Best agency 404 page. Ever.

Source: Adverblog

If you’re a young teenager, with high levels of testosterone, then you’ll surely appreciate this one from Axe. Heck, even i enjoyed the fine details they did at axebcww.com, a multi-language site, with 4 girls singing their sexy new music in their world tour.

Even if Axe is setting the objectification of women to higher levels, you’ve got to love that funny tune. I confess - i’ve downloaded the ringtone. The video is all “Destinys Child like”, well produced and - imagine this - with a plot.

On a side note, the site was found through axeads Blog, where you find this and other ads by the Unilever deodorant brand and some of them are even good. Bom Chicka Wah Wah.

Ad

Last April, after the show from CSS at LuxFragil, i gazed at the merchandising at the lobby. Trendy design, i thought. Well, it surely is, since the controversial 2012 Olimpics logo seems to have been designed by Lovefoxxx and company.

Well, it wasn’t. Instead Wolf Ollins was paid £400,000 to design the new branding that is causing quite a buzz, with online petitions to its withdrawal, with signs that it may be causing epilepsy.

As a souvenir, the video of the show, from the great Brazilian band Cansei de Ser Sexy (Tired of Being Sexy), at Lisbon.

Congratulations to friends/co-workers André Breda and Filipe Graça for being selected to represent Portugal at this year edition of Young Creatives competion at Cannes Lions.

So, without further delay, here are their entries:

Press (Honorable Mention, Awarded):

“Economy”

Click to view larger image
“Fighting climate changes helps to protect your business”
“Invest in your environment”

Cyber (Honorable Mention):

“Coin”

“If you don’t invest enough on environment”
“You’ll have a different cost later.”

After giving a hand at previous Cyber winners such as Leonardo and Claudio, or Tiago and Carlos, this year i was quite proud for these brillliant folks having earned 2 honorable mentions, and being selected to compete at Cannes. Oh, did i mention that we won Cannes Young Creatives award in 2004?

You visit a place so many times that you just don’t notice what is changing under the hoods. While checking my video channel i was intrigued with what seemed a resize button …

Well, to my amazement I was quite surprised to find that the video player at YouTube (not at the embedded videos) now has full screen capabilities:

I really don’t know if this has been around for long, or if it has anything to do with the recent Apple TV deal, but i can’t help wondering if Google isn’t preparing the ground for a Joost killer, if the rumors of YouTube video content encoded with H.264 are true.

On the tech side, this feature is only available since the release of Adobe Flash Player 9. So don’t bother to check if you still have an older version (you’re probably one of the few 17%).

Last week, Publico interviewed me about the recent changes on the online advertising industry. As the article is only available in portuguese to premium subscribers, i’m posting here my answers to João Pedro.

With online advertising budgets increasing, should we expect that it will surpass the investment made at the other media?
Even with changing consumer habits, where consumers are wired for about a third of their time, most of the large media budgets are still invested in traditional media, usually called above-the-line media. Some change is happening and the numbers are there to prove it: IAB, the Internet Advertising Bureau recently announced that Online Advertising has reached 17 bilion USD, with a 35% growth rate from 2005. These values are the cornerstones of projections that media such as radio or press will be overthrown by internet until 2010. I don’t think tough, that Internet will replace old media, but rather complement these or other media, increasing the proved positive correlation between online and offline campaigns. Much of this budget migration will happen thanks to greater accountability by interactive advertising technologies, richer consumer involvement and more personalized and targeted online advertising.
In Portugal, we’re only at the beginning of this trend, lacking true integrated marketing strategies and substantial online budgets, even if this kind of advertising is much more qualified and less expensive per reach than traditional media.

Is there any trend by advertisers to choose Google platforms to launch their campaigns? Or are they used as a side-strategy?
Big advertisers usually perform some risk management by diversification, with their specialized media agencies, optimizing campaigns and choosing the right channels and partners. Google, of course, is one of those partners, but is being referred as a frienemy, a short-term friend and a long term enemy, with several conflicting interests for being at the same time competitor and supplier.
For medium or small business, these platforms (Adwords, Analytics) are quite efficient for their small marketing budgets, with qualified targeting and easy campaign management. Google’s advertising solutions are now reaching also print or even TV, taking the next step to campaign integration and management for a large group of companies.

Some say that the recent purchases (specially by Microsoft and Google) of advertising companies can be a sign of a new bubble. Is this a sound argument?
While Microsoft reacted mostly to their failed attempt to buy DoubleClick, and didn´t intend to be left out of this industry, Google’s purchase of the DoubleClick is a bit different from the normal acquisition strategy, where smaller companies were the target. But if we understand Google as a advertising company, it makes perfect sense to increase their online advertising solutions portfolio with display advertising, or even with RSS advertising, as recently happened with the purchase of Feedburner.
Google’s information added to 10 years of DoubleClick’s consumer profiles will provide a huge and robust online advertising platform. All these internet media giants are buying more than companies� — they’re buying data, huge amounts of data, and that’s the extra value they were charged for. We’ll surely won’t see any bubble, as most of the growth of these services is based on real needs, with consumers adapting to a new digital lifestyle, and in consequence, more and more investment by brands in this medium.

© Publico 2007

While all the fuss over last week around multi-touch screens was due to the announcement by Microsoft of Surface, other similar interfaces deserve their share of credit. One of the most notable ones is Reactable, the table that creates music.

It was with big surprise that I’ve found the installation this Saturday at ZdB (Galeria Zé dos Bois), performing their collaborative music in the table top multi-touch interface. In a talk with Sergi and Marcos, they shared a bit of the history of the 4 years research project of the Music Technology Group within the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. While only performing live for 1,5 years, the research is now already 4 years old, with development based on C++ with open-source software reactiVision, with a camera underneath detecting the objects location and orientation.

Basic Demo video

Improvisation Demo video

At the performance Marcos and Sergi placed different objects or sound generators (aka fiducial) on top of the multi-touch table, and while quite experimental it surely is a great way to produce music as shown by Icelandic singer and performer Bjork that will be using the tabletop during the “Volta” tour. As for a more commercial applications, Marcos explained me that more robust table could be built to ensure a safe experimentation by larger audiences (children mostly). oh, you can even try and build one yourself.