The Food Commission Research Charity (a non governmental organisation) has recently launched a site to warn young consumers about the risks of junk food. As explained on BrandRepublic (sub. req.) the site also unveils the marketing and advertising strategies junk food producers use to get children to buy their products. The site, Chew on this, also includes activity sheets where children can put themselves in the role of a marketer and try to create products that appeal to children.

Last week, as reported on The Guardian, soft drinks makers in Europe yesterday agreed to stop targeting children under the age of 12 in advertising campaigns as part of a series of measures to help prevent obesity among young people.

How many hours did I spend as a kid playing the Lemmings videogame? I can't tell or, better I should not tell... anyway, for anyone with a PSP, Sony has just (re)lauched the game for such platform. A mini-site (full of goodies) created by Greenroom Digital and an online campaign are supporting the launch. A viral is also part of the effort, with a video-clip featuring Lenny the Lemming.

This year the SuperBowl ads could arrive on your iPod also. Of course, you need to actively download them, but brands will make everything possible to make them available to portable video-capable devices. According to USA Today the new small screens will help advertisers amortizing the costs of SuperBowl ads since the NFL decided to post the ads after high-paying sponsors complained they were shut out from seeing the TV ads in the stadium.

Some brands like, for example, Pepsi, will also launch collateral activities to go beyond the TV spot and further engage consumers (check in a few days www.brownandbubbly.com).

If you think of Hilton just as "Paris" Hilton, click here and experience something new: the Hilton Journeys created by Blitz. It's an emotional website going created around three concepts: travel should empower, travel should pamper, and travel should entertain.
It is made out of lovely animations and some chances of interactions. I like it because of the communication approach it takes, delivering a rich the brand experience that fits the luxury you expect from Hilton.

Be aware you need a broadband connection to fully enjoy it.

Konami is online with a dedicated website to promote its music video games. My friends at Eroi are behind Music in Every Direction which features an advergame (Ultimate Club Promoter) and also a text-2-win competition.

Jung von Matt "Du bist Deutschland" campaign (You are Germany), to self-promote Germany among Germans.

In Canada, Taxi has created the MINI "Dominate Winter" interactive section on the car's main website. Following the concept of "domination", a woman dressed in black leather welcomes users with the message "Click as hard as you like". All the MINI’s characteristics for a perfect performance during winter time are explained in a sexy and ironic way, with an excellent copy and a series of effective animations.

The site definitely delivers a positive experience, making sure that, MINI, once again, is perceived as a “cool” brand.

Thanks to Ozgur I've found out about this crazy online campaign by Onitsuka Tiger: it's called Crazy Lovely Football and it's an online karaoke competition which invites users to sing and send in their recorded performance in order to win prizes. Kind of cool, kind of crazy!.

Garwich BBDO (Ecuador) for Gatorade. Very simple, but effective to explain the product's potentials.

In Belgium SN Brussels Airlines is currently running a very successful and funny campaign to promote its low fares for early bookings. Based on the idea that if you're early to pay less, Snow by LG&F; come up with a "wake-up call" idea.

As Jonathan Detavernier strategic partner at the agency explained me... "we created a wild postering and guerilla campaign that is now hanging in the major cities of Belgium. Those posters and street tags point to this website. On the site, you can check out how much a destination is. But you can also order a free 'wake up call' for a friend. You fill in the form on the site and choose a location. After that, you get a phone call: a voice asks you to leave a message for your friend. The next morning, your friend gets a wake up call: "Goodmorning ... just to say that you have to choose your friends a bit better. One of them asked me to wake you up" and so on. The message ends with: "Wait, I'll pass him through." Then you hear the voice of the friend that initiated the call."

Alfa Romeo has is online with "broadband" campaign to present its new Brera model to the international audience. There is a teaser website (MachineWarriors) featuring a mysterious movie trailer starring the car. Unfortunately since I'm on a UMTS connection I haven't been able to download the entire movie (43mb!), so I cannot really tell you what the video campaign is about. For sure I appreciated the variety of available video formats: Quicktime, Windows Media Player, PSP, iPod and Pocket Pc. Excellent!

