I thought it’s be nice to compare their performance, mainly from a social media traction point of view.

Diesel one hundred lovers – In case you’ve missed this awesome piece – inspired by Goddard’s “Bande a Part” movie, the video features 100 lucky selected people re-creating the famous dance. Based on special stop-motion technique, the lovers appearing in the video rapidly change, along with their clothes, all while appearing to continue to smoothly follow the choreography of the dance. The video is fully interactive: you can pause it, rolling over individual items to get further product information, buy them online and also find information about the people featured; allowing anyone to link into their activities and interests on their social network personal pages – making it the world’s most awesomely social interactive fashion catalog.

Utweet from Uniqlo, one of the most culturally digital brand out there, known for their simple ideas and slick execution. UTweet simply puts a funky little song and dance to your recent tweets, running them through several animations and as your stream is running so do some beautiful people wearing Uniqlo t-shirts.

There is very little to compare between these two projects, however, going back to the core of their initial objective (get people to see our new and interact with our brand products) both seem to have done well but in a slightly different way.

Note: one big unknown here is any media spend.

From what I was able to gather (using different tools and public data)

Diesel a hundred lovers:

187 blog posts

11 news items

378 related tweets

Over 1 million views of the final video

uTweet

456 blog posts

15 news items

27,947 tweets (!!!)

uTweet plays – ? (this one is key – can anyone help me find this data?)

Conclusions:

1. Be awesome - both brands created slick beautiful executions that once seen is hard not to interact with.

2. Do something with people – when you approach your brief with the question “what can we do with the people we want to reach” (insted of what can we say to people) you are bound to come up with much more interesting, engaging answers that actually bring value to both people and brand.

3. Personal instant gratification is key to spreadability – ‘conversation wise’ (i’m doing my best to avoid using viral here) it looks like uTweet had much more traction on public social platforms (blogosphere and twitterverse). It have reached millions of people by letting people have some fun with their social stream. Nothing innovative but admirable simplicity, playfulness and very slick execution made people happy and they couldn’t help but shouting about it. Simple, slippy ideas win.

4. Being culturally digital pays – as I mentioned earlier there is nothing innovative about uTweet. If you want to be even more critical abuot it you could even say they are taking the piss – making you to look at their clothing through your visually pimped twitter stream. But the fact that it’s Uniqlo and the culture of anticipation they have created over the years with their beautifully crafted digital toys made it one of the most successful campaigns of the year. Very few brands could have managed to pull out something like that and take home millions of mentions/ interactions.

When John, Anjali and few others tweeted about their votes for a Pepsi Refresh project I clicked through and in 20 seconds I was in a ‘standing ovation’ mode. Such awesome, admirable, bold, new-media-twitteratis-wet-dream of a project, a project we only dared dreaming about in a ‘what if’ blog posts when talking about the future of marketing
.

And here it is – Pepsi (fuckin) did it. They did not spend money on the annual advertising frenzy that is the Super-Bowl. Instead, Pepsi would spend $20 million funding community renewal events across the U.S. through the Refresh Everything platform. Check out all the details, it is beautifully executed, with healthy looking facebook community, some smart celebrity endorsement and all that. They seem to have ticked all the right boxes on a social-media-powered-campaign list.

R E S P E C T

Unsurprisingly it got loads of attention. Big guns praising as well as some early research findings showing the campaign has already paid off in terms of increased media coverage.

But the Nielsen report looks specifically at Super Bowl related conversations or so called ‘earned media’ so what they found is actually quite obvious – make a bold, well-orchestrated new-news statement and you’ll get talked about. And since Coke didn’t have anything major to stand out with around the Super Bowl frenzy, Pepsi got most of the attention.

But then I recalled the other (social) media frenzy that was around the Coke Happiness Machine viral (1.5 million view on the official video) couple of weeks ago and it got me thinking: in terms of talkability or ‘earned attention’,Happiness or Goodness – who wins the ‘conversation’? So I quickly configured a crude monitoring dashboard…

In the RED corner a $20K or so slippy idea. In the BLUE corner over $20 million bold initiative. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

Volume of conversations since 1st of Jan 2010:

Here is what Pepsi ‘earned’ to date:

Here is what coke happiness machine earned to date:

If you are a cynical, purely ROI driven marketeer, the argument that the Coke ‘shtick’ has generated 10% of the media coverage of the Pepsi project with only 0.1% of the investment is enormously seductive. Yet it’s wrong.

This grossly inadequate comparison actually tells us a good story on the future of marketing. Both projects should be compared to all other brands who did spend millions of dollars on some pretty spectacu-lousy superbowl ads that no one will remember half an hour after the game (or generally brands that keep spending loads of money on insignificant, bland advertising).

If you want to get talked about your best hope is to try and do loads of small, cheap, surprising, awesome things like the Coke Happiness shtick AS WELL AS big, bold, game-changing initiatives. Everything else will most probably fall into the obscure world of uninterestingness (which, frankly, is where 95% of marketing communications naturally reside).

BTW soon enough, the idea of big brands spending loads of CSR money via a shouty crowd-sourcing initiatives will become old news. I bet you that the next big brand that will do something similar will get less than half the attention that Pepsi rightly enjoys with Refresh Everything (but that doesn’t mean that brands shouldn’t invest loads of money in making a change for good).

Think both small and big but most important is to think different. What say you?

Simple and nicely done (although the ‘results’ of the experiment could have been even more interesting)

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.

This piece that got all marketing twitteratis drooling left me with half a smile half a ‘meh’. It’s an idea I bet has been on the minds of half the creative dudes in the world. It definitely was on mine. That’s not to say I’m hot because I don’t think this idea is hot.

It reminded me of an interesting blogversation with Andy on his old blog where he claimed that: “Very clever things on the other hand have become the new obvious”.

Recently I wrote that I fear that in 2010 we’ll see loads of obvious stuff that might work but isn’t really exciting and i think that this is the perfect example.

While I strongly believe in the idea that brands should be generous etc., when I see (or do something like that with my clients) I can’t avoid the feeling that, how shall I put it, this is the kind of stuff you do when you don’t have a better idea to earn people’s attention – you give away free stuff in a slightly cheeky way.

Now compare it to this one that also gives free stuff and as I write this post I think I understand why I liked it so much better than the Coke thing. The obviousness in the Ikea promotion comes as a surprise. It’s a sweet-bitter kind of obviousness you see in a simple original idea.

With the Coke thing there was no surprise, just obviousness.

What say you?

The next phase of media, I’ve been thinking, will be after the page and after the site. Media can’t expect us to go to it all the time. Media has to come to us. Media must insinuate itself into our streams.

(Jeff Jarvis)

So I decided to try and consume my ‘media’ only from the stream. No RSS, no bookmarks, no direct access – just streams.

Unsurprisingly, it proves futile after the first day. My new mantra fits exactly to the hype around Streams: old things are not being replaced with new stuff, they add to them. Sometimes they compete and sometime co-habit and complementary and together they evolve and we evolve. So categorically predicting that streams will ‘kill’ everything that was before is plain new-media fetishism.

Yes, the wonderful evolution of streams is making it very challenging for old media folks but that’s not new. First it was iGoogle, then the RSS reader and now our social streams. More and more, people consume media in different customised, ‘pull’ and ‘social’ ways which shakes the business model of the newspapers and old portals. But very very few people will ditch the old behaviour and platforms altogether. The huge majority will adopt streams behaviour that, yes, will come at the expense of something, (most probably RSS readers, if they use them at all).

But it won’t replace everything. It will just add to the old ways and will become another option, another route, another filter for us to cope with the media firehose.

(All together now)
Old things are not being replaced with new stuff, they add to them

Don’t know what about you but I can get fairly irritated at the odd tube station that doesn’t have the next train display – I don’t mind waiting, it’s part of life, I just hate not knowing how long I have to wait… I’m therefore a sucker for everything that makes your ‘dead time’ moments in life less dead by either entertaining you or, more importantly lifts you out of the misery of uncertainty and lack of control over your time.

In Zurich airport for instance, in the designated belt at the baggage area there is a count down clock that tells you exactly when your luggage will turn out(the flight’s luggage of course, it’s not personal). The time display on Firefox when you download something or the rare customer service line that keeps you informed of the time it will take the next available person to answer you etc.

All of these are the little things that make dead time more bearable.

Eko light by Damjan Stankovi does just that only on an even more prevalent situation:

Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well. Eko can be easily installed onto existing traffic light systems without much effort while significantly improving overall traffic dynamics.

There are many benefits of the Eko light, the main ones being:

Less pollution.
Drivers can turn their engines off and cut carbon emissions while waiting for the green light.

Less fuel consumption
Turning off your vehicle while waiting on the traffic light can lower fuel consumption in the long run.

Less stress Since you know exactly how long you have to wait you can sit back and clear your head for a while. No need to keep your foot on the gas. Relax.

Safer driving- With the Eko light both drivers and pedestrians can be fully aware of how much time they have left before the light changes and that way reduce the chance for potential traffic accidents.

Slightly less practical but nevertheless awesome is EggWatcher – one of the projects that came out of Poke’s recent hackday. Good work mate!

What / where else we could use a time indicator?

Climate change awareness (and action) is in a weird state at the moment. On the one hand, the financial climate seems to grab all headlines and public attention – when the financial system collapses, there is no time for treehuggers scaremongering. I think that the awareness and motivation to act on climate change has reached a bit of a dead end in the past year or so. Following and around the release of Stern report, Al Gores’s inconvenient truth and the big media push, global warming was very hip topic back in 2007. But now that most people are ‘doing their bit’ and following ’5 easy cheap steps to save the planet’ there seems to be a green fatigue – we failed in keeping the conversations around global warming interesting. I personally read and promote this important issue far less than I used to 2 years ago – I plead guilty.

