Purina’s Fancy Feast is running a multichannel effort that features social media, mobile and online promotions that encourage consumers to celebrate life and its precious moments.

Fancy Feast partnered with American Greetings for this promotion, which is part of the cat-food brand’s “Moments” campaign. The mobile component consists of two custom Fancy Feast greetings, which are available for distribution through the American Greetings iPhone application.

“Fancy Feast’s main goal was driving awareness and involvement with the Appetizers products and mobile was an additional way to facilitate that,” said Kelly Abood, director of sales, marketing and client services at AG Interactive, Cleveland.

The Fancy Feast Appetizers program, which is part of the brand’s Moments campaign began in the beginning of April and will run through June.

Here are some screen grabs of the iPhone component of the campaign, which includes two Fancy Feast greetings distributed through the American Greetings iPhone application.

The first is the greetings listing page within the application, with the Fancy Feast video greeting “Be Brighter.”

This is the Be Brighter video greeting viewing page:

The Be Brighter greeting’s message is, “Rise, shine and make your mornings brighter. Because every day there’s something new to celebrate.”

The Fancy Feast Appetizers logo is at the bottom of the screen while the message is being played.

Below is a screen grab of the “Time to Unwind” greeting listed in the American Greetings application:

This is the Time to Unwind video greeting preview page. The greeting encourages people to “Sit back, relax and unwind. Take time to celebrate another incredible day.”

The Fancy Feast Appetizers logo is at the bottom of the screen while the message is being played.

Additionally, Fancy Feast did a homepage takeover on eGreetings.com:

Consumers could watch an informational video, which was imbedded in the billboard, as shown above.

Here is the video:

In the middle of the page there is a Facebook push:

Consumers that click were routed to a different page where they could share the Fancy Feast ecard with their Facebook friends.

Here is a screen grab:

The Fancy Feast program also includes an eGreetings Facebook Branded Content Shell. Essentially it is a Fancy Feast skin that envelops a variety of ecard content that users can browse from once posted to their Facebook wall (or their friends’ walls).

Here is an example:

From the branded Content Shell a user can scroll through other Fancy Feast branded cards, share another card on their wall and email a card to their friend, which will then be posted on the recipient’s wall.

Fancy Feast also gets a themed custom channel with five custom greetings, all of which are postable to Facebook. Click here to view it.

“Fancy Feast wanted to have a presence in a couple of different places and mobile provided a way to take the campaign to the next level,” Ms. Abood said.

Article and images source: Mobile Marketer

Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.

Last month saw the latest Twitter foray into social good efforts with the launch of the new Hope140 initiative. Its #EndMalaria campaign over the past week featured the TwitPay platform for donations, creating a new call to action for Hope140. Twitter users participated in World Malaria Day by retweeting and donating $10. The Case Foundation matched donations with a $25,000 grant.

#EndMalaria demonstrated that Twitter can be more than an awareness mechanism for non-profits. Further, Twitter is using its Promoted Tweets feature as public service vehicle, launching with two charities; Room to Read, which is campaigning to promote the building of their 10,000th library, and Partners in Health. Now Twitter’s non-profit offering provides comprehensive capabilities, from click-throughs and retweets to bona fide donations and public service announcements.

“We’ve started Hope140 as a way to identify important things happening on the Twitter platform and across the company,” said Jenna Sampson of Twitter. “We’ll be highlighting timely causes, sharing case studies that inform non-profits on best practices, and simply providing a nest of hope for anyone to visit.”

But how well did Hope140 do in an actual campaign? When compared to Facebook’s or YouTube’s non-profit offerings, how does Hope140 stack up? Further, how well does the Hope140 donation service work? Can any non-profit work with Hope140? We take a closer look below.

Real-Time Performance

The Case Foundation, no stranger to online giving contests, with platforms like Facebook Causes and Network for Good, served as a partner for the #EndMalaria campaign. So we turned to Case for insights on how Hope140 performed.

“Unlike some of the other social media campaigns that we’ve been involved with at the Case Foundation, the End Malaria campaign on Twitter had a singular focus – raising money for Malaria No More to help ensure that more bed nets are available in Africa,” said Kari Dunn Saratovsky, vice president of social innovation, Case Foundation. “Other campaigns that we’ve developed and supported, like America’s Giving Challenge, have allowed donors to choose the issues they care about and then mobilize their social networks to action.”

