Lexus and M&C Saatchi have developed a new conceptual project to show off how thrilling it is to drive a Lexus RC F by building a very special car that is covered in biometric paint to visualise drivers’ heartbeats.

Three professional drivers were connected to the car through unique biometric paintwork that displayed their heartbeat – transmitted from a heart rate monitor to a bespoke electrical system within the RC F. The data is then captured and processed before sending an electric charge through the car’s body panels.

A test track, inspired by the heart of Japanese Motorsport, was created and then the drivers raced, at night, in an event dubbed ‘Heart Racing’.

Everyone has probably heard the phrase “a random act of kindness”. At face value, it describes something fairly self-explanatory; a selfless act performed by someone who wants to help or cheer up another individual. As a concept, it even has its own week in the event calendar, with Random Acts of Kindness Week occurring from the 9^th to the 15^th of February.

Recently however, it’s become something of a marketing trend. While the likes of augmented reality, drone advertising or projection mapping are using the latest technology to promote brands and products, campaigns based around Random Acts of Kindness are all about spreading some love in the simplest way possible. One of the earliest examples was Interflora’s Twitter campaign in 2010, when it cheered up people who were complaining about having a bad day on social media by surprising them with a bunch of flowers. It proved particularly popular with airlines, a number of them, including KLM, Virgin Atlantic USA and Spanair, creating their own campaigns to surprise travellers in airports across the globe.

Here are our five favourite examples of brands performing their own selfless acts of kindness;

M&M Global has kicked off a public vote to decide the winner of three M&M Global Awards 2015 Grand Prix awards. Here’s your chance to have your say on who you think deserves to be crowned International Advertiser of the Year, International Media Brand of the Year and Programmatic Company of the Year.*

Check out the categories/shortlisted companies below and CAST YOUR VOTE HERE. Also, you can click through to view some of their latest work featured on Cream.

International Advertiser of the Year is a brand that has excelled across markets, and found success through the innovative use of media and communications. The nominees are:

In the last few years, we’ve seen some amazing advances in customer automated technologies – and mainly welcomed changes that make life easier and more efficient. As a Brit, although we quietly accept queues and will happily join in when we see one, many of our everyday experiences, particularly shopping and travelling, have undoubtedly been enhanced by the growth of self-service technology.

Take airports, for example; Operations are far more smooth and efficient as a result, whether departing and speeding our way through the check-in, bag drop and security processes, through to the arrivals experience, which has been drastically improved – originally by IRIS technology and more recently by the introduction of e-passport machines and trusted traveller programmes.

It’s a win-win situation. The consumer has a better all-round experience, enjoying more free time to treat themselves in shops, cafés and restaurants, or on other products and services, while reaching their destination in a more relaxed frame of mind.

Brands also win, benefiting from more time to engage with customers, and greater scope to develop more effective experiences, such as in-store skincare consultations or entertainment to get passengers in the mood to treat themselves while in transit.  

There is a treasure trove of untapped marketing potential in travel user generated content (UGC) for both publishers and advertisers. The key to accessing it is effective classification. When classified in the right way, travel UGC presents publishers with a golden monetisation opportunity, while making it easier for brands to target their advertising.

No longer do holidaymakers wait until they return home to develop the snaps they’ve taken on their disposable cameras, now they post them in real-time via their mobile or laptop straight to their favourite social media channels. In fact, a new infographic released this week from Stackla [see more below] highlighted that, as of June 2015, more than 47 million #travel photos have been posted to Instagram alone.

The good news for brands is that 40% of millennials rely specifically on this sort of content to inform their future travel plans.

Herein lies the advertising opportunity. If this content can be accurately classified, it can be sold to brands as a key advertising opportunity, allowing them to target their ads to the subject of the image. Up until recently, only contextual data could be used to classify a picture based on the text around it. But this can be hit and miss, creating the danger of ads being placed alongside inappropriate images.

MediaCom and OMD have achieved the highest numbers of entries in this year’s M&M Global Awards shortlist, with the agencies almost neck-and-neck with 31 and 29 entries respectively, while Dell and Shell have emerged as the brands with the most nominations.

This year the shortlist features 116 entries spanning 18 categories.

While 69 brands made the shortlist, Dell’s ‘Take IT Easy’ case study through MediaCom stood out for garnering the most nominations for any campaign, being shortlisted six times, followed by Bose’s #listenforyourself (also MediaCom).

Starcom MediaVest Group achieved the third-highest number of entries to the awards, while newcomers include Essence, RE’FLEKT and Primus.

This year’s awards see the debut of a number of new categories: B2B Campaign of the Year, Best Partnership Award, Best Use of Mobile, Best Use of Native Advertising, Best Use of Video, International Creativity Award and The Smart Use of Data Award.

Check out the full shortlist below.

Garry Taylor, UK Art Director at Say Media, believes you should never judge a book entirely by its cover, but argues that online, first impressions really count.

Substance should always win out over style, right? However, in the digital world - where you have literally (milli) seconds to grab someone’s attention - first impressions still count. People make snap judgments all the time in daily life, forming lasting first impressions of people, places and products in an extraordinarily short period of time. You may make a final choice on a new perfume by testing it out with a little spray here or there, but how did you decide which perfumes to try on before you even smelt them?

When a reader lands on your website, it’s often their first interaction with your brand. That first impression your site’s design creates is crucial in grabbing users’ attention. Google research has confirmed that site visitors get an initial ‘gut feel’ for your site within 50 milliseconds of landing on it. By comparison, the average blink of an eye takes 100 to 400 milliseconds.

You can’t expect people to stick around if that first impression is dull or confusing. The quality of the content might be great, but what good is it if users get put off before ever reading a word?

First impressions not only count. They last.

If I told you that a new global campaign is calling out to the public to “make a child cry”, what are your first thoughts?

Well, it’s actually the workings of non-governmental organisation Doctors of the World and the idea, conceived by DDB Paris, is really quite something.