BrandKarma is a brand-centric social media platform which aims to bring together important information about how brands behave so people can evaluate and rate them - just as they might a friend on Facebook.

The goal is to make brand owners more accountable to all their stakeholders - customers, employees, suppliers, investors and the planet.

The site relies on opinions and actions of its users to rate how well brands are doing and includes news feeds of articles mentioning the brand and a comparison chart ranking the brand's environmental consciousness.

 

Leonidas appeals to chocolate lovers in Brussels with an Easter egg dispensing billboard:

Music and skinny jeans go together like sprinklings of chocolate on top of frothy milk. Anomaly has created an interactive video that sells Diesel's clothes throughout. Just hover over the item you like to find out how to get hold of it.

Part of the Be Stupid campaign.

Yesterday I spent a very interesting afternoon sitting in on the judging of the Festival of Media Awards. I arrived when the jury was going through the Best Communications Strategy category. There was an extremely high standard of entries and there were several contenders for the award winner. In the end it took three separate votes to reach an agreement.

It was a hard category to judge, since there were huge global brands operating in multi markets with huge budgets sitting alongside single market brands making a very small budget go a long way.

Obviously I cannot disclose any of the results, but I was impressed by how cohesive the jury was. As expected there were lots of people with strong opinions (see some of the Festival of Media Awards judges here) but they all worked together exceptionally well under the stewardship of jury chairman Bernhard Glock.

In between categories we interviewed members of the jury with our Flip Video cameras - kindly provided by Cisco. We will be able to publish some of the footage once the results are revealed at the Festival of Media in April.

You can't have missed it. If you did wonder why it looked like there was a power cut on your local high street at the weekend, well that was the WWF Earth Hour (no mud wrestling jokes please)... 

Here's how I spent mine. I made doubly sure....

 
  See the film for inspiration and visit WWF here for more information. 

When I joined the Cream editorial team last year we were all given some rough ground rules which basically stated; “add value, be interesting and go easy on the self-promotion…” I think I’ve adhered to these rules pretty well so far, if I do say so myself.

Indeed, I have actively policed myself diligently on the last point, no self-promotion. I have made no mention at all of our company, holding back on the itching desire to market our (rather unique) offering to anyone who cared to read about it. I’ve focused more on trying to give you a balanced perspective from the insides of the industry and open up some of the bigger issues.

Well, heck, its time to break the rules….

I believe the most effective marketing occurs when a relationship of trust and acceptance has been established between a brand and its potential consumers. I think after all these months we’re there….don't you?  I can hold back no longer and in a blatant piece of reckless self-promotion I just wanted to share with you a mailer we have sent to the many friends of our company this last week. I share it with you only because we are so chuffed to have reached our first birthday in such a tough year for our industry. So here’s a short ad break....

Dear Friends

 

Happy Birthday to us.

 

On 1st April ID COMMS celebrates its first birthday and we wanted to give you a short little update of what we have been up to and what the plans are for our second year, if you’ll indulge this once-a-year piece of direct marketing.

 

Its been a tough year all round, but we launched one year ago convinced that the recession would prove to be a positive thing for our industry in the long term. It has forced us all to re-evaluate what we do and what we want, personally and professionally. We sincerely hope we have all learned helpful lessons and that those lessons will influence the way we run communications businesses in the future. 

 

 

In the last 12 months ID COMMS has worked with a diverse group of clients, from global brands to global agencies, media investors and start-up brand businesses. All of them looking ahead and looking to us to help them embrace a new future.

We believe 2010 will be a year for reflection and decision. This is the year to make clear commitments, to be better, to mend the broken things and approach the future in a more strategic way. This allows 2011 to be the year of real change that we all hope it will be. We, like many others, are devoting our time to find more robust business models for communications companies and more effective solutions to modern marketing problems.  

In the last 12 months we have had the pleasure of meeting dozens of amazing small companies who, like us, saw an opportunity in the recession to innovate and make positive change.

As is typical in a recession, some of the best ideas, creativity and business innovations are coming from smaller, more dynamic and more ambitious companies. There is a great sense of optimism amongst us and we are proud to be part of this new generation, dedicated to innovating the business and creating a communications industry for the future with a real sense of purpose.

 

We look forward to hearing your stories from 2010 and we hope that our paths continue to cross, some by co-incidence, some by design. We are always looking for new projects and problems to help solve and trust that our success thus far and our growing reputation is testament to the value we add to our clients’ businesses. You always know where to find us.

 

We wish you the best for the coming year, thanks for reading

Tom Denford & David Indo

Founding Partners

ID COMMS Ltd

Well, thanks for reading, if you did. If you want more we're at www.idcomms.com

Our normal programming will now resume…

Fans of The Premier League in UK will know two things (amongst many other things). 

Firstly West Ham United are in deep, deep trouble and need any help they can get to win, or even draw a match otherwise they face a humiliating relegation to a lower league.

Secondly, midfielder Rory Delap of Stoke City has a strange ability to throw a football longer than anyone else. Averaging 38 meters (yes thats over 100 ft) they are akin to a corner or a free-kick and much feared by the opposition because they are such a good source of goals. 

 

On Saturday this weekend these two met; West Ham needing to protect the point they started the game with and Stoke's almighty ball thrower trying to take two more points off the suffering Hammers. But West Ham had a nifty trick up their Claret sleeves, with thanks to Burnley who had actually come up with this idea originally. Making the longest throw of a football requires Delap to make something of a run-up and so West Ham brazenly and cheekily installed a new ring of advertising boards around their pitch, only 3 feet away from the edge of the playing area, making any run up to throw the ball impossible. 

Bad sportsmanship? Who knows, frankly who cares. (Some may say, yet again) advertising could have come to the rescue, but didn't. That it didn't actually make a difference, or do the job that it was supposed to.... I'll leave that debate for another time. Delap still managed to make 30m+ throws and Stoke City won the game. Looks like West Ham are doomed. Strangely co-incidental then that debate also rages about the demise of advertising and its own potential relegation from the top table...?  

How much use can a banner be in terms of being a branded utility? I would have thought not much until I saw this one that cleans your computer of the "bad cookies" that slow down your PC and internet surfing speed.

For vacuumcleaner brand Vax, the message is that it is so powerful it can even clean your computer via a banner.

From Y&R Tel Aviv