“It was as much an awareness raising campaign as it was a fundraising campaign,” added Saratovsky. “The platform itself proved to be an invaluable tool for messaging facts about Malaria and the creative use of the mosquito icon drew special attention to these tweets. We still have a ways to go in transitioning those who helped serve as ambassadors of the message to also be compelled to donate, but it’s a process that will take some time.”

Full Disclosure: My company Zoetica consults the Case Foundation on America’s Giving Challenge.

How Does Hope140 Stack Up Against YouTube and Facebook?

Both YouTube and Facebook have their own non-profit channels. So how does Hope140 compare to them? Very differently it seems.

“Take YouTube’s non-profit offering for instance,” said Frank Barry, Manager, Professional Services at Blackbaud. “They don’t go about picking specific non-profits to highlight. But they do offer great features to non-profits — i.e. premium branding, “call-to-action overlay,” YouTube Video Volunteers platform, non-profit channels, and non-profit videos — which, in my opinion, are of greater value to participating non-profits because they help generate awareness and drive action -– the ultimate response.

“Now let’s look at Facebook’s non-profit offering,” continued Barry. “Although Facebook doesn’t have a special ‘offering’ for non-profits, they do have a host of features that non-profits love. These features enable non-profits to engage and communicate with their supporters, donors, volunteers and advocates in a way that was previously impossible for most because of the time and money it would take to build such a site.”

It seems that Twitter’s offering, while developing, has yet to match the maturity of YouTube’s promotion or Facebook’s much more complete suite of tools, from promotion to fundraising. This is especially true given the new fundraising tools and lack of access to the Hope140 program for all 501c3s (more on that below). For now, non-profits would be wise to turn to Facebook and YouTube first for more reliable outcomes.

The New Giving Feature

Hope140 utilizes RT2Give, a service stemming from third-party developer Twitpay. After users donate via the service, the app tweets for them with a campaign-specific hashtag or term soliciting their followers to join them in giving.

Unlike Facebook Causes, the new giving feature is currently set on a fixed amount, such as #EndMalaria’s $10. It remains to be seen whether users will have more control over their donations in the future. The likelihood of someone returning ten times to donate $100 seems low, and the cap may be limiting total donation amounts in the long run.

“From my perspective, the most valuable asset [of #EndMalaria] for non-profits was in the introduction of the new donation platform, Twitpay,” said Saratovsky. “However, the numerous social media efforts around World Malaria Day, including Twitter’s End Malaria campaign, also served as huge awareness-raisers for Malaria No More and other non-profits involved in the fight to eradicate Malaria.”

How Accessible Is Hope140 to Other Non-Profits?

Currently, Hope 140 is not accessible to all non-profits, and to be featured, a 501c3 organization needs to be selected by Twitter. Twitter says it’s exploring how to use Hope140 as a resource for non-profits, and a way for socially concerned people to connect. But the larger impact on the non-profit space has yet to be determined.

“[It's] one reason why I think transparency will be key,” said Alex Bornkessel, consultant and changeblogger at SocialButterfly. “Also — I’m curious as to what Twitter’s goals are with Hope140 and and how they align with the goals of its non-profit partners. For now, Hope140 seems more organization-driven than community-driven — which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the metrics of success.”

“We plan to share information on Hope140 about upcoming programs like “Tweets for Good” which is based off of the Promoted Tweets platform, and examples for non-profits to learn how to use their accounts more effectively,” said Twitter’s Sampson. “We also believe Twitter developers can be a part of the equation, since many small organizations lack technical resources that can take their efforts to the next level, so we are planning to provide opportunities for them to connect as well.”

While Facebook and YouTube have more reliable proven programs, Twitter’s Hope 140 can offer innovators a new suite of tools to separate themselves from the pack. Helping a new social network program mature can establish leadership. Smart non-profits can balance results versus online innovation. If provided the opportunity to participate in Twitter’s Hope 140 program, it’s likely that in tandem with the other social network programs, a non-profit can make significant steps towards affecting change and achieving leadership within it’s cause space.

Article and images source: Mashable

Quick-serve restaurant chain Taco Bell ran a mobile campaign that was supported by traditional media to build a database of names for future marketing.

Taco Bell’s agency J&A Integrated Thinking tapped Cellit Mobile Marketing for the “RefreshIt” campaign. The program used traditional media to drive awareness and participation in a weekly mobile club that features offers, incentives and discounts.

“Mobile allowed us to expand our traditional reach,” said Melanie Corbett, vice president of media services at J&A, Brentwood, TN. “It also gave us another opportunity to reach Taco Bell’s core audience, which is younger and more tech-savvy.

“And what better way to ‘get in their pockets’ than through mobile advertising,” she said. “As a lifestyle media and marketing tool, mobile is definitely on point.”

Taco Bell is a quick-service Mexican restaurant model, founded by Glen Bell in Downey, CA, in 1962. The fast food franchise boasts about 5,800 restaurants throughout the United States, more than 80 percent of which are franchise-owned.

J&A provides Taco Bell with strategic planning and media services in 26 markets with over 600 retail locations.

The campaign required little integration, allowing Taco Bell to run it at several locations with little direct coordination.

An outdoor billboard promoted the mobile call-to-action:

Bag stuffers were also used to promote the call-to-action:

Taco Bell’s content plan generated buzz and excitement for the campaign, and timed the offers to drive specific day-part business.

To further extend the value of the test, Taco Bell also ran a survey to help tie in the call-to-action of traditional media components to specific coupon offers.

Results

The RefreshIt campaign ran for five weeks and attracted nearly 13,000 members to the mobile program.

More than 93 percent of subscribers were still active at the conclusion of the program, confirming the value of the content offered and the cadence at which offers were sent to consumers.

To date, more than 29,500 coupons have been sent out to the database.

Cellit updated its Cellit Studio platform to support rolling expiration dates, enabling consumers to text in and receive a coupon that expired exactly 3-5 days – depending on the offer – after the initial text.

In turn, Taco Bell stores were able to bypass integration completely, a definite plus due to the use of various point-of-sale systems throughout this group of stores.

Upon conclusion of the program, Cellit sent a follow up survey to gain insights on the relationship between the effectiveness of traditional media and mobile.

Sixty-one percent of participants responded to the survey.

“This was a great ‘triple play’ mobile program, as it used our flexible technology in new and interesting ways, combining outgoing blasts, coupon redemption and a follow-on survey,” said Brian Bauer, vice president of operations and client services at Cellit, Chicago. “This is exactly the kind of multi-layer, interactive campaign that Cellit has become known for.”

Article and image source: Mobile Commerce Daily

Jimmy Choo has mobilized its print ad in the April issue of W Magazine, letting consumers get information and deals from the brand, as well as enter for a chance to win $1,000.

The luxury brand is just one of several companies that took part in the image recognition-enabled ads that are included in this month’s issue. Mobile social media technology company, Pongr partnered with W Magazine to make the ads interactive for the publication’s readers.

“People have their mobile phones on them all the time,” said Wright Ferguson Jr., senior vice president of national sales at Pongr, Darien, CT. “Image recognition brings the ad to life.

“I really like when the editors get behind it,” he said. “They have a better relationship with the readers.”

W Magazine is a luxury and fashion lifestyle magazine. In its April issue, every ad had a mobile component powered by Pongr.

Pongr provides advertising technology products and services that focus on mobile consumer engagement via pictures, social interaction and brand media.

A sole a day

The Jimmy Choo ad features its sunglasses collection.

Here is a screen grab of the print ad in W Magazine:

There are not any bar codes or QR codes in the print ad, so advertisers do not have to modify their advertisements.

Pages within the magazine alert readers regarding the image recognition-enabled ads.

Here is a screen grab of a full page ad that lets readers know they can engage with the print advertisements:

Readers just need to take a picture of the ad with their smartphone and send it to w@pongr.com. They receive an email letting them know that they are entered for a chance to win $1,000 from W Magazine.

Here is the screen grab of the email:

Consumers are given three site links from Jimmy Choo. In the first link, they can view a mobile video, which features Tamara Mellon, cofounder/president of the company talking about the brand.

The second link directs the user to Jimmy Choo’s Facebook page and the third link takes the user to its Twitter page.

Here is the mobile video ad:

Here is the screen grab of Jimmy Choo’s Facebook page:

Here is a screen grab of Jimmy Choo’s Twitter page on mobile:

Interactive luxury ads

W partnered with Pongr to provide mobile engagement that lets readers get more information on brands advertising in the issue, which is solely dedicated to shopping.

On any advertising page, readers can snap a photo of the ad and send it to Pongr’s email to receive a message from the advertising brand.

Consumers can receive a link to buy, a special shopping offer or video promotions such as behind-the-scenes or runway shows.

W advertisers include Gucci, Burberry Prorsum, Marc Jacobs, Bvlgari, Rolex, Chopard, Cole Haan and Ralph Lauren.

The technology makes the ad pages interactive via image recognition, without requiring advertisers to modify their creative.

According to W, the technology equips advertisers with an instant tool for monitoring engagement.

“Image recognition is a differentiating technology,” said Jamie Thompson, cofounder/CEO of Pongr, Boston. “Brands work to make their ads interactive with print.

“This gets maximum reach, works all the time and is available to feature phones and smartphones,” he said.

Article and images source: Mcommerce Daily

Video source: YouTube

Building on Commonwealth Bank’s vision of banking in 2013, the Group is announcing its next digital innovation with the release of its iPhone augmented reality application for anyone buying or selling a home, or simply looking to keep on top of the property market.

The new iPhone application will take property search to a new level, revolutionising the way home buyers search for a home allowing them to make smarter property decisions with virtual reality insight in to any Australian home anywhere, anytime.

The technology is supported by two industry leaders realestate.com.au, the nation’s number one property portal and rpdata.com, Australia’s leading property information and analytics company.

The core functionality of the application utilises ‘augmented reality’ where rich data including past sales history (on more than 95 per cent of properties in Australia), current property listings and recent sales, is mapped on to a real world view through the iPhone’s camera.

Users can also switch to a list or bird’s eye view to pull in insights on properties matching their search criteria. Home hunters can then track their ‘dream house’ in their favourites, send to a friend and make informed decisions with access to detailed suburb profiles revealing demographics, median price, property hotspots and capital growth trends.

According to Mark Murray, General Manager Consumer Marketing, “We are leveraging new technology and continually innovating to deliver convenient, relevant and real-time services to make buying a home easier.

“As Australia’s biggest home lender we have teamed up with rpdata.com and realestate.com.au, to help Australians make an informed decision when it comes to making their biggest financial commitment.

“The new iPhone application will be an industry first in Australia. Home buyers and sellers can easily access a host of customised information, tools and insights on every home in Australia – for free.

“The application is a significant milestone in our 2013 vision of banking, bringing virtual reality property search to customers right here, right now,” added Mr Murray.

A video demo of the iPhone augmented reality application will be available next week with the application available for download from the Apple App Store, coming soon.

Article and Image Source: Commonwealth Bank

In March 2010, social researcher Mark McCrindle finished up a survey of 500 under-18 Australians. He asked participants to keep a media diary mapping all their entertainment activities for a week and discovered that they were spending an average of seven hours and six minutes using entertainment media everyday – that means time spent plugged into the internet, iPods and mobile phones, yes seven hours and six minutes everyday.

The fascinating thing is, the under-18s packed this entertainment into five hours because they would often be using their iPods and the internet simultaneously.

Meet Generation Z, otherwise known as The Naturals. Give them any label you like, but you better make sure your business understands this powerful new generation of consumers that has never known life without the internet.

Here are 10 tips to help you connect.

Tip #1: One medium at a time? That is so last millennium.
The first commercial web browser became available in 1994, a line in the sand that some demographers and social researchers are using as the start of a very new generation.

Futurist and anthropologist Mike Walsh likes to call this tribe The Naturals (McCrindle refers to them as Generation Z).

“The things we have had to learn – communications, downloading content, online transactions, research, networking – is entirely natural to them,” says Walsh.

“They were born into it.”

However, Walsh insists The Naturals are not a demographic, but rather the first wave of an “entirely new way of thinking about communications, content and commerce”.

