Check out this TV spot we created for BBC Radio 4, to promote their science shows 'The Life Scientific' and 'The Monkey Cage'.

We used a fresh approach to appeal to the younger end of Radio 4's target audience, as well as regular listeners.

We wanted to create an animation that would capture the attention of the inquiring mind, using a little bit of technical magic and a humble radio receiver.

The team was led by creative director Lee Edwards, director Sonja Phillips and 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' animator Alice Dunseath, bringing to life, and creating characters for the parts that live inside the radio receiver.

Ed Edwards, Executive Creative Director of devilfish, commented:
"With this film, we wanted to create some magic for Radio 4, and we are extremely pleased with the final animation. The characters were brought to life in a beautiful emotive way with a hugely talented team."

Liv Slack, Creative Marketing Executive, BBC said:
“The team at devilfish are wonderfully creative and a great bunch to work with. Their response to this brief is both innovative and charming and we’re delighted with the end result which will really strike a chord with the audience.”

Credits
Agency: devilfish
Executive Creative Director: Ed Edwards
Creative Director: Lee Edwards
Producer: Kate Bush

By Mike Woods, Framestore

This is the week that the holiday party season gets into full swing.  A viral video warning for all you partygoers from DDB - be careful of the 'Walk of Shame.’

 

by Wesley Lynch.

Admit it, as a niche or luxury brand you probably scoff at social media. What, you wonder, does your brand have to do with some pimply kid on a skateboard messaging his friends?

But you’d be wrong on two counts. A KISSMetrics report reveals that social media users are both wealthier and older than you think. Among the social platforms, Twitter has the most high-income earners (27% earn over $75 000 p.a.). An impressive 37% of Facebook users are over 45.

And they’re not monitoring their kids either. They’re ditching their satellite news channel for a more well-rounded perspective (Twitter), and they’re polling their friends, who know their likes and dislikes, for advice on what to get a loved one for Christmas (Facebook).

It’s obvious, then, that social is an underestimated and underrepresented medium in the niche brand marketing mix – a fact borne out by their brands conspicuous absence from social platforms.

Besides the surprising facts quoted above, here are a few things you probably didn’t know about social, things that ought to ease your fears and suspicions about the medium.

New authorities 

Forget Google and brand websites – social media is the new authority on topics across the board. If someone is looking for a really great wine or to form an opinion on a topical affair, chances are they’ll poll their friends or  poke around the ‘walled garden’ of Facebook rather than wade through search engine results or undertake an arduous trawling of websites.

So if you’re not on social media, you’re missing out on some highly qualified audiences doing some very targeted comparative shopping and acting on very powerful recommendations.

Millionaire aspirations

Today, industries like IT produce younger millionaires who bring a new casual luxury segment to the market, a segment perhaps not fully recognised yet by the high-end brands. Gangsta rappers with their penchant for ostentatious wealth, luxury cars, bling and designer wear, bring a different style again to the consumption of luxury brands.

With this democratisation of luxury brands, aspiration is keener than ever. Ordinary companies now toast their successes with Dom Perignon; kids and other low-income earners simply must have the latest iPhone.

Brand exclusivity and social

Given these developments, going social is not a move away from exclusivity. It is simply an extension of the brand community.

Today, brand communities form around groupings that actually consume the brand – not abstract metrics such as wealth. (Besides, with the above examples of young IT professionals and upwardly mobile rappers, the correlation between disposable income and age is being steadily eroded).

Niche brands should take social media channels seriously as a portfolio of tools, technologies and platforms facilitating the discovery and sharing of their content by an increasingly discerning social community.

Cartier experimented with MySpace back in 2008

It can be done

Where to from here? While it is not a widespread phenomenon yet, niche brands are increasingly flocking to the social Web. From Cartier’s MySpace account to Tiffany’s Facebook page and the Jimmy Choo treasure hunt on Foursquare, brands are figuring out how to do it.

To follow in their footsteps, other niche brands investigating a social strategy should engage the services of a technology and creative team that has been there and done that. Decide what you want from a social campaign or presence, find the local and global examples that inspire you, and track down the team that can deliver.

Wesley Lynch is CEO of Realm Digital.

 

Okay, so such a thing might not really exist but in attempt to help the online world get a little bit closer to the discovery of the perfect website, ROI Media in South Africa has crunched some data and viewing habits to help create an infographic guide.

This won't stop people getting to flash with Flash, nor will it stop well established sites needlessly experimenting with successfull layouts just for the hell of it (Yes, I'm looking at you lot at the bbc.co.uk homepage), but if this helps stop just one wayward web design, its creation should be applauded. Some of the stats are a bit familiar, but there's some nice user experience insights. It also tracks the continued meteoric rise of the tumblr blogging platform.

By Stuart Durham

Applications for a new generic top level domains (gTLDs) are set to open in January 2012, changing the way some brand owners control and manage their online brand presence.  For advocates of the new gTLDs, these ‘.brand’ domains are a marketing game-changer, but the changes have also attracted some vocal critics.

Advertising associations, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Direct Marketers Association, have been particularly vocal in their opposition to the new domains, claiming the new gTLDs will increase cybersquatting and make it ‘easier for online felons to cloak themselves in the names of trusted brands’

Online trust is a huge and highly emotive issue for brand owners but the argument that the new gTLDs will lead to some kind of cybersquatting free-for-all just doesn’t stack up.

Cybersquatters won’t apply for a new TLD

Cybersquatters are opportunists who have long thrived in an environment where ‘no questions asked’ domain names can be purchased for just a few pounds. At $185,000 USD just to apply for one of the new gTLDs, ICANN has set the bar deliberately high so that only organisations that satisfy ICANN’s requirements get the chance to operate their own new TLD.  Secondly, ICANN is unlikely to allow confusingly similar names or ‘typos’ to be approved in the application process – so for example, if .hsbc is approved, .hbsc won’t be allowed.

Ownership of a .brand enables brand owners to exert far greater control of who uses their name on the internet. By creating and owning a unique piece of online real estate, brands are able to exert full control over who resides in that space – making cybersquatting impossible on a .brand domain.

Scoping the threat in new generic names

What about the expected new generic names like .music, .web or .shop?  Some of these new names will have restricted registration requirements to allow only companies or individuals in the industry or community the name represents – for example, .hotel could be restricted to only hotel operators – reducing likelihood of cybersquatters on those domains.

So that leaves only the new open registries.  While it is hoped they will set responsible registration rules, the chance for cybersquatting on the new open names will exist.  However, while it is hard to definitively say how many new open registries there will be, it is likely the number of truly open new TLDs will be significantly smaller than the total number of new gTLDs.

Big brands – the primary targets of cybersquatters – won’t necessarily have to register all their brands in the new open TLDs.  They could register in only those which they feel are higher risk, and monitor the rest of the new domains for any infringements and take action on a case-by-case basis.  Or they could just take a purely monitoring approach for the new TLDs.  It will depend on the risk profile of the organisation, but the point is that blanket registration across the new open TLDs is not the only effective option on the table.

It’s worth remembering that there are already 200+ top level domains in existence today which cybersquatters can choose from, and savvy brands are monitoring these for infringements to take action where necessary.

Using the new TLDs to lower risk

Perhaps most significantly however, a .brand provides brand owners with a simple visual cue to help Internet users distinguish between real sites and fake ones, something which the current domain name system has failed to achieve.

Research Melbourne IT DBS conducted with YouGov found 48% of consumers rate brands as either fair or poor in adequately distinguishing their sites from counterfeiters.  A similar proportion (51%) admit they find it difficult to differentiate between sites selling genuine goods and those which sell fake or counterfeit items.

A .brand gTLD is not an overnight solution to these issues. But in the long-term, if brands educate and encourage customers and other stakeholders that their .brand site is the one to trust, internet users will make the trustworthy .brand domain their first and only choice.

By casting off the shackles of the existing naming system, the new gTLDs present an opportunity for brand owners to create communities of trust and reassurance for their audiences.

With so much of the long-term future of the Internet to be based on authentication and trust, savvy brand owners can use the forthcoming changes to their advantage for long term online brand benefit.

By Mike Woods, Framestore

The holiday season is fast approaching and this week's video will get you all in the spirit of December.  Made by a couple of guys from England, this video is a simple premise of a different dance for each day of December.  It’s brilliant!

7th December - 'Fell In Love With A Girl' by The White Stripes from lewisnluke on Vimeo.

 

Dutch brewer Heineken has purchased Galaxy Pub Estate, the owner of 918 pubs in the UK, from the Royal Bank of Scotland for a cash sum of $646m.

Coca-Cola has called a review of Diet Coke’s pan-European advertising account which is estimated to be worth $62m.

Earlier this year Cream sat down with Coca-Cola’s senior vice-president, integrated marketing communications and capabilities, Wendy Clark, who spoke about Coke’s ambitions to put content at the core of its strategy via its ‘liquid and linked’ philosophy.