So the campaign launched around 2 weeks ago but I held back from posting it till now to see how well the public will receive. With the London 2012 Olympics starting in less than 200 days, what could a super brand that isn’t an official sponsor do to thwart people into thinking that it is one? Create a campaign using key GB sports influencers with a simple call-to-action that urges the public to join in. That’s exactly what Nike has done. I salute you, Wieden + Kennedy London.

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Bit of background information, Nike executives laid out the companies plans for the current fiscal year to its investors and analysts, and listed connecting more directly with consumers as one of the company’s main goals. This also included updating the God awful website that Nike had, all the flash sites are being replaced with HTML5 – hallelujah. Nike’s CEO commented on the company’s progress late last year -

“Social media is helping us unite and expand,” he says. “We have never been closer to our consumers, as they connect more with each other, their heroes and their favorite teams.” – Mark Parker, President/CEO

Nike has launched this new campaign that urges we all step up our game in 2012 and ‘Make it Count’. This multi-media channel campaign features a number of the UK’s top athletes making personal pledges, this includes the likes of Mo Farah, Jack Wilshere, Rio Ferdinand, Mark Cavendish and more. Dope quotes was inspired by the constant bombardment of inspirational and uplifting quotes on Twitter. I don’t know how it all started but for me, reading one quote that I can relate to will suddenly inspire me to work harder and help me refocus on my purpose. Especially since the internet is full of distractions, it’s nice to come across a quote that will remind you of what you have to do. Instead of sitting there waiting for your Twitter feed to refresh.

Until the launch of this campaign, @Nike never had an official Twitter account. It has several separate accounts for each of its division but now for the first time, the company has a single voice tweeting on behalf of the entire brand. It seems like they’ve tied down a deal with social network to customise their page with a giant banner (see image above). The first tweet from the account is a quote from the founder:

If You Have A Body, You Are An Athlete. -Bill Bowerman

Peep a few of the print posters below, you may have seen them across billboards, underground stations, magazines, newspapers and on storefronts around the city.

As you can see at the bottom of the posters, they encourage everyone else to join in with a simple call to action and make a pledge via the b #makeitcount. Adam Hinton’s photography mixed with the bold Futura and handwritten typography works so well together. I love the personal touch, it’s nice to see the individual’s handwriting. It’s such a simple idea and launching it in January is the best possible time. I just find it incredible how they’ve managed to get the Olympics thought across without actually mentioning it. I’m sure it’s the first thought that came into your minds when you glanced at the posters too?

The videos are just like the posters, simple editing with an inspirational message from the athletes. It’s not quite as engaging as the posters for me, a little bland if I do say so myself. View them all here.

The website for the campaign is so simple but effective as it simply urges viewers to tweet. Nothing more, nothing less.

But the campaign doesn’t end there. Come on now, we’re talking about Nike. It’s definitely a social-focused campaign but what’s the next step? Instagram. The company also launched it’s very own profile on the rapidly growing mobile social network. With the help of my favourite photographer and Instagram legend, 13th Witness – the brand launched the campaign on the network with a series of photographs using the hashtag. So far there have been over 1500 photographs tagged with the #makeitcount tag, not much but it’s still pretty decent for IG. I’m scouring the internet in search of tweet stats but none available for free at the moment. Lame. Hashtracking came up with the following for the past 24 hours:

1,500 tweets generated 959,921 impressions, reaching an audience of 628,636 followers within the past 24 hours

Now Nike doesn’t stop there. They’ve taken it one step further, a physical interactive installation in each of Nike’s big stores. If you go into Niketown on Oxford Street, you can create your own pledge photograph. I’ve been in and seen a mini-studio constructed on the ground floor where you’ll be able to create a pledge like the one above (Found on Tumblr!). I might just do one, not sure what my pledge would be. ‘Blog more, tweet less’

Lastly if you’re interested in seeing more of the photography from the campaign, you’ll be able to do so from Wednesday at Nike’s 1948 store in Shoreditch. There will be an exhibition of Adam Hinton’s portrait photography like the ones below. Right I’m off to bed, jog in the morning whilst preparing for my presentation. How will you make it count?

