From Australia, a beautiful online project to tell the world the story of Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children. Through a series of lovely illustrations we are invited to take twelve lessons in leadership discovering the world of Mrs Jebb and the work she inspired.

In Japan Smart has launched an online project where it invites users to design their ideal Smart.

At first sight the website reminds of a project MINI did a few years ago, when they asked consumers to design the cover of their ideal MINI car. However taking a further look you realise there is more to discover and enjoy. Nothing really innovative, I have to say, but definitely something nice to discover on a website by a brand like Smart.

Playing with the concept of a Smart small like a toy the website allows you not only to "pimp" your Smart but also to drive it around the screen and play an advergame with it. Again, nothing really new nor special, but I still believe that, even if you haven't got a brand new idea, you can still do things well and create a web project that is consistent with your brand and capable of creating an interaction with your product. After all, over 10000 Smart designed by the users aren't a bad result at all.

The agencies behind the project are TYO Interactive Design and Kyucon.

From Russia, with love, here is the link to the new Russian Standard Vodka website, for the pleasure of your eyes.

I like the idea that the first level of content is all video based and starts playing automatically when you arrive on the site. So you get a nice overview of the differente sections and you learn all the basic information about the vodka without reading anything. Good idea if you're lazy or better, not interested in finding out all the details about the product.

Competition when it comes to vodka brands (and vodka websites) is fierce, therefore it's good to see Russian Standard Vodka managed to create something interesting to explore in a crowded panorama.

No matter if your enthusiastic or tired of Facebook, Linkedin and Myspace, there is a new social network you absolutely have to join. It's called Lamato, and it just launched in Canada, inspired by an idea by Tribal DDB and Mott's Clamato.

I haven't been able to check it personally, but it looks pretty fresh and new. To support it, they launched also a series of short videos. Below you find my favourite.

After the thrilling football match last night between Turkey and Germany (2-3), tonight the other semi final of the EUFA Euro 2008 takes place. It's Spain against Russia, with Spain as favourite. But they didn't win a Championship since 1964. What do they need to win? In this Spanish video, Nike takes the Magnificent Five (Torres, Iniesta, Ramos, Puyol & Fabregas) from Spain to beat the prejudice.

Getty Images has launched a very nice application to inspire the creative community. It's called Moodstream and it's a tool that allow users to tap into Getty Images? creative palette of images, footage and music, to create a sequence of visuals and audio conveying a specific mood.

I like it, probably because I like looking at photos matched with the right music background, but at the same time I find it quite hard to find a reason to come back to the website.

I'm not a creative person, so my opinion for Getty doesn't count much, however I rather feel that Moodstream would work perfectly in bars to create audiovisuals projects to set the mood depending on the hour of the day. In case, I will claim the rights on the business idea :-)

Winners are out. Uniqclock project by Projector and the Sol Comments project (first unveiled to the world right here on Adverblog!) and Year Zero won the Cyberlion.

What is your feeling about the winners? Do you believe any good project has been left behind? Do you think a project has been overrated?

Personally, I think that Uniqlock and Sol were just great and absolutely deserved the Grand Prix. But then, from a purely marketing perspective I think that Waitless and Drive-In game deserved more than the Bronze Lion, while Absolut Machines (gold) and Get Out and Play (silver) were not as good as the jury decided.

And you, what do you think?

Sometimes you have to be a bit drunk to be sincere, to say what you really think or to unveil something about yourself that, when sober, you'll never dare confessing. After this short preface, you will probably understand why I can't help smiling looking at the new Absolut Colors website that celebrates the rainbow flag and invites users to come out online and share their story on the site itself.

Actually Absolut Colors project is very serious (and this is why I don't fully understand/appreciate the coming out feature on the site) and aims at raising money to support Aids charity associations by selling a limited edition bottle that reminds of the rainbow bottle.

So it's good to see Absolut supporting gay & lesbian rights as well as AIDS prevention however, from a purely marketing perspective, I don't like the fact they have forced a space for user generated content on the site. Which, by the way, at the moment looks still pretty empty.

To fight back Google Image Search dominance in image search on the Web, Msn has launched in the UK "Iconic Britain". The website encourages visitors to upload images that better portrait UK culture, architecture and tradition. Users are also (and more importantly) invited to search the Web and look for the images that best fit into the concept.

I have contrasting feelings about this campaign. I think the Iconic Britain concept, althought it isn't very new, could have been an interesting starting point for promoting the Live Search feature. Unfortunately it looks like MSN took a quite creative idea and developed it with the flattest look & feel and interface possible. To me this website even works negatively for the MSN brand not intentionally (of course) communicating to the users MSN isn't a cool brand at all. What do you think? Am I too critic with this campaign?

