I’m going to jump on the band wagon and write a post about the X Factor. You can’t escape it these days. Every newspaper, even the highest of brow, has either a dedicated columnist or daily/weekly editorial – even the Irish Times!  

You search it in google and there are 57.5 million links! On twitter, there is a new comment every mille second. Every time I log into facebook, some one has updated their status with a new X factor related comment… (and I log on pretty often).

Winter is in the air, and X factor has started to permeate our lives, (even more than last year). All across the UK and Ireland, it is conversation spinner genius. Yay, we don’t have to talk about the weather, or the depressing state of the economy, or the Lisbon Treaty, or the way the Christmas advertising has started too early this year. It is escapism and excitement at its very best.

Now on to what I really want to talk about – John and Edward (aka Jedward). What a pair. Originally, I was disgusted. How embarrassing are these guys? What are they doing for the image of Ireland and its people? What with Louis Walsh and these high haired clowns, the population of the UK must think we are a pack of feckin eejits.

Then on Saturday night, my mind changed. I started to like them. I cried with laughter for the full 3 minutes of their rendition of Britney Spears ‘Oops I did it Again.’ I’m not the type of person who votes for these kind of things, but if the option was there, I’m pretty sure I would show my support for them. There is no sob story, they are rubbish singers, but god are they pure comedy to watch.  

And now, the Grafton Barber Chain is inundated with requests for the ‘Jedward’ a sky-high platinum blond hairstyle. Read about it here! It’s the ‘Rachel’ for men. I can’t believe it.

The X Factor is the high point of my Winter  – talkability factor 10 out of 10. If you want to create your own ‘Jedward’ click on Edwards pre-do photo….Halloween costume idea?

Vanessa

On the 17th March 2008, it was a special St. Paddy’s Day in JHB. Anyone who was driving in the stubborn traffic on JHB’s busy highways saw a strange and startling object hanging from a crane. It was St Paddy’s Day and Guinness was ready to celebrate. A large steel structure shaped like a Guinness draught and filled with black and white balloons, was developed and hung over one of the busiest intersections in the country. This is a simple but truly innovative idea that creates a great deal of talkability for a brand! Seeing is believing so check out the photos:

Towards the end of 2008, Posterscope developed a simple but effective idea for Santam. The brief from DraftFCB was to create a campaign for Santam that allowed them to interact with their consumers and drive traffic to the website. The media concept was to install “Think Big” units depicting people’s wildest dreams in malls across South Africa. People visiting the malls got the opportunity to take photos of them being astronauts, scuba divers, celebrities, sports heroes and extreme sports men. These “Think Big” units allowed people to do the impossible! Santam promoters were there to faciliate the experience and take photos to upload onto the website.

The campaign was increibly successful for Santam as over 15 000 photographs were uploaded onto the website driving thousands of people to the website.

viZoo, a company that describes itself as “media with edge” is breaking the boundaries of what is normal. One of their new media offerings is called Free format. Free Format is a  free-floating hologram which looks absolutely true to life. By combining tried and tested technology with a radical new way of thinking, viZoo has developed a patented solution that is now available for mass marketing. Created by projecting a specially produced film onto a see-through screen, the results are incredibly realistic, despite being an illusion. The film merges with the foreground and background to create an illusion in a real-life setting. This innovative new format is being used by many brands overseas but is on the way in South Africa, through the company Imajinn. 

Check out the videos here:

• The concept of Free Format
• Showing how it works through dance moves
• Diesel Fashion Show
• Vodafone
• Toyota
• Adidas
• Sony Ericsson

This is one way to get your brand talked about!

The business hub of JHB will be transformed in the next few months with the introduction of the Sandton Eye LED Spectacular . The Sandton Eye is the first digital broadcast platform in South Africa with incredible reach and impact. It  will be an established landmark by the time the FIFA 2010 World Cup commences and the Gautrain will be operating at full steam.

The area will also have the Bus Rapid Transit stations along Rivonia Road and West Street. Projected figures for the Gautrain are 120 000 people per day, of which 80 000 passengers will pass through the Sandton station.

