Little Red Riding Hood - RETOLD

What a wonderful project.

""The brief told us to do a classic ad to be printed in the magazine "Filter". The target group was swedes in ages 15–30 years. After some thinking and researching, we realized that a small ad in a small magazine wouldn´t do that much of a difference.""

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

The video takes you through the most memorable day in the life of Little Red Riding Hood and along the way, you learn all sorts of details. Like the air resistance experienced by a Volkswagen Type 2-61 Minibus at 43 MPH as measured by Volkswagen GmbH in 1955. Or the wildlife density of the Hundred Acre Wood, showing a surge in the rabbit population. Not to mention the nutrition facts of Grandma with a total caloric value of 10,000 kilocalories. :-)

Twitter integration into Google search results

Integration of the real time twits into Google search results in my view does three things;

1. gives a new reason for brands to not just be on Twitter but ensure they are monitoring conversation on Twitter, not just of the brand but of the entire eco-system.

2. it brings together the twittering "elite / few" to a searching "majority" and hence cannot be ignored.

3. has an amazing effect on the search engine optimization of any brand / site. In fact majority of 1st page search results seem to be from the social media space, with Twitter leading them all. And it is a lot faster.

Also there is a wonderful way of integrating twitter results specific to your google search into your results for every possible subject. Read here about Realtime Twitter Search Results on Google

Nice compilation of social media trends.

TrendsSpotting's 2010 Social Media Influencers - Trend Predictions in 140 Characters

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

Trends Review - Major trends in 2010 Online Video

2010 Video Influencers: Trend Predictions in 140 characters, by TrendsSpotting

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

Online Marketing trends for 2010 - liked the series.

2010 Online Marketing Influencers: Trend Predictions in 140 characters by Trendsspotting

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

A very comprehensive report on Mobile Trends.

2010 Mobile Influencers: Trend Predictions in 140 Characters, By TrendsSpotting

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

Woo Rank - a good tool

I quite liked this tool. It is awfully simple, quick and gives enough 1st level information on the websites and points out the simple (and in some cases big) mistakes. Check it out.

My A to Z list of digital tools. (ABC)

This is a list which I have complied after a request from a few friends, who wanted to be more effective with their own online presence. A to Z listing of online tools is a compilation of tools which can assist you in being in better control of your digital marketing effort. These are effective, insightful, very useful and have been tested extensively. Together they can provide a very comprehensive ability to manage digital marketing – and you would notice that a lot of them are free. These are my personal favourites and not in any specific order;

A.

This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords.

B.

This tool helps in visualizing and analyzing the customers' search sequences.

C.

This tool helps test & improve a website performance. It calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time.

Read about more tools on my A to Z list of digital tools. Click here.

Brower Capatibility Testing

In my recent talk with Rajesh Ghatge on the effectiveness of the online marketing programs, we discussed at length adherence (or lack of it) to the basic logic of pre-testing campaigns across browsers platforms before their deployment. The logic is very simple; however, it is often overlooked due to over dependency on IE as the default browser. Most marketers tend to disregard the campaign effectiveness on other browsers, due to their own usage patterns.

After our chat, I did spend a little time on looking at the back-end of my own blog (The BTL Life) to try and test the logic and was quite taken aback by the browser mix. This pie chart shows the distribution of the browsers used to visit this blog.

I was expecting a higher IE% (and not because I am an IE user), however, the site stats got collaborated by other 3^rd party browser stats, which are pointing towards a significant increase in the Fx users (42%) and now a 3% now on Chrome. Read more about Browser Stats here.

Pre-deployment testing across all browsers formats is now more critical than ever. It is basic yet critical. Also not to be overlooked are campaign’s compatibility / effectiveness on parameters like Java scripts versions, monitor resolution and colour depth – all these can make your great campaign look rather silly on certain machines. While global averages may not always be relevant to every online deployment as different campaigns would attract different audiences (and hence hardware and software type), however, it is important to address all browser formats and ensure cross-browser compliance. Thanks to a number of tools and sites, this is easy to ensure. One could use sites like www.browsershots.com which report on site compatibility across browsers.

1010-asia.com - a peep into the Digital Wonderland

OK, the site is live now. No more videos to look at, but it's time to explore the wonderland and of course its alter ego, the real land.

The trip, will remind you of the Alice in Wonderland, but thats what we as an agency are doing. We are evolving, discovering, learning and playing in the digital space.

www.1010-asia.com is a unique digital adaptation of self discovery and has been inspired by the famous fable Alice in Wonderland. It is a fantasy trail that allows one to wander down the Rabbit Hole, explore the hidden facts and unravel the myths underneath. Treated through animated characters, the portal demonstrates the agency’s strong combination of creative and strategic capabilities and expertise in an unanticipated manner.

The new site, corporate identity and the logo created by in-house power idea creators. The logo is symbolic of the aggregated thoughts that transform to leverage peoples’ passion for great ideas.

While in wonderland, do remember to attend the beer party! Over to the wonderland.

Await your reactions.

What an exciting day !

Two good things have happened to us today.

The first is the much awaited FIPB clearance. The clearance has meant that we can now go ahead and complete the pending issues on the merger of 141 Worldwide and Sercon. The duration of the delay has had its heart burn, but thankfully no missed opportunities. Now with the merger suspense behind us, all of us at the agency can go ahead and concentrate on things which we like to do best – get our brands to win in the market place. Do look out for updates on www.141sercon.com

The second big development is our readiness to launch 1010, our comprehensive digital initiative. While I will do a detailed post on space we intend to occupy, our point of view, our philosophy and our approach in the next couple of days, I want to invite you for a sneak preview (and don’t tell anyone ) to our beta site.

The link for the beta version of the site is given below for your preview. However, do keep in mind that the polishing for the sheen is still on. We will officially launch 1010 on Tuesday, 4^th of Sept.

Do enjoy your time in the wonderland and the real land: www.1010-asia.com/beta

Yes, I am hooked to Stumble!

I don’t seem to get enough of it and am hooked, have been speaking about it at every opportunity I get and to everyone. Do you still spend time searching for good content sites on the web? Have you never used StumbleUpon ? You must. It does not matter whether you are a casual browser, heavy user or a webmaster – there is good reason to move to stumble.

As a user you can modify the “stumbling” by your interest area and you will get highly relevant content that matches your preferences. As a site owner or webmaster, one gets substantial and steady traffic. My blog and sites have seen a steady increase in traffic from StumbleUpon and probably the best and most targeted traffic I have ever seen.

StumbleUpon, is easy to install and trust me, you will be hooked as well.

From a webmaster or site owners’ perspective reasons to take Stumble more seriously include :

New visitors; StumbleUpon traffic means tons of new visitors, visitors that are really interested in your subject / content / topic not just any visitors. Further more the visitors tend to rate your content and get more visitors on your site.

Most pages/visit: This analytics is about the level of interest that the visitors have in your content. Due to the nature of visitors, the interest levels are high and hence the page views as well. Visitors stay longer on your site.

Extremely low bounce rate; The user traffic’s bounce rate (use a tool like the Google Analytics to find out more) is the number of people who land on your page and leave instantly (maybe because they did not really want to come to your page). While this trend is very high from traffic sources like Google & Yahoo, the bounce rates from Stumble are extremely low.

International traffic; You will get subject interested visitors from across the globe. For me it has meant that I have been able to exchange my views visitors from countries in Africa & Latin America besides the normal traffic areas.

Instant traffic; Unlike long wait which you need to put in on engines like Google and Yahoo and the complexities of Page Ranks etc, Stumble gives you instant results.

So go ahead and download the tool bar, and happy stumbling. And while you are at it, give my blog a thumbs-up as well J

Another viral campaign - with a brand association.

Here’s another example of a interesting viral campaign, Staedtler (the writing instruments maker) wants more and more people to write snail mail letters (or just write – instead of keying it all in), so much so they agreed to send 10,000 physical letters to users who submit their details on the Take Note site. You can even sign up to receive a letter from a stranger. Can’t recall when was the last time I received or send a hand written letter (as would be the case with most other folks) so this should be interesting for most people, especially the younger TG, who have probably never received a hand written letter.

While I really enjoyed the humor in the notes (good copy writers within the agency, I guess), I wonder why not extend the proposition to make this a worldwide property, Staedtler is afterall a worldwide brand. My view is that an international campaign would have increased the viral potential multifold.