Dave King, founder of digital agency The Royals also sees The Naturals as a psychographic state rather than a particular age, that people born in the 1970s and 1980s can be just as “natural” about the way they use technology.

Tip #2: As long as the electricity towers are up, the cables are running and the electricity is pumping, The Naturals will be okay.
Remember, connectivity is as natural as breathing to The Naturals. The internet is not a channel. It’s part of the fabric of everyday life. For The Naturals, the internet is how people meet, feel and understand each other.

“It’s how they express themselves and it’s how they define themselves,” says King. Whereas for Generation X, Y and Baby Boomers, technology has, for the most part, been about improving productivity, working smarter, Naturals see technology as the way they collaborate and connect. It’s not just about a productivity solution.

Tip #3: Meet the most sophisticated consumer yet.
Economically speaking, The Naturals are likely to be far more sophisticated than their predecessors. Their financial education starts early thanks to the internet, in kids sites such as Club Penguin, where as a penguin avatar they play games and earn virtual coins and Farmville where life on a virtual farm includes farm coins (current users: 82 million).

By the time The Naturals have real money to spend and real transactions to make, they have a more entrepreneurial mindset, they are used to using the internet to hunt for good prices and they are savvy about how they spend and where they spend it.

Tip #4: Consumer and content decisions are made almost exclusively through social networks.
When businesses are trying to attract The Naturals’ attention, the message has to be relevant and entertaining enough for them “to risk their own social standing by forwarding it on to their own networks,” says Walsh.

Evian has the title of most-watched online advertisement with almost 21 million viewers lapping up the babies on roller-skates scenario (it is a total hoot) mixed in with some Evian slogans.

Because of the plethora of information on the internet, Naturals base a lot of their consumer decisions on peer group opinions.

“Rather than taking an analytical approach to information they push it to the side and go through friends,” says McCrindle.

Tip #5: You can keep your official website, I’ll make my own content thanks very much.
McCrindle has observed a major shift in how companies are doing market research with Generation Z. Rather than creating a product or service for them and then asking for feedback, the products and services are being developed in collaboration with Generation Z.

“It’s about co-creation,” he says.

Naturals like to create their own online worlds, not be force-fed one by a third party.

“They are certainly not going to official sites,” says McCrindle.

Tip #6: There are no ad breaks
You can’t manage advertising, communication or branding in the digital realm as you do in a paid-media scenario. According to King, an important consideration is why your audience is there (at the site) and what they are doing. “Hint: they’re not watching your ads in between the station’s programming,” he says.

The TAC had an unusual way of getting around the fact that The Naturals are hard to capture through advertising in traditional broadcast channels that include free-to-air TV, newspapers and radio. The TAC is still using its powerful ads, but through a new medium, a network of television screens at selected petrol stations called PumpTV in partnership with Channel 7 and Yahoo 7.

This Easter it used PumpTV get the message out about safe driving over the break. PumpTV estimates that in a month, its screens reach 12 million consumers.
GrabAds is another channel to grab Naturals’ attention through ‘on-cup advertising’ exposure on items like takeaway coffees, beer at the cricket and other portable items. Australia Post, VISA, GIO, Cricket Australia and Fone Zone have been using GrabAds.

Tip #7: Expect only partial attention
The Naturals pose a real dilemma for marketers because they assume the right to be heard, to blog, to tweet, to tell the world what they are thinking (or even just tweet that they are feeling bored) but they are not prepared to really pay full attention.

“The rest of us should assume they live in a state of constant partial attention,” says King whose approach to marketing to Naturals centres around looking for the value that the product/service can provide to The Naturals’ connected lives.

“Rather than trying to work out ways to force a message into their daily regime, as a marketer, you should ask ‘what do I have to offer my intended audience?’ It could be new types of functionality, utility, entertainment or socialisation – but it’s probably not a tagline,” he says.

Tip #8: Don’t even think about censorship
The real joy of a site like Trip Advisor is just how frank the community is. It now has a storehouse of more than 30 million traveller reviews and opinions. The authenticity of the information shines through. So empowered do its users feel that they will post photos of dirty sinks and rusty taps and scrutinise every aspect of their travel experience. Hoteliers and other travel operators do have right of reply these days on the site which all adds to the value of the site.

