• Heineken has launched the second film instalment of its global ‘Open Your World’ campaign.

Heineken has launched the second film instalment of its global ‘Open Your World’ campaign. ‘The Date’ premiered on the Heineken Youtube channel and Facebook page.

 

Check out Heineken's mischievous campaign in Italy where the brand developed beer-flavoured gloss.

...and the video in our blog post.

• Renault is launching a global advertising campaign to promote sustainable transport.

In other news:

• Twentieth Century Fox is sponsoring Turner Media Innovations’ (TMI) weekday comedy block, ‘Laughternoons’.
• Oakley Capital Investments’ (OCIL) the Fund has acquired a majority stake in Time Out New York, to create a global digital media group.
• Dmexco has revealed the first names on its international speaker list for its exclusive pre-day event, Ubercloud.
• Google, Citi, Mastercard, First Data and Sprint have teamed up to launch a new service which provides all the features of a wallet, on a mobile phone.

• Yesterday Twitter bought TweetDeck for $40m.

Check out our insightful blog post by Mark St. Andrew about the beginnings of Twitter and its path to success.

In other news:

• The regional newspaper division of the UK’s Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) is in for a challenging second half of the year due to declining ad revenue.
• The number of tourists visiting Egypt dropped 46% in Q1, according to a government statement.
• Canada’s Postmedia is testing a new subscription-based model with its websites for the Montreal Gazette and Victoria Times Colonist newspapers.
• European inward investment rebounded in 2010 with a record number of projects.
• More than 40% of consumers in Asia are interested in purchasing a smartphone in the next year.
• The global economic recovery has begun but will come under threat from a slowdown in China and rising commodity prices.

The other night, while coming home from work, I picked up the London Evening Standard and stumbled upon Gideon Spanier's wonderfully comprehensive article entitled "Advertising and content collide as digital blurs rules." As the digital content curator of M&M, I could not have come across a more pertinent article to what I do. Although everything Spanier discusses in the article was deeply analysed at the Festival of Media in spectacular Montreux this year, this read honed it all in for me.

Today's digitally savvy audience see right through traditional advertising. So how can brands cut through the clutter and still touch their audiences? Spanier says that in today's world "[it's] not just advertising around the content but being part of it." Shane Smith, founder of Vice, says "We say every brand has to think of itself as a media brand." And so editorial becomes marketing and marketing becomes editorial. The lines are indeed blurred.

The next day, as I sifted through the news to tweet about, I discovered that BBH's Mark Boyd and Drum's PHD's Mark Eaves are launching a new creative company, Gravity Road. Boyd appropriately says, "We launched Gravity Road as a reaction to clients who wanted bigger, longer term ideas built around quality content that has a clear purpose." Curated content is definitely king, as Shane Smith has said. People love a good story, and if they can truly engage with it, they don't seem to care if it's an advert or not. "Is it an ad? Is it content? It doesn't really matter," says Clive Dickens, Absolute COO. 

As a recent hire, part of the discussion has been about where exactly my role sits within the company. Should the girl in charge of social media be a part of the marketing department? the editorial? Perhaps, if curated content truly is king, a bit of both!

By Juliet Perrachon, as spotted on the M&M Blog.

• Unilever’s soap brand Dove hopes to encourage Chinese women to share what they feel makes them beautiful through a social media initiative.

Watch the video of Dove's 'Real Beauty' campaign in China where the brand partnered with TV show Ugly Betty.

Check out our blog post about Dove's ambient activation around the ongoing 'Real Beauty' campaign.

• Playboy Enterprises is taking 57 years of Playboy magazine online, with i.Playboy.com.

Check out Playboy's cheeky campaign in Argentina where the brand handed out beach towels illustrated as Playboy front covers, with whoever lying on them appearing to be cover models.

Also see our blog post about when Playboy Argentina created an online interactive experience to go hand in hand with its printed version.

In other news:

• James Tagg has joined MPG Media Contacts’ full service mobile agency Mobext as mobile services director.
• ADmanago, the application which aims to simplify Google Adwords, is launching in the US market after gaining traction in Europe.
• Volkswagen is rolling out its ‘Think Blue’ initiative in the US, to encourage eco-friendly mobility.
• BBH’s Mark Boyd and Drum PHD’s Mark Eaves, are launching a new creative company, Gravity Road.
• Wrangler has awarded its total communication, media and digital planning and buying business for Malaysia and Singapore to MEC’s Malaysian division.
• Online video hosting platform, Vzaar has launched its online video festival, with guest judge Oliver Stone.
• Consumer confidence in emerging regions, such as Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa, is exceeding that in more mature areas.

• Dmexco’s Satellites event will be held in Paris for the first time at the end of May.

“The French digital industry is extremely dynamic and together with the UK and Germany it is one of the largest markets in Europe,” said Dmexco director for marketing, sales and operations Frank Schneider.

As a testament to this statement, check out how Nestle creating a 3-D game on the back of its Chocopic cereal pack.

• Mobile email activity has grown by 81%

If you're interested in mobile, check out our mobile report which deeply analyses this rapidly growing trend.

In other news:

• Orange has launched its Orange TV app on the iPad.
• Americans streamed a record 14.7 billion videos in April.
• Bart Michels is to lead Added Value UK following the transfer of co-managing director Marie Ridgley from London to New York.
• Omnicom Media Group MENA and mobile media company July Systems are joining forces for the creation of a mobile media platform in MENA.
• International visitor arrivals into Asia and the Pacific for the first quarter saw a 5% increase, according to figures by the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
• Specific Media has appointed Vic Catalfamo as global category lead, consumer packaged goods.

• Adidas is expanding its presence on smartphones by bringing its miCoach app to Android users.

Watch the video of Adidas's frisky advert with half naked girl dancing provocatively in a pair of Adidas Originals jeans.

Check out the Heat Tracker, the App that helps singletons identify local hot spots to increase odds of meeting that “special someone.”

Read about when Reebok teamed up with global acrobatic circus entertainment company, Cirque du Soleil, to create an innovative gym work out called Jukari Fit to Fly.

Watch the video of when Nike developed the Nike Air Show, a technological innovation that mashes up online and offline worlds in a unique race: shoes that levitate and move thanks to the air of the participants, who can blow through the microphone of their computers and move the chosen shoe, competing against other consumers that can be at the Nike store or anywhere connected to Internet.

In other news:

• Euronews is now available live through its iPad and iPhone apps.
• International media and marketing insight company Ebiquity has acquired Echo Research.
• Viacom International Media Networks’ (VIMN) is expanding its presence in Poland with the debut of educational pre-school network Nick Jr.
• Spanish and Portuguese-language digital media company Prisa has appointed Felipe de Lucas as general manager, Prisa Brand Solutions.
• Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has been named the ‘Media Person of the Year’ by Cannes.

Government agencies need to tread very carefully when dabbling in social media. The latest gaffe to hit the blogosphere comes from the U.S, where the Secret Service has apparently been forced to issue an apology for the following tweet:

One would think the U.S Secret Service, or indeed any national organisation involved in covert operations, would be the last organisation to run a Twitter account. Even if it did, surely posting a running commentary of what it was up to flies in the face of being, well, secret.

Regardless of the implications for natonal security, it's comforting to know that the modern Secret Service operative is media savvy enough to not only appreciate micro-blogging, but is also able to spot right-wing bias when they see it.

The offending tweet was retweeted by the service's 20,000 followers before someone at HQ intervened and deleted the posting. Fortunately, screen grab technology ensures that 

Perhaps the next James Bond film will see Daniel Craig as 007 taking time out from saving the free world to update his Facebook status?

By Felix Morgan

It feels like we’ve been saying this for years now, but Google is proving time and time again that it simply does not understand social.

