Dutch Brewer Grolsch just launched a new green beer bottle. The introduction is backed by an online commercial inspired by the famous One Red Paperclip story. Good to see that more and more advertisers get inspired by remarkable online initiatives.

Coca-Cola is online with one of the first YouTube co-marketing efforts. It's called Holiday Wishcast and it's a mini-site based on YouTube service which allows visitors to upload and share their video greetings. Among the users who have submitted content, we find the sweet Geriatric1927 who is already a star among YouTube fans.

Marketers look with interest Coca-Cola's initiative to exploit a new advertising space crowded with young users (read Contagious for example), while YouTube purists hope this is not the beginning of a brand invasion on the popular video sharing service. I don't want to sound pessimistic but, since in the end, someone has to pay the (bandwidth) bills, I'm not sure there's much we can do to stop the brand invasion...

In Holland, New Years Eve is traditionally celebrated with loads of family fireworks. It's also tradition that people ignore all safety precautions, which leads to hundreds of serious injuries, especially between the age of 10 to 19. To create awareness among these youngsters, a lot of confronting campaigns have been created over the years. But this year it's different. The campaign is online and has a sarcastic taste: fictive character named Li-Kung Lee gives you safety precautions the Chinese way. For those who still don't understand, the tagline in the video says: 'Good luck in the year of the pig'.

If you are looking for an original, vintage and nicely cheesy way to wish Merry Christmas to your friends, I reccomend using the Big Spaceship video card generator.

The default card is perfect for Web 2.0 fans, but you can personalize the videos and add your own messages to run as subtitles.

A nice campaign by TBWA\Frederick, Chile for Mc Donald's. I like the 70s style of the living room...

I've found an interesting advergame created within the 1E Energy Awareness Campaign. The concept is good: it's a game to make people understand how they can save energy in the office, by switching off the IT equipments when they don't use them. Also, if you click on "act" you can calculate how much money your company will save if everybody pays attention not to waste energy.

The game in itself is not perfect (there are no instructions on how to play, for example) but it is surely a useful tool, which I would rather define as an "edugame". This said, I believe it could be successfully used as an educational tool in schools as well.

Original concept and excellent execution for this campaign by H2e for the Bundesverband Tierschutz, a German association which fights for Animal Rights.

Found on Brainstorm #9 where you can find more ads belonging to the same campaign.

Pepsi launches a new challenge to users who are eager to generate content. In Spain the soft drink is running a competition which invites visitors to design the layout of a Pepsi can. The best design will be actually put in production and the Pepsi can will be distributed throughout Spain.

The contest's idea is not extremely original, but can still result quite inspiring for young, undergraduate illustrators. Unfortunately the appeal of the whole contest is somehow lowered by a website not as nice and appealing as it should have been.

In Italy, jobs site Monster has launched an online postcard to wish his visitors Merry Christmas. Maybe it's not really a Christmas related postcard, but it's still a nice idea, which could work quite well in Italy, generating some viral effect.

Turn your speakers on, and then click on the monuments on the map, you will be invited in local dialect to get a job... soon!

LG&F; for Bold, the Belgian Association for Obese Patients. Maybe Playstation was not enthusiastic about it, but I think it's a very nice concept, which would work even better with the new WII.

Copy says: Encourage your children to do more sport.

Via A/D Goodness a clever door-to-door marketing campaign for Otto, a huge mail-order company in Germany (and Benelux, I think). A sticker featuring model Eva Padberg, Otto's catalogue and the order number, was attached to the spyhole of thousands of houses around Germany.

Several people say this ad is very similar to the Pizza Voyeur who won Cannes this year. Ok, it was done before... So to us, I mean us working in advertising, it doesn’t look that innovative. But I don’t think this is the point. As a consumer I would feel surprised and curious to find such an ad attached to my door.

Yes, it’s intrusive, but less than the dozen of leaflets we receive in our (offline :-) mailboxes everyday. Also, what it shares with the Papa Johns campaign is not the creative concept, but the use of media, so what's the problem with this? What do you think?

From Israel, a guerrilla marketing campaign for denim brand Revero. Maybe it's not really groundbreaking, but given the product advertised, it's obviously interesting for me to take note. Actually what's relevant to notice is that they spotted a new advertising space available in public spaces. Done properly, I mean with a sort of artistic approach, painted (branded) benches could work both for advertisers and for public administrations which could find a new revenue stream to fix their bills.

