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30 Most Viewed Stories at RandyMatheson.com in 2011

December 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Top 30 Posted Stories of 2011

The following list is an interesting collection of the the top 30 most viewed, searched for and shared stories on RandyMatheson.com in 2011.

30 / The 12 Days of Christmas Underwear
Bonds Christmas ad features Rachel Taylor eating canned pears in lingerie as Aussie crooner Jack Ladder channels Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’. Read more…

29 / Volkswagen AR Experiences
VW Canada’s campaign for the 2012 Beetle features an awe-inspiring AR experience over Toronto’s Dundas Square. Read more…

28 / Jonathan’s Starbucks Card
Mobile consultant Jonathan Stark invites the world out for coffee in a short-lived and much-debated ‘social experiment’. Read more…

27 / Moosejaw X-Ray App Reveals All
Outdoor clothing retailer Moosejaw launches x-ray vision app that reveals what’s underneath the warm clothes of it’s catalog models. Read more…

26 / Spongebob’s Frozen Face-off Goes Social
Nickelodeon uses Twitter to promote Spongebob Squarepants special with a week of Twitter trash talk between characters. Read more…

25 / Infectious Billboard for Contagion
Warner Brothers Canada posts a living billboard of bacteria and fungi to promote the release of pandemic-themed movie Contagion.Read more…

24 / Tetley Canada’s Shopping Butlers
Tetley Canada brings joy and confusion to grocery shoppers by replacing shopping carts with personal shopping butlers. Read more…

23 / Biker-filled Movie Theatre
Carlsberg directs unsuspecting couples into a movie theatre full of burly growling bikers. Who goes, who sticks around for a surprise ending?
Read more…

22 / Reebok Street Art
Reebok promotes Crossfit program at London’s Canary Wharf with an amazing record-breaking work of 3D street art.
Read more…

21 / Ballatine’s Interactive Tattoo
As part of their Human API campaign, whisky-maker Ballatine’s creates the world’s first interactive tattoo streamed live from their Facebook page.
Read more…

20 / Jack Daniels Letterpress Posters
Knoxville-based printers Yee-Haw Industries create gorgeous hand-crafted posters for Jack Daniel’s campaign.
Read more…

19 / Nike’s Back to the Future Shoes
Nike shoe designers create 1500 real-life versions of the Back to the Future MAG shoes and auctions them on eBay to benefit Michael J Fox foundation.
Read more…

18 / Starbucks AR mobile app
Starbucks releases ‘Magic Cup’, an augmented reality app that brings the coffee shop’s holiday-themed cups to life with animation.
Read more…

17 / Boston Pizza’s Playoff Rebrand
Boston Pizza jumps on the Canuck playoff bandwagon by rebranding it’s BC stores as Vancouver Pizza for the Stanley Cup finals.
Read more…

16 / Ariel Fashion Shoot
Laundry detergent brand Ariel lets Facebook users shoot a remote-control gun filled with chocolate, jam or ketchup at designer clothes… and win them.
Read more…

15 / O.B. Says Really Really Really Sorry via Song
Johnson & Johnson tampon brand O.B. responds to miffed customers by creating personalized apology song.
Read more…

14 / Karen O sings for Chipotle Halloween promo
Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O provides vocals for Halloween-ish short film promoting the Chipotle Boorito campaign in benefit of the American family farm.
Read more…

13 / Honda Pilot’s Crazy Train
Ozzy Osbourne’s iconic 1980 hit ‘Crazy Train’ gets a unique a capella treatment in this fun Honda Pilot commercial.
Read more…

12 / You’re Never to Old to Sit on Santa
New York’s Improv Everywhere comedy troupe performs a holiday-themed surprise-musical for shoppers in a New Jersey mall.
Read more…

11 / Nissan Damned Ponies
A frustrated pickup driver opens the hood to find a group of prancing ponies that want nothing to do with getting dirty. Just when you think it’s over the leader turns into a demonic fire-breathing horse.
Read more…

