1 – Alton Towers
2 – O2 Arena
3 – Emirates Stadium
4 – Old Trafford
5 – London Eye
6 – Trafalgar Square
7 – Tate Modern
8 – Leicester Square
9 – Buckingham Palace
10 – City of Manchester Stadium

You can see the full dynamic list of the top 50 on:  Visit Britain’s Facebook page

Retrieved 17th November 2010 (stolen from @dancall1)

Here is the happy day

Turns out he is not the only one in Japan with a virtual girlfriend and they even have a holiday package which the happy couples can take up!!!

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/07/go-on-holidays-with-konamis-virtual-girlfriends/

Is this a fine example of future technological advances? A case study of how brands can push the boundaries of emotional connection with their audience?

The AI within this DS programme becomes more intuitive and begins to adapt to behaviour, it recognises your voice and can play games with you.

It probably doesn’t mention on the box how she gets more demanding and complacent for you to one day return home from a hard days work and find her in bed with your Wii – SLUT BITCH!!!

This is a computer game and piece of technology which seems to invoke one of the mankind’s strongest emotions – Love.

At first this seems bizarre - developing so much commitment and passion towards a non-existent being… but hang on, how strange is that concept? And haven’t we seen this kind of thing before?

http://elections.foursquare.com/

(if you are one of the people who has been left wondering “what the fuck has Obama done?” – this site might help)

What I really like about this is how they are showing the real time check ins and you can recap what happened through out the day – peak voting times etc.

what I realy really really like about this is how you suddenly end up with a demographic out of it:

A decent size sample of the Foursquare* users – 19,270 checked in to this (and growing) showing it’s 60% male (currently).

Whilst on the subject of numbers and the internet – this bad boy below runs through the size of the internet. (click it and bask in it’s full splendour)

This made me think:

• How many Terabytes have I used up in my brain!?
• If Facebook becomes bigger than China, will China blow it up or will Facebook get its own army?!
• YouTubes biggest accomplishment so far is Justin Bieber… You complete bag of C*&£s
• What were we doing before we had statuses to update? Is there any correlation between the crippled economy and these distracting status updates!?
• Is the internet all a bit of fad we will grow out of?! Like shoulder pads in the 80’s?! (HA!)

*if you don’t know, get to know – location, location, location… (and games)

I like this, it doesn’t feel like they have tried to cling on to the previous concept to much, but extended it in a way that works. As if they had it planned all along. Maybe they did, who knows?!… oh yeah, them – Fallon.

@sandoz “This new Gap logo is total marketing genius. It’s everywhere. Which company designed it? #gap”

It turns out I use the term ‘news’ rather lightly, soon realising it is more high horse criticism or design world disbelief that the simplistic blue block had been… CHANGED!?!?… Not only changed but they have used Helvetica (OMG, WTF how dare they)

As an ex-employee of the establishment in question, where I operated as Stockroom Specialist (look at me now Mummy) I was quite surprised and intrigued by this action. I felt it necessary to share the story so far, and I think it will be interesting to see how this pans out. It will no doubt end up becoming a case study for something – the power of social media (again), bad branding, back pedalling, horrific logo design, PR disasters, crowd sourcing, live feedback etc.

Here is the change:

Below is the back pedalling Facebook status where they seem to be considering a crowd sourced approach to correct what has been perceived as an anal wart set to latch itself to the pert buttocks of the worlds high streets.

Interestingly (yes, INTERESTING!) – This one update has 376 comments and 348 likes (at the time of writing), compared to all previous comments over the last few months which muster a measly 40-50 comments each. I for one would like to see the figures on how many fans and followers this uproar and buzz has generated over this last couple of days.

Possibly the most entertaining part of this is the appearance of a GapLogo twitter account. Looking back over the last 2 days’ worth of tweets, it’s a somewhat active, sarcastic, mildly abusive account.

Here is a good article from Fastcodesign with more information about what’s been going on in this socially fuelled explosion.  Plus, the crowd sourcing has begun with plenty of examples being submitted on ISO50.

Please do feel free to post your opinions below if you give a shit in any way shape or form – love it, hate, over-hyped, good reaction, bad reaction – do share.

Personally, I don’t really like it that much but the amount of buzz shows that people give a fuck and notice what Gap is doing, which must be an awkwardly good feeling for them. A somewhat expensive hug maybe. However, what will it do to sales?!

*Currently GAP US only looking at the websites.

A good idea is a good idea which can be rehashed through the ages to withstand the test of time. Simple ideas, executed correctly can change the way we present content and interact with the fickle nature of our ever evolving customers.

My first memorable experience of ‘computing’ was at the tender age of six in Mrs Taverners class at  West Town Primary School. The excitement surrounding the possibility of “making PODD pop” (he did other things too) on the futuristic looking BBC Computer System was enough to spark a pre-teen riot as a grapple for the keyboard ensued. Of course, such a treat was only to be rolled out on special occasions and operated under the strictest of corduroy slack wearing supervision.

This was a time well before Twitter, Facebook and even porn. Floppy discs were actually floppy, and the opportunity to witness a minimalistic swollen red scrotum explode in a fit of sexual tension was certainly not one to be missed.

An illustration of an astoundingly simple concept which captivated a school full of children, far more than any lesson on the Ancient Greeks, field trip to a Mosque, or the stunning Canadian supply teacher ever could.

Skip forward 20 something years and command based games have evolved. The concept has moved into marketing with similar branded spin-off versions of the classic game, such as the Burger King – subservient chicken. More recently Tippex produced a branded YouTube Channel takeover – TippExperience – which no doubt many an agile, creative mind lent their expertise towards producing – the fact that none of them thought “hang on who the fuck uses Tipex in This day and age” is a moot point.

*TANGENT* When was the last time you hand wrote something that actually justified the use of Tippex? Hang on, in-fact, when was the last time you wrote something by hand that wasn’t notes from a meeting? Probably a birthday card right? Well you can go and take a trip to Allied Carpets, roll yourself up in one, and jump of a fucking bridge  if you get my name wrong and need to Tippex it out in my birthday card…

Moving swiftly on, another incarnation or perhaps the evolutionary pinnacle of this interactive viral content – THE most manly man of all men (no, not me), The Old Spice Guy (OSG)- not only jumped on the band wagon but smashed its back doors in in the process. He took the concept and gave it the seeing to of its life – another level of interaction, a step-change, a paradigm shift. The execution, quite simply is this; you submit a question which the OSG then answers in an amusing and of course MANLY way through the medium of YouTube. “Jesus Titty fucking Christ – a personalised, bespoke response to my question from the Old Spice Guy” could be heard (or seen) echoing across the social networks. A buzz generating phenomenon illustrated perfectly by the results in this case study.

This evolution would indicate the start of a new form of brand engagement – The Real Time Viral – with more and more adaptations and variances of the theme popping up around the internet. Just this week I spotted Orange switching up their previously simple ‘The Feed‘ blog. This had been used previously to push Orange branded content (articles, film trailers, competitions) to those who may coincidently stumble upon it. Now, they are creating Response Driven Interactive Social Content (I made that up – it would be called RDISC if a GP or gynecologist broke the discovery to you).

ANYWAY, using the same platform, Orange this week launched what looks set to be the first in a catalogue of genuinely interactive treats: The Singing Tweetagrams. You tweet with a #tag and if you’re lucky, and of course entertaining enough, the Rockabellas will record it in song format and post it back to you within 48 hrs. Awesome! Better than sex!. Note: all tweets are acknowledged even if they are not recorded. Here is one I did, my mate had a new job – it was the best I could muster up in a hope of some self gratifying recognition. The success of the idea from a marketing perspective comes from your tweet being directed at someone, thus spreading the awareness, generating a viral buzz – sharing is caring and so on..

The evolution is evident, the production of short stories and videos with a loose relevance to the Orange brand activity, has now become a living, breathing, fun, shareable experience with an all important personal touch. I’m eagerly anticipating this revolution bridging the gap into the world of pornography.

The conclusion?… hmmmm, well…

Content is evolving – as are ideas and their execution, but usually it’s the simple and entertaining ones that are noticed and shared. Can we see more of this please?

Very nice deck, the author is perhaps a Rolling Stones fan? Really breaks down the role of content strategy.

A nice idea from WWF. Seemed a little local at first pulling it off in-store but I think it transfers well for ordering the t-shirt and doing it at home. T-shirt isnt all that bad.

Interesting presentation really breaking down the new smart customer and the customer journeys.