Planning 2.0 — towards user-generated creativity

By Saurabh Varma

Are you ready for the new world where marketers are slaves to consumers, consumers become creative leaders and planners take on a reactive, not strategic, role?

Having originally conceptualised a “death of planning” article, I must say I am relieved and excited by what I truly think the future holds for planners. Having said that, I do think we are a dying species. Many of us who love understanding consumer behaviour and chase the evasive insight find our world shaken to the core. Our search for truth has actually turned out to be our Achilles’ heel.

Our principle challenge lies at the heart of our fundamental premise, to transcend the specific situation or tactic. For years, our reason for existence was defined by our ability to chaff through the confusion, building long term and hopefully, everlasting strategies. While we were busy honing our skills and developing our tool kits, the consumer and the world changed forever.

New Dr Pepper ad - Cherry Chocolate Rain

I love DrPepper even more now, maybe not this flavour though..

Philips Aurea HD Lava-lamp TV!

This is a full HD 42 inch screen from Philips that features 126 LEDs capable of producing 4 trillion colours – changing realtime as your TV plays (it sort of mimics the colours on screen). Think hybrid TV and Lava lamp. Looks great at first site but I have this feeling that it might drive me nuts after 10 minutes. Retail approx AU$5999.

http://www.aurea.philips.com/

InstantAction pioneers near-console quality in-browser gaming

InstantAction and GarageGames are launching a service that enables users to play single- and multiplayer fully hardware accelerated games in-browser across both PC and Mac platforms. Seems a bit primitive at the moment as it’s still in development, but it’s set to go live (not sure if that’s beta or the real thing) in January ‘08. Looks like a few Xbox Live Arcade titles are set to be included in the launch, as well as a team-based online first person shooter in the vein of Dynamix’ Starsiege: Tribes, plus a number of as-yet-unannouced titles from both major and indie developers.

http://www.instantaction.com/

Not much real info on the site yet, but there’s a Gamespot interview here that explains the system in greater detail.

Having some fun with a sponsor reel late 70’s/80’s style

Chicago Agency Optimus made a sponsor reel for the AICP Midwest Show. Not sure how to fit in 30/40 logos this is what they came up with. http://www.optimus.com/AICP/aicp_large.mov 

Original story here - http://motionographer.com/optimus-aicp-sponsor-reel-concept-and-credits/

Secret strategies behind viral videos

Ever wondered how ‘viral’ videos get to be seen by millions? Read the article on TechCrunch below and see the tricks used by one company that is specialising in viral video marketing.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/

I’m sure this will cause a fair amount of debate, especially around the ethics of using current popular tags rather than tags related directly to the subject matter. Planting fake comments also raises some eyebrows. The comments directly off this post have generally been those of disgust, not praise. Most likening the techniques to that of spammers. Bottom line is it may be difficult for sites like YouTube to prevent more companies using these techniques despite the YouTube Terms of Use expressly forbidding this kind of behaviour.

Games like Amnesia’s own Paper Plane game spread actually completely organically (mainly via email), which you could probably label as being ‘truly viral’ but interestingly this did not happen until 4 months after it ran on NineNSN after it was archived to our blog.

DORKBOT

Last night I went to Intersting South - an event with short talks from people ranging from a photographer who takes shots of small towns in Australia to a prostitute who services disabled clients … it was completely random and VERY interesting.

Anyway, I discovered DORKBOT - a monthly meeting described as “PEOPLE DOING STRANGE THINGS WITH ELECTRICITY”. So weird, but strangely attractive. Who’s up for coming along?

Prize Rush – NineMSN. Win prizes by digging on a map…

Prize Rush - Win instantly. There are very few games like this online, especially this big. You don’t have to sign up - just start playing! All you have to do is answer 5 questions and dig on a map of 1 million pixels. Note: Prize Rush (version 3) is live again from March 3 2008. Details of the new version by Amnesia are here.

Don’t forget, you can ‘cheat’ using search (well actually it’s part of the gameplay).

http://www.prizerush.com.au

Mr. T and Mr. Shatner Sell World of Warcraft

Check out these awesome TV commercials for World of Warcraft that started running recently in the states. Verne Troyer coming soon!

These would make me want to start playing if I didn’t already have a level 66 Paladin. Yes, I’m a geek.

PGR 4 Screenshot Desktops in seconds

Love the fact in Xbox 360 Project Gotham 4 you can take shots, upload straight to web and use as your desktop. Check it out…

Blogging to WordPress with Office 2007.

How to blog to WordPress using Office 2007 – including automatic image uploading…

So here’s some of the old ways:
Do it in WordPress (slow and image mgmt is painful)
Do it using Deepest Sender (fast, but clunky if using images)
Direct from Flickr (Limited control of how it displays)

Now the biggest pain with blogging is image management. The way most people do it is you ftp your image up having resized etc which is a royal pain in the a___ especially when you have to start remembering filenames or copying and pasting URLs. Blogging should be as simple as sending an email – copy and paste your pictures in and hit send. The good news is a few minutes of setting your blog up in Word 2007 can save a lot of time and energy.

