A Source Of Inspiration

These might have been the words from Morrisey describing online advertising budgets. Indeed, in the recent US online advertising boom some industries were the main drivers, with Auto and Telecom categories leading the way.

As for Portugal, i’ve seen some some odd behaviors, with the big advertisers coming from the financial sector, mostly from personal loans and credit, followed closely by the telecoms, mobile and ISP providers.

Browse through a bunch of Portuguese websites and 7 out of 10 online ad units are probably some credit card or personal loan company. That surely explains the large deficit in family’s budgets (more than 110%), quite different from the private savings rate we had 20 years ago (about 20%).

Telecoms and mobile operators are also extremely aggressive, specially the ring tone operators that get quite happy with a CTR of 0,00001%. Go figure. I wonder what will become of these banner-spammers when the iPhone arrives or people become more tech savvy and learn to upload a MP3 to their phone.

The question that remains to be answered for Portugal is why the auto companies seem so reluctant to invest heavily in Online Advertising. I know that the industry is going through a long crisis, but a high ROI medium seems a good medicine, don’t you think so?
If you have any other strange national (non US) market behaviors to share, i’ll be glad to hear from you.

New media industries have really changed the rules, and that goes for recruitment also. Red 5 Studios, the makers of the World of Warcraft,  set the bar really high when it comes to finding the best professionals in game development with a fantastic direct marketing campaign: Golden Ticket

They realized that the usual recruitment tactics (usually email or phone) wouldn’t be enough to catch the best minds, so a different approach was in need.

A unique invitation was sent to one hundred professionals, highly admired in the industry. Their work, habits and personal tastes were studied. With that knowledge in hand, the design agency Pool handled the invitation and really made a offer you can’t refuse.

The iPod had a personalized message from Red 5 and access codes to a website, where the professionals could find out more about the job they were being hired for.

Result: nearly 100% response rate on their campaign. And of course, a kick-ass team of happy developers.

Hmm, seems this got out just in time for Cannes Cyber Lions …

Ultra-heavy loading and clogging the memory but with super visuals. Yes, it’s for Cannes.

URL: http://www.gettheglass.com/
Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Interactive Agency: North Kingdom

(via Frederik Samuel)

This is some sick viral marketing. As in disease-sick. Really.

Finally a agency that has some sense of humor and gets a reality check on bullshit marketing.

And as we’re already on the subject, check also this more traditional vision:

(link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj29qmLnBiE)

On a recent interview, Henriette called my attention to what she thought would be the next tendency on the internet: the web without the internet. I believe this is already happening with the latest release of Apollo or the silent adoption of widgets by home users.

Take for instance Apollo from Adobe, a cross-platform solution to deploy deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop, with powerful interactive experiences on the desktop. The great thing about Apollo is the seamless integration between a set of web based technologies (Flex, XHTML, Javascript, Ajax) but able to run as standalone desktop applications, with no browser needed. If you’re a more visual learner and want to be a pro, check the videos at Lynda.com to get a quick introduction.

As for widgets, although they can be web-based, most of the fun comes when they jump into the desktop. OSX has the famous Dashboard widgets and the new Windows Vista (also) copied the feature. Users are craving for rich experiences on the desktop, whether it’s content syndication or personal information management, and the shortest path to get the offline/online state are probably widgets.

Companies are still scratching the surface of these new tools, traditionally in areas such as weather, news or sports, but i still haven’t seen a suite of co-branded desktop widgets or perhaps some intranet widgets, that would surely have a added value for the user.

“If you can’t beat them, join them”, was perhaps the recurring thought at DuPont, one of the largest industrial companies in the USA, as they closed the deal to a series of science stories with Amanda Congdom, one of the blogs superstars and former videocast hostess at RocketBoom.

Everyday situations are narrated by the sexy voice of Amanda with several DuPont product placements in the videos. In a similar style to RocketBoom webisodes, they do not intend to be viral, but rather more educational and perhaps more in the tone of serious pro-bloggers, the ideal seeders to spread the word on DuPont Labs. I think they’ve got me, then.

As in any knowledge circle, those who are most listened tend to be a more credible source of information, so it makes all the sense that if you’re a company really interested in talking in the same language as bloggers do, you’d better off hiring someone who really “talks the talk and walks the walk”.

Last week, the brazillian composer Amon Tobin released Foley Room, and complains about the leaked pirated copies on its logbook:

all I can comment on with any certainty is how all this has affected me personally and in light of my nearing release this might be of interest to those of you who’ve expressed an interest in my music.
(…)
it’s unlikely that you will be able to order a copy even from online stores … the predicted sales of the record were so low that it didn’t justify the manufacture or distribution to any significant level.
(…)
you can draw your own conclusions as to what this means with regards to my own future output. again I stress that I’m not talking about what should happen here.

He’s making very clear one of the most compelling arguments against piracy: if you don’t bother to buy music, these talented artists (specially on cutting edge areas) will have no incentive to go on.

On another subject, Amon Tobin has also a new website, a journey through a underwater space, with deep sounds and a ambient inspired by H.R. Geiger or “The Abyss”.

It makes a lot more sense after you see the album trailers, with the sound experiments building the foundation for his new album. As a fan of Steve Reich, i’m anxious to listen (and buy) this new album, that is believed to be one of the best works from Amon Tobin.

URL: http://www.amontobin.com/field/
Interactive Agency: Freeset (the company who also made Human Locator)

The swedish have done it again, pulling out a great website with an exquisite sense of humour. We get to know a tailor that specializes in great pockets as a way to solve the problem of our increasing number of gadgets.

One of the more interesting aspects of the interactive narrative was the synchronized back and forth between the two realities, with fine flash video. There’s also some extra care in details such as the dialogs while waiting for the user to do something.
As usual, they included the viral tools: stuff to download and links to Henry Needle MySpace profile or more pictures at Flickr.

I don’t want to be a spoiler so i let you figure out who is the client …

Agency: FarFar
URL: http://www.greatpockets.com/
Launch Date: March 2007

via ComputerLove