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Add your Zebrafish to the Hope Tank and Help the British Heart Foundation Mend Broken Hearts

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

British Heart Foundation - The Hope TankScientists funded by the British Heart Foundation are conducting research into ways that they can literally help broken hearts mend themselves. Currently once a heart muscle is damaged from a heart attack, it can never fully recover to it’s former healthy self. Scientists are using Zebrafish, which can re-grow parts of their heart, with the goal of helping human hearts mend themselves in as little as 10 years time. What was once science fiction is becoming science fact.

To promote this groundbreaking research and the Mending Broken Hearts Appeal, the British Heart Foundation has created The Hope Tank, a virtual aquarium filled with zebrafish. Visitors can create their own zebrafish and leave a personal message of hope, joining nearly 3,000 other supporters.

The Hope Tank was created by London creative agency Glue Isobar.

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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: Non Profit, User Generated Content Tagged With: , , , ,

Canon Wants to Hear the Stories Behind Your Lost Photo Moments

September 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Canon "Your Second Shot"It’s happened to us all at least once. We lose a record of that special moment by screwing up the photo. In the old days before digital that meant bad lighting, blurry images, red eyes, maybe a thumb in front of the lens or even lost film negatives, slides or prints. Now that people have much better quality cameras and can take more photos these incidents happen even less, but still that once-in-a-lifetime photo can still be lost through lost camera, memory cards or hard-drive crashes.

How it Works
This summer Canon launched Your Second Shot, a campaign promoting the PowerShot ELPH 300 HS. People are invited to submit their blurry or messed up photos and the story behind them for a chance to win one of six cameras. Photos will be submitted in six rounds with a judging committee selecting ten videos for public voting in each round. The top three vote-getters in each round move onto the final round where the Grand Prize Winner will receive a $1000.

I was very excited about this campaign when I first saw the commercials and read through the website. However, as I began to dig through the rules, I was disappointed by the complex process and prizing awards.

How I wished it worked
First: The multiple rounds seem overly complex. I would have liked to see one or maybe two rounds with the top 10 from each appearing in a final round of public voting. Right now (September 5) there are over 700 entries, it’ll be interesting to see if entries trail off or increase over the other five rounds.

Second: The prizing seems weak, a $250 camera would be a fine prize for all 20 finalists in my scenario suggested above. It would have been great to see the winner get their photo disaster recreated up to a certain value – while that may have been complex to administer it would have made for a greater story in the end.

Overall, a very cool idea for campaign – I would have liked to see more of that initial ‘big idea’ carried through the process and prizing.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, User Generated Content Tagged With: , ,

Mastodon Invites Fans to Play Guitar or Drums on New Track

August 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mastodon The HunterAtlanta heavy metal band Mastodon knocked it out of the park with their 2009 album Crack the Skye, earning legions of new fans and rave reviews of their sophisticated sound. In September Mastodon is set to release their new album entitled ‘The Hunter’, and in a competition hosted on Soundcloud they’re inviting fans to step forward and play lead guitar or drums on the track Curl of the Burl.

Fans download stems without the lead guitar or drums (a 441 MB ZIP file), record their version, then upload it to Soundcloud for everyone to hear and vote on. The winner will receive a new MacBook Air notebook, $50 to spend in Mastodon online store, a message from the band and a 1-year pro Soundcloud account. The band will select the winner based on originality and skill. The prize listing notes that one of the ‘losers’ will even receive an empty bag of chips (no idea whether it’ll be signed by the band or not). The competition closes on September 9.

Augmented Reality Cover Art
The fun doesn’t stop there, when the new album’s cover art is viewed through a webcam it creates an augmented reality experience where the viewer appears to be wearing a 3D version of the trippy animal head sculpture.

If you have Spotify, check out the official Mastodon Spotify playlist.

Filed Under: Music, User Generated Content Tagged With: , ,

Air New Zealand is looking for the Coldest Canadian

January 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Air New Zealand - Are You the Coldest Canadian?Today on the way in to work I saw 12×18 posters for Air New Zealand’s Coldest Canadian Contest on a few mail boxes and power poles along King Street West. It looked interesting enough, certainly topical enough in the -10 degree weather, and I’m a sucker for these user-generated video submission contests. I took a second look at them at lunch time and noticed a couple of issues with my first interaction with the creative.

First of almost every poster I came across was mounted at waist or below height making it virtually impossible to get down and read the information including the URL. In the lower left corner was a very small QR code, I’d say it might have been a half-inch square. I squatted down in the slush and tried to scan it with my normally reliable QR code scanner, but it didn’t work for me. I assume it will redirect my mobile browser to the ColdestCanadian.ca site. I took a moment and typed the URL into my iPhone browser. The site that I saw was not optimized for mobile, it was the standard web page. It displayed fine, but I did have to enlarge and scan around in order to read. I did share the poster with a couple of friends, but the sharing was not done through the site. It was done by taking an iPhone photo and emailing it to them.

I’ll be on the lookout in other media for additional initial touch points with the campaign.

A few things that could have worked better with the poster and mobile experience:

  • Mount the posters higher so I could read them while walking by or standing at a crosswalk
  • If you are using a QR code think about how your viewer is going to interact with it. Having it at the top of the poster would have been better position.
  • Make sure the QR code is the correct ratio for scanners to pick it up. I am assuming the poster had been sized-down from a larger creative, so the ratio may have been correct to begin with.
  • A site optimized for my mobile device would have allowed me to check out the information while I was still in the area.

Once I arrived back at work, I did check out the site and the contest looks like a lot of fun. Air New Zealand is asking people who want to enter the contest to submit a three-minute video demonstrating why they are ‘The Coldest Canadian’. Once the video is approved its up to the entrant to collect as many votes, comments and likes as they can. The contest features weekly prizes as well as Grand Prize of a round-trip airfare to Auckland, NZ. There is a Google Map showing where the coldest Canadians are located and live reminders of how cold the temperatures are in different areas of the country (and how much warmer it is in New Zealand right now).

Filed Under: User Generated Content Tagged With: , , , , ,