10 / State Farm Giant Robots
The insurance provider brings the giant house-wrecking robot from their TV ad to your neighbourhood via an inventive Google Streetview mashup.
Read more…

9 / Red Hot Chili Peppers QR Code
A street poster campaign for the Peppers’ ‘I’m With You’ album features a QR code nicely integrated into the band’s logo.
Read more…

8 / Volkswagen Fans Vote on TV Ad
Volkswagen Canada’s Facebook Fans invited to choose scripts, car, cast and music for the latest TV commercial.
Read more…

7 / Spotify Launches in U.S.
After years of false starts, it was big news in July when European-based online music service Spotify finally launched in the U.S. (but still nothing for Canadian listeners)
Read more…

6 / Müller Wonderful Stuff Ad
German yogurt-brand threw everything on the screen, including unicorns, the Knight Rider car and Yogi Bear in this crazy TV commercial and campaign.
http://randymatheson.com/muller-wunderful-stuff-yogurt-campaign-features-unicorns-yogi-bear-k-i-t-t/

5 / Pan-Am Social Media
ABC launched an ambitious promotional campaign for Pan-Am using Facebook, Twitter, GetGlue to no avail as the series was shelved after just 9 episodes.
Read more…

4 / Mercedes Benz Blurs
Mercedes Benz Canada creates an attention grabbing street installation that makes their C-Class Coupe look fast even when parked on a Toronto street.
Read more…

3 / Canadian Tire Spirit Tree
Canadian Tire lights up Toronto’s Union Station with a 30 foot tall Christmas tree powered by the positive sentiment of social media.
Read more…

2 / Dermablend Covers-Up Zombie-Boy
Dermablend demonstrated the power of their skin coverage make-up by covering the tattoos of Montreal model Zombie-Boy.
Read more…

1 / TakeThisLollipop Creates Creepy Facebook Connection
A mysterious project provides Facebook users a creepy peek behind the screen.
Read more…

What were your favorite campaigns of 2011?

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Experiential, Fashion, Film, Music Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Starbucks’ New Mobile App Will Bring Your Coffee Cup to Life

November 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Starbucks Cup Magic - Augmented RealityIt’s still only early November and while Christmas is still over 6 weeks away you can walk into any store and find the sights (and maybe sounds) of the holiday season all around you. I’m not sure of the exact day it started, but the Starbucks in our building has had their red Christmas cups out for a few weeks, along with the usual window decorations, and of course the Christmas coffee blend.

Starting November 15, you’ll be able to bring those red cups (and apparently 47 other Starbucks products) to life using the Starbucks Magic Cup app. Use your camera phone to focus the app on the cup and you’ll see short animated clips appear on your screen. If you’ve been in a Starbucks recently you’ll recognize the characters (an ice skater, a boy and dog sledding, a fox and my favorite a squirrel) from the door clings, cups and packaging. Tap on the screen and you can interact with the characters. Collect all five characters and you qualify for a prize. The app also features holiday ecards and special offers from Starbucks.

The Starbucks Cup Magic app was created by Blast Radius and will be available for iPhone and Android on November 15.

Via Agency Spy

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Randy MathesonI am a Nova Scotia raised Creative Guy, currently Director of Emerging Media at Delvinia, a Digital Strategy & Customer Experience Design Firm in Toronto. I’m a huge fan of the creative use of digital technologies in social media, marketing, sports and entertainment. I use this blog to share the more interesting examples that I find. If you’re in need of a break, join me over at Madtini.com for a cocktail.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Experiential, Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

Jonathan’s Starbucks Card Wants to Buy You Coffee

August 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

UPDATE Aug 8 4pm: Response from Starbucks: “We think Jonathan’s project is really interesting and are flattered he chose Starbucks for his social experiment. [Twitter]

UPDATE Aug 11: Jonathan Stark revealed that the card had received a total of $8700 in donations from himself and others (he has added $300 of his own money). The card has been reloaded 500 times and it’s been used around 900 times for purchases at Starbucks. [Mashable]