But I also think that while the public indeed took some important steps, governments proved to be a bunch of wankers and people rightly argue that the BIG change has to come top down with some serious commitment and legislations. Unfortunately there is very little environmental leadership at hand, both in the UK and abroad.

Hopefully Obama will change that and succeed in taking the right steps to halt the grim predictions of our melting planet. OK i carried away – where were we? oh yes, Earth Hour the annual international event created by the WWF. Based on an idea successfully executed in Thailand in 2005, it was pioneered by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, and achieved worldwide participation in 2008.

2400 cities in 82 countries have officially signed on to turn off their lights on Saturday, March 28th at 8:30p.m. local time. (Last year they had nearly 400 cities in 35 countries committed). This year the great pyramids, the acropolis in greece, Rockefeller center and Broadway Theater marquees among other landmarks will go dark during earth hour.

If I didn’t convince you, here is Alanis Morissette:

Earth Hour: The Huge Turn Off- Alanis Morissette PSA

Happy earth hour.

While the decision on a third runway directly affects millions of people that will be subjected to yet more unbearable noise and pollution, there are only few thousands that pull their finger and fight.

I reckon Clay’s Here Comes Everybody is just a bit ahead of it’s time and some of it’s stories are mere anecdotal evidences. The effect that the social web will eventually have on the so called ‘freedom of assembly’ and social empowerment won’t be fully seen for years. To recruit, organize, coordinate, and communicate without formal organizations you’d still need kick-ass leadership in place to reach a critical mass and that’s the main ingredient that is missing here.

The millions of west Londoners who will eventually be badly affected from a third runway need a local Obama on this one…The business lobbyists are far stronger than a bunch of eco-warriors and politicians are still to a large extent opportunists a-holes. damn i’m getting too angry.

must do something. now

Eco-Drive is a web app that tracks your driving behaviour via USB key that is taken from the car to your computer. It then analyses your driving style and helps you acquire a more fuel efficient driving behaviour that is better for the environment and your wallet – clearly a win win. By the look of it just from the demo video it totally kicks ass.

1. It shows the carbon footprint of your last journey

2. It gives you overall summary of CO2 footprint

3. It offers tips for more efficient driving

4. It makes it all tangible by giving you your eco-index

5. It lets you set personal targets to reduce your footprint

6. Finally, it allows you to see your progress relative to other drivers and injects a good dose of competitiveness to the experience

Sounds familiar? Yes, it’s all very NIKE+ and for years now people are talking about applying the revolutionary success and the psychology of self improvement tied into community of NIKE+ to climate friendly behaviour. Finally Fiat took the lead and made it happen.

If anything I’m happy that bloggers will now have another anecdotal evidence for Brand Utility to bang on about so they can let NIKE+ to rest

But seriously now, this is great example of what (almost) every brand should look at doing and it’s not a comms idea – it’s a product idea that has turbo advertising power built in.

If they wanted to something REALLY special, they should have added a tiny code that tracks and admonish you for short journeys. So if you’re a lazy bastard that takes the car to the corner shop – rather than advising you on how to be more fuel efficient it should reproach you badly. But I don’t think they went that far…

I’m not talking about new business opportunities for modern tree huggers and ethically conscious consumers but rather about the fact that as the shift in balance of power as well as the shift for ever stronger emphasis on product and experience are gaining momentum, companies today are in the business of happiness.

It is a fascinating trend that is influenced by different forces, among which is the growing interest in positive psychology and the pursuit of happiness as a viable, realistic personal goal in modern life (for the privileged developed world one must add). Additionally ever since we got the opportunity to freely express our emotions on all things that make us tick or creak it became clearer which brands, products and services we love and which one we hate, and that added another dimension to business and marketing:

Make ‘em happy.

Imagine that ‘make them happy’ was on the top of the list of companies goals / missions. Not ‘reduce churn’ or increase sales by 30%’, ‘achieve 37% marketshare’ or even ‘increase satisfaction rates’. MAKE THEM HAPPY. So simple, yet so difficult for companies to comprehend and implement. It’s just not the way they think and behave.

Come to think of it, the title of this post is somewhat misleading. It should be Hippy Business. Marketing is only one way you can make people happy and frankly, not the best one to start with. In times when your product is your marketing is your brand etc it’s better to start thinking about happiness much earlier in the process. There are so many ways in which you can make people happy, depends on your category, but the most obvious one, and the one that need immediate improvement is customer service.

Easier said than done. Now check this – Tara Hunt took this idea of happiness as business model and created a bloody good presentation that rises beyond the cliche’ with brilliant mix of storytelling, wit, prescription and case studies to inspire the most dull and conservative suit. Big hug to you Tara.