chroma

Lots to catch up on

Have been a bit busy (and fighting a cold), so posts have been light this week.

There are a lot of great articles and links kicking around though, so try to have a peek:

Web 2.0 hype reaches front cover of Newsweek
Cubic Dweller's Funniest Home Video
Hearst to provide mobile content for select mags
IHT: Let Everyone Have Ideas
Brand marketing and MySpace

Mix It

Customization on steroids: a new technology permits customizable beverages, paints, pharmaceuticals and personal care products at the press of a button, right on the bottle itself.

Tons of applications for this, as long as the price is reasonable.

(via MIT Adverlab)

Successful Brand Manager

Don't know if this new, but it's funny stuff from Strawberry Frog.

Breakup

This is the kind of story that makes new marketers ecstatic: 17 year old girl, 75 second video with (pretty cheesy) camera effects on You Tube, and, over 150,000 views.  It all adds up to a free viral video for Logitech. And unlike the iPod viral from last year (Steve Masters?), the Logitech camera was not even mentioned.

World Water Day

Yesterday was World Water Day, and Starbucks, through their Ethos Water brand, participated by launching a website to draw attention to the cause.  They organized walks in various cities, and, for those not able to physically attend, allowed participation as virtual walkers by signing up on the page. Nice touch. By adding code that could be copied and pasted onto weblogs and personal website, they also introduced a simple mechanism to help spread the word.

More than 1 billion people world wide – 20% of the planet’s entire human population – lack access to clean, safe drinking water. According to the United Nations, this world water crisis leads to the death of more than 4,500 children every day and is a leading cause of poverty, disease, and social instability world wide.

Learning Digitally

Professory Henry Jenkins is a leading thinker on new media and culture, and he's doing a great job pointing to the positive outcomes of the digital lifestyle for young people.

There are some great points in the article here, chief among them the notion that all that surfing, networking, producing, posting and sharing is arming kids with the kinds of tools that will be increasingly sought-after in a world that values team-work and knowledge-sharing. 

"A new paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), by Professor Henry Jenkins of MIT and the New Media Literacies project, contends that young online users are developing the skills, knowledge and self-confidence they need to fully participate in the world around them.

Citing teens' skillful use of all things digital, including instant messaging, Myspace.com & similar social networks, online free sample offers, 'zines', 'mashups', Wikipedia and onlibne games, Professor Jenkins said, "Social connectivity, creativity and learning take place through these various media-related experiences."

If the professor is correct, surfing may not be a mindless waste of time for young minds after all.

In fact, comparing new media with old, he contrasted passive media consumption (essentially the slug on the couch) with the more interactive pursuits that characterize digital culture, which has "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing and members feel their contributions matter."

(Interesting to see the gender difference, as well in the above graphic)

 

Fanisodes

(via Modern Marketing)

A neat twist on consumer-generated content (or whatever you choose to call it): a collaborative, viewer-driven program put together by  Fan Lib, where fans of the show (The L-Word in this case) contribute show ideas, and voting determines the winning entries.  With major sponsors like W Hotels and Saks behind this open-source initiative, commercial-free network Showtime has discovered an innovative way to harness fan's passion, and the brands have a great sponsorship role

Business Week writing on Fan Lib:

FanLib will bring fan fiction from obscure corners of the Web into the light -- a very postmodern form of mainstream entertainment in which a show's content, its fans, and its marketing intertwine. FanLib, based in West Hollywood, Calif., is running a complex online script-writing contest for fans of Showtime's soapy and sapphic The L Word -- its first effort for a TV series. To cite a sitcom cliché, it's a crazy idea, but it just might work.

THE L WORD CONTEST, which assembles a full script scene by scene, began in late January and lasts through March. The show's real (paid) writers outline a scene and give guidance. Fans have about a week per scene to submit offerings, peruse others', and vote. One grand prize winner gets a script-writing session with L Word creator Ilene Chaiken and a $2,000 credit at Saks Fifth Avenue (SKS ), which, along with LendingTree and W Las Vegas, sponsors the competition.

Engaging Definition

Why not? We'll join the legions of weblogs poking fun at the ridiculousness that is the Advertising Research Foundation's definition of "engagement":

“Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.”

Come again?

Boomer Binge

Constant marketing attention is directed at teens and millenials, but Andrew Zolli, writing in Fast Company magazine draws attention to the enormous demographic changes looming on the horizon. Massive shifts in the composition of age, race, gender and population patterns will have huge implications for culture, education and business. Here's a peek at the "Boomer Binge" we're headed for:

Starting in the next decade, however, our flabby pyramid is quickly going to slim down. It will assume the form of an hourglass, with the largest number of older people in our society's history, the quasi-retired baby boomers, up top, and the largest generation of young people since the boomers--the millennials, or echo boomers--at the bottom. The beleaguered generation-Xers will form the "pinched waist" in the middle.

(read more)

Video iPod Film Festival

(via Brand Noise)

Budding independent film makers can take a shot at the world's first iPod Video Film Festival at flux.tv.  You have to set up a free account to view the submissions, and it's worth it to see what is being done for the tiny screen.
Categories include Music Video, Indie Film and Student Film.

(Hey, we just reached 500 posts here at Chroma, but it's too early in the morning for champagne!)