Sounds familiar?

Ad Age Agency of the Year: The Consumer

AdAge claim they thought of it first though

Howard

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Rob Andrews over at e-consultancy and the Times are reporting that, hot on the heels of Channel 4’s announcement and recent ad push of it’s 4OD broadband pay-per-view TV service, ITV has announced that it’s own broadband TV service will launch this year in March. 

I haven’t been able to check out 4OD myself yet as it’s only available for windows XP, but I hope to have it installed on my work PC shortly to sample it and how it works. 4OD have a mixed revenue approach with some free shows, and others are 99p per show.  ITV will be 100% free by the look of it, and will feature the ITV1 channel streamed in realtime (yay! Trisha at work! :D) as well as a large back catalogue of it’s work, all of which will be free.

So - as TV finally begins to shift in full reality over to a broadband delivered format, does this mean that the public will gradually get used to the idea of IPTV rather than a broadcast medium, be it digital or analogue, sooner rather than later?  How will this affect what we in the industry and our clients see as digital advertising? 

Howard

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Interview with Ben mcConnell, of Church of the Customer and author of Citizen Marketers, being interviewed on ABC TV in the states.

BMW have a nicely designed piece on their International homepage promoting a new, mystery product which appears to be related to in-car entertainment of the MP3/audio/video kind.

Featuring a nicely morphing video, also available as a download from this page in a series of formats including PSP and iPod, the device mentions loads of current gadget buzzwords to get even the most anti-BMW geek juiced up.  There are rumors it’s something related to Apple, and considering BMW claim details will be released in mid January, in time for the apple conference in San Francisco, that’s not a bad guess I suppose.

Product aside, the use of an overlay on their own homepage is a nice touch (although strictly i’t’s not an overlay as the whole page is one big flash movie, but that’s what it looks like), leading the user through to a dedicated microsite, still nicely contained within the overall BMW site architecture though.

Not sure who the agency is that did this (Fallon?), and whether the video ad is intended for TV or not (i can’t see it on youtube yet, but it might be there), but it’s nicely done that’s for sure.  The site is a little sparse at the moment, but it is a teaser and for that it’s more than adequate to get you eager for more.

Worth checking out, whether you’re in the market for a BMW or not.

Howard

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An interesting post over on PSFK about branded utilities which kind of ties into the way the digital marketing world is looking more and more towards widgets that are actually useful rather than carpet bombing.

Quote: For a while I’ve felt uneasy about certain brands’ desires to interrupt people’s lives with irrelevant messages. Technology means that messaging should now become more targeted so that this level of interruption should decrease but many companies have chosen to take the worst habits of advertising and take them online. They’ve chosen to get in the way.

Hear hear!

Howard

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First off, let me make it clear that the name "advergame" is not something I like or made up and it is in fact a terrible title.

OK, that aside, this has been doing the rounds for a while now, since the long ago days of 2006, but i thought it was worth a post.  Seems Burger King has got itself into the games side of advertising and is distributing it’s own games featuring their King character to Xbox and Xbox360 gamers through their restaurants.

For $3.99 a pop gamers can pick up the titles to take home and play on their consoles, and there are currently three different titles to choose from.

Nothing too new here - as long as there have been games there have been brands trying to use them for marketing (I remember in particular a game for the Atari ST way back in the early 90’s for "Quavers" crisps, called "Push Over",  which i still have at home) and there have been many others over the years.

it’s interesting that as games as a marketing platform become more feasible, certainly in terms of more "traditional" stuff like banner placements (as we have discussed here at adventures before) that BK should decide to do a full blown set of games from scratch rather than opt for a simple display model.

As this short piece over on eMarketer points out though, BK is likely to make all of their spend on creating the titles back in short time when you take into consideration the initial development costs compared to the $3.99 price and the burgers and fries it’ll sell at the same time.

A trend for 2007?  Hmmmm - I’m not so sure, but it’s something to bear in mind.

Howard

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So I must offer five little-known things about myself. These are:

1. When I was 12 I had a depressed skull fracture. I was helping Dad build a fence in the back garden and the sledge hammer slipped - that’s what he says anyway
2. I spent almost 6 years living in Paris, France between 1995 and 2001
3. I have the worst Irish accent ever - see 1
4. I collect cook books and collect recipes but never, ever use them and instead improvise. This concerns those who have to live with me and my clutter.
5. I need a cleaner - see 4

I tag Brigid Buckman, Howard Scott again :-), Peter J. Bogaards, Adaptive Path can you tell that I don’t know many bloggers… finally 37 signals

Jonathan

*sigh* Always a sucker for the latest web trends, Vincent Thome has tagged me so now I have to post five things about myself on the blog or else suffer a fate worse than death - something like that anyway.

So, here goes…

1) The only bones I’ve ever broken in my body are a rib, and my nose, both of which were done at exactly the same point in time.

2) I am a terrible drunk, and under no circumstances should I generally be allowed to drink to excess - it just makes me mental

3) I once met Mr. T in Liverpool where he was playing the Genie in Aladdin in a pantomime.  He is very short, and very wide.

4) I once saw a man die outside my student house in Liverpool.  He was an old man, and had a heart attack.  We watched as the ambulance people tried to revive him, but could not.  I have not seen anyone else dead.

5) I once spent the night in a police cell.  Blue rubber mattresses are not comfortable in any way, shape or form.

I now tag Jonathan, Gray, Suw, CC Chapman and Eric.

  Happy New Year!

A fresh start for 2007 as I begin my new role as Digital Manager at The Marketing Store, London.  I couldn’t let Jonathan grab a new job on his own now could I!

I’m working alongside Gray from www.adland.tv again and it should be a hell of a ride! 

So, to kick off we’ll start blogging again with a vengence on adventures as to be honest, we both let it slip a bit here in the last weeks of ‘06 (all those xmas parties you know!)  but we’re back!

Here’s wishing everyone a great 2007.

Howard

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