(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
In the boycott against Danish products, muslims in Saudi Arabia - and possibly other countries - have launched a viral anti-marketing campaign using SMS. The SMS contains information on how to determine whether a product is Danish by looking at the first two digits of its barcode (the country code for Denmark is 57).
In response to the boycott, member of the Danish parliament, Louise Frevert tried to catalyze a counter SMS campaign, which encouraged Danes to boycott muslim owned stores. The campaign was a total failure and has been ridiculed by all sides in Denmark - including her own right-wing party.
Related: Mediamatic runs a mini-feature on the cartoon subject. They give credit to the blogger who discovered that a delegation of Danish imams where circulating a phony Mohammed drawing during a visit to the Middle-East. You can also find a 'stay out of trouble' guide for the ignorant cartoonist.
Inspired by the current pixel advertising craze, two students at the International Film School in Wales are asking people to donate money to fund their first feature movie.
In return, those who donate £3 or more will receive a screen credit as executive producer.
The students aim at raising a million dollars by involving thousands of sponsors. And while they are at it, they also hope to get in the book of Guinness World Records for the movie with the longest list of credits.
• www.themilliondollarmovieproject.com
The 2006 edition of the Play Award design contest is devoted to football (or 'soccer' as it is called in the US).
Football hasn't changed much over the past century but now Play Award calls for young designers to rethink, challenge and innovate the elements of the game, such as: the rules of play, the stadiums, the teams, the balls, the turfs etc.
PLAY-AWARD is an initiative of NIKE Germany and the Berlin based design festival DESIGNMAI.
PS. As inspiration or critical context, you might be interested in Friedrich von Borries' book Who is Afraid of Niketown? in which he analyses Nike's marketing strategies with a focus on how they target local sub-cultures and urban space.
Madonna.com has launched a tagging project with the objective to build the largest photo archive ever devoted to a single subject: Madonna.
Fans are encouraged to submit any sort of Madonna-related photographic material, such as scans of concert tickets, autographs, drawings and photos.
Curiously - when googling the project for more info - it turns out that a similar project with the same title also exists at Flickr.com.
So, did someone clone someone else's idea? Or has Madonna simply discovered the possibilities of social software and created herself a strategic Flickr account?
• www.madonna.com/taggingproject.html
• www.flickr.com/groups/taggingmadonna
Why is Rocketboom.com such a popular vlog? Probably because it feels like...TV.
In case you missed it, Rocketboom is a three minute daily videoblog that features a mélange of satire, news and techno-culture. Unlike most other videoblogs, it is very well produced and each show, or 'entry', takes around 4 hours to make.
Rocketboom is based in New York City and the show is produced + directed by Andrew Baron and hosted + co-written by Amanda Congdon. Besides being fun, interesting and sometimes inspiring, it is compatible with a variety of media players so, there's little excuse for not watching the show.
Posted by Sebastian on Jul 09, 2005
First Pullover is a newly started blog, run by Richard Kuchinsky who works as a product manager at the footwear dept. of the Danish sports brand Hummel.
Besides offering interesting inside info on the design and production aspects of footwear, with a strong focus on Hummel and its core values, the site serves as a good example of the strategic potential of corporate blogging (child labour? not at Hummel!)
Google Will Eat Itself - GWEI -by Hans Bernhard (ubermorgen.com) and Alessandro Ludovico (neural.it) is a subversive web project, which aims to buy Google with funds generated via Adsense - Google's own advertising program.
GWEI.com is designed to look like a serious website about web marketing and business but like so many other websites, the real objective is to hijack hits from people searching for information and subsequently lure them into clicking the ads.
Each time someone clicks one of the Google text-ads, GWEI receives a micropayment, which will be invested in Google shares. In other words: Google will slowly be bought via its own advertisement-system!
The project is a critique of Google's growing monopoly of information. The long term plan is to take over Google and turn the ownership over to a GTTP-community - Google To The People!
• www.gwei.org and more info at hansbernhard.com
Inspired by the recent bodyadvertising craze (the concept of auctioning advertising space on your body to the highest bidder) Floyd Hayes - a Brooklyn resident - came up with a new ad-dimension called 'voicevertising'.
Floyd Hayes put his voice up for sale on eBay, promising to shout out a brand name as loud as possible every fifteen minutes for an entire week, no matter what location or situation.
Quite fittingly, the highest bidder turned out to be 'HALLS Fruit and Breezers' - a company selling throat drops.
Guaraná Power is an energy soft drink produced by farmers in the Brazilian Amazon in collaboration with the Danish art group Superflex.
The collaboration was formed in response to the activities of multinational corporations whose monopoly like position has driven the price of the guaraná berries down 80%, thus wrecking the local economy.
To develop a suitable counter-strategy, Superflex organized a workshop with the local farmers who decided to create their own product - Guaraná Power.
The energy boosting soft drink is now being served at a variety of bars and cafés in Denmark, where Superflex is also running the 'Guaraná Power Mobile Bar'. The activities in the bar vary from music events to film screenings.
Info is available at the Guarana Power website and while you are there, don't miss the campaign videos!
SN Brussels Airlines has launched a viral campaign that effectively combines movie, web and user interaction.
The campaign, which is called Passion Film, allows you to integrate a personal text message into a movie ad and thus, to twist its plot.
In the ad, you see SN airline service personnel recieve an important phone call to one of its passengers (the call is from you). Unfortunately, the passenger has already boarded and the plane is on the runway about to take off. However, with a bit of imagination and bird-like group organization, the friendly personnel manages to get your message through to crew and passengers.
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Contact: Sebastian Campion