My trusty iPhone tells me that we are on our way to having a nice streak of warm weather. That means the sun is shining and New Yorkers have reason again to pull out their favorite sunglasses as they hit the streets, parks and outdoor restaurants.
Maison Martin Margiela, Mykita, shades, sunglasses
Last week Google announced an exciting new update to their mobile offering where participating retailers like Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm with listings in Google’s Product Search can not only indicate their proximity to users who are searching for them on their smart phone devices and list available items, but can also specify whether or not an item is in stock and at which location. Just look for the blue dot and click on the “In stock nearby” link, and you will be taken to the seller’s page, where you’ll see whether the item is “In Stock” or has “Limited Availability” near you.
Google is also accepting retailers interested in participating.
via freshome
As part of a new advertising campaign IKEA has furnished four different metro stations in Paris.
This is an excellent initiative in building brand awareness; an even better expression of consumer trust.
The question is – would such a campaign survive in New York City subways?
As one of my co-workers pointed out earlier last week, the SXSW Interactive convention is currently going on in Austin, Texas. From the remarks that I have read on Twitter and the blogosphere is seems the overall conference has been somewhat of a let down, with a few sparks of excitement on the side of Localization applications and quality speakers like Danah Boyd.
Danah Boyd, Google Buzz, Privacy, Publicity, SXSWi
With the Olympics now behind us, brands have moved to the next biggest sporting event coming our way. No it is no March Madness, though in America it could be, what I am talking about is a sport that is people around the world enjoy playing. That sport is soccer or football and the tournament is the World Cup. This year is South Africa, millions of fans around the world are counting down the days to the first whistle.
Visa one of the Olympics biggest sponsors has began running their World Cup ads in Europe. The ad begins with a large English fan running his way to South Africa, going through multiple major cities and loosing weight along the way, until finally scoring the winning goal. The overall presentation is nothing short of amazing – enjoy.
Commercial, Visa, World Cup 2010
There was a recent American Apparel campaign we’d love to share on here but can’t—take a wild guess why….
Moving away, briefly, from their cutting edge, risqué, not appropriate for work, basically rated-R advertising campaigns American Apparel hooked up with LookBook and asked the members of the site to submit styles that featured American Apparel clothing.
AA then created a CLEAN 64-page book with over hundreds of different looks. The LookBook can be found here or in stores….great job crowdsourcing
The Google Apps Marketplace is now open for businesses looking to streamline software and business application procurement and usage. The Apps Marketplace offers businesses all the benefits of cloud-computing, eliminating the time, money and hassle often associated with running business applications from various companies with various passwords and interfaces. “From accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management”, the Apps Marketplace offers a diverse array of solutions for purchasers and users of integrated business applications.
Google, Google Apps Marketplace
Just in time for Census 2010, Google has launched their Public Data Explorer into Google Labs. An evolving snapshot of their “Public Data” search feature released last year, (which pulls data from various local/national/international government agencies, non-profits, and other providers of public data, including the World Bank), PDE is considered an “experimental visualization tool” that details some of the most popular searches for statistical public data conducted on Google.
PDE is designed to help people comprehend data and statistics through animated visualizations with customizable, creatable mash ups using graphs, maps and bubble charts. Powered by Trendalyzer technology acquired by Google from the Gapminder Foundation, these data renderings even come to life at the click of a mouse button as users can watch (below) New York’s unemployment rate shrink while California’s grows red hot.
I have to say, it’s pretty freakin cool to play around with too.
Google, Public Data Explorer, Statistics
The Guardian.uk.co yesterday reported that Microsoft soon plans to unveil its multimillion-pound advertising attack on rival Google in the United Kingdom.
The three TV ads, similar to those which ran in the US last year and created by agency JWT, are set to launch Wednesday, 3/10, and run intermittently for three months under the same tag-name “Bing and Decide”. TV ads will be supported by digital advertising across the Microsoft network as well as social media outlets and other web properties.
Microsoft’s efforts intend to bite into Google’s near 90% share of search market traffic.
A Media 101 video has been making its rounds throughout the internet. Like other memes, the true origins of this video are unclear.
What IS apparent is that it was created by someone on the publisher side of the media space.
The tone of the video also suggests that agency – side media planners are incompetent and not very coherent. Take a look. It’s worth a laugh or two.