QR codes which have failed to engage with a mass audience are ressurected in Heineken’s campiagn ‘Open Your World‘. The booze dispenser debuted the campaign at this year’s Open’er music festival in Poland, where festival go’ers would visit the Heineken tent to personlise and print out their own QR code. The code which was carried in the form of a sticker, was an attempt to encourage festival go’ers to meet new people and make new friends by scanning each other and ‘creating conversation’.  Watch the video after the break.

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I think this is quite an interesting campiagn, I like the fact that they’ve thought outside the box, would I use it… not particularly, i’m not sure if scanning people would make me want to talk to them but perhaps being in that environment would encourage you?

7 months away from London 2012 – let’s the campaigns start rolling in week by week. First up Cadbury, I know there’s been a big BRAND campaign launch that I’ll talk about in an essay like post soon but till then, let’s focus on the chocolate makers with their all new campaign ‘Spots V’s Stripes‘ in which they will be giving away London 2012 tickets on a weekly basis. To start of this campaign, they held a live event at London’s new Westfield Eastfield in Stratford showering sale shoppers with special tokens which people could claim later for chocolate mascots and the olympic tickets themselves. The tickets were given to the shoppers through a giant Party Popper – a great start to a potentially huge campaign for them. More on the reverse.

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I do like how they’ve actually responded to the comments on the Youtube page. Not the most easiest questions and queries to reply to as well, nice bit of human-like interaction from the brand. It’s nice to see brands respond to flaws and complaints so openly on social media now – it gives them more character. Definitely a huge trait you’ll see across many brands this year. Click here to win tickets.

Haha you’ve got to love Viktor Hertz‘s work, it’s honest, a teeny bit cheeky but brilliant. It’s guaranteed to make you laugh – he’s turned some of the most popular corporate brand logos into satirical designs. They’re all honest, you’ll find yourself agreeing with most of them unless you work at the company and are in blind denial. The honest logos are all about revealing the actual content of the company behind all the advertising and marketing campaigns. Hop on after the cut to see them all.

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Not feeling festive yet? Christmas spirit not managed to take control? Yeah, not quite hit me. I’m not looking forward to the money that I have to spend this week on presents, I haven’t even started. Hoping to buy a few bits and bobs during my lunch breaks this week – eek, like fragrances and so on. I’ve actually asked everyone in my family what they want and they all respond with ‘nothing’. Including my 19 year old sister – what the hell is wrong with them! Apple have just released their Christmas commercial and it’s dope! it features Santa Claus playing around with the 4S’s Siri technology. He checks the weather, texts Mrs. Claus and browses through the naughty/nice list. Video on the reverse.

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Love the Bokeh in the photo above.

THE SALE IS COMING. Done your Christmas shopping? If not, this is perfect. The sale starts tomorrow and you can get in first through the retailer’s Facebook page. ASOS who came out on top in the latest Social Media Benchmark from eDigitalResearch have unleashed their latest sale app with the help IU-HQ. The Facebook app gamifies the ASOS Sale; fans are given the chance to play a handful of games to win points and improve their position in the queue for access to the sale. This time around, the games are a hell of a lot more addictive – trust me the whole office was playing the ‘Play Your Clothes Right’ game on Thursday. More on the reverse.

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ASOS | IU-HQ

So want to get into the sale before everyone else? All you have to do is head to asos.to/ASOSLuckySale and start playing! You might be wondering how on earth you’re going to get to the top with everyone else 100,000s of points ahead. Well take a risk and play the Changing Places game, you might just win a 250,000 points boost.

I wasn’t involved in the development of this project, one for the seniors! I’m getting there – going to make sure I’m involved in the next one. Until then, I need to do some reading and work on my skills!

Apparently this is old but what the heck, hello childhood. Who remembers watching Yogi Bear on cable TV Cartoon Network? Nope he won’t be making a return to your TV screen any time soon. This is in fact a Müller yoghurt advert that takes us down the nostalgic route. To be honest, on first watch I was blown away by the visuals then my brain started functioning and realised this advert is just  so desperately trying to make the brand look somewhat cool. That effect it’ll have on many but the ones with a little common sense will notice this is £20 million fail from TBWA. Why would Kitt of all cars managed to get a parking ticket? and since when was Mutley a Good Samaritan? Fail on that part. Visually, it’s brilliant but it genuinely lacks any concept. More on the reverse.