UPDATE Aug 12: Internet entrepeneur Sam Odio revealed that he created a script to hack Jonathan’s card and had already transferred $625 of the balance to his own Starbucks Card, offering it for purchase on Ebay with proceeds going to the Save the Children fund. [Mashable]

UPDATE Aug 12, 10pm: Starbucks contacted Jonathan to inform him that his Starbucks card was being deactivated due to the hacking and fraud concerns reported earlier Friday. [Mashable]

Jonathan's Starbucks CardMobile application developer and consultant Jonathan Stark is using his Starbucks card to buy coffee for anyone who wants it.

Grab the screenshot of Jonathan’s Starbucks digital Starbucks card shown here. Copy the image to your smartphone, head to a Starbucks near you, order a coffee and hold the picture up to the scanner. If the scanner beeps there’s money on the card and you just earned yourself a free coffee. (it only works in the US, where Starbucks is scanning the mobile phone codes)

Jonathan describes the project as “an experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones.” He’s built a bot to scrape the Starbucks site and broadcast the current balance to a Twitter and Facebook page.

Since this experiment is about social sharing and not just free coffees, Jonathan has provided instructions for reloading the card for others to use.

The experiment is not associated with Starbucks, and it’ll be interesting to see if they comment or interject in the experiment in some way. Either way the experiment is already a great promotion for Jonathan Stark as a developer. ”

Check out @JonathansCard on Twitter for the current balance and if you’re close to a Starbucks drop in for a free coffee, this one’s going on Jonathan’s card.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Social Media Tagged With:

Instagram’s Success Lures Brands into the Picture

February 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Instagram: NPR, Starbucks, Levi's BraziliPhone app Instagram is one of the hottest tech properties out there right now despite its lack of a traditional web presence. It does display a page images shared by its users on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr. Virtually all the interaction takes place in the iOS-only app, where users stylize their own photos and follow the stream of others.

The application was launched in the early fall of 2010 by Kevin Systrom of Burbn, Inc. and became an instant hit gaining over 100,000 users in just it’s first week. In late December that user number grew to 1 million, and by last week (Feb 14) that figure has doubled to 2 million users.

Instagram is a simple application, you take a picture using the camera phone or select an existing one from your library. Next, you select one of its 12 retro-look  filters, then share it to your Instagram followers as well as to Twitter or Facebook if you choose. You can follow the shared images of other Instragram users, adding likes and comments as you go.

Here are examples of how brands and news services have started to explore ways to use Instagram to enhance their own photo sharing, or to solicit photos from users for contests.

  • Levi’s Brasil are sharing imagery of their new products line.
  • NH Hotels are hosting a contest asking consumers to share Instragram images on Twitter with the hashtag #WakeUpPics.
  • CNN iReport and NPR are supplementing their existing news with Instagram and are getting comments and dozens and ‘likes’ on each photo they share.
  • Starbucks is sharing images of products and asking followers opinions of new store signage ideas.
  • Brisk is crowdsourcing an Instagram photo shared with the hashtag #briskpics to appear on a new can to be introduced at SXSW.

So,what are these brands and organizations hoping to achieve by using Instagram? In most cases they are simply dipping their toes and testing the waters by sharing a few photos here and there. However, NPR and CNN have built up large followings of 13,000 and 8000 respectively, and images frequently receive dozens of comments and likes. UPDATE: On February 24, Instagram announced a new real-time API that would allow developers to create new web applications and services from its user’s uploaded content.

It will interesting where Instagram goes from here. Similar apps like PicPlz and Hipstamatic are providing some competition plus a rumour is making the rounds that Facebook may add their own ‘retro-look’  filters to user’s photo albums. With big brands experimenting and a user base of 2 million and growing, the only way is forward. One hopes that Instragram will be able to maintain its simplicity as it grows.

As our digital cameras get more sophisticated, the more popular it becomes to make them look like they were taken in another era.

Filed Under: Art & Design, Social Media, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,