For 2 reasons, that I'm aware of today at least. Although it's possible to justify why 1 of these reasons is not actually that bad depending on your view of the world and humans in general..
Reason 1: I've not blogged, noted or uploaded anything to Bannerblog for a good few months (the last was here) luckily there's several noted geniuses running the site and moderately sharp (like a butterknife after a bong) people like tc here can get away with things, most of the time.
Reason 2: I'm posting about online gambling. Now, wether or not you see this particular example as bad karma or not depends on:
a) if you can agree with me that placing bets, wagers and playing game of chance has been with us since the dawn of time - think old fellas and 2up in the trenches or trying it on with swedish twins at the same time even though their sisters/brothers - that sort of thing
AND
b) if you can also agree that when it's peer to peer, mano to mano, that it's better, far better than TABCORP or the Victorian Government taking the profits and making desal plants with it. I mean the Victorian Government here in AU alone takes something above 1.5 billion ($375 per person old-ish data) annually.
Therefore, betfair is something closer to ok perhaps? I'm cool with it.
Anyway they've launched this site as part of the 8million seconds of summer campaign. It's pretty neat how it works using a Marumushi Newsmap type approach to display using scale and colour, available pools and odds, updating every few seconds.
If you're a betting man/woman, it's a better option than the pokies.
If you ventured into Sydney city yesterday you would have noticed almost every second adshell has an unbranded poster of a goat with a frog on its head. I debated with my friends if it was for Telstra (colors look right) or Optus (use of animals) or some other random brand or just part of Sydney Festival (maybe Sydney is sponsoring art in ad shells instead of just ads). We also debated the stupidity of buying so much media with no brand.
Imagine my surprise when I visited news.com.au today to see the the ad again with the brand. it was Trading Post (owned by Telstra)
Here's one ad where you can create a sentence in goat talk! Why? Who knows but you can get it sent to your mobile and show of to your friends how cool you are.
I'm guessing TV media starts today (it did see Mumbrella for more info) with the reason I would want to "talk like a goat". The website Goatizer might be ready soon too. As the T&Cs link goes there but nothing else is visible.
This is a total waste of outdoor media dollars. I initially thought it was all about building word of mouth. ie People start asking "WTF is with the goat and frog ads" and the brand is revealed a week later. They would have made it interesting to buy the search term "goat with a frog on its head" and lead them to a similar mysterious website to capture those people interested enough to search for it. But sadly the mystery is now spoilt the next day by online.
Or is this a new strategy devised by the geniuses at Trading Post's agency? Run branded TV and online and offline unbranded. So you subtly remember the brand.
Canon's new promotion "Beyond the Still" has begun with this call to entry video from Vimeo user Vincent Laforet.. This really shows off the amazing video you can achieve with the DSLRs. I'm glad Canon is supporting Vimeo as it's a much more creative (although much smaller) community.
Locally in Australia Canon celebrated the latest round of the fantastic Photo 5 comp with a gallery showing the 7,000 submissions. More details on Campaign Brief.
The Wall is a new element I noticed in which a notable photograpger curates a collection of photos submitted via the World of EOS site.
I've seen the odd campaign from Nikon but Canon just continue from strength to strength. Which makes me sad as a Nikon user.
Picture Town from Nikon was one of my favs. The video here sums it up well
But sadly the URL is dead. Great work from Nikon. What is live is their World of EOS type photo sharing site called Mypicturetown only without any of the community or engagment that Canon has.