Dimensions of the LED spectacular:

• Main Screen: 14m (h) x 10m (w)
• Side Screens: two on each side: 1.5m (h) x 35m (w) each.
• The screen will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Each of the top tier advertisers will be granted exclusivity and their adverts will appear on the screen every 2 minutes, 720 times a day. 

The Sandton Eye LED Spectacular is a new and exciting medium that is taking digital out-of-home (DOOH) to the next level

For more information on, please email kyle@posterscopesa.co.za

Last year, Levi’s launched their new range of jeans in a bold Out-of-Home way. In Cape Town, large walls in the CBD were utilized for a large scale laser projection of the 501 Levi’s jeans. Crowds gathered on the street when a break dancer and graffiti artist appeared on the wall from a projector and began to spray paint the words, “Live Unbuttoned.” A laser outlined the words and created shapes. Seeing is believing, so check out the video here:

An exciting and fresh idea for Levi’s that engages with the target market!

1. FLEXIBILITY: Digital OOH is an incredibly flexible medium as brands can choose specific slots, times, locations and people to target. Brands can pin point exact times of day that they want their message to reach the public. For example: An alcohol brand might want to just advertise in certain pubs from Thursday to Saturday to reach the consumers at point of purchase.

2. FAST COPY CHANGES: This medium is digital, therefore is presented in an electronic format. This allows for quick and easy changes in the message. From financial information changing every few minutes to new brand specials being broadcast every day.

3. REACHES THE UNREACHABLE: Digital can now reach the notoriously hard to reach consumer by engaging with them and offering them something completely different and unique.

4.INTERACTIVITY: Allowing consumers to interact rather than passively consume a brand’s message, takes the consumer to level where they are getting involved with a brand and truly experiencing it. Sony Ericsson did this in the UK, where they allowed people to upload photo’s of themselves onto screens in train stations.

5.THE NEW AND EXCITING: When a brand steps into the digital realm, it is taking  a step into a medium that is new and fresh. It allows brands to explore areas that they never knew existed. Today’s society is jaded and closed off. Allowing the consumer to explore digital excites and GETS PEOPLE TALKING!

What did we used to do before the Search Engines? The answer is: Offine Search. Mister Three Sixty is saying that Search isn’t in itself very new. But it is a useful metaphor for thinking about word-of-mouth campaigns.

Needing a new car? Looking for a holiday destination? Deciding on a school for the kids?  Long before they typed a term into Google, people asked their friends and family. They were particularly interested in anyone with highly relevant information or experiences to learn from. One thing you can say about people is that they are damn good at imitating each other.

Then, as now, the searcher would often hear the same names repeated again and again. It was an old-fangled version of the Page Rank. Humans  are herd animals and they all tend to talk about the same things at the same time. Witness the sudden explosion in popularity of Twitter below. 

Search Volumes for Twitter on Google

But Mister Three Sixty hears you cry; what does this mean for people working in Marketing Communications? Two clear implications. First, whatever discipline you are working in, you need to make your communications so memorable that when someone asks for a recommendation, your brand pops-up top of the list. Second, go for fame. However good your creative idea, if people don’t end-up talking about it, it won’t be driving successful ’searches’ for your brand – so make sure it’s talkable if you want word-of-mouth. Chris Anderson tells a great story here about using King Gillette driving offline search for razors.

If your brand is top-of-mind (think page rank), then you’ve got attention (think traffic) and you can start to monetize it (think Google’s ads).  There’s much more to be said on this says Mister Three Sixty, but that’s quite enough for now…

Here’s another amazingly simple, bizarrely brilliant, belly-laugh inducing, advert from the Natural Confectionery Company . . .

Introducing Raphael The Bear – Yeah, deep down he’s still a bear; an animal born to raise hell, so watch out dinosaurs . . .

Here’s a brilliantly surreal advert from the Natural Confectionery Company in which two of their sweets chat amongst themselves. Not only did it get me laughing, but it got me thinking about how surreal adverts are becoming. It’s becoming less about product or brand exposure and more about talkability media – the effect it has on the viewing public in terms of how many people talk about the ad and tell friends about it.

Another example is the, now almost cult, advert from Cadbury’s; the Drumming Gorilla!

Anyway, watch the video below and BRING ON THE TRUMPETS!

Almanaque de Criação aparece no talkability, o blog da agência de marketing promocional Bullet.