As you might have already read somewhere, Mercedes has recently launched an emotional website to deliver a strong brand message. The site is called from A to S and features several information through attractive Flash animations. It is definitely worth a visit, although I believe it is not as good as it could have been, considering the nice concept it is based on.

Unfortunately not all the letters are yet active. You click and you get a message like "this feature will be added soon, please enter your email address to learn when". Actually, since the site isn't about a specific product but just about the brand and the quality of its cars, I don't see why I should sign up for such info. To me, as a consumer who is actually interested in buying an A-class the site isn't triggering enough to come back for a second visit just to see what's new. Too bad.

A new sexy and ironic campaign by Lynx. In Australia, they have launched the LynxJet, a fictional airline full of virtual (?) sexy hostesses who will grant men a lot of fun. Lowe Hunt is behind the campaign (Interactive Creative Director: Jaime Corker).

There is also an exclusive Mile High Hotel which you can book, but be aware that they "reserve the right not to deliver if we think you are a sick bastard, or we just simply can’t be bothered".

Actually, after doing some research on Google, I've found out this campaign isn't really new. Lowe Hunt says it has been a huge success, so here is the reason why I post about it: sex sells. Sadly, every marketer should keep this in mind.

Volkswagen US has jumped on the corporate podcasting bandwagon on the occassion of the Detroit motor show. The VW podcast site is featuring entertainment with various Detroit based bands, consumer insights with the Detroit GTI enthusiasts, on location documentaries of the fair, and testimonial interviews from VW and Car Connection.

The podcast links for iTunes and XML are only accessible after entering your eMail address, which is a mistery to me. On the site teasers of the podcasts are available only.

Duval Guillaume Brussels has created a guerrilla marketing campaign for “Overpoort Bowl" a popular bowling alley right in the hart of the Ghent’s student neighbourhood. As you can see from the pictures, all kinds of round objects in the scenery were provided with 3 little round black stickers, representing holes. The effect of this is that all of the sudden any round object were transformed into a bowling ball.

Puma is running a pan-European online advertising campaign to promote its Velocity boot (v1.06). The online effort is strictly connected with above-the-line ads inspired to the African Nations Cup. Rich media ads using Eyeblaster technology are currently running in the UK, Germany, France and The Netherlands while in Norway and Sweden more traditional formats have been preferred.

Brand Republic explains the campaign targets men aged 17-24 taking them to a personalized website which aims at generating viral buzz.

Actually, after watching the pumafootball site, I realize the idea isn't very original. See, for example, this campaign by Electronic Arts.

The IAB Europe has relaunched the site allaboutcookies.org to help marketers and consumers understand the issues surrounding the use of cookies. The idea is to show how cookies are used, the relationship they have between the website and users' browsers and why they are key to getting the best from the web.

Unfortunately, the site, even if it has been created by the IAB, performs pretty bad on Mac computers. As you can see from the screenshot above some words in the menu aren't properly displayed.

Nestlé UK has launched the Kit Kash 2006 marketing campaign, supported by the company’s largest online ad spend to date. Rich media ads are running through a series of UK portals promoting the daily prizes assigned online. In order to enter the competition, consumer need to submit a code they find on Kit Kat products such as Rolo, Lion and Toffee Crisp. As explained on Revolution Magazine, the competition also gives consumers the chance to bid for or buy rewards using KitKash points collected from packs.

Last year the Kit Kash campaign generated over 3 million unique visits to the competition website, with 80 million Kit Kats sold over a period of 20 weeks.

ClickZ reports more and more marketing budgets are moved from mass media to targeted, direct response media such as interactive marketing. A new study by Winterberry Group found out that media budgets are changing following the evolution of consumers’ interests and media usage.

The more integrated the consumer gets, the more integrated the brand needs to become. Also, the media fragmentation makes it more and more difficult to effectively deliver a “mass” message, so brands have no other logic choice than going interactive.

