middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

Nice interview by Shel Israel with Hugh Macleod about social objects, social markers, social marketers, social marketing and other interesting stuff. Some old stuff covered but still really nice to see Hugh talking about it himself. (Hugh, you rock BTW)

No embed (boo!), click through to watch at Fast Company.

Right now (and I mean as I type) there are some guys in Norway spraying the Qik logo on a wall and broadcasting it via a mobile phone using Qik. People are watching as they “talk” to the Norwegian police and generally have a laugh doing something very cool using mobile technology. They’re also using their laptops connected via 3G to keep a check on comments and also engage with people further. Paul Walsh even got them to spray segala.com on the wall too. (Nice hijacking there for him). Live and engaging guerilla activity for a brand. It’s the way forward.

PS I asked for a smiley face too and by the sounds of it, they’re about to do one (will update if it happens).

Marmite has just launched a Facebook group. Now it’s (nearly) always good to see brands getting stuck into things like Facebook and it’s even better to see it done really well - but today I was left a little bit disappointed.

You see, surely a better thing to have done would have been to have created two groups “We love Marmite’ and “We hate Marmite’? That way the two groups - each fuelled by the passion of the people in them - could have battled it out. As it stands (link to group here, actually it’s a Page but there we go) the love or hate aspect of the call to action gets a bit lost in the action. The official Page for Marmite could have been created for ‘true’ fans and used to fuel and update the battle for love or hate across both groups.

Also - I went to the main Marmite site today and there was no mention of the Facebook group anywhere (obvious) to be seen. Again - little bit sad to see that given the fact that they would have known the online coverage would be appearing.

Anyway, I actually love Marmite and am no hater, I just felt compelled to write this as I assumed that the second I read the headline, that’s what they would have done. Wonder why they didn’t or if anyone else has any other ideas? Or maybe I need to worry about something else.

Oh, disclosure - Facebook is a Bite client but then I think I’ve mentioned that a few times so you probably knew that.

Busy week again this week. All good though. Here’s a nice round-up via Red Herring of some of the marketing activity Nintendo implemented that no doubt helped to make the Wii such a success in the US (talked about at MI6 07).

For me, the fact that my father-in-law-to-be has bought a Wii after playing mine at Christmas and now has not one but four Wiimotes so that the whole family can play tennis on his plasma is a sure sign of its success.

Been enjoying the sun this weekend? I have. And also the latest personal technology breakthrough - TV on the Wii. Been checking out TV Links recently and on Friday I discovered the amazing combination of TV Links + Wii.

Having updated the Intenet Channel, I pointed my Wii browser towards TV Links and hey presto, everything works. And everything works amazingly well - you really should check it out if you own a Wii. And if you don’t then here’s just another reason to get one.

TV shows, Movies, Anime, Cartoons, Music videos and Sport are all on there. First movie of choice was “An Inconvenient Truth” and it ran just fine. All the way through with no stutters. Second up was a few doses of Alan Partridge, Peep Show and even a couple of “How is it Made?” episodes from the Discovery Channel (helicopters and glass = awesome).

On further inspection, some of the movies appear not to work properly but then even if a small percentage of what’s listed works - it’s still well worth it. So Check Ch-Ch-Ch-Check it out, as the Beasties might say.

And speaking of the Wii - the Art of Wii is OK, but feels a bit “yeah, yeah”. Thoughts?

Ask is getting lot of stick for this. If we all joined the “revolution” then wouldn’t all online information just go through another company?

Also - think some of the copy is very dodgy on the site itself (smells a bit of “tracked changes”) and annoyed me that when I remembered the URL having seen a poster, I Googled it and the paid-for result looked like it was pointing to ask.com and not the site I was looking for. I actually gave up and waited untill I saw the poster again . . . when I realised it was .org. Then it was just a bit of a let down.

PS - Sorry for being rubbish on the blog after a flying start. You can blame DIY and a lot of work for that one.

So, this gives Russell Davies’ everything digital becomes real sooner or later prediction a new twist. A store in Turkey clearly rips off the Google logo and causes a stir online.

Reminds me of a lecturer once telling me that farmers in Africa thought that Tesco was a real country, a nice place where all their produce was going. Which is really, really bad.

Just a quick thought that alot of the viral stuff I’m seeing around these day’s is a bit rubbish. Check out Millward Brown’s guide to what makes a good viral (Via Contagious). Iain over at Crackunit has already blogged about this, so I’ll hand over to him, but for now please use the word viral that little extra bit carefully.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m closer to all this stuff than the average guy on the street so I’m overly cynical and actually they are really rather good? Who knows. There’s no going back now.

Also, Duncan Nealon (the guy who wrote the report) I think I might know you . . .