Dodgeball

When it purchased Dodgeball back in 2005, Google was four years ahead of the global trend for location-based services. By buying the market leader, it had a huge opportunity to capitalise on and dominate the market before it emerged. What did Google do with it? Discontinued the service and released its creator, Dennis Crowley, to continue with a new project. A few years later, he created Foursquare, which is currently seeking funding at a valuation of over $500 million… while Dodgeball sits in the dusty Google cabinet of ‘almosts’.

Google did well to: Spot the location based trend early.
They missed a trick by: Failing to capitalise on it, and killing Dodgeball before it flourished.
They should have: Retained Crowley and taken advantage of their foresight.  

Google Wave

A few years later, Google returned to the social market with its new collaboration service, Google Wave. This was announced to much excitement, being proclaimed as the future of web communication and with beta invites being sold for up to $70. Eventually it was released… and the community replied with a collaborative ‘Huh?’ – the user experience was incredibly confusing and the mass population had no idea how to use it. A social media platform exists to facilitate human connections and, while Wave had some interesting functionality, it operated in a very convoluted way and didn’t satisfy any basic human needs. So, it was soon unbranded and released as an open-source platform due to lack of interest.

Google did well to: Excite the community by offering a new approach to collaboration.
They missed a trick by: Trying to change human behaviour too much by creating a needlessly complicated user experience.
They should have: Kept it simple, and focused on the consumer need rather than the technology.

 

Google Buzz

Not one to give up, the company decided to take another attempt at social with Google Buzz. Buzz was a social messaging service that integrated into Google’s existing communications platforms and allowed people to share information and content easily. This seems like a useful tool on paper but, yet again, Google managed to screw it up. The launch of the product was completely overshadowed by the inherent security issues of Buzz, as well as its intrusive nature. Google didn’t realise just how personal to the consumer social media is. And while the security issues were minor in the grand scheme of things, Buzz had lost the community at ‘Hello’.

Google did well to: Spot the opportunity for a centralised communication platform.
They missed a trick by: Making the product too invasive, and allowing the security issues to take the spotlight off of it.
They should have: Focused on helping consumers consolidate their existing networks, rather than adding a new one to their already buzzing lives.

 
+1

And now we come to the present day, where Google is preparing itself to hit the social market once more with a new service: ‘+1’. However, this already seems destined to be another failed social opportunity for Google because, once again, the UX has been thought through in a very sloppy way. The +1 button can be experienced in two different ways: firstly, on third-party websites with the exact same functionality as Facebook Likes (who have partnered with their rivals, Bing), but without the social graph to back it up; and secondly, in the search results.

As it currently stands, Google is asking users to press the +1 button if they ‘like’ the content being delivered. But because this call to action is placed before the web experience is even delivered, there is no way for the user to know whether they like the content or not until they’ve left the site. At that point, Google has already lost them. Do the developers of +1 really expect users to find a site through Google, view its content, then head back to Google to press a button? It’s a ridiculous user journey and a mechanic destined to fail; Google has yet again introduced a service with incomplete functionality and, unless +1 is swiftly re-imagined, it will inevitably lose the public’s interest at the first hurdle.

Google did well to:  Join the social search market before Bing managed to dominate it.
They missed a trick by: Failing to create a partnership with Facebook, and creating a badly thought out user experience.
They should have: Created a partnership with Facebook to access their social graph and existing user base.

 

Google is one of the most logic-focused companies in the world; the company is built on intelligent algorithms that eliminate the need for social input. By relying on social data, Google is either admitting that its algorithms aren’t as intelligent as previously claimed, or it’s damaging its own service. This is a fork in the road for the company; rather than hedging its bets between the two routes, Google needs to commit to either an algorithmic or a social path, if it wishes to retain dominance in either.

 

Felix Morgan is senior creative technologist at Billington Cartmell !nvent. See more of its work here.