It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The time when ghosts, ghouls and creepy things emerge from their hidden depths and burst through to the mainstream to run amok on your computer screen. It’s the time of year when brands loosen the reins and have a little fun. If you have any doubts, Sears, the department store giant best known for their Craftman tools, wants you to “revive your style” through their zombified site.
Now you can look like a fashion zombie instead of being one
You can view the site in English or Zombian (don’t speak Zombian? No problem, they have a tutorial). Sears helps you find the perfect gift for the zombie in your life with the handy Zombie Gift Guide. They also include undead shopper videos, a zombie shopper Twitter feed and a fun zombie avatar creator. It’s great seeing a brand that is usually perceived as stodgy break out of their shell.
The undead never stop and Yahoo teaches the principles of economics through the zombie apocalypse. In Shambling Hordes, each player is a zombie warlord leading his troops to capture the opponents’ headquarters. The game is presented as a simple “Risk”-style game, but depending on the map you choose and how many battles you enter, it can become quite challenging.
Bring It!
If you need to update your avatar to express your inner zombie, Makemeazombie.com is the only place to go. Upload a photo and the site zombifies you - giving you a great looking avatar to use. You can download the image or share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Orkut and more.
Bringing Sexy Back
Finally, if you missed what might be the creepiest Halloween commercial ever made, Snickers is encouraging moms to buy the candy bar for trick ‘r treaters this year through some psychologically scary imagery.
What have been your favorite online Halloween treats this year?
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.
The American Days Photo Contest has found its champion
The polls have now closed on our first American Days Photo Contest and all the votes have been tallied. We asked you to send us your best photos that captured the American spirit and got some fantastic submissions in return. A huge thank you to everyone who participated, whether it was by sending in a photo or taking the time to vote for a winner.
It was hotly contested for a while, but one entry charged ahead of the pack to win by more than a few lengths. Chalking up an impressive 184 votes, the winner of The American Days Photo Contest is…
Fedja Jakupovic
Congratulations, your photo of a gravity defying break dancer has won you an iPad from The Duffy Agency!
Fedja is a project leader for a great local organization called Hela Malmö, which works to get children more involved in sports and other activities. Fedja’s winning photo is below, along with some other exceptional photos from the contest. Again, we’d like to give a great big thanks to all those who got involved.
The very best social media tools for getting the most out of the 2010 World Cup
When the World Cup rolled into Germany in 2006, YouTube was in its infancy, the iPhone didn’t exist and no one knew what a Twitter was. Things have changed a bit these past few years.
Starting today, we will witness the crashing together of two behemoths: the world’s grandest sporting event and the world’s vast social networks. Prepare to have your Facebook, Twitter and every other kind of feed experience a noticeable shift in focus for the next three weeks as every football fan gets the chance to become a global sports reporter without leaving their living room.
There are loads of options for following the 64 games in painstaking detail, but we’ve sorted through them all and put together the top tools that deliver everything you need.
There are lots of great apps dedicated to the World Cup, but ESPN’s is the cream of the crop and the only one you really need. You’ve got the full schedule, you can select which teams you want to follow to stay updated on breaking news, and stats and bios of every player for every team. You can even get a history lesson in the major events of tournaments past and interact with other fans by posting comments from within the app. If you’re willing to dole out $8, you gain access to radio broadcasts of every game, letting you follow matches no matter what you’re pretending to do at work. And to think a few years ago I was happy with cutting tournament brackets out of the newspaper.
Sure you can try to follow cluttered, hectic hashtags (like #wc2010 or #worldcup), but Twitter has done you a favor and created a World Cup headquarters themselves. They’ve done a great job of it, too. On the homepage, you’ve got a flow of the top tweets, which is superior to hashtags because it doesn’t just pull in the latest World Cup tweets, but uses an algorithm to select the most interesting ones. You can also see what matches are coming up and jump to a page for tweets about each particular game where you can easily follow and join in the banter. On the flip slide, the constant flow of information on Twitter is guaranteed to contain spoilers, so if you’re recording games to watch later, it’s probably best to abandon Twitter for a while.
Visa has put together a great solution for following your favorite teams via Facebook. When you choose to follow teams and matches, you can invite friends to an event page where your customized group shares comments and media. And of course you’ve got the full day-by-day schedule with live updates, as well as a video of the “worldwide goal cheer.” As an expat the event function is particularly appealing, as it’s a great way for me to root for the (former) home team with friends despite the distance.
When they aren’t busy filing ridiculous lawsuits, FIFA (sponsored by McDonalds) is running one of the best fantasy tournaments. You’ve got 140 credits in the bank and all the players in the tournament to choose from. Put your squad together and compete for your piece of the glory.
Do a little competing of your own with this fun football trivia app. In a creative twist on the regular old trivia contest, with this app you take the role of a team on the road to World Cup glory, advancing as you get questions right. It’s the perfect way to overcome halftime boredom and learn a thing or two about the tournament at the same time.
If you’ve got any other favorites that you’re horrified I missed, give a shout below.
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
Recent efforts show that marketing success with this new tech is well within reach
The challenge of using new technology in marketing is numbing yourself to the novelty of it and finding a genuinely good idea. And though most fail, a few succeed brilliantly. We’ve been looking to use augmented reality in an upcoming project and did some research to see what has already been done. What we found were some amazing applications that solve the target’s needs, while wowing them with shiny things at the same time.
Here are the best campaigns we’ve come across and why they were a success. Maybe they’ll inspire you to come up with some brilliant applications of your own that you didn’t even realize were possible.
Slap a virtual watch on your wrist So you’re thinking of dropping a chunk of change on a new watch, but not quite convinced it will look as dashing on your wrist as you imagine. Why not try on a digital model first? Tissot is betting you’ll want to take their new range for a test drive. It starts with a paper watch you cut out from their magazine ads (you can also download it from the site). You put the paper watch around your wrist, go to the Tissot site to download the software and hold it up to your webcam. You then see a 3D model wrapped around your wrist. You can cycle through the new range and even test out some the watches’ features. It’s extremely cool, has drawn loads of media attention and fills the need of potential buyers to try out a watch before buying beautifully.
The dude is unsettlingly devoid of emotion, but the watch is nifty
Take a BMW for a spin on your desktop (the wooden one) They could have just gone with creating a nifty 3D pop-up model (like Mini did), but for the Z4, BMW kicked it up a notch and created art. Or rather, they let you create art. Using a simple printout, a Z4 pops onto your desk and you can drive it around, leaving colorful tire tracks in your wake. When your street art is complete, you can save and share it via YouTube or Facebook with one click, thus expanding the campaign's footprint and making it spread organically simply by virtue of being fun and drawing fans more intimately into the BMW experience.
Such pretty donuts. Mmmmm....donuts.
Explore the 3D world on your tongue Since augmented reality springs to life just by using a simple pattern, you can slip it into almost anything. Even the tongue of your shoe. Adidas has created a 3D city (complete with the Death Star) that springs to life when you go to their website and hold the shoe up to your webcam. You can then navigate the city and play games using the shoe as a controller. It’s pretty dang cool and adds a unique selling point for their sneakers in an overcrowded market. The brilliance of the idea is that it adds a whole new digital dimension into the product itself, instead of creating a one-off gimmick that’s glanced at and forgotten. This way, the 3D world is always on the tip of your tongue. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
3D city! Storm troopers! Lasers! Overstimulation!
Enroll in alien police academy The film District 9 used a highly interactive augmented reality app to spread awareness and deepen fans’ experience of the sci-fi world. By visiting the website for Multi National United, the fictional government organization in charge of policing Earth’s alien inhabitants, you can go through an augmented reality training simulation on how to deal with day-to-day tasks, like non-human arrest and shooting at monsters. The campaign is a clever take on the film world and adds depth to the story, increasing viewers immersion and extending engagement beyond the cinema.
Working for the man is fun when they give you a machine gun.
Get your own mud soccer cheerleader In the most ambitious campaign I came across, UK brand Dairy Crest have set up an elaborate mud soccer contest. In order to win a slot for you and 5 friends in the Frijj Swamp Soccer World Cup 2010, complete with your own Swamp Soccerettes cheering your team on, users hold up a Frijj bottle in front of their webcam to enter a real-time environment. Oh, and a swamp soccerette crawls out of the bottle and does a cheer for you. The campaign cleverly capitalizes on the World Cup fever among its target and encourages them to get involved in a footie tournament of their own while their blood is boiling for some action. Plus, it’s so quirky you can’t resist seeking out more info to see if it’s real.
The connection between mud and milk is left mysteriously unsaid
Inspired yet? If so, check out this article for some great practical tips on creating an augmented reality campaign before you get started. And if you’ve seen any other great augmented reality campaigns, share them in the comments section below.
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
What started as a small music event showcasing unsigned musical artists is now a mega event that encompasses music, technology and film. For ten days in March each year, all eyes turn to the capital of Texas to find out what bands we should be on the lookout for, which films are truly groundbreaking and what’s on the forefront of web technology and video games. Past bombshells have included the breaking out of Twitter and Foursquare, the US debut of The Hurt Locker, and performances from the likes of Vampire Weekend, Yo La Tengo and Dolly Parton. With over 2,000 bands, 250 films and AOL, Chevy, Pepsi, and SoBe presenting the latest in technology in social media, how do you make sense of it all and keep track of what’s happening?
Fortunately, there are many ways to keep up to date on events, news and schedules.
My.SXSW.com is the festival’s official planning tool. It lets you create a schedule and join groups. It’s a great way to keep track of what you’re doing. It also has an iPhone app that provides additional features like maps, news, and the ability to share information with other attendees.
After the success of last year’s Zeitgeist, PepsiCo re-enters the fray with SXSW Play. It allows you to listen to the MP3s of featured artists, watch trailers, listen to podcasts, navigate through the SXSW lineup, follow the buzz through the “Zeitgeist” button and more. This appears to be the one iPhone app to rule them all while attending SXSW. This is a great way to follow what's going on without being there.
AOL is working hard to become relevant again with their Lifestream app. Lifestream allows you to bring your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and AIM accounts together to better stay in touch with others attending the festival. While My.SXSW and SXSW Play keep you up to date with what’s happening, this app allows you to get in touch with people on the ground and to follow along if you can't attend.
Eventbrite has 51 events listed and lets you RSVP to events. This is a great way to connect to people before SXSW kicks off and can help you find events that you might miss otherwise.
Mashable has teamed up with Sony and Cliqset to bring you Austin Real Time. This is a database of people attending SXSW with links to their social media accounts. It’s easy to sign up and get connected with people via your Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Foursqare, Gowala, YouTube, Vimeo and Plancast accounts.
Don’t get lost in the shuffle of SXSW. With a little planning and forethought, you can be sure to not miss a hot event or fail to make important new connections.
2009 was a great year for social media. Twitter went mainstream and Facebook dominated the world, replacing social networking websites that had a strong foothold in their country. As the world became more aware of social media and web 2.0 techniques, we saw some interesting marketing efforts from Pepsi, Fiat and Pringles, among others. With the new year upon us, let’s take a moment to look ahead at what we think will be the big game changers of the new year.
Micro communities - Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are the big impersonal dogs that dominate the social media world as we know it. People are starting to look for smaller, more relevant communities in the coming year. 2010 will see the rise of Ning, Xing and Linked In, as well as location based communities like Foursquare and Gowalla, which will be purchased and incorporated into Facebook and Google in 2011.
Facebook starts to slip - After obtaining the seemingly impossible in five years (350 million members), Facebook has justly secured their place as top dog in the social media world. There is no where to go but down from here. While expanding their functionality and destroying their credibility through poor decisions on how to handle user privacy, Facebook will lose members as users become overwhelmed with follow requests, app requests, security settings and a million other little things.
