A few thoughts.

I promised I'd jot down a few things and here they are. The main thing everyone seems to be banging on about is how 'social media' is changing the way we think about marketing brands. All sounds very modern and daunting. But I'm not so sure. Take a look at these examples. And just to give a little extra social media flavour, I've done this as a blog post. Social media used to share a little about social media. See what I did there? Get me.

For me, the important bit is that through the use of all this new social media stuff, people are the best advertising medium. That's nothing new. Word of mouth has been around since, well, mouths. Except of course, via the internet, the word can be posted, podcasted, tweeted and blogged right the way round the world. Not just muttered to your mate on the next barstool.

Take Twitter for instance. If you're not familiar with it, have a little look at this. It allows real time, online, bite sized conversations that hundreds of thousands of people can follow. Not surprisingly, agencies are starting to use it as a medium. Several brands are using it to have conversations with their customers. This idea pulls a Twitter feed into an online banner. If you're logged in to Twitter, the viewer can tweet their opinion - and that is what appears in the banner. So the customer literally writes the ad themselves. Read more here.

Here's another great way to get people talking. And find people to talk to. To see the first shot of Heath Ledger as the Joker in the new Batman movie, people could register by email to reveal a single pixel of the image. Thousands of people signed up within hours. Voila, the photo they wanted. Voila, massive database of interested punters. Full story here.

Behind both those examples though is very old fashioned thinking. Write and tell us what you think. And send away for an exclusive picture. For me, both have just used the internet as contemporary ways to implement age-old marketing.

Another word of mouth idea was used by my agency to win a pitch for Sailor Jerry rum. The main appeal of the brand is its authentic heritage and underground appeal. So the trouble is, as soon as you try to advertise it, it becomes mainstream. Our solution was to create a website that pulls everything that's already out there on the net into one place. So it's not a corporation telling you about the brand, it's other punters. Click the image to visit the site.

More and more, the gameplan seems to be to integrate online and the real world. How about this - to relaunch Monopoly, an agency put GPS devices in London taxis. You could go online and sign up to play, picking a taxi as your 'piece'. The taxi went about its day to day fares, and you were notified if it stopped at game relevant locations that you could buy or pay a fine if another player had already nabbed it. A giant, interactive, real life game. Click the picture for a movie.



When Google launched its Streetview capability, just for grins (and a little publicity) they created a real world game of Where's Wally? You had to use the technology to find him out on the streets somewhere. And here he is.

I love, love, love this. Check out this little 3 minute movie first.

The thing I like about it most is I'm not even sure what kind of idea it is. Is it a PR stunt? Is it advertising? Is it online? Who cares. It has the capacity for all these things, even on-pack promotion. Dead simple, 'dinosaur' thinking - If you can't take your mate to the pub, take the pub to your mate. But again, through the internet and webcams and the ability to chat online, what once would have garnered a few lines in the tabloids or got a mention on the nine o'clock news becomes a living, breathing event you can follow and participate in as it happens. A steel container, few classified ads (how fantastic is 'Position vacant: Doctor who can also weld') passage on a freighter and a website. In the grand scheme of things, it cost fuck all. (Click image below to enlarge.)

Clients want to see that agencies can utilise social media. This Turkish airline hid its pitch brief online, leaving a trail that could only be followed by someone familiar with the various channels. Don't tell me you can do this stuff, prove it. Daunting stuff - be interesting to see a solution that can top the ingenuity of the actual briefing. Full story here.

These guys know what they're about. They created a simple Facebook app whereby you could remove someone from your friends list and it would notify both the friend and Burger King. Get rid of ten friends and you'd get a free voucher for a Whopper. Not new thinking from a creative territory point of view - Do you love someone more than you love Brand X? But a very nous use of down-with-the-kids social media to apply it. Read more here.

That's all using the internet as it currently stands. But how about changing the way we interact with the internet itself? Have a little fun with this. It's the Don't Click It website.

Augmented reality is big at the minute, which can involve preprinted cards and phones and screens. But what's REALLY coming down the pike is not the combination of online and offline. It's a complete blurring between the two. Forget sitting at your computer, or even your smartphone. Soon enough, you will be able to use all the power and information of the internet as easily as looking at something.

This is 8 minutes long, but stick with it. The bit where a roomfull of nerds simultaneously wet themselves about 4 minutes in is worth the price of entry. It really starts to pick up after that too.

It all seems crazy rock and roll and hard to keep track of. But my thrust (ooh matron) is that underneath all the whizz bang technology, social media, web 2.0, interactive how'syerfather stuff is still straight ahead problem solving thinking. The real creativity is often done long before a pen touches a piece of layout paper. And there is absolutely nothing new in that.

Teach people to think about what the problem actually is and how to solve it. Everything else is just technique. Sure, be aware of what's out there and what's possible. But cracking that core thought is still at the heart of everything. That hasn't changed as far as I'm concerned. Though it could be I'm just the proverbial old dog...