Smart travel operators are accepting the fact that feedback is never going to be 100% and that this is a reality of social networking sites. Vogue magazine in Australia has recently received bad press after its editor Kirstie Clements revealed that it removes negative information about its advertisers when it surfaces in the thriving Vogue forums.

“If you start pruning the negative, they will start pulling out of the site,” says McCrindle.

“You have to relinquish control, it is about user-generated content.”

King recommends playing anthropologist, look around and dive into these digital worlds for ideas on how to connect to these consumers. His firm The Royals has a blog on interesting new trends (see here).

Forget about Facebook as the number-one place to watch The Naturals.

“It’s so 35-plus,” says McCrindle. “When a brand gets big it is perceived as being too big and uncool and they go back to subterranean brands,” he says. The average user of most of social networking sites is positively middle-aged.

The average Twitter user is 39 years old, which perfectly corresponds to news this week in the Herald Sun of 40-year-old cricketer Shane Warne’s new love of Twitter. Warne, it seems, has switched from texts to tweets. Perhaps his new nickname should be the Sheik of Tweet?

Bebo is the current favorite social networking site with younger generations, with 50% of its users aged under 24, compared with Facebook’s less than 25% under 24.

Tip #9: Remember, The Naturals just can’t stop being connected
The hit reality program ‘I’m with Rolling Stone’ charts the journey of a pool of young interns fighting to get a job at Rolling Stone magazine. There is not a single frame of the show where an intern is not touching at least one piece of technology, a phone, an iPod or a laptop: gaming, texting, tweeting. It looks like they are physically addicted to technology.

Walsh has observed this too and is carefully watching the emergence of internet addiction clinics. They have sprung up in Chinese cities where broadband is freely available and citizens’ passion for online gaming is out of control.

In the US, one internet rehab clinic reStart in Washington has a 45-day, $17,500, 12-step program. In South Korea, the government is going to distribute free software to help people limit their online time. The software makes the system shutdown after an agreed timeframe. With The Naturals spending an average of more than seven hours of screen time per day, it will be interesting to see how Australia handles this very real way of life. Says Walsh: “This is only the very beginning of the story.”

Article Source: Smart Company
Image Source: Flickr

The best way to grab the attention of the inner-city hipster is to look for all the world like you’re not trying to. That, at least, is the view of the people behind Hidden Pizza.

Since opening last Monday, this hot new restaurant in a Fitzroy laneway has been serving about 500 pizzas a night, served in sturdy bags made from hand-stitched recycled paper along with a glass of home-made lemonade in a recycled jam jar.

Cost: zero. But first, you have to find it.

There’s a Facebook page, lots of ”have-you-tried?” tweets and a sophisticated website, but no address or phone number. A note on the website tells would-be customers that ”finding the restaurant is easy, just look it up the way you would any other business”.

Most of the urban tastemakers being targeted by Hidden Pizza might imagine that means google, but they’d be wrong. For this whole enterprise is a marketing stunt for the distinctly uncool Yellow Pages. (And for the cynics among you, if there happens to be a Yellow Pages ad on this page as you’re reading this, it’s got nothing to do with me.)

Hidden Pizza is an elaborate case of ”relationship marketing”, the art of spreading the word via informal networks of people rather than paid ads.

While ostensibly a new restaurant trying to gain momentum through a two-week giveaway marketing campaign, Hidden Pizza was in fact created for the sole reason of demonstrating the power of this kind of marketing. At the end of the two-week pizza giveaway, the pop-up restaurant will pop right back down again. On April 25, it will be no more, it will cease to exist, it will have expired and gone to meet its maker.

This real-world demonstration of the power of hijacking friendships to flog stuff was dreamt up by relationship marketing specialists Clemenger Proximity in collaboration with ad agency OMD, whose clients include Sensis (owner of the Yellow Pages brand). According to one insider, the point of it was to ”look at different methods of marketing and to explore their effectiveness”.

But neither agency is yet willing to fess up to the fact that Hidden Pizza is in fact a hidden campaign, presumably for fear that it will sour its effectiveness.

Inquiries to both OMD and Clemenger were redirected to a publicist who insisted the pizza giveaway was a genuine marketing campaign for a new restaurant with long-term ambitions.

