Sounds dull. Isn’t. From the man that brought us Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

This stock licenced image ( a $5-10 fee) , an illustration by Yiying Lu, is the image you see when Twitter is down. It is called the “Fail Whale” and has moved as a meme into early adopter culture in a big way:

Wikipeda currently redirects searches to find information to the Fail Whale to the Twitter entry. Sensitive!

Using Compete.com, Garry Jenkin looked at Twitter’s analytics and saw that in April users had increased 42% and over 1,000% for the year. That’s some big time uptake.

BuzzFeed has a mass of links to follow including these:

• Fail Whale, the Fan Club- failwhale.com
• Fail Whale, the Gear- zazzle.com
• Fail Whale on Wikipedia
• What Twitter Users Are Saying -summize.com

Is the whale an endangered species? The Guardian’s article last week”Twitter searches for the next step” mentions that “now might be a good time to grab one, before the fail whale swims out of sight for good.”

And really does it matter? Does it matter that a new technology is fragile and falls over through massive uptake? You can only be let down by something that you have already given your expectations to…

It reminds me of a great quote from the late great Randy Pausch:

When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.

A great presentation from Iain Tate, on how the band Radiohead have such effective and relevant experiences online that they have taken him from being someone who disliked Radiohead into being someone who may not love them, but certainly likes the idea of them. His ultimate point being that this is the outcome that a lot of brands want out of the online experience, but to do this you really have to experiment with the medium and to a large extent re-invent the medium regularly. This means you really have to do new things and not wait until you see someone else doing it first successfully before feeling comfortable about doing it. Remember they only give out medals for bravery.

.

Apparently Lego are already using this as digital POS.
You can have 3D objects and or video playing in the same space.
Mmmm…

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Awarded Best Film at Cutting Edge at the British Animation Awards 2008.
Awarded Best Experimental Film at Tirana International Film Festival 2007

A simple story that illustrates the forces shaping social media.

So the sand has well and truly settled and Cannes is long over for another year. Observations from afar? I’m left wondering when it will get to a point when it’s just the Cyber Lions and then everything else. The only other category will be for work that had no digital component whatsoever. If it’s got a URL on the poster, it can’t be entered. Or… are the categories themselves just becoming irrelevant, it’s all just stuff, integrated, direct, promo, telly, digital stuff, that’s all connected somehow. Anyhoo… it just seems a lot of the digital stuff keeps popping up in other categories.

>>>>>Large Kittens Below<<<<<

UNIQLOCK

By PROJECTOR For UNIQLO
It’s a fusion of dance video routines, time signal music and clock utility, so the description on the entry says. But it’s more than that. It’s a brand and it’s collective agencies who have for the last little while produced some amazing work with such an articulate digital focus. If the GAP was born a decade or two later and had some imagination this is who they could be. But won’t. They also have a solid grip on the widgetisation of your brand and where it can take you, or more importantly where people can take you.

NON-STOP FERNANDO

By LEAN MEAN FIGHTING MACHINE For EMIRATES
Audacious idea. Have this Brazil nut gabber on for the time it takes to fly from Dubai to Sao Paulo. Lean Mean Fighting Machine also takes out Interactive Agency of the Year beating out Crispin Porter + Bogusky, all this with a staff of only 20 proves that they really are.

PET SHOP BOYS – INTEGRAL

QR codes, QR codes, QR codes… Now even a Pet Shop Boys film clip has got em’ but with a little twist. The QR codes appear throughout the clip embedded in a pixel animation. So when you pause on a frame (there are over 100 of them in the clip) and point your phone at them you’ll be taken to civil liberties/social rights sites that provide more information on the songs moral message. Neat.

ORANGE UNLIMITED

By POKE For Orange
Good things should never end. Just like the site. Which didn’t, the more you scrolled it just kept on going. Full of whimsy (break out the toffee) and instantly embeddable sized bits and pieces to take away for later not to mention FREE THINGS hidden in the site. The awards for this thing seen to be unlimited as well so far…Cannes Cyber Lion Silver > Webby Awards – People’s Voice Award > Art Directors Club of New York – Silver > One Show Interactive – Silver > The Clio Awards – Bronze > IAB Creative Showcase – Grand Prix > IAB Creative Showcase December 07 > FWA – Site of the Month > D&AD – Nomination > Design Week – Commendation > Creative Circle Certificate… enough.
Yet it doesn’t seem to be enough for these guys, their latest effort play balloonacy looks set to capture the collective attention of the internet again. The results they must have for some of their sites must be staggering. BTW check out the interior designed toilets from the London office.

BFD BUILDER

By CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY For DOMINOS
You build the pizza, you save the pizza, you order the pizza and then you track it all the way to your front door (almost). Now I’m glad this won, because it’s a utility. You know, something you can use, and through its usefulness it becomes a really good ad/brand promise. Smells like the olden days.

SEE SOMETHING. FEEL SOMETHING

By SOAP CREATIVE for FOXTEL
You know the one, where you’re inside the telly, watching people watching you. Getting all emotional.
Nice work from the local Soaperheros.

GET OUT AND PLAY

By FARFAR for NOKIA
Great simple game play, wonderful stop motion and superlative production values.

THE KEY TO RESERVA

By JWT SPAIN For FREIXENET CARTA NEVADA RESERVA
Really it’s a long form TVC featuring Martin Scorsese. Beautifully produced tho’

SIMPSONIZEME

By CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY For DOMINOS
40 million people had a go of this thing. Brilliant take away content.

GET IT STRAIGHT

By JUNG VON MATT for BOSCH
One of the many motion sensor entries. I think this one was the best as it’s useful to boot. The others weren’t bad though.

READ A BOOK AT WORK

By COLENSO BBDO for NEW ZEALAND BOOK COUNCIL
Beautifully simple idea. The fullscreen site looks like the generic windows desktop, yet it’s not, it’s the minisite for the New Zealand Book Council where you can read books (short stories, poetry etc) at work as the content appears as wonderfully terrible powerpoint slides.

TITANIUM

MILLION

By DROGA5 for THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Now this is really something, a program whereby kids in New York High schools are given specially built phones that function as learning devices during school hours (teachers can send out assignments etc) and all the normal distracting features are turned off. After school hours all the calling/txting features are turned back on and it’s just a regular phone again, other than that the credits etc are then linked to student performance, so it’s incentive based as well. Sure there are brands involved in this but it really is for the greater good. It’s these type of ideas that really belong in the Titanium category, not just campaigns that don’t fit in any category because they defy the genre, but for ideas that rise above advertising itself.

It reminds me of this idea and that’s not a bad thing.

Ahhh…

That said, this is advertising and it’s hard to go past a good beer ad. Really you have to see this, it’s amazing.
It’s what this whole content thing should be about. The Speights Great Beer Delivery.