That's definitely a good title, after our meetings with the great guy's from Cisco and IMN the past 2 days we arrived in New York where we stay on the 42 floor of the Hilton on Times Square and Man what a view. As it is my first time in NY it's all quite overwhelming and really stunning to see all these buildings. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow to visit the Guggenheim museum, Central Park, the top of the empire state building and lots of other Things. Tomorrow I guess you’ll have a lot of pictures of our adventures here but anyway I’ll give you one at the moment …. THE VIEW FROM OUR ROOM...

This morning at around 10.10 we had our flight to the States and what a trip, we flew with American Airlines so far so good but the trip was veeeery long what we ate if we had some was really bad so this wasn't a really nice experience. Once arrived in New York (where the weather was really great) we were very happy to find our Ford Explorer, a great car to make our trip to Boston. I guess we’ll grab a bite now and go early in our bed as tomorrow we’ll have some great meetings with IMN and Cisco to complete our partner event planner.

After a lot of work last week and a totally disconnected weekend (due to also a lot of work, but in my garden) I wasn't able to do a lot of blogging. Tomorrow I'm off with a colleague of mine to the States for a client meeting in Boston and after that some leisure time in New York. If I find the time, which I'm not really sure I'll try to keep you posted of our adventures or at least upload some pictures of what we do.

I guess it’s the start of the Racing season but there are definitely a lot of racing advergames It all started with a post from BMW which is for me top of the bill. Anyway the one that I’m showing here from puma and Foot Locker to promote the new Puma Ducati isn’t bad at all it has also a really nice game play but the graphics are a whole other style than the BMW game.
Then there is one from Biotherm which is also nice and also has a catchy game play. When you have a look at the 3 games you see quite clearly the difference in means to develop the games. I'm not saying the last 2 are bad but the BMW game is really another league.
Found on: http://www.adverblog.com
Technorati tags: Advergame, Race+game, Puma, Biotherm

Got to love the high quality Belgium TV programs “Temptation Island” great program with great and really deep messages. A guy called Gringo (What a name anyway) said the prophetic words “Talk to the hands, because the face don't want to hear it anymore.” got to love the guy. Now it has been immortalized on Wikipedia, next to Schwarzenegger, The Simpsons and Jerry Springer.

PS: for my dutch readers does somebody know what "Jeun" means???
Reminded by: http://i-wisdom.typepad.com

BMW just launched a new advergame Pursuit Across Europe. it's a race game and although I'm not really a fan of race games I really liked this one both from the graphical side as from the game experience side.The sounds/music of the game are also really cool they add a lot to the whole experience. I can only say one thing ""WOW"" cool game, really nice graphics and even better music. It's really a must experience one.
Found on http://www.adverblog.com
Technorati tags: Advergame, Race+game, BMW

Trident Launched a new site www.tridentgum.co.uk/ nothing really special but the whole concept of the site is that it's build like a DVD and it's really well done. The movies stream very well and it's a nice experience. Once you start you want to see more.
Found on: http://www.adverblog.com

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (where are the days ;-) are launching a new movie and in São Paulo they found a great way of promoting it. Next to the guerrilla action which you can see below the also made a blog http://www.estamoschegando.com.br/ (we are arriving) where you can follow all the actions they did for the launch of the movie. The idea of a guerrilla action or a commercial (see one of my previous posts about "The Couple") with the making of blog is really nice and has a real added value, you give a glance to your audience of what to expect and make them want to see the final result with a bigger chance of success for your campaign.
Found on: http://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/20070415_tmnt_guerrilla_in_saeo_paulo/#When:19:00:00Z

JCDecaux found a new interactive poster, they introduced to launch the new Grolsch beer bottle. In the movie you can see the effect it has on the people, nice concept.

found on: http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003047.htm

Following my previous post I had naturally a look at the next big bike race "Parijs - Roubaix" and what I saw was that they left out the integration with Google maps BUT I didn't see any integration with MSN maps so I guess at the moment this isn't possible in MSN maps. Let's hope that on the next race we'll see a brand new MSN Maps application.

Geert Desager an ex colleague of mine who's currently Trade Marketing Manager for MSN in Belgium is making a commercial for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions called 'The Couple'. Till here nothing special, the special thing is that he's keeping a blog about his adventures http://themakingof.wordpress.com/. I'll surely be watching his adventures and which him good luck with this great project.
PS I'm quite sure these won't be his last days as Marketing Manager at Microsoft!
Technorati tags: Commercial, MSN, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions

Yesterday my attention was caught by a news alert from my messenger concerning the bike race Gent-Wevelgem. I'm not that interested in sports but anyway I wanted to see what the life coverage was. So I clicked and to my surprise I saw a co-branded campaign between Msn, Google and Nieuwsblad.be!!! Why co-branded cause it seemed that they were using Google maps to show the progress of the bikers. The tool was very clear and nice but still it seemed weird to see the integration of Google maps when we know that Msn has exactly the same kind of tool Msn maps. Anyway, maybe the integration with Msn maps was too difficult or simply not possible?

Sloggi made a nice new campaign to promote their "Hot Summer" collection where you can create your own billboard. You are in charge of the casting, the background and then you take your picture. Nice campaign but veeeery masculine ...
PS. Their normal site www.sloggi.be is also quite nice.
Found on: http://www.molblog.nl/
Technorati tags: Sloggi, Viral, E-campaign

I saw this commercial on the TV and quite liked the humor of it, http://www.adverblog.com reminded me, so here it is.