Dutch based Lemz runs an interesting online campaign for a new line of K-Swiss shoes. The ‘Stripe Shifter’ has five stripes on the side. Each is changeable in color and height, creating unique combinations that can be used to convey a personal message.

There are five general messages. Through an extensive TV, radio, print and internet campaign running in The Netherlands, England and Germany people are encouraged to visit the website and create their own code and message. This is fun and addictive and will definitely lead to a full consumer generated language. Wonder if it will work on the streets as well.

DDB Germany for Volkswagen Sharan.

AdLand has launched a nice initiative to engage advertising related blogs and their readers: The battle of the ad blogs.

Adverblog is running in the category "Best Ad Commentary not from the United States"... of course I'd like you to visit the site and vote for me, but on the page there are also many other cool blogs to discover.

If you'd like to know my own favourites, just click on the links at the bottom right of this page... sorry but today I'm lazy :-) I just finished moving into my new home, and tomorrow I'll start my new job. I'll tell you more as soon as I can...

In France, Maybelline has launched a series of "beauty podcasts" featuring tips to get a perfect make-up.

The podcast marketing effort is divided in two parts: a weekly video to download for the new iPod and a "traditional" audio podcasts section sharing make-up suggestions by Max Delorme (who?).

[news via iPub]

eMarketer has recently published an article on the market potentials of mobile gaming. It's no big news, there's a lot of money out there, but what is interesting for us is that advertisers can also take advantage of the situation.

According to eMarketer senior analyst James Belcher the opportunities are mostly connected to location-based and multiplayer games which will allow advertisers to precisely target their prospects. Also, mobile gaming can work for branding, so we can expect mobile advergames to grow. Of course distribution (costs) will be an issue, but hopefully Bluetooth connections will solve every problem allowing user to by-pass carriers in the download flow.

Textually reports Stephen King is about to launch a new media campaign to promote his new book "Cell: a novel".

Thousand of Stephen King's fans who opted-in to receive promotional information on their mobile phone will receive the following SMS: "The next call you take may be your last... Join the Stephen King VIP Club at www.cellthebook.com."

Exclusive, gloomy, ringtones and the book wallpaper are also available to buy, but only for AT&T; and Cingular.

In Belgium, Ford has launched a viral effort to promote its corporate offer. If your daily life in the office is boring, it means your company doesn't have a Ford...

The campaign site features three videos showing typical (emphasized) office situations, but most of all there is a triggering email where the message subject is "VERY VERY OUT OF OFFICE..." which I expect to generate quite a lot of cliks.

I received this ad last week. It has been created by Jaab/Concept Alliance for BaByliss Nasal Hair Remover in Singapore.

Why am I posting about it? Basically just because I didn't know such a product could exist...

Pod Design once again proves to be extremely smart in creating viral games. Their new game, developed for Peerflix, a new DVD trading service is called "Paparazzi- Adventures On The Red Carpet". Players play the role of red carpet-stalking Paparazzi, trying to get the money snaps of celebs behaving badly.

The game is really funny to play for a couple of times. In two weeks the Paparazzi site has already generated 100,000 visitors, just out of word of mouth.

From a marketing perspective, I surely appreciate the viral effect the game generates, but I miss something for what concerns the brand promotion. It's a new service, and I think some information about it should have been displayed on the advergame site also.

Publicis Conseil, Paris for Sagem.

Creative director: Olivier Altmann. Art director: Charles Guillemant.
Copywriter: Patrice Lucet. Photographer: Jean-Yves Lemoigne.

In France, SNCF, the National Railway company, has launched an advertainment campaign to promote its Corail Luna trains to the mountains. Four viral videos and an advergame to emphasize the importance of being "fresh" when skiing. The idea is that if you travel by train, you sleep during the night and you reach the ski resort perfectly awake and ready to have fun. If you don't travel by train, then you're very tired and... watch the videos to see what happens.