Nice timewaster for a friday afternoon. This self-promotion for an interactive production company sucks you into an entertaining and interactive story about a men who's looking for The Secret Location. With this movie, the company proofs their ambition to tell thrilling and interactive stories. Enjoy.

via

This is our latest work for the Italian Next Level campaign. A short film to celebrate Pirlo and his cursed free kick. Directed by Acne, produced by Filmmaster. Enjoy!

At the end of the video the bumper says: "The cursed free kick is Next Level".

From New Zealand, a very nice series of online episodes to explain users the risks the Internet exposes us to. From phishing to viruses to people who are not what they say to be, the dangers out there are a lot.

A number of cartoon like characters (that remind me a lot of The Incredibles) tell the stories and explains possible risky situation in a wit and entertaining way. The site definitely does a great job in creating awareness not only about the dangers of the Web but also (and most importantly) about the company (NetBasics) that offers solutions and services for a safe online life.

The agency is Apropos.

This is not exactly new but if you haven't seen it yet it's very funny. The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) is back with another marketing rap. This time he describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site.

Ok the Cannes Cyber shortlist is out. Who's going to win the Grand Prix this year? Got milk tonight or need to fight for a kiss before bed, just remember I have 3 halos while walking around my Ikea kitchen but you may want to Simpsonize me if I am wrong. What do you think?? Maybe a Stella to think about it all... or not.

Palette, the new car by Suzuki, is really ugly, but the Japanese site to present it is really nice (and weird). It's something between Mary Poppins and Charlie Chaplin, with animations and a story telling sweet and definitely unusual.

As usual, I don't speak Japanese, so I don't understand a word, but I like to point out the different communication approach chosen by Suzuki to present its new family car. I can imagine kids sitting at the PC with their parents browsing through the site to discover the animated stories.

A month after the KissCam, Mentos is online with a new site: The Kiss Fight. As it's easy to guess, the challenge is to win a virtual kiss battle.

It's a cool and amusing beat 'em up style advergame with an inspiration that very much reminds me of Lynx/Axe initiatives.

BBH together with North Kingdom are the agencies behind the project, once again very well developed and with a great attention to the details.

In the US, MTV has launched an online project to raise awareness of HIV among the youth public. The site, called Pos or Not, is conceived like a quiz game: visitors are presented with a series of profiles (like in online dating sites) featuring some information about the person in the photo and a key question. Is the girl or the guy HIV positive or negative?

As in real life, it's impossible to guess the answer. Your intuition can't help you, so don't take risks.

The initiative is sponsored by the Kaiser foundation and tries to take advantage of the viral effect of the "game" prompting visitors on every page to pass the link to a friend.

via Osocio.

Back from the neverending May campaigns and from a week off in Southern France, I feel I have so much to (re)cover. I'll do my best to write about the great interactive projects that have gone online around the Web during the last month or so. So forgive me if a few things won't be as new and fresh as usual, but remember Adverblog's motto is "showcase the best, and forget the rest", so if there is something worth remembering, I'll post it!

The first project is quite new, and you still 7 days to join the first virtual balloon race on the Internet ever. It's an idea by Poke for Orange.

It sounds very innovative, but also quite hard to explain, so I quote NMA to explain you what is about: "The technically complex project is a bid to engage with online audiences through blogs and social media. The race will promote Orange's mobile tariffs by inviting users to tag a balloon shaped like its dolphin, panther, canary and racoon brands. The race launches in three weeks and entrants will be able to track and control their balloon as it travels across the web. Each site equals one internet mile and the user with the most miles at the end of seven days wins. Players can also get bonus prizes and energy boosts for their balloons".

Greenpeace has a sort of viral that asks the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Reminds me of the funny Monster.com ad from a while ago but has a much more serious message.

These days people spend far too much time in front of their computers working and not enough time reading books. So New Zealand Book Council asked Colenso BBDO Auckland to find a fun new way to make books more accessible and to encourage people to fall in love with reading again. They figured that surely people would rather read books than do work. So they created a site to disguise books as every day office computer documents.

You can now read classics by George Orwell through to modern short stories on any computer, at any time, without anyone ever knowing. Especially at work, where your boss and co-workers will be none-the-wiser. And all these books are housed at our equally disguised online library, which is designed to look identical to a Windows desktop.

I've seen overlays like this before but not as targeted. A good use of the medium to show the message.

I really HATE left/right scrolling but this one I loved because it's done so well. So simple.

Sega's new title Condemned 2 is a brutally horrific game. You'll commit all kinds of unspeakable murderous acts and you'll see things you wish you hadn't. The experience could well leave your soul in tatters.

That's why Sega is doing its moral duty and allowing people to offset the evil, whether singing along with the sickly sweet Saturday-morning cartoon songs or playing the games on the site. By offsetting the evil you can reduce your sin footprint just enough to re-visit the scarring black horrors of Condemned 2 once more.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives