middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

See that down there. No, down there in the bottom right hand corner. Yes, the orange thing. That means that middledigit.net is taking part in ‘the world’s first internet balloon race’ - Balloonacy - a spectacular idea from Poke (yes them again, promise I’m not being bribed to write about them) for Orange which definitely needs a look in. Basically you create and name your very own balloon which then takes part in a race on June 23rd at midday. All the balloons taking part will fly across the interwebz, across sites taking part (including this one) using a bit of Javascript and a dose of Flash 9 movie goodness . Don’t really know what to expect, but given my experience of the site so far, I’m excited and fairly certain it will be super slick.

I named my balloon digit and for some reason decided to talk about pies in the blurb about him/her - first word that popped in my head that rhymed with skies blatantly. Here he/she is in all his/her orange glory, along with his/her tag:

More here from Iain (who explains the whole thing better). The only thing I’d maybe like is a little balloon based countdown timer to whack up on the blog to remind me (and people) when the big day is - as it’s a fairly long way off. There’s a nice one on the main site . . . though I guess it’s nice to ‘discover’ the little bobbing balloon and find out for yourself on the main site. Guess I could try to knock one up if I was really that bothered and do some of that co-created advertising stuff they talk about? Hmm.

So, wish digit all the best and prey for good weather on the interwebz on June 23rd, 2 days after Interesting 2008 BTW.

Saw this before watching Indy 4 (OK film, but felt slightly ‘empty’ afterwards) the other day. A short animation incorporated into a Mini ad as part of the Mini Shorts/Future Shorts campaign.

(Mini opinion - The ad felt a bit patched together around this piece of creative content rather than blended nicely with it and also, where’s the SEO/keyword bit of the campaign?)

The animation was by a guy called Lev Yilmaz and his home on the web is here. I’ve just spent half an hour or so (procrastinating) checking out loads of his other work at his YouTube Channel. What strikes me is how very human it all is. How just like all the best art, it connects with you as a human being because it is so real and obviously comes from his heart.

Here’s some more of these little movies which touch on loads of things in life like depression, breaking up with girlfirends, seeing your mates succeed in a band that you could have been in and the random conversations you have with your mum.

“The cool guys”

“A typical conversation with my mom”

‘I’m not going to think about her”

There’s also a touch of Lev in the Common Craft videos and the latest Social media one was released last week.

Fair play. After much talk recently on this here blog of advertising, here’s a great one from Honda - a LIVE advert featuring sky divers broadcast on Channel 4 from Spain. Over to Jai & Wal to tell you about it. I’d love to see more live online adverts and stuff. It’s been done I think, but back to ‘data is the new advertising’ . . .

Yesterday evening at 8.10pm Honda and Channel4 broad casted a live advert. We understand it’s not the first live commercial in TV history, but it’s bloody great. It fits very well in the rest of the Honda Accord campaign Difficult is Worth Doing. The ‘real’ advert, also about skydiving formations, will break this Sunday. We’re curious what W+K has up their sleeves.

UPDATE - I’ve created PR Fail as a way to help people face the reality of the perception of PR on the web, be better and stop doing bad things. A ’see what happens’ thing.

UPDATE 2/6 - it’s still going on and this time there’s accusations flying around about the integrity of the PR industry - to which the PRSA responds

UPDATE 31/5 - the debate is still on - spreading to Phreadz

Coming from a background in PR and still very much involved in it on the digital side of things, I keep a close eye on the general feeling from the web community towards PR - and file any examples of really good (and really bad PR) or particularly fruity opinions about it. More often than not though, it’s negative and that’s obviously not a great thing.

Over the last couple of days, I’d be hitting del.icio.us every few minutes, as it’s all kicking off right now with a debate raging about whether or not companies need to do PR and general thoughts and feelings about PR are being thrown out left right and centre.

It started with Brian Solis revelaing his ‘PR Secrets’, then Loic Le Meur replying with his “Not a Secrets’ that pretty much dismissed Brian’s guest post on TechCrunch. Then, as is the case with social media and the web of today, it’s spilled out into Seesmic, Twitter, FriendFeed and a whole lot of other places.

So, rather than wade in fully and add to the noise, I thought I’d just share a few recent quotes from people on Twitter that I’ve been collecting and offer up my thinking that the definition and role of PR has changed to some degree, but people’s perception of it (and in a lot of cases, use and execution of it) hasn’t.

It’s this difference (and the fact there’s still a long way to go for the PR industry) that causes this debate and that the overall perception of PR on the web is a MAJOR FAIL. And that’s why (and I hate to say it), I more often than not cringe when I think about being in PR - as the industry has so much to do to change perception online and this needs to be led by actions and not more (insert expletive) words. This, is where the industry should be focused its efforts as I don’t think it’s ever going to shake off feelings like this, if it doesn’t change for the better and do so fast. As to how, not sure. More thinking needed, I don’t have all the answers. But in the meantime - consumers are just getting on with their lives and filling them with stuff they like. They don’t really care.

(Hope people don’t mind me ‘re-tweeting’ here. I just want to help spread the word. And, on Twitter, you really do have to face the true reality of what people think)

Charles Arthur - a particularly negative tweet, includes the word ‘DIE’

Jemima Kiss - a funny (but negative) tweet, made me really cringe

Mike Butcher - a negative tweet , I can almost hear him shouting this, my personal favourite one that also makes me cringe big time

Neville Hobson - a positive tweet (yay!), that is in fact negative when you think about it.

David Ciccone - a negative tweet

Spot the Bull is back. And it’s better. This time it’s not Derek, it’s Winston (Son of Derek). There’s more features and it’s still a great idea incredibly well executed where you bet on the location of a cow (calculated via GPS and plotted live on a grid overlay on a webcam feed) in a field in Glastonbury to win tickets. Since blogged about it last year it’s won awards. Come on Winston . . . number 67 tomorrow at 3pm son. Nicely done people of Poke and Orange.

This really did make me chuckle. Found via Popurls, so you’ve probably already seen it.

I went to the Chinwag Micro Media Maze event last night to talk about micro media and web stuff. The panel was really good and included Umair Haque (Director, Havas Media Lab / Bubblegeneration), Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist, Author, Entrepreneur), Mitch McAlister (Product Director (Europe), MySpace), Miles Lewis (SVP, European Advertising Sales, Last FM) and Neil McIntosh (Head of Editorial Development, Guardian Unlimited). Steve Bowbrick also did a great job of chairing the thing and keeping it all ticking over nicely.

We didn’t really talk about micro media that much though. Instead with the heavy music bias to the panel, talk was a lot around music and the future of content on the web - which ultimately boils down to the same old argument of ‘consumers want music free and everywhere, the industry wants to be paid and control distribution’. In particular I thought Miles from Last FM (in the true spirit of transparency, openness etc) gave away some great insight into Last FM and the struggle faced by people pushing boundaries with technology. And, Umair too delivered some fairly strong opinions on what we should be doing with the web, advertising in general and as agencies to make the world a better place.

I was going to write up some notes but Ben Matthews has some good stuff up already, so I’ll just add the following little thoughts:

1> 3% of traffic to Last FM comes via the homepage and more than 40% comes from widgets (with 55% predicted by the end of the year). Evidence of brands being distributed around the web. Setting up home in one place and spending all your money on some nice curtains, a swanky drive and a big impressive hallway might not be the best thing to do now. Time to become micro and distributed - part of the flow of data and value around the web.

2> People look at their mobile screens an average of 25 times a day and 95% of the time their mobile device is less than one metre away. Blimey. We all know that the mobile web is going to blow up this year, but in what other ways is this going to impact on our lives?

3> Gerd said that ‘data is the new advertising’. I like this thought a lot. It reminded me of the concept of spimes and got me thinking about providing value to people though data control, manipulation and enhancement.

4> Everyone agreed that we should be doing more stuff that genuinely makes people’s lives better. I thought to myself about what would happen if advertising disappeared overnight. What would happen? What if all that money spend on advertising was re-channelled simply into making products and services better, in order to make people’s lives better?

5> Twitter or micro blogging wasn’t really talked about. Yes it’s a bit yada, yada but I really do think it’s demonstrating the power of thinking small. Neither were new micro advertising formats (like Pistach.io) even though there were blatently some really smart people in the room (including a guy from Double Click I chatted to before kick-off). Or the fact that the whole world is getting smaller while brands seem to still be thinking big all the time.

There’s so much more to come in this space, it’s incredibly exciting. The fact the event was crammed last night was a definite sign of that. Now we just need to start thinking and acting micro. Because as we all know, being small usually means you can move quicker and with the web, speed is everything.

Update - missed Jemima’s post which contains some great quotes and some rather more succinct analysis.

[Picture thanks to Little People]

A slow worm. Oh joy. I have a real fear of snakes and even though this is technically a lizard of sorts, it’s very much a snake to someone that doesn’t like snakes.

Although these lizards are often mistaken for snakes, there are a number of features that differentiate them from snakes. The most important is they have small eyes with eyelids that blink like lizards. This is a feature that is not found in snakes. They also have visible ears like lizards do, which snakes do not have. They also have a notched tongue rather than the forked tongue of a snake. They shed their skin in patches like other lizards, rather than the whole skin as most snakes do. Also, the pattern of their ventral scales is totally different from that of snakes.

Oscar (our cat) has been bringing in quite a few of these lately and every time it fully freaks me out. Also, “Slow worms are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 from being killed, injured or sold “. Random post over and apologies for the slightly crappy photo - didn’t wanna go too near and leaning made it hard to keep the camera still.

“An ambiguous animation painted on public walls”. Really rather good indeed and I can’t believe how long it lasts for! More here.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Sorry, yet another link to something from Noah Brier (via TIGS). A good one though. If ever there was an example of ‘do as thy say’ then this is surely it. A while back (thinking about it, because he was in the middle of building this) Noah quite rightly said that a brand is what people say it is, not what you (the marketer/brand owner says it is. Someone else, I can’t quite remember now, recently said a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is. Both very true, humans rule.

Brand Tags, a side project by Noah, lets people say one word about a brand and collates these into tag clouds for a selection of brands that you can browse. It really is rather clever indeed and has indeed made the front page of del.icio.us today. Nice one Noah, who I’ve just seen has started celebtags too - this feels like the start of something.

Check out what people say about Apple, eBay and a whole host of other brands (including Starbucks, cropped tags below).

Also worth taking a peek at this presentation which inspired the idea.