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However I’m impressed by the artwork, in fact I love the behind-the-scenes videos below. I just wish they had a better end product, especially when you spend £20 million.

Watch the full video below.

Here come the where’s DETOX discussions. Dr. Dre makes an appearance in the latest Beats by Dre commercial and his collaboration with electronic accessories company Monster just seems to be getting stronger and stronger. Whoever linked the two together deserves awards, perhaps a million dollar cheque – perfect link up between brand and celebrity. Dre’s career was starting to fade and now he’s EVERYWHERE and RICHER without even making music. If he were ever to release that Detox album, imagine the marketing potential with the Beats By Dre platform. In all honesty, has he fallen out of love with the ‘creating’ music? He’s probably making a hell of a lot more money this way. The campaign featuring the likes of DJ Mia, Justin Eldrige and Levi Maestro is pretty impressive, nicely shot with the slow of the balloon exploding. Wish they used better typography at the end….that’s just me being a picky designer.

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The brand are set to release coloured versions of their studio headphones just in time for Christmas. This means you guys don’t have to spend a fortune getting them customised over at ColourWare. Who wants to buy my white pair? Bought it in ’09 and haven’t worn it much since ’10. Still has a year’s warranty.

I wasn’t able to get into posting mode last night as you can tell from the lack of updates. I think after watching Warrior, all I wanted to do was work out and get hench. GASSED. Samsung’s latest video campaign takes a little stab at the Apple hipster fan base. You know the losers that camp outside the Apple stores tweeting and live blogging the happenings overnight in the queue. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone but there is no way in hell that I’m going to sleep on the streets for a piece of tech that I can just wait a few days extra for. Have a gander at the advert on the reverse.

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Is it just me or is the anti-aliasing on the text in the video, horrendous!? Samsung users come across a little smug. Funny marketing tactic though.

I’m still #TeamiPhone through and through.

Before we get started, my other half is writing this post. I’ll let her take over….

Here’s a bit of a random question for you: do you think your birth certificate is just any old piece of paper? Think again – and then seriously re-think that…again again. There are 75 million young girls all around the world born without a registered birth certificate. Sadly, these girls are often forced into pre-mature marriage and/or are denied the right to a proper education. PLAN UK is fully breaking the mould of charity fundraising with their latest ‘Because I’m a Girl’ campaign. Last week saw the launch of a pretty amazing and truly thought-provoking next generation interactive video app on Facebook, which puts you – yes, YOU in the shoesies of these less fortunate girls.

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CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

The “Plan Your Story” application absorbs Facebook users’ key information to create a personalised video storybook that drives people to find out more. The tale centres on what life would be like if you hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. This unique story sequence was designed, shot and edited by the Soho-based, award-winning social CRM agency Neoco who’ve teamed up with PLAN UK for a great cause.

The pages of the book are filled with personal touches – including the user’s likely first crushes that bring home the importance of having a birth certificate. The way I actually don’t remember who my first celebrity crush was when I started actually noticing the opposite gender. I think it might have been the handsome Freddie Prince Junior? *sigh* …back to the app!

    “What’s unique about this application is that, through Facebook, people can get a real connection to important social development issues… We’re hoping that this app will really make it easy for people to engage with the campaign and also make a difference for girls in some of the world’s poorest countries” says Justin Wylie, Head of Business Development at the international children’s organisation Plan UK.

App users will be asked to donate £2 to Plan UK’s Girl’s Fund which supports the charity. You don’t obviously have to feel guilt-tripped into doing so… just give out of the kindness of your heart if you wish to do your bit in encouraging an honourable change in the world and turn the fate of these young girls right around! £2 is all it takes to give someone hope. (You can buy your 2 items from Poundland/KFC Snack box next time).

“People will see for themselves that a small donation can help fund projects that will make sure children get a birth certificate, thrive and pursue their education.” [Mr Wylie]

Now, if you’re a (straight up) dude, do not get offended as the app doesn’t directly apply to your life, it is a tad bit sexist but please remember what the actual campaign is called? You can still try it out and show your manly support. Females dig a guy that is genuinely compassionate for others in desperate need don’t we? And to all my ladies ‘who run the world’… go and check it out now and tell your mama’s, sister’s, grandma’s, aunties, cousin’s, girlfriends, followers etc! Spread the word. Your own story will move you.