Wondering what's on Toyota's mind? Or better, curious what goes on in the world of Toyota? Then go and check out their new brilliant Swedish website. Informative, but brought to you in a very pleasant en entertaining way. The animated site is made by NorthKingdom (definitly see the portfolio).

Jacqmotte, an excellent Belgian coffee brand, is about to launch a new gamut called Finest Selection. To give buzz Jacqmotte contacted (so it seems) Robert Hales for a video shoot. The whole concept of this promo is based on the Rorsachtest, the psychological ink spot test.

It is a scoop since this concept has never been used in a promo video.

Watching the video gives you the feeling of being kept hostage in an exotic destination and it is a good reason for leaving your computer untouched.

Please have a look at www.jacqmotte.be (only available in French and Dutch) on which you can download a screensaver version.

Less than two weeks to go... a lot of work to do... but it's still nice to think about some Christmas presents (i would like to receive)... below it's my wishlist... maybe it can be a source of inspiration for your presents as well or, even better, you can decide to buy me a gift :-)

Advertising
- Advertising Now! Online
- Advertising Now! Print

Graphic novels
- Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China
- Persepolis: v. 1 & v. 2

Design books
- False Flat: Why Is Dutch Design (So) Good?
- Designing the 21st Century

Graphic design books
- Altitude: Contemporary Swiss Graphic Design
- The Story of Graphic Design in France

Fashion books
- Jacques Helleu and Chanel
- Wearing Propaganda: Textiles in Japan, Britain and the United States, 1931-1945

Photography books
- LaChapelle: Heaven to Hell: v. 3
- Approaching Nowhere: Photographs
- Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography

Music
- Signs of a Struggle - Mattafix
- So This Is Goodbye - Junior Boys
- Crane Wife - The Decemberists
- Damaged - Lambchop
- Through The Window Pane - Guillemots
- It's Never Been Like That - Phoenix

Movies
- Will And Grace - Season 1-8 Complete Box Set
- Good Night and Good Luck

Want to play games on your Playstation but got a deadline for an exam or report that didn’t match your gaming ambitions? Then File Destructor is the right place for you. Send trashed files and blame your faulty computer, instead of confessing that you are a lazy bum who just wants to play videogames.

The "devil" behind it is F&B;, and the client is Hype, a Swedish magazine for videogames lovers.

Advertising Age has been recently publishing a series of interesting articles about the evolution of new media communication. Especially for those of us who work on the client side, it's important to understand how consumers use the Web (and other new devices), in order to plan in advance brand strategies to make them happy.

The first article, by Abbey Klaassen, was published last week: Stop With the Engagement Already, It's About Receptivity. Actually it's about TV advertising, but it presents some ideas which can be also applied to the Web. Basically, it talks about "ad receptivity", which means, first attract the right audience, and then engage it. A concept which is "slightly" different than engage and then make receptive to your marketing message, as we are used to. It's interesting to take note, try to apply, and then measure results.

A must-see website for all of you in your thirties: Good Game Good Game. I have no idea who Argos is, and the site isn't innovative at all in graphics and interactivity, but it's based around toys from the '80s, and this is enough to grab my attention.

Start with a quiz to challenge your memories, and when you're done explore all the toys who populated your childhood. Meet Alf, the Cabbage Patch Doll, He-Man, My Little Pony, the Commodore 64 and many more... just any make sure tears don't drop from your eyes...

In Holland we're used to young foreigners that come over to Amsterdam to get totally wasted. So is The Bulldog, a big and famous coffee-shop in our capital. To give their intoxicated costumers a save place to sleep they also run a hostel. And this is how they promote the hostel online.

The video is directed by Peter Strange who made a clever combination of the famous wasted pictures and the stop motion trend.

Samsung is launching its new mini computer called Q1 with an interactive campaign featuring a huge dog called Sam. Sam is Saint Bernard dog who apparently has all the answers to your questions about the Q1.

The first thing I thought when I've seen the site (and the videos) is "how cute!" but then I thought again when writing this post, and I realized that maybe "cute" is not the right adjective to describe a campaign so oriented to business users. So Sam is cute, but I'm not sure it will actually help Samsung selling the Q1.

Here in Europe, a new international news channel is about to launch. The agency Marcel has created a beautiful TV spots which can also work as viral.

The channel, even if it's international it's going to be called France 24, but this is not the point of my post :-)

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives