Pod1 Blog

What type are you? -launched earlier in the year by Pentagram who wanted people to be able to understand that meaning properly and use it more consciously.

Researched over seven years with a team of 23 academics across Eastern Europe, ‘What Type Are You’ asks the four key character questions of our day, analyses your responses in exceptional detail and recommends one of 16 typefaces as a result.

Find out more here

1. Homepage takeover of VIMEO that is pretty outstanding. Great execution. It goes from this:

To this:

(originally found here: http://www.andykinsella.com/2010/03/02/tostitos-salsa-nice-takeover-example-on-vimeo/)

2. Skinput: using the skin on your arm instead of a joystick/keyboard – see for yourself:

Nice short for Love Magazine by James Lima and Katie Grand. See some great shots from behind the scenes at London Fashion week on their blog at http://thelovemagazineblog.wordpress.com/

Michael Donnelly, Coca Cola’s Group Director for Worldwide Interactive Marketing gave the above presentation at the iStrategy 2010 Conference.  Very interesting to see how the uber brands of the world manage social media marketing and well worth the review.

A few key points from Mr. Donnelly that resonate:

• Your consumers own your brand.  Make your social strategy fan-focussed and let them choose how they want to engage with it
• Creating engaging communities builds a sustainable relationship with your consumers
• Fans don’t join online communities to be advertised at or sold to
• Fully integrate media campaigns with common social media functionality for maximum impact
• Optimise social medial tools  you have available to you
• Social Media should always support Brand Objectives
• “Keep it simple and intuitive”

NET-A-PORTER.COM have ventured into the world of white and launched their first online Wedding Boutique this month.  The Boutique sells luxurious, chic bridal and wedding fashion from a number of designers including Lanvin Blanche, Alexander McQueen, Temperley London and more. To promote the online Wedding Boutique, we’ve worked with Net-A-Porter to launch a rich media advertising campaign.

Pod1’s brief was to create the campaign messaging, and design and produce a number of rich media ad formats within an interactive template. The camapign is the first of its kind for Net-A-Porter that uses an exciting new rich media format.  We’ve teamed up with Flashtalking to create dynamic templates containing a share panel that all ad formats will use.  The panel allows the Net-A-Porter audience to interact with the ad in a personal, engaging way.  Gone are the days of traditonal formats, static impressions and boring click-throughs; make way for multichannel sharing, social media engagement and behavioural tracking! Check out the Ad’s in action on the following sites:

http://www.youandyourwedding.co.uk/
http://www.weddingmagazine.co.uk/
http://www.bridesmagazine.co.uk/planning/default.aspx

Last Friday marked the launch of Dig Deep Moments, the first of our many campaigns for Dig Deep. If you don’t already know, they are a new men’s streetwear brand inspired from sports launching in April 2010 with a stunning collection of tee-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, jackets and accessories.

The idea of Dig Deep Moments came from our early pitches to them, it gives Dig Deep the opportunity to explain the philosophy behind their brand before the eComm launch, get a following through great content, data capture through an exciting competition, and of course be the platform for fans to have heated discussions on the greatest sporting moments in history.

Check it out Dig Deep Moments – View, rate, share & have your say!

To celebrate the launch, Dig Deep invited a some of the team to the Six Nations Rugby match at Twickenham, with the England vs. Wales game marking the centenary match at the glorious stadium. Blessed with a beautiful (cold but sunny) day we enjoyed some freezing pints, tasty stadium food and watched a great game filled with many Dig Deep moments.

P.s. Thanks for the great photos Hannah.

Great interactivity with this new collection site for Wrangler Blue Bell Jeans Spring/Summer 2010. Visitors get to interact with each model taking drag interactivity to a new level. Produced by Swedish interactive production company Kokokaka.

We’re into our last month of the year now but rather than focusing on Christmas campaigns lets have a look at what the creative minds in the world have been up to.

MARKETING & ADVERTISING:

I always wondered why you have to print an e-ticket. Well perhaps JC Penny’s mobile coupons would solve this problem.

Weetabix tries to build itself on top of another brand (Google) with http://www.insideyoursearch.com/. But does this really work; surely it could apply to a lot of brands?

Citroen goes playful with their C3 advert, focusing on the joy of driving.

Mobile traffic report and trends from the US.

Ikea creates the world’s biggest rack.

DESIGN:

A strong graphic design collection.

Brian Andrews is a wood craftsman with some incredible hand carved sculptures.

Esquire does augmented reality with The Barbarian Group and Psyop

Hofstede Design, based in Australia creates a beautiful type tablet.

Autobahn playground has a great collection of playful type experiments.

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY:

Digital Photographer of the Year shortlist announced.

Eva and Franco Mattes breaks all the rules on their “It’s always six o’clock project”, making better use of your childhood toys.

Net-a-porter extends our Wonderland concept into their latest Cruise campaign. This time though, we were tasked to create banners beyond the traditional formats such as the push down unit on sites like Elle UK and Style. With a combination of supporting media formats and branded graphics we’ve completely taken over Elle UK today!

Net-a-porter Cruise Campaign. Elle UK Take Over from Pod1 on Vimeo.

OK I do have an ulterior motive for this post. We have been contracted by UK Scooter-wear Designer Armadillo to promote the launch of their viral video Ad.

The creative team was lead by Amsterdam based Italian/Spanish duo Ham & Kaas and London based production company Stink Ltd, worked together with the British Directing Team Darkfibre to produce the viral.

The Director of Photography, Michael Bonvillain is famed for his work with TV series Lost, Fringe and most recently, the film Zombieland and the accompanying music is from Canadian two-piece, Lullaby Arkestra.

I personally think it’s a really slick piece of work but you can decide for yourself.

Visit the site armadilloscooterwear.com/toughenough or view it below.

(PS There is also a longer directors cut version coming soon which is more of a short film with a new sound track, watch this space!)

Armadillo Scooterwear Tough Enough from Armadillo Scooterwear on Vimeo.