Google makes search more relevant - Google released real-time search at the end of 2009, but it’s not as refined as it could be. Google will continue to refine their search techniques based on the personal experience of the user. This means my search for a thai restaurant in San Francisco could be completely different from your search. Google rushed real-time search out in order to beat Bing to the punch, but expect it to be streamlined by the end of the year.
Gaming becomes more social - We talked about console gaming going social in our hugely popular blog post last month, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. 2010 will be a rebirth in gaming with games not just linking to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but by allowing users to create original content through them as well. Add to that online gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish and Crowdstar who are expanding the capability of their games. Also, expect mobile gaming to go to great heights with the iPhone and Android phones changing the way we envision mobile gaming.
Big Brother won’t have to watch us – we’ll do it ourselves - In our ever expanding need to feel relevant and hip, we now do what people a decade years ago would have viewed as implausible. Privacy isn’t an issue like it used to be. We now tell people where we are and what we’re doing every moment. Thanks to Foursquare, Google Geotagging, Gowalla and Britekite, we can automatically update our location without lifting a finger. Expect this trend to continue, and get much more invasive, before it gets better.
iPhone loses ground to Android - Sure, the iPhone is great, but it has one major drawback: it’s only available on one phone. Now imagine the same software that makes the iPhone great spread over several phones with cheaper price-tags. The Android has the potential to be a game changer in next gen phone development. With several phones coming out in 2010, the huge market share that the iPhone now controls will quickly erode.
Companies discover how to use social media - 2009 was the year that businesses discovered that the internet isn’t just a children’s toy any more. 2010 will be the year that companies finally start using social media as an important marketing tool and will devote more of the advertising funds to online efforts. 2009 saw some interesting uses of Twitter, Facebook and iPhone apps as companies dipped their toes in the pond. Now that they’ve explored a little, expect some interesting online campaigns.
Our 5 favorite social media creations of the holiday season
As you’ve probably noticed, people are more reluctant than ever to send Christmas cards, whether it be for their wallets or the environment. But social media is picking up the slack to keep the holiday cheer running strong. Here are my five favorite ways to use social media to either send Christmas greetings, or just to inject some fun into the holiday season when it starts to wear thin.
Santa Yourself I had nearly given up on finding something interesting among the hundreds of uninspired Facebook Christmas applications, but this one stole my heart. Mostly because you can make Santa look really creepy while going right to town in his dance number. It’s not Christmas until Santa makes children cry.
Redneck Christmas gifts For the distinguished Southern gentleman or lady, here we have an exclusive selection of gifts for their refined tastes. Make their holiday season special with a ginger bread trailer home or a decorated outhouse.
Santa shoot-em-up If an evaporating bank account and endless family gatherings are making you feel the need to shoot something, take out your stress with a Christmas flash game. My favorite is Deep Freeze – how can you go wrong with a heavily armed Santa and lots of cannon fodder?
Find out what list you’re on Worried you’ve been too naughty to get any presents this year? Just ask Santa to check your tweets and he’ll let you know. He’ll send you a tweet with the verdict and what punishment/reward you get, all the while swaying drunkenly to some jovial music
Christmas cocktails Speaking of swaying drunkenly, this iPhone app is ready to serve up a tasty holiday drink recipe whenever the occasion demands. Search by ingredient or give it a shake for a random suggestion. Just try not to embarrass yourself too badly in front of the in-laws.
Those were my favorites. Did I miss yours?
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
My earliest gaming memory is sitting in my living room playing Contra with my brother and wreaking serious 8 bit havoc while mom made grilled cheese sandwiches. That was what social console gaming meant through the 80’s and 90’s – playing a game with someone sitting beside you in the privacy of your home. But social networking’s ever expanding reach has utterly changed the face of console gaming, turning your living room into a global venue.
Thanks to consoles going online, these days you’re not confined to just playing games with people in your living room. Gamers started competing online a long time ago, but consoles are now going beyond gaming and become bonafide social media tools. Via the plastic box in their living rooms, gamers today establish new lifelong friendships, stay in touch with old friends, and sometimes even find a husband or wife and make babies.
The social expansion continues. A few days ago, Microsoft launched a major update to Xbox Live - the online platform for the Xbox 360. You can now connect to Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and the Zune marketplace. So if you want to find someone to play a game with or check out what people are saying about new releases, or just Tweet about how sweet Left for Dead 2 is, you can do so seamlessly. And if you’re tired of gaming, you can check out playlists on Last.fm or stream a movie in HD.
Launched a couple years ago, the PS3’s Home is now really starting to hit its stride with more users and developers getting involved. Similar to Second Life, you enter the world as your avatar and walk around meeting other gamers, finding people to either play a match against or just have a chat. You can also check out movie trailers at the theater, play mini-games like bowling and can buy and decorate a house. This Sims like experience is sure to have staying power as it blends in with the overall gaming experience.
The other big console, the Nintendo Wii, is great fun for groups of real-life people, but as far as online capability goes it’s still in the stone age compared to what Microsoft and Sony have accomplished.
Console gaming hit something of a rut for a while in terms of breakthroughs, as the only major progress they made was having prettier graphics. But with the introduction of social networking, the possibilities are limitless, both from developers with big budgets creating new interactive platforms and users generating their own content. And with the expansion into social media, you know marketers won’t be far behind. Red Bull and Audi already have a presence in Home, and Kia ran a campaign on Xbox Live. And why not? It’s another great media channel for marketers to get creative in and deliver highly relevant content.
It’s an exciting time to be tethered to a box. Where do you think the future of the console is heading?
Jason
Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both
traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of
the ad industry.
What are the scariest online activities for this Halloween?
It’s my favorite time of the year, Halloween! For me, Halloween is Christmas for adults. We get to dress up, make fools of ourselves and have fun. In order to set the mood, we have to get our Twitter avatar properly set up. Trickotweet gives you several really cute and fun monster avatars to choose from. I went with the hockey masked one.
On to Facebook. Pet Zombie allows you to create your own pet zombie that you can feed, play with, cover in toilet paper and make dance. My zombie is named Marvin.
Cute isn’t he.
I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “How would I do in a zombie apocalypse?” Find out by taking this short Facebook quiz. Turns out I might survive.
I love carving jack-o-lanterns. But sometimes I have problems coming up with ideas. Extreme Pumpkins has lots of jack-o-lanterns that people have taken to unusual levels. The 2009 winners provide lots of inspiration to go far beyond the mundane. The site is packed with “how to” tips, patterns and lots of photos of pumpkins.
If you need some practice before you start carving your pumpkin, try carving a virtual pumpkin.
If you don’t want to sit inside this Samhain, join a zombie walk.
What could be more fun than dressing up as the undead and shambling down the street?
If dressing as a zombie isn’t your game, why not play some? Re-kill the undead with Boxhead, a Lego like character game where you’re stranded in a tunnel where you shoot or get eaten. The more you kill, the better your weapons become. If the undead become too much, shoot barrels to thin the herd.
If you need something a little bloodier to slake your zombie thirst, Endless Zombie Rampage is your game. You have to defend your ground against gut-munchers with a handgun. As you gain experience points, you can upgrade your weapons to assault rifles, shotguns and laser cannons. Both games are great fun.
Sometimes you can’t be at your computer (you have to eat, poop and sleep sometimes). Thankfully, 148apps.com has found four iPhone applications to fill the void that’s in your soul when you leave your computer. Alive 4-ever gets their highest rating and from the images, it looks action packed. Personally, I can't wait to play Hysteria Project, check out the screen capture below. There are also iPhone versions of DOOM and Resident Evil for a bit of classic game play.
Finally, this All Hallow’s Eve, I want to leave you with this bit of stop motion zombie mayhem fright, Chainsaw Maid.
What are you favorite Halloween sites?
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.
