says, “It’s creating a lot of funny confusion at our offices. People overhear that I went out last night with Eva and we partied in Paris with some beautiful models. And we have pictures on Facebook to prove the event! But in fact, it was actually our Burn Avatars, Eva’izzle and Stafford’elicious.”

(TrendHunter.com) The hottest trend in ads right now is advergaming; basically building your brand in the gaming sphere. There’s the good the bad and the downright ugly in this field, but notable examples, including the brilliant PlayStation-based BK Games from last year, raise sales, cash and awareness in the noto…

This just in!! This “Reuters” story is one day late but apparently adland kills us all and is the cause of 1.6 million deaths each year.

image credit: csmonitor

Paper “Egocentrism over E-Mail” (2005, pdf): “People tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else.”

(TrendHunter.com) The Hurricone not only warns of a wet floor…it also dries it. An internal fan blowing all 360 degrees up to 15 feet works on battery power for up to 12 hours on a single charge.
This will probably reduce the number of slip and fall lawsuits.

26-year-old Matthew Dent has taken the heraldic theme to new levels in his redesign of the UK coins. I love it!

Hat tip, BAP

Oh look. It’s like the Infinity launch commercials created by Hill Holiday (I think) with endless shots of flowers, trees, mountain streams, wildlife and other moody images but with a not so small difference.

Here’s an interesting note from Adweek:

Hyundai Motor America last week assigned former national lead agency The Richards Group a “mini-campaign” for next fall through its Eastern regional dealers association, said Joel Ewanick, vp, marketing.

“I saw something we liked,” said Ewanick, who declined to disclose spending on the campaign. “It suits our strategic and tactical needs at the moment.”

A couple of facts for you:

– The Hyundai account was at Richards before it moved to Goodby.
– Ewanick worked at Richards as a Brand Planning Director before he was hired by Hyundai. He also worked at Porsche when Goodby was their agency.

C’mon guys. Get this crap worked out. You’re killing the resale value of my Santa Fe if you can’t move the brand forward.

Some guy’s hoping for Million Dollar Homepage fame after having fallen prey to a Woot.com April Fool’s joke

Anything launched on April Fool’s Day is, by default, suspect which is why Brand-mates, a site on which people can share the brand they love with others, just doesn’t seem quite right.