Here’s how to it real fast, +lots of images simply using copy and pasting. FTP of images is all handled automatically:

Open Word 2007 (This is a new feature of Office 2007)

1. Write Something in a Blank Document

2. Now go grab an image.

Seven habits of highly innovative people

There is a good article here on creativity. It’s a huge subject area but I found this a nice introduction to the subject:

http://thinksimplenow.com/creativity/7-habits-of-highly-innovative-people/

Read the above and now add a sprinkling of the following from Michelangelo:
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark”

Deep Sea Window Shopping

Lots of things to love about this Diesel Style Lounge designed by Germany AARF office Neue Digitale, but mostly the detail and thorough execution. Beautiful follow through on an immersive (literally) metaphor, great soundtrack, entertaining content snippets during load, stunning video integration, clever customisation of the cursor to be more “fish-like”… only criticism might be usability related when trying to figure out what’s clickable and what isn’t - getting around isn’t as easy as it could be.

http://store.diesel.com

How creativity is being strangled by the law

Stanford professor Larry Lessig talks on TED…

The history and current state of copyright protection law explained. Brilliantly.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/187

Click a mouse, feed a mouth in UN campaign

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

LONDON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A food-linked word game put on the Internet a month ago has proved a runaway success and has already generated enough rice to feed 50,000 people, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Friday.

FreeRice offers participants multiple choice definitions to the meaning of a word, with each correct click generating 10 grains of rice for the WFP.

The brainchild of American online fundraising pioneer John Breen, the Web site (www.freerice.com) relies on advertising revenue to underwrite its rice campaign.

“FreeRice really hits home how the Web can be harnessed to raise awareness and funds for the world’s number one emergency,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the Rome-based WFP.

“The site is a viral marketing success story with more than one billion grains of rice donated in just one month to help tackle hunger worldwide,” she added.

The day it was launched on Oct. 7 just 830 grains of rice were donated.

But the Internet community quickly caught on, and on Nov. 8 alone 77 million grains were donated — equivalent to more than seven million correct clicks.

Cool background illustrations: Bran Van 3000

Check out the illustrations in the background of this music site…

http://www.officialbranvan3000.com/

Red v Blue Designer Tennis - GAME SET MATCH

We have reached the terminus of this match, 10 of Amnesia’s designers have played a thrilling round of designer tennis. The judges have made their verdict - congratulations to the winners, and to all the other players thanks for your volley!

AWARDS:

Best Xbox 360 integration - J. Chung

$500 to the RED TEAM CHARITY

Best Halo 3 integration - T. Stimpson

$500 to the RED TEAM CHARITY

People’s choice award (winner by a loooooong shot!) - R. Barlin

$500 to the RED TEAM CHARITY

BEST TEAM OVERALL - RED TEAM

$1000 to the RED TEAM CHARITY

so RED TEAM takes it out 4 - 0! It was tough judging, the BLUE TEAM had some great artwork but RED just nudged across the line in first place! Cash prizes to be generously donated to RvB charities by Xbox.
This game is an unofficial www.redvblue.com.au
challenge – an epic battle for a great cause!

Confused? Check out the rules…

Using your phone GPS and 3D Google Earth.

The following was done (this morning) using a Nokia N95 (which has inbuilt GPS), Sportstracker software (free from Nokia). The data was then transported into Google Earth for viewing. Basically I turned the phone on, ran the software, drove to work and then saved the resulting file to my desktop. Pretty easy.

Here’s the story:
1) Run a workout in Sportstracker (Free download to the Nokia N95).

2)Watch how it absorbs all your GPS data as you take a drive around town. This data includes location, altitude, speed, distance etc.
  

OK - now dump this into some mapping software and straight onto the map. You simply run Google Earth (Desktop App) and Menu>Open the .kml file:
(You can save this data out of your phone as a .gpx for other sites like MapMyRun)

Note the height data is brought onto the map too.It’s actually much more realistic than Googles height data.

The line is interactive, so you can see your fastest point etc.

So what are the specific applications? Well if you’re into sport, then you can also import your GPS data into sites like MapMyRun which is a very good site. The point is that the phone GPS works well and contains a lot more data than say the NikePlus (ipod Nano add on for running). Maybe a bit heavy to carry tho. There are many ways in which GPS data can be used and we’re only just seeing the start of B2B B2C and C2C applications. The good news is the technology is becoming affordable, and the dots are starting to connect.

Red v Blue Designer Tennis: Volley 10

Last volley of the match…

I. Clazie, Blue Team

Confused? Check out the rules…

Red v Blue Designer Tennis: Volley 9

Let the bidding begin…

A. Pearce, Red Team

Comments from this player…

CENSORED.
Bribe Andy and he might just give you a glimpse!

The best bribe(s) gets to see the image. Monetary bribes are most welcome and will be donated to the Red Team’s charity - Mission Australia.

Enter your bribe and your email below and if you’re worthy, you’ll get a glimpse of what caused so much bother. GAME ON!

Confused? Check out the rules…