Awesome hand-drawn visualisations of some on the top apps, talks and innovations shown at this years SXSWi. Well worth checking out.
FRENCH
CITY IMPLEMENTS VIRTUAL CURRENCY TO AVOID
FINANCIAL RUIN:
The French city of Nantes has plans to introduce its own virtual currency as a complement to the euro. By 2013, participating local businesses will be able to pay, or be paid in virtual currency units called “Nanto.” Addressing the increasing importance of non-monetary exchanges between firms, the goal is to accelerate trade between local companies by limiting the use of cash, thereby reducing cash flow problems and facilitating easier exchanges.
Playboy
Argentina were searching for a way to get more
Twitter followers. That’s where Maria Paz
Delgado came in, former Miss Buenos Aires and
now a TV show hostess in
Argentina. During her shows Playboy discovered
that there were a lot of tweets.
Playboy then challenged fans of her to retweet
one of their messages in order
to see her naked. Every 15 tweets uncovered
one of her pics..
Result: lots of retweets of course!
SMELLS LIKE TEAM SPIRIT: THE YANKEES LAUNCH A FRAGRANCE
The fragrance market is awash with celebrity fragrances, but nothing has yet come out fronted by a Major League Baseball team. That's changing with the launch of a New York Yankees fragrance backed by ads expected to reach 95% of New York males ages 16-34.
Ads bearing classic black-and-white shot-on-film photography and the slogan "Past, Present, Forever," will show up everywhere from one entire side of the No. 4 train that goes to Yankee Stadium to a bullpen sign and a"Fragrance Day" event inside the ballpark. There will also be billboards in the metro area, and national magazine, newspaper and internet ads in a seven-figure campaign created in-house and aided by Media Kitchen, Carrot Creative and PR shop DKC.
OLD NAVY: THE BEST TEE EVER INFORMERCIAL
Listen up, fools. Mr. T and Anna Faris made this infomercial to tell you how Old Navy totally reinvented Best-Tees to be the greatest, most softest, best-fitting tee in the history of everything!
GRANDPARENTS USING APPLE PHOTO BOOTH (VIDEO)
What’s better than watching a sweet elderly couples using a webcam for the first time? Seeing an army of grandparents each trying out Apple’s Photo Booth and its effects.
The funny video — which first appeared in February 2011 but is now getting a second wind — features grandparents recording themselves while their faces are distorted because of Photo Booth. The noises they emit are just as odd as the faces shown in the one-minute compilation.
Several websites dedicated to viral videos have re-ignited the virility of the clip, which has more than 350,000 views on Youtube.
HARVESTING CONSUMER INTENT FROM THE SOCIAL WEB
A great presentation from SXSWi from Edward Boches on how brands are far more easily integrated into the interest graph as opposed to the social graph and how new platforms such as Pinterest should be watched very carefully for new opportunities.
UNLOCK A SECRET LEVEL OF ANGRY BIRDS WHEN YOU STAND UP TO CYBER BULLYING
Rovio has teamed up with MTV in the social game maker’s first effort to drive social change. Angry Birds Space players will unlock a secret Golden Egg level when they support MTV’s “A THIN LINE” campaign, which fights digital abuse, bullying and discrimination.
“We know how big the game has become and the ways people are engaging with it,” Jason Rzepka, MTV vp of public affairs told Mashable. “We saw this as a place we could really connect with young people.”
You’ll receive a hint to access the secret level when you post a positive action on MTV’s Draw Your Line app, a positive action can be anything, such as pledging to step in when you witness onlinebullying, changing your email and social media passwords, and spreading A THIN LINE resources on Twitter and Facebook. An incentive based on a popular partner is a clever way to guarantee a certain level of interest.
THE FIRST ADVERGAME YOUR CAN PLAY VS YOUR CAT
You can now play air hockey against your cat. At SXSW Purina presented a new iPad game where (human) players have tofight for a bowl of animated Friskies cat food, battling against their very own cats. The idea of advergames for cats isn’t new, as Purina launched last year the first series of tablet games for cats only, however a digital challenge between humans and cats is probably the innovation many of us have been waiting for for ages!
WAS THE REAL WINNER OF SXSWi AMEX?
Have you heard about the hottest startup to announce a new product at South by Southwest Interactive? It had the most ubiquitous new product, it threw the biggest party with one of the world's top celebrities, and it may change how we think about social commerce. Presenting the winner of the SXSW 2012 buzz bowl: American Express.
In the year that AKQA’s Rei Inamoto presented a keynote talk on why ad agencies should act more like tech startups, a 162-year-old financial services company acted like a tech startup, and stole the attention away from the thousands of startups represented there. Here's how AmEx did it…
CHANNEL 4 LAUNCH 4SEVEN: A SOCIAL CATCH UP CHANNEL
Channel 4 has given the green light to a new TV channel, to be called 4seven, that will allow viewers to catch repeats of its most popular shows from this summer.
The new channel, which has been developed under the code name Project Shuffle, will allow viewers who missed the first live broadcast of Channel 4's most popular shows the opportunity to catch up with them over the next seven nights. David Abraham, the chief executive of Channel 4, revealed the thinking behind the 4seven as a bridge between the traditional way TV is watched and a truly converged digital experience when viewers will no longer be constrained by the linear schedule. He added: "It will schedule the main channel content that is creating noise – amongst social media, bloggers, commentators and of course via contact our viewers have directly with us – and incorporate this buzz into the look and feel of the channel."
CADBURY MAKES ITS GOOGLE+ PAGE OUT OF CHOCOLATE
Cadbury loves Google+. Not only has the UK-based chocolatier launched a product through Google’s social network, has also now created a chocolate version of its Google+ Page. The confection was created to celebrate a recent milestone: 500,000 “circlers,” or fans. Cadbury chronicled the construction of its edible Google+ page through a series of 10 step-by-step photos, shown in the gallery below. Layers of Cadbury Dream and Dairy Milk chocolate were applied to a base of Dairy Milk bars. Edible inks were printed onto sugar paper to create detailed replicas of the Page’s buttons and photos of fans. Pieces were adhered using liquid Dairy Milk as a kind of glue. Text was applied byhand with edible ink. The company also invited followers to chime in and watch live as the finishing touches were applied through a Google+ Hangout.
BMI AIRLINES: PINTEREST LOTTERY
British airline BMI has launched a Pinterest Lottery, encouraging users to repin images of its travel destinations for the chance to win free flights. The company is experimenting with the successful website’s ‘repinning’ function by setting up five boards on their Pinterest account. Each board focuses on a different destination: Beirut, Dublin, Marrakech, Moscow and Nice. There are nine pins for each board, which are images from around the cities, and they each have a different number assigned to them (from 1 to 45).
AMERICAN EXPRESS: SYNC-TWEET-SAVE
American Express have launched an interesting play with Twitter which lets US card members turn customised Twitter hashtags into savings. When customers sync their American Express Card with Twitter, they can enjoy exclusive offers loaded directly onto their card. American Express are showcasing “Sync. Tweet. Save.” at SXSW 2012 where all eligible customers in Austin will receive $10 when they sync their card, tweet the special offer #AmexAustin10 and use their synced card to spend in Austin during SXSW.
The BBC isdeveloping a radical scheme under which UK viewers would pay to download new and old BBC TV shows from a service it hopes will compete with iTunes. BBCexecutives want to make all shows available as download-to-own (DTO) at prices including £1.89 per show, under a scheme called Project Barcelona. It has been negotiating for rights with independent producers that make some of the shows. They support the aims of the scheme, believing it could represent a new revenue opportunity and a defence against piracy.
GUINNESS: ROUND UP YOUR MATES FOR ST PATRICKS DAY
Guinness is encouraging people to round up their mates and take them to the pub on St Patrick’s Day, March 17. The campaign suggests that St Patrick’s Day should be the happiest day of the year. A TVC demonstrates how difficult it can be for a sheep dog to achieve this goal, as demonstrated by sheep dog trial championGareth Longrass with his border collie Roy. Seven men are herded past a sofaand television, an Indian restaurant, and girls on a dance floor, to get to the pub that serves Guinness.
They are also using Facebook to set a Guinness World Record for ‘The Friendliest Day of the Year’ by encouraging as many people as possible to join a global party celebrating “true Irish friendliness”.
This week Google have announced the launch of Google Play which is, in a nutshell, Google Music, Google eBookstore, and the Android Market. Not only will you purchase music, movies, books, and apps at play.google.com, but those items will also be stored in the cloud. You'll be able to do the samething on your Android phone or tablet using the various Google Play apps. The two destinations--Web and mobile--stay synced. So, when you purchase an app, movie, song, or book on the Play Web site, that content will become immediately available on your Android phone (and/or tablet). Likewise, if you rent a movie on your Android tablet, it becomes available for viewing on your desktop, too.