Posts from the “Cool stuff online” Category

When the digital and real world’s collide in a spectacular way

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on September 25th, 2012

This article is a regurgitation of a christmas campaign post from James Duthie of Online Marketing Banter – from 2011, but I thought it still has some great ideas for what retail businesses can do to bring their digital content in line with their offline Christmas ad campaigns. eBay’s virtual shop front “Give a Toy” is probably my favourite.

Tagged: augmented reality, mobile apps, QR codes

Our pets can be like our children – but we’re more comfortable shaming our pets

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on September 12th, 2012

I’ve heard many people laughing about the incredible number of cat content on the internet. According to Hardip in Yahoo Answers from 2010, there were 110,952 cat videos on YouTube. I’m sure this has grown exponentially in the last 2 years. I’m not much of a cat person, I’m a dog person, but my friend Jodie has a crazy cat called Frank Schrodinger. Frank the Bengal cat was named after some super scientist that worked with Einstein and devised a quantum mechanics theory that involved putting a cat in a box to test the simultaneous (and obviously contradictory) existence of a live and dead cat. (I know, its way over my head too. But I figured if I was going to mention it, I should at…

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Categories: Cool stuff online, trends

Tagged: cat videos, content marketing, online content

Sharing our lives as we live it – Google Glass

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on July 10th, 2012

I love that the walkman and now the ipod gave us a soundtrack to our lives but now we are on the verge of Google’s new “Glass” project possibly giving us a fly on the wall account of our lives. Of course both the walkman and Google’s glass require you to actively participate and choose to wear the device, turn it on and share – or stream. My first thought was COOL! My second thought was “this is a bit weird, it takes multi-tasking to a whole new level” but not in a good way. It would be hard to ever capture someone’s attention completely. But having said that, we already suffer this lack of focused attention with the popularity of the smartphone…

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Categories: Cool stuff online, Inspiration

Tagged: Google glass, Google glass project, mobile devices, smartphones

Digital content is the new advertising – Guardian 3 Little Pigs Web Video

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on May 4th, 2012

I have been advocating content marketing for over a year in this blog and this week I had the good fortune to learn of a brilliant example of web video and digital content when I saw a presentation from the Executive Creative Director, Damon Stapleton and Executive Planning Director, Jason Lonsdale, from creative advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Damon and Jason were talking about storytelling

Tagged: content as advertising, content marketing, digital content, guardian 3 little pigs, video content, web content, web video advertising

Facebook Flipbook – Make An Ad With Facebook Photos

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on April 26th, 2012

I love Flipboard the iPad magazine – it pulls in all of my RSS feeds and I can read it in a magazine format, much more visually appealing than plain text through an RSS reader but the new Facebook Flipbook is pretty cool too, for advertisers at least. Basically, you upload your photo’s into an album on your facebook profile and users who view the photos in the right order will get a stop-gap animation style video advertisement. Facebook advertising just got cooler. So simple, so cool! Here is an example of VW Amorak using the Facebook Flipbook to tell their story (show their ad) in a new format. Facebook FlipBook from McCann İstanbul on Vimeo.

Tagged: ads on facebook, cool stuff on facebook, facebook ads, facebook advertising, facebook flipbook, VW, VW amorak

A TV commercial, created using social media crowd sourcing

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on April 4th, 2012

I was watching TV tonight and a little light bulb went off when I was watching Hungry Jacks latest TV commercial for the stunner deal (a burger, fries, drink and sundae). I think I’ve seen the ad once before but I just realised that Hungry Jacks was using the social media crowd sourcing website, Fiverr.com, that my friend Jodie has been obsessed with and created some hilarious stuff over the last year, to create their latest TV commercial. See Hungry Jacks social media crowd sourced TV commercial with all elements created for $5 using an online community: Do you realise what this means? That a global company with huge media and production budgets for advertising, chose to create an ad 100% using social media.…

Tagged: crowd sourcing, facebook social media, fiverr.com crowd sourcing, mainstream advertising, online community, social advertising, social crowd sourcing, social influencing mainstream advertising, social media, social media crowd sourcing

The Dalai Lama Can Teach Us A Thing Or Two About Google+ And Social Media

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on March 22nd, 2012

This discovery is about 6 months old but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit the profile of Cool Stuff Online. The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile, was planning on attending Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Inaugural Peace Lecture in Cape Town, South Africa on 8th October 2011 but if you can believe it he couldn’t get a visa. So, to make sure that he paid his respects to the apartheid activist and Nobel Peace prize winner (1984), the Dalai Lama signed up to Google Plus, a social network, and set up a hangout so he could have a video conference with the Archbishop during his interview. Apparently the Dalai Lama signed up to Google+ the same day he used it, now he has 1,332,444 users…

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Categories: Cool stuff online

Tagged: archbishop desmond tutu, archbishop tutu, dalai lama, dalai lama social media followers, desmond tutu, G+, Google, google plug, google plug hang outs, public video hangouts, social media google plug hangout, social network google plus, the dalai lama

Making chip music with a gameboy

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on February 10th, 2012

Last night I was driving home after an incredible meat filled dinner with good friends at Porteno in Sydney and listening to FBi Radio (which specialises in local Sydney music) and Stu Buchanan was interviewing Abortifacient, a music who makes “chip music” using nothing but a gameboy. Instagram photo of Abortifacient uploaded by New Weird Australia while being interviewed by FBi Radio This is all new to me. I’ve never heard of the term “chip music”. I’d never heard of making music with a gameboy. I didn’t even know you could still buy gameboys, I thought the DS had killed the gameboy but apparently I am wrong.

Tagged: abortifacient, chip music, chip music abortifacient, chip music genre, chip musicians, chip tunes, digital innovation, gameboy, gameboy musician abortifacient, gameboy musicians

Brilliant Integrated Advertising Campaign Woven Together with Online

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on November 22nd, 2011

When you think of Bing search engine, do you think Jay-Z? No? Me neither. That’s why this campaign is so brilliant. I wish I had been living in the states when this campaign launched in 2010, I would have loved to marvel at its simplicity but incredible complexity of media planning and execution. Droga5 was the advertising agency behind this campaign, they brought together 2 clients, Jay-Z, who was launching his memoirs Decoded and Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. I’m always banging on about how online marketing, and specifically search marketing, needs to be contextually relevant and this is the best example I’ve ever seen of how to bring a campaign to life. The plan was, for a month before the launch of Jay-Z’s…

Tagged: advertising integration, Bing, contextual relevance, Jay Z, Jay-Z decoded, online advertising, search engines

Kinect could be the next big thing in Digital

Shanelle Newton Clapham

Posted on November 15th, 2011

I was at a conference last week where they were using Microsoft’s Kinect to scroll around the screen of a web browser. It did look like a lot of exertion to violently throw your arms up and down and side to side in an effort to scroll around a page but it was pretty cool to know this new body movement technology can be used for the simple things, as well as the complex. One of the speakers at the Conference suggested that Kinect may very well be the next big thing in Digital and that it would have already put Microsoft ahead of its Google rival if it hadn’t attached the Kinect technology to the Xbox as its launch strategy. This has ostracised…