By Duval Guillaume Antwerp. Technorati tags: Brother, Commercial

For those who don't know what Twitter is, here is the Wikipedia definition on Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website or an application such as Twitterrific. These updates are displayed on the user's profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to members of his circle of friends, or allow delivery to everybody (which is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application. For SMS, currently two gateway numbers are available: one for the USA and a UK number for international use. While the twitter service itself is free, posting and receiving updates via SMS typically incurs a charge from the wireless carrier.

Now my findings, does anybody really care what I'm doing at the moment if I'm in my bath or walking in the park with my family??? Well I don't think so, but I also thought that this was really a niche public thing untill I read a post form bvlg on Belgian Twitter Friends. In his post I saw this image. It surprised me to see that "so many" Belgian people where part of the Twitter community! I'm wondering is this just a hype that will pass or is this really the next big thing like Blogging?? One thing is sure at the moment you won't find me in this list, but I'll follow closely what's happening around it.

Technorati tags: Twitter, Belgian Twitter Friends

This is a great presentation on Identity 2.0 from Dick Hardt. The subject is not only very interesting but this guy sure can keep your attention.

Found on: http://iabeuropecongress.blogspot.com
Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Identity 2.0, IAB Europe Congress Blog, Dick Hardt

Coke launched a new commercial in China the special thing about it is that it's a combined commercial with the game World of Warcraft. I think the idea is really great after my previous post about KitKat and Second Life now we got one from Coke and WOW.

Technorati tags: Coke, Commercial, WOW

I just received the invitation to install the new version of Joost, I had a quick look and really liked the additional developments they did on the tool. It makes it all a lot more clear and more user-friendly. Now the important part of the post, with the new version I also received some invitations and guess what I got 2 left. So the first 2 persons who send a mail to kris.vanhauwermeirenatgmail.com will receive an invitation to become an official Joost Beta tester. On your marks, get set, ready, go.

This is a report I found on Marketing online but it originally came from Piper Jaffray, it predicts all the trends the comming years. I found it really intresting so I took the overview completely over, it's a lot to read but still it's all worth reading it.

The report defines user revolution as a major trend that is happening primarily with consumers, who are taking control of content consumption and branding. "The historically passive consumer is changing rapidly, not only becoming more informed and confident about purchase decisions, but also increasingly taking control of the consumption of information and content that used to be distributed by networks, studios, publishers and retailers," said Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. "We believe this will cause a significant rise in prominence of the Internet as a major content consumption and marketing medium."

There are 12 key themes discussed in "The User Revolution" report:
1. Global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011.
2. Communitainment: Internet has increasingly become a principal medium
for community, communication and entertainment -- three areas that
have collided and are impacting each other's growth -- generating a
new type of activity: communitainment. Communitainment is taking time
away from other, traditional, types of content consumption on the
Internet.
3. Usites -- The increasing popular category of user generated sites,
which we are calling Usites, are driving traffic away from other
destinations and pose a challenge to the advertisers and publishers.
4. The Internet is now a mainstream medium: The web is the leading
medium at work and the second leading medium at home behind
television.
5. Internet usage patterns are changing, favoring Usites,
communitainment sites, search, and away from traditional portals.
6. User Generated Brands. The consumers are taking control of content
consumption and branding.
7. Media Fragmentation: Advertisers increasingly will need to buy more
inventory, from nearly all types of media, especially the Internet,
to have the desired impact.
8. The Golden Search: search has become the new portal.
9. Google's dominance is likely to expand, partly fueled by a wide
variety of non-search related products that create a virtuous cycle
of brand affinity for Google.
10. Video ads will be the driver of the next major growth in brand
advertising and getting additional dollars shifted from traditional
media to online.
11. Ad networks are experiencing increased demand due to increasing
Internet fragmentation, desire for more targeted inventory,
increasing usage of networks for branding and increased site
visibility.
12. Agencies are rapidly evolving into more sophisticated,
technology-savvy entities that combine best of breed offerings.

The report also lists the most important companies to watch during this revolution, companies that are likely to benefit most, or be highly impacted by these trends. These companies include: Google (and YouTube), Yahoo!, Disney, News Corp., Time Warner, Microsoft, InterActive, Facebook, Craigslist, Brightcove, Yelp, SINA Corp., Baidu, aQuantive, ValueClick, 24/7 Media, Netflix, Wikipedia, MobiTV, Digg and Hakia.

Originally from: http://www.piperjaffray.com
Found on: http://www.marketingonline.nl

About every marketing blog showed this campaign from Wonderbra so now it's my turn, never less really a great creative idea (or isn't it). Even the viral of this Movie works cause on the Viral Video Chart it takes place number 18 with 99 blogs linking to it and about 295,204 views in YouTube. Not bad for a campaign that wasn't meant to be viral. The only thing is I still don't know if it's just the machine gone mad or if it's really coming out of a creative mind, so if anybody has seen these all around or knows if it's a well thought campaign please let me know here.

Here is the first Joost Commercial I don't say the commercial is great but it doesn't have to be the product is great enough.
For those who were on the moon the last month's and don't know what it is here are my previous posts about Joost.