Posts from — January 2010

The term includes everything from that dopey Redbull car trolling around every college party to professional athletes with target stickers slapped on their helmets. The problem is that consumers are becoming increasingly aware that they’re being pitched to; which makes most ads less affective. So what is a young marketer to do?

Well more corporation are simply creating their very own content (or investing in others) to get their product out there and in your face seamlessly.  Spending 2 minutes on Creative-online can easily turn to 20 with it’s inspiring youtubelike content. The newest film by “Where the Wild Things Are” director Spike Jones is already stirring up interest after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Its a quirky love story that follows the lives of two Robots and the shenanigans that involve Robo-love making. Oh and did I mention the entire thing is a gigantic commercial for Absolut? Yeah, running with the “In an Absolut world” tagline the entire movie is just the tip of the large newly defined category of “Branded Content.”

Just kidding, but Stockholm Pride did work with Akestom Holst on  several online apps to promote the upcoming festival with a campaigned creatively called “Hetero.” Creative-online summed the “Hetero” campaign up perfectly, “the campaign focuses on how heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of homosexuals, bisexuals and transpersons, and consequently, society as a whole.”

Got a couple seconds to spare?

Their newest campaign scans your Facebook friends to to see how hetero they are and uses the average to rate your profile. (If you have a TON of friends get ready because it takes a while.)

Feel free to judge yourself and your friends, my personal favorite was the app that scans facebook tweets

Scan your tweets to see how “Hetero” they are

Sick of your boyfriend listening to more Britney then you do? Scan his playlist and call him out.

A website dedicated to scanning your facebook photos and comparing it against the “Hetero” norm

Cute, viral, and an excellent use of social networking sites. Two politically correct thumbs up for Akestom Holst

Everyone remembers the laughable response Conde Naste magazine’s, GQ, received after they announced they would be selling their December “Man of the Year” issue as an iphone application for $2.99. How in the world can the glossy detail of a full magazine be expressed on a screen barely larger then a deck of cards? Well, apparently the $2.99 app sold 6,641 times and the January issue has sold almost twice as many times with over 12,000 downloads. Adage reports that the total sales of $60,000 is only a small drop in the bucket but advertisers and industry analysts are excited to see such a positive response on what was thought to be a doomed effort.

Hopefully such promising news will boost confidence in other online media adventures. The rumored apple “islate/ipad” has had Warner, Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corp and any other news publication scrambling to beef up their graphics department. They’ve all joined forces to push into the rapidly growing field of online magazines and from the demo’s floating about online it looks pretty exciting.

The I-slate is supposedly being announced January 27th. Who knows what new advertising opportunities will present themselves in this emerging online platform?