[via Culture Buzz]

A nice ad for Siemens Vacuum Cleaner. Unfortunately I don't know the agency...

[via AdGeek]

Last year Ian Fleming Publications has launched "Young Bond" a series of books telling the story of James Bond in his youth. The second book of the series "Blood Fever" has been released recently, and is currently being promoted with an online game. As explained on BrandRepublic, Cake developed a site that lets users take on the role of Young Bond and solve mysteries in order to unlock new content and get the full experience of the online community.

There is also a mobile game, ispired in this case to the first book, "Silvefin".

Google Earth is eventually available for Mac. Thanks to this post on Rhizm I immediately have the chance to test it to play the new online game launched by Adidas Australia.

The +10 Playoffs campaign idea is extremely cool: it's a football quiz which takes advantage of Google Earth to provide hints for answering correctly.

Unfortunately the quiz itself isn't as exciting as the concept. Of course it requires quite a lot of football knowledge, but a part from the interaction with Google Earth, there isn't much going on... it's just a quiz... Anyway congrats to the agency who did this (who is?), it's probably the first online campaign with Google Earth and it surely shows the potentials of the tool integration.

Fallon McElligott (Minneapolis) for J.D. Hoyt's.

In Belgium, fashion chain C&A; has run inside its stores a guerrilla marketing campaign to support Unicef. The initiative, created by Publicis Belgium, aimed at collecting money for the young victims of the recent terrible earthquake in Pakistan. As you can see from the pictures below, as series of clothes made out of Pakistani newspapers were hung around the store, featuring the message: "Is this the only thing homeless Pakistani children will wear this winter? Help them with a gift at the pay desk".

[via Houtlog]

From Brazil, a viral game created by DM9 for Telefonica. Oscar stays up at night to spare on Internet connections, he needs your help to stay awake at work: use a microphone and your mouse to avoid him falling asleep.

Congrats for the nice game and the brilliant domain name (zzzzzzzzz.com.br).

Maverick Media has won the Oscar at the Channel 4's Ideas Factory viral competition. The video, created for the videogame "Juiced" shows two men in a car who discover their videogame console can cause a young woman to lose her clothes. Personally, I very much prefer the runner up, created by Great Guns to promote appealnow.com, the website for drivers who think they have had incorrect parking tickets.

The full list of winners can be found on Boreme.

Yes, ok, "sex sells", but Lynx is always so smart in creating original and funny campaigns... I've found this ad on AdHunt, I guess Bartle Bogle Hegarty did it, but I'm not sure. It was created by Lowe Hunt Sydney.

In The Netherlands, Marktplaats (an eBay company) is testing a "click-and-get-called" banner. Basically, when you click on a special banner, a pop-up opens asking you to fill in your telephone number in order to get called by the advertiser. As De Koopman blog (in Dutch) explains, the advertiser is charged on a CPM and a lead base.

To see the banner in action, click here and visit the Marktplaats jobs section.

The Swiss Tourism Board has created a tv-spot "for women only". The video (opens .mpg) shows a series of good-looking and kind of sexy men welcoming the viewer to the country.

As explained on Persoenlich (in German) the campaign idea is to target the wives of the men who will go crazy next June watching the World Football Championship. The campaign will mainly run in Germany and France, but also in other European countries.

While your man drinks beer, watches 22 men running after a ball, and yells at the referee, come to Switzerland and enjoy its natural beauties... An unusal but smart idea to promote a country!

Saatchi & Saatchi Copenhagen for Kilroy Travels, Epica Award winner in 2005 for best Transport & Tourist print campaign.

Sorry for the recent lack of updates. First the Christmas holidays and now a lot of travelling for a new job and a new relocation back to Italy... but the new job is definitely worth the effort!
Next week I should get back to the usual blogging pace. So, stay tuned.

In the meantime, I'm considering opening the Adverblog space to guest bloggers/contributors. If you feel like contributing in the next future, drop me a line!

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives