Britain's Got Talent is back on air and a new video has started to spread across the web - but this time it's not Susan Boyle, it's Heineken's 'Men With Talent.'
Heineken 'Men With Talent'
The Heineken film starts off with 4 women watching 'Top Models Singing On Ice' before the men take over.......
Topical and suitably silly, Heineken's Men With Talent is a nice follow up to some of the previous viral hits like the walkin' fridge series and the Real Madrid vs AC Milan stunt.
IKEA's contribution to the US Presidential election was building a mock up of the Oval Office. For the UK election IKEA have just launched a kitchen site that shows what the leaders kitchen layouts could look like!
The IKEA election site is called Domestic Policy from IKEA and highlights election kitchen designs inspired by our would be PMs (with items tagged with tongue in cheek / relevant descriptions.)
Brün is 'durable and for the economically conscious':
IKEA Brün election kitchen showing 'Meedjaunite - enjoy your favourite reality TV show or Arctic Monkeys track' (click for larger image)
Kamerun is 'sleek and shiny - an immaculately presented kitchen':
IKEA Kamerun election kitchen showing 'Landromen - clean up politics and hang corrupt party members out to dry' (click for larger image)
Kleggi is 'this week's most popular kitchen':
IKEA Kleggi election kitchen showing 'Negotiatabl - capable of extending at a moments notice to entertain unexpected guests' (click for larger image)
A nice way of piggybacking all the news coverage whilst highlighting core offerings - it's a viral message grounded in the fact that IKEA do kitchens!
To promote the release of Iron Man 2, 'AC DC were pitted against Iron Man in a ground breaking architectural projection mapping project' at Rochester Castle!
AC/DC vs Iron Man at Rochester Castle
'The front facade of the Great Keep at Rochester Castle, was brought to life using the latest in 3D animation techniques. This onslaught of the senses, saw the castle confront it's ultimate challenge. Warping, morphing, spewing and collapsing before the audiences eyes. Let there be rock!'
AC/DC vs Iron Man at Rochester Castle on YouTube here:
There are a huge range of social media Listening tools offering to analyse buzz and sentiment. These can be roughly split into two camps - those that rely on purely machine analysis and those that use a mixture of machines+humans.
Machine sentiment analysis is cheaper than machine+human sentiment analysis, but you get what you pay for. I have been using the mantra that 70% of sentiment analysis is fairly straight forward, the other 30% is the hard bit.
No problem when things are 'great' or 'awful', but when people start being sarcastic machines struggle to cope. When Michael Jackson decided 'Bad' was 'Good' then machine analysis would (in all likelihood) have ruled his lyrics to be expressing negative sentiment, whereas he was in fact portraying himself positively.
For a human brain the comprehension of sarcasm is an interesting process. The right parahippocampal gyrus is the area of the brain that deals with sarcasm interpretation. The left hand side of the brain deals with the understanding of words and sentences, but the right hand side is needed to understand humour and language that is not literal, for example puns, jokes and sarcasm. The mental process basically involves an element of social cognition, the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and experience the context as well as the words (also explaining why those suffering from dementias struggle with this too.)
Machine analysis of social data alone struggles to deal with things like sarcasm for these very reasons. Computer programs can follow logical rules and interpret the words, but without human help they struggle to understand context.
If we now add youth speak and slang to the mix it gets even more complicated. The Daily Telegraph this morning has reported the work of Lisa Whittaker from the University of Stirling which studied the language used by teenagers aged 16-18 on Bebo and Facebook in Scotland. She found that:
- "Young people often distort the languages they use by making the pages difficult for those unfamiliar with the distortions and colloquialisms.," she said.
- "The language used on Bebo seems to go beyond abbreviations that are commonly used in text messaging, such as removing all the vowels.
- "This is not just bad spelling, which would suggest literacy issues, but a deliberate attempt to creatively misspell words.
- "The creation and use of their own social language may be a deliberate attempt to keep adults from understanding what is written on the page.
- "By doing this they are able to communicate with their in-group and conceal the content from the out-group. This further adds to their online identity."
Not only are machine based analysis systems having to deal with the difference in interpretation of words like 'sick' (great if it's association with a new piece of technology, bad if it's used in association with a hospital patient) - but they are now faced with an ever changing, youth speak, deliberately designed to confuse observers and those who aren't part of the club!
There's only one thing worse than having no information, and that's having the wrong information. As the plethora of online social listening tools continue to increase, it's worth looking at more than just price - approach to data and the quality of the data provided are the key elements. Buying in a cheap system and then acting on bad data will be more expensive then paying for a machine+human solution now. With human involvement machines can learn over time, with no human sense checking / help then machine only sentiment analysis may not ever get to the point where it can be truly reliable and useful.
No point 'getting MWI' if your solution can't do the job properly.
Today is the fifth anniversary of YouTube! On 23rd April 2005. Called 'me at the Zoo' was the first video posted to the site it features Yakov Lapitsky at San Diego Zoo revealing a profound truth about elephants.....
Over the following five years YouTube has exploded, so much so that latest figures show that over 24 hours of video is being uploaded to YouTube every minute!
There have been innumerable mainstream media references to the site - it really is hard to believe that YouTube has only been around for 5 years. YouTube fundamentally changed content on the web and, more than any other platform, YouTube drove the idea of UGC.
YouTube, and user success stories, really drove home the idea that publishing is not limited to the well funded traditional publishing elite. People sitting at their bedroom computers could make content that out performed the productions of mainstream media and professional ad agencies - and new stars like the Numa Numa Guy, Obama Girl and Fred have been born as a result.
Anarchy has reigned as users mashed up, remixed and re-appropriated professional content giving it new meaning and relevance depending on who it was aimed at. Most of all YouTube has changed long standing ideas of what creative should look like. Big, dramatic, moody films do not sit well in this space. YouTube is a place where humour, surprise and randomness rule - and the big publishers and creative shops have had to adapt their approach to content accordingly.......
To commemorate the anniversary of the first YouTube video I thought I would post some personal 'highlights' here. Everyone has a YouTube favourite, from dogs on skateboards to piano playing cats to laughing babies, none of those here but I hope you enjoy some of the clips I have appreciated over the last few years!
1)British Army in Iraq - 'Is This The Way To Amarillo?'
In 2005 troops in the Royal Dragoon Guards shot a video at their Al Faw base (Iraq) miming along to the Tony Christie (Peter Kay) song. They e-mailed it to Army friends in London, but it quickly went viral and the Ministry of Defence server crashed because so many tried to download it! After being uploaded to YouTube it continued to spread.....
2)Calm Down Dear! REMIX
Around 2004-2005 Insurance company E-Sure became prominent after Michael Winner wrote and starred in TV ads featuring the legendary phrase 'Calm Down Dear!' When YouTube users got hold of it, this happened:
3)Cadbury Gorilla mashups
In 2007 Cadbury released a TV ad with a Gorilla playing the drums to Phil Collins' 'In The Air Tonight.' The response online showed how a broadcast TV ad can become a piece of branded content when it moves onto a social platform like YouTube. Not only were users sharing the original, but YouTube users were showing their creativity by producing endless remixes, mashups and re-interpretations (Cadbury even re-ran the ad the following year, changing the soundtrack to make it match one of the more popular re-interpretations) - my personal favourite is this one:
4)Literal music videos
It's not just ads that get remixed. YouTube users have also managed to breathe life into old songs by re-making the tracks with accompanying 'literal videos'. The largest view count is against this re-make of 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart':
5) Feature film re-edits
YouTube user film re-edits have created a raft of new content. Using the original film as a base, YouTube users have created new stories (that they have produced themselves), re-enactments using things like Lego and humourous clips and parodies. One of the most featured movies is Star Wars and Star Wars+YouTube=hours of fun for fans. This clip of 'Darth Vader Being A Smart Ass' is one of the most popular:
In 5 years YouTube has grown from nothing to a service that gets 24 hours of content uploaded to it every minute. I can't imagine how much content will be on there by 2015!
Feel free to leave links to your favourites in the comments.....
Since last week's leadership debate the UK national press have been taking (leader of the third party / Liberal Democrats) Nick Clegg seriously, with Malcolm Coles highlighting the substantial increase in national press coverage that Nick Clegg has been getting (here.)
Today, a number of newspapers have decided to very openly attack Nick Clegg in any way they can think of:
- The Telegraph have a huge splash on a story about Nick Clegg's personal expenses (even though they appear to have been openly claimed and properly declared)
- The Express (as usual) feature immigration on the front page, but this time seek to position Clegg as the illegal immigrants friend
- and The Daily Mail trawl the depths of the gutter by running a front page story that twists a piece that Clegg wrote in the Guardian in 2002 (8 years ago!) into being a 'Nazi slur on Britain' - claiming that this is evidence that his 'views are an insult to war dead.'
Daily Mail Nick Clegg front page personal attack
Anyone who chooses to read the original Clegg article in question (on the Guardian website here) will quickly realise just how much the Daily Mail have manipulated the sentiment of the original piece. The original talks of Clegg's personal sympathy for 2 German workers who were forced to leave their jobs in a UK call centre after being subjected to a 'barrage of anti-German jokes', he talks of his schooldays and the shame he felt watching certain classmates goosestepping in front of their German exchange students and he singles out 'oafish' anti-European tendencies in selected UK boardrooms. In conclusion he tries to explain why this sort of idiocy still persists in certain areas of British society.
He concludes:
'Even New Labour ministers, Gordon Brown in particular, crow about comparative British economic success with more than a hint of condescension towards Germany and the rest of the EU. They all blithely overlook that Germany's wealth per head remains a full 6% higher than in the UK. That German workers are 29% more productive than their British counterparts. That German trade with other EU countries has shot up in recent years, while Britain's trade with the euro zone stagnates. That Germany has engineered one of the world's most ambitious economic transformations in the former East Germany. Not even the most blinkered British visitor to Germany's prosperous towns and cities, to its schools, hospitals and its transport system, could pretend that our quality of life is comparable to German standards.'
Clegg puts this down to (as the Daily Mail chose to quote) a British 'misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur.' I think it's actually a well written and thoughtful article in the Guardian and thanks to the Daily Mail's highlighting of it, Mr. Clegg has actually gone UP in my estimations.
However, whilst in past elections there was no real way of responding to (ridiculously) personal attacks, the social world we now live in enables people to respond at scale. The article in the Mail has prompted a backlash on Twitter. The link to the original Guardian article has been repeatedly highlighted, 'Nick Clegg' has been a trending topic all morning and this has all been alongside sarcastic responses tagged with '#nickcleggsfault.'
Twitter Trends showing 'Nick Clegg' and '#nickcleggsfault' trending this morning
Twitter users have been tweeting every kind of outrage they can think of and attaching Nick Clegg's name to them through use of the #nickcleggsfault hashtag label.
One Twitter user blamed Nick Clegg for running 'out of milk.' Another Twitter user put forward the idea that he wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's front pages try to associate Nick Clegg with the Diana crash and an oft repeated tweet this morning blamed Nick Clegg for the volcano(!):
Nick Clegg volcano tweet - #nickcleggsfault
UK newspapers still have licence to print the sort of stories that they ran this morning, but the response from the public has been a reminder that people can (and will) respond to the sort of nonsense that has been served up on the front pages today. The irony is that today's stories, and the following Twitter backlash, may actually create sympathy and more support for the LibDems - and I hope it stops publishers from this sort of smear reporting in the remaining part of the campaign. Don't mess with Twitter!
The latest 'viral' to feature in the UK general election has been released onto YouTube by 'totalpoliticsmag'. The video has the aim of encouraging people to vote and features hordes of well known political figures and political bloggers lipsynching over the Bucks Fizz Eurovision winner 'Making Your Mind Up.'
Alastair Campbell, Peter Tatchell, Nadine Dorries, Nigel Farage, Lynne Featherstone, Anne Widdecombe and many more appear alongside bloggers such as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale. 'There are also some VERY special guests...'
Really not sure what to make of this!!! What do you think?
UK airspace remains closed and, with a reported 150,000 people stranded abroad, the election is currently not the thing at the forefront of (most) people's minds.
This time last week it was simply unimaginable that European airspace would be shut down as the result of a volcano in Iceland - and with 'Black Swan' events like this people, especially if family members are marooned, have a natural desire to stay on top of the latest information.
Google Insights for Search shows that the public are turning to Search engines - Search trend behaviour is now not about election policies and leaders, it's about volcanos and ash clouds:
Google Insights For Search showing more people searching for 'volcano' than 'election' (click for larger image)
Furthermore, events like the volcano prompt discussion too and Twitter / social platforms are alive with volcano discussion - the tongue in cheek '#ashtag' being used as the hashtag / label for volcano conversation and a continuous trending topic.
Whilst the flight bans remain, in all likelihood the election will continue to come second best on the news agenda and with sunsets like this, the volcano has an attention platform that election candidates could only dream about:
Volcano enhanced sunset over Nottingham (from Facebook)
New YouTube video from Nike shows a musical shoe performance in Japan!
The description states: "This is a secret live performance that was held in Tokyo. Hifana is playing music with Nikes flexible running shoes, Nike Free Run+. http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/...*The NIKE FREE RUN+ is absolutely a running shoe. Shoes sold at retail will NOT make music when bent or twisted."
After trying for many years, the first UK election leaders debate took place on British TV this evening - and Twitter was dominated by #LeadersDebate conversation.
#LeadersDebate Twitter Trends (click for larger image)
6 of the top 10 Twitter Trends were related to the #LeadersDebate with the debate hashtag, leader names, broadcaster ITV and the phrase 'I agree with Nick' all featured. The BBC have stated that there were 2000 tweets per minute during the TV debate and the volume of tweets is another demonstration of how TV and social media can work together during live broadcast events. This might also (finally) kickstart the social media election.
Pundits who have analysed the debate are split over who won, but looking at Twitter one person seems to have generated more Twitter discussion then anyone else - leader of the 'third party', the Liberal Democrats' Nick Clegg. His name was used on Twitter more than any other leader, but the most enduring element of the debate may be the quote 'I agree with Nick.'
Gordon Brown regularly used the 'I agree with Nick' phrase and it is being repeatedly tweeted and re-tweeted. The legacy of the ITV debate may well be the generation of the first genuine meme of the 2010 election the phrase 'I agree with Nick' could come to play a big part in viral campaigning over the following couple of weeks - I wonder how long it is before someone starts buying it as a Google keyword or T-shirts start to appear!
Update:
Zazzle are already selling 'I agree with Nick' T-shirts - an hour after the debate finished!
The Old Masters are revisited in a new viral for Samsung 3D LED-TVs. The video purports that the new Samsung 3D LED-TV technology can show us what was really going on in the old masters paintings. We are thus treated to new views on everything from the Mona Lisa to the Reverend Walker skating to Vermeer's 'Girl With The Pearl Earring' and more.
Manet's 'Bar at the Folie Begere' - one of the Old Masters revisited in the new Samsung 3D LED-TV viral
The new Samsung 3D LED-TV content is risque and has a Wayne's World-esque approach and voiceover:
The video finishes with the phrase 'A new dimension in TV. Because the old stuff is rubbish.' Users are then pushed to www.facebook.com/samsungtv where there is more information about the products and details of upcoming 3D TV events. The content is edgy, but I think this has potential to spread. Can it beat the Samsung LED Sheep film of 2009?
....and kudos for reviving the shark / helicopter (fake) viral image too! (Original story on the shark meme here).
The UK election campaign has been running for a week and there have been a large number of Paid Search ads appearing on Google.
The dominant PPC advertiser is the Conservative Party who today unveiled their latest creative 'Read all 102 broken promises from Labour's 2005 manifesto' and, rather than pointing to the WebCameron YouTube channel as most of the previous ads have, the new Conservative PPC ad linked directly to a pdf document of all the Labour 'broken promises':
Conservative Party pdf showing the '100 broken promises' from Labour's 2005 manifesto (full pdf available here)
Labour have been running a fair amount of election PPC too, with ads even appearing on this blog:
Labour Google Content ad on this blog!
Little Paid Search from the Liberal Democrats so far (I have seen a small amount of Content Network activity but can't recall anything else), though a Search for Vince Cable does offer you the chance to buy his 'celebrity autograph' on Ebay or 'Cable Vince' on Amazon (!):
Vince Cable on Ebay and Amazon
The Green Party are running a low volume of Search, one of the UKIP candidates is also using Google ads (on a local basis), but the remainder of the election related Search ads are from pressure groups and advertisers like Marmite and Ann Summers - whilst searching for 'Conservatives' still brings up a significant volume of ads for Conservatories!
Rather than detail all the election Search ads individually I have put them together in a single screen montage - I'll up date it as the election campaign goes on:
Election Search ads mashup montage (click for larger image)
Interesting to see if this is tactical activity around campaign and manifesto launches or whether this will carry on until polling day.
The 2010 UK general election campaign is well underway and at www.google.co.uk/elections2010 Google have launched a UK election hub that pools insights derived from Search behaviour.
The site gives data for the most searched for leaders and users are able to see Search trends across 1 day, 5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 'Max.' Since the launch of the election campaign the most Searched for leader is 'Gordon Brown':
Google UK election 2010 Search trends - Party leader searches (click for larger image)
The Google election 2010 Insights pages also allow users to investigate Search query data for the Chancellors, the Parties and key Topics. The most popular election topic Searched for over the last few days (unsurprisingly given the level of coverage of Labours Job's Tax) is 'Tax':
Google UK election 2010 Search trends - searches by topic (click for larger image)
The next most searched for topic is Education, followed by the NHS, with joint fourth place going to the Economy and Iraq / Afghanistan. Crime is 6th on the list.
Following these Google Search trends will give interesting insight into how offline coverage and debate drives people to search out more information online - assuming John Prescott's click fraud campaign doesn't corrupt the data......!
Tiger Woods has re-started his golf - and Nike have re-started advertising that features him. The new Nike Tiger Woods ad is 'Earl and Tiger' and features a black and white image of Tiger Woods with a voiceover from his deceased father Earl:
A bit surreal and maybe has the potential to re-ignite discussion of indiscretions. Some are questionning the taste, but there is no doubt that it is attracting attention and generating Conversation - even featuring on BBC news this evening (with both ad footage and Nike logo being shown.)
The mashups and spoofs have already started though - a number featuring alternative advice from beyond the grave, another version that features 'Tiger's mom' and a whole range that feature the voicemail message that fuelled the scandal......
Tom Dickson, founder of BlendTec, came to (YouTube) fame when using his company's BlendTec blenders to blend household items.
The first five videos reportedly cost a total of $50 to make (plus the cost of the things that were blended) and, helped by Digg links, they generated hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. The viral success of the Will It Blend videos delivered a demonstrable increase in sales as well as securing appearances for Tom Dickson on VH1, The Today Show and the Tonight Show (where Dickson blended a rake handle in front of a bemused Jay Leno.)
The film that really drew attention to Blendtec blenders though was the blending of a brand new iPhone in July 2007. The iPhone video was introduced with "everybody knows that the iPhone can make phone calls, play movies & music, surf the web, and a lot more. But, Will It Blend? That is the question":
With the success of this iPhone blending film (and the subsequent blending of an iPhone 3G) it was inevitable that the iPad would get the Blendtec treatment. Generating over 1million YouTube views in less than a day - here is the answer to the question 'iPad - Will It Blend?':
Google have announced the launch of Animal Translate claiming to bridge the gap between animals and humans - and it just so happens that the date is the 1st April!
Google say 'making the world's information universally accessible is a key goal for Google. Language is one of our biggest challenges so we have targeted our efforts on removing language barriers between the species. We are excited to introduce Translate for Animals, an Android application which we hope will allow us to better understand our animal friends. We've always been a pet-friendly company at Google, and we hope that Translate for Animals encourages greater interaction and understanding between animal and human.'
Google Translate for Animals Android Application - how to begin (click for larger image)
Google Translate for Animals Android Application - how to begin (click for larger image)
More on Animal Translate in the YouTube video here:
This is more than just an April Fools day ad creative. Google have created various different supporting material for Animal Translate including a tour, the YouTube supporting video and the app itself!
BMW have a history of running April Fools Day advertising in UK newspapers and for April Fools Day 2010 they have announced the 'BMW Political Roundel Attachment tag'! UPDATE - BMW APRIL FOOLS DAY 2011 AD HERE!
Under the headline 'Show Your True Colours This Election' the 2010 BMW April Fools Day ad says:
"Soon, the country goes to the polls, so BMW is giving you the chance to personalise your car depending on your political view. This unique and limited edition accessory is available in the colours of all major UK parties. What's more it can be replaced in a matter of seconds, which is great news for the floating voter. And in the event of a hung Parliament we'll replace your badge for free. "
BMW April Fools Day ad 2010 - the Political Roundel Attachment Tag! (click for larger image)
Readers are invited to call 0800 561 0080 or email uwe.beanhadde@bmw.co.uk to order a Political Roundel Attachment tag!
Heineken 'Men With Talent'