Other sources, however, have confirmed that the entire enterprise was built with a lifespan of just two weeks.

They have also confirmed that the project was born last December, when Clemenger approached local designer Joost Bakker with a proposal to create a pop-up pizza business. Bakker was interested, but only on the condition he could make it as eco-friendly as Greenhouse, the venue he created in Melbourne’s Federation Square in October 2008. To run it, he drafted in his old friend Tony Fazio, formerly of Stokehouse and I Carusi, who had just sold his pizza restaurant Porcino in Collingwood.

Bakker had ”not very much” money to spend but full creative licence. ”They’ve let me design everything,” he said, while declining to identify who ”they” were on the grounds that he’d signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade it.

”I’ve made everything out of leftovers from Greenhouse. The wheelie bins inside are made from plywood offcuts. My mum is sewing the pizza bags out of recycled paper.”

The eagle-eyed among those who have managed to find Hidden Pizza may have noticed the yellow-and-black vinyl covering on the stools. It comes from recycled Yellow Pages billboards. Other than that, though, they will have seen few clues to the true nature of the enterprise.

They may, however, have wondered how a restaurant with no visible income could afford so many staff. Particularly good-looking staff, at that.

While the numbers through the door would suggest the campaign has been a success, it remains to be seen how the marketing-resistant hipsters it has attracted will greet the news that they have effectively been duped.

Officially, they won’t find out until the campaign has run its course. ”We wanted to create a sense of intrigue,” said one figure close to the campaign. ”We want to gradually reveal what it’s all about.”

Unofficially, the pizza’s already out of the bag. The question is, how does it taste now you know who’s really made it?

Article Source: The Age

Image Source: The Age

In a clever case of role reversal, one anonymous agency strategist has put herself on the market as a “skirt for hire”.

She’s popped up on Twitter, created a blog and posted a job ad on Mumbrella, where she writes: “An opportunity for a bold and beautiful agency has arisen, with a senior skirt now available for hire.”

Specialising in communications, marketing, PR and social media, the Skirt launched her recruitment push last week.

The only hint of who she is, is the fact that she works in Melbourne, she’s done in-house comms for government departments and a not-for-profit organisation. And she’s also had experience in issues management, having worked for the Victorian Department of Health.

And she’s not shy either, telling prospective agencies: “If you are interested in finding out more about this rare opportunity to hire one of Melbourne’s most dedicated skirts, apply immediately as our client is keen to appoint the right agency as soon as possible.”

Dr Mumbo would like to know if there are any educated guesses on just who this Skirt may be…

Article Source: Mumbrella

NEW YORK — Apple rolled out the iPad Saturday to cheers from many early adopters (”To those who are asking, OMFG I LOVE THE iPAD” read one Tweet) and from Apple Store employees. The blue-shirted concierges were clapping in unison for and high-fiving customers who waited for hours to drop at least $500 for Apple’s “magical” tablet.

At the flagship 5th Avenue store in Manhattan — across the street from the storied Plaza Hotel and down the block from Tiffany’s and other high-end stores, who could only envy the business Apple was doing — hundreds of people were already in line at 8am.

They were divided into two lines: not the haves and the have nots, but the have sooners and have laters. A reservation system — and the lack of any telco activation since the iPad being released today is Wi-Fi only — made for very smooth sailing. The doors opened at 9 sharp up and down the Atlantic coast and, in smaller markets like suburban Washington DC and San Francisco, the 50th person in line had his iPad in about 19 minutes.

When I returned to wait in the reservation line shortly after 10, it looked hopeless. But store employees checking customers’ reservations assured us at one point that “it would be only about 20 minutes.” That claim seemed impossible but turned out to be true.

And then, the years-long wait for an Apple tablet was over.

So, what is the iPad? It is at once less than a computer, and more. It’s familiar enough to help us accept it, and innovative enough to guide us into different ways of doing things. Indeed, it is perfectly-crafted to guide us into a new-media way of life that Apple hopes to sell us, and away from the old media ways which still work (and are definitely cheaper).

As a leading entry into the e-book 2.0 sweepstakes, the iPad will have to wean people off dedicated devices and entice paper-lovers with its wiles, which include carrying your reading library around with you like you do your music, and adding to it on an impulse.

As a newspaper replacement, it will have to borrow from the e-reader playbook to convince people that what they can already get in paper (or for free on the web) is worth paying a premium for in this new format.

As a magazine delivery system, it will have to be an actual magazine, and not some of the component parts thrown together with a different creative sense, in order to be worth paying what we pay for paper.

And if has to make you forget about the device entirely, so you can focus on the content it’s displaying. This, it seems to do.

First and foremost, the iPad is fast. Very fast. Browser pages open on command. Swipes transition exactly when they should. We are used to the iPhone/Touch metaphor now of a device which sleeps a lot but turns on and unlocks in a snap and presents us with icons that get us to our destination, and the iPad does this on a grander scale.

Setting it on a table seems natural, and tapping out on the keyboard when necessary seems just fine in a hunt-and-peck sense.

A quick survey of available “print” content is impressive. It isn’t just that web pages seem bountiful or that games seem to have no latency and fill your vision. I synced with my laptop, choosing only a subset of the apps I use on my iPhone. Entering the App store for the first time you are offered a free book (after agreeing to a 58-page TOS) and if there are iPad updates they are waiting for you to download. Migrating your life from the iPhone is seamless.

All that’s to be expected. But to be the future of media the iPad will have to be a friendly reading device, and it will take a while to get a feel for that. At least two books, I would say.

And the cost of the media itself will be a determining factor. We know what movies and TV shows and books music will cost. We don’t know what magazine and newspaper publishers will be assuming the market will bear. The Wall Street Journal will charge $18 a month, more than for the paper and for the current bundle of newspaper and digital offerings.

Time Magazine, one of the first periodicals on the iPad, is asking $5.00 — the same at the newsstand price — and not offering a subscription yet. It’s hard to imagine that is a sustainable model, since even booksellers realize that e-books should be cheaper than their print analogs.

Loading up Time presents a cover page filled with a black and white photo of bespectacled Steve Jobs. This is strangely jarring, as if part of the branding of the device itself. But the smiling visage of the Apple CEO on the cover of one of the first iPad magazines is also somehow fitting.

The second page of Time is an ad. An ad which will not swipe away for several seconds. Hmmm … in a paper magazine — 1 paper magazine I paid five bucks for — I could tear the damn thing out if I wanted.

And I could not tell if it is a quirk of the app or of the hardware, but a black ban covered the bottom of many pages when they loaded. Rotating made it go away. But it appeared persistently.

Switching gears entirely, Skype works like a charm. The app needs updating, but the quality of the call, on speaker even, was fantastic.

So, yes, Virginia, you can make calls in the iPad. Good ones.

First impressions can be important, but are not necessarily the final verdict. The Gadget Lab regulars will take it from here, and I’ll delve deeper into the media aspects of the new Apple Tablet back on Epicenter.

Article Source: Wired

Cadbury has this week relaunched its Freddo chocolate website as part of the confectionery company’s strategy to become “more like an entertainment brand”.

The site, created by Publicis Mojo Melbourne, first launched in the middle of 2009 featuring animated storytelling, games and activities for young consumers. Shortly after however, it stopped uploading new content reviewed the effectiveness of the site as part of its overall marketing mix.

Last year, following feedback from parents and children, Cadbury briefed Mojo to develop new content for the site which will now be used as a key platform to target Freddo’s young consumers.

The development is also being reflected in the brand’s TV advertising. Where previously it launched product-based TV ads, they now centre around the website – which is unbranded, bar the use of the long-running Freddo character in the games and activities.

Joel Thomson, Publicis Mojo creative director of digital, said:
Freddo was losing ground to Kinder and its toys. Within the category, it’s about product innovation. And while parents may not like Kinder, kids love the toys because it’s about added value.

Without changing the product we wanted to create value, which is what this entertainment channel represents. It’s about creating added value and behaving more like Disney and Nickelodeon and becoming more like an entertainment brand.”

Thomson added that in order to gain credibility with parents, it has launched the TV ads during “shared family viewing times” in the daytime and afternoon. It has omitted Cadbury and Freddo branding from the ads. There are no pointers on Freddo packaging linking the brand to the games website. The site also requires parental consent in order for kids to register.

Article Source: Mumbrella

Video Source: YouTube