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Willie Nelson Teams Up With Chipotle to Promote Sustainable Farming

September 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Chipotle - Willie Nelson performs The ScientistWillie Nelson is no stranger to helping raise awareness of the crisis of family farming in America, having started Farm-Aid in 1985 with John Mellencamp and Neil Young.

Now Willie Nelson has teamed up with Chipotle Restaurants for ‘Back to the Start’, a short film and recording of Coldplay’s 2002 song ‘The Scientist’ that looks to promote sustainable farming through Chipotle’s Cultivate Foundation. The video produced by Irish animtor Johnny Kelly shows a family gradually replacing their traditional practices with a factory farm until the farmer has a moment of realization and takes things ‘Back to the Start’.

These days more and more people want to learn about where their food comes from and how it was grown. If you’d like to learn more about the issues with factory farms check out the documentary ‘Food Inc.‘ or read more about Chipotle’s Food with Integrity campaign.

The track ‘The Scientist’ can be downloaded at iTunes with proceeds going to benefit The Chipotle Cultivate Foundation.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Music Tagged With: , , , , , ,

WSJ Hurricane Irene Live Blog Pulls in Instagram Pics

August 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

WSJ Live Blog - Hurricane IreneWhile I am safe and far away from the effects of Hurricane Irene here in Toronto, I am still entertaining myself watching CNN reporters being pummeled by the driving rains and high winds. Hopefully everyone will stay safe and any property damage from the Irene will be minimal.

Besides watching coverage on TV throughout the day, I’ve been checking in as The Wall Street Journal posts storm updates on the Hurricane Irene Live Blog. The reports are supplemented by a feed of Instagram user’s photos that feature the hashtags #Irene, #HurricaneIrene and #hurricane.

Dealing with a hurricane usually involves heading inland to higher ground or hunkering down behind plywood-covered windows, but according to these Instagram photos it appears most people are coping with the storm with board games, great food and wine. The photos of user’s regular life are a welcome relief from the non-stop visuals of weather maps, tornado warnings and yes, reporters being rained on.

Instagram now at 7 million users
On August 3rd Instagram reported that 150 million photos have now been shared by its 7 million users since October, 2010. In fact, Instagram users are now sharing photos with each other at the rate of 15 photos per second adding up to 1.3 million photos being shared per day.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, News & Journalism, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Agency Interns Help 89-Year Old Tottenham Barber Rebuild After Riots

August 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Keep Aaron Cutting from BBH Barn on Vimeo.

When 89 year-old Aaron Biber arrived at his Tottenham barbershop Sunday, August he found the place trashed and his equipment stolen by rioters and looters. Even his kettle was missing. Aaron did not have insurance and

Aaron Biber - Tottenham BarberKeep Aaron Cutting
The three interns, Björn Conradi, Sophie Browness and Omid Fard at Bartle Boggle Hegarty’s London BBHBarns program were touched by Aaron’s story and were looking for a way to help out. They launched the Keep Aaron Cutting website and spread the word about Aaron’s story.

Within a few days £35,000 has been raised, more than enough to sort things out and repair the barbershop. The blog will remain open at the interns at BBHBarns record the progress of repairs, and they work with the local council to distribute the rest of the funds to help businesses and people in the area recover.

Save Siva’s Shop
Of course Aaron Biber’s barbershop is not the only business devastated in the riots. Hackney shopkeeper Siva Kandiah watched as his Convenience Store was ransacked, leaving him with nothing. As of August 13th, Save Siva’s Shop, a website set up by friends had collected £16,564.91 in donations.

Something Nice for Ashraf
Another site, Something Nice For Ashraf had been setup by Jamie Cowen to help with medical bills for the Malyasian student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The video has been viewed nearly 5 million times on YouTube. Ashraf posted a thank you video on YouTube on Saturday.

The moral? Sometimes it takes a devastating event like the UK riots, Haiti earthquake or the Japanese Tsunami to make us realize how fortunate we have it and how fragile life can be. And sometimes unfortunately it takes an event like these riots to reveal the underlying issues within our society. I don’t pretend to understand the frustrations of these people nor do I have a solution.

With the 10 year anniversary of 911 coming up in a few weeks, a lot of us will be reflecting on the events of that day and it’s effect on our daily lives. Be kind to each other.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Digital Culture, Non Profit, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Stella Artois Presents The Black Diamond Immersive Experience

August 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Stella Artois Curse of the Black DiamondThis summer a few lucky Londoners have been invited to a very special immersive experience commissioned by Stella Artois and orchestrated by Felix Barrett and the Punchdrunk Theatre Company to promote their Stella Artois Black Lager. The same partnership produced a similar immersive experience last year called The Night Chauffeur.

In early July, invitations were sent out to people in London to attend a special party. Invitees knew when and where to go but not much about what they were about to experience. Guests arrived at the warehouse is Shoreditch, East London, which had been designed to look like a Paris family home in 1963. Besides the invited guests, the party included a number of actors playing roles within the Black Diamond storyline. It turns out the party is being hosted by a young diamond-cutter named Jacques Ferre, and that night he is set to give his girlfriend Cecile a rare black diamond.

Later at the party a man is chased from the room by Jacques. It turns out that the black diamond has been stolen and Jacques shouts to the crowd of guests asking if they had seen anything. The party is brought to an abrupt leaving the guests in a state of confusion.

A few weeks later the guests are summoned to a secret location in small groups to play out the remaining six scenes in the story. The scenes played over the next hour at several locations as guests interacted with actors playing the various characters in the story. If you’re curious whether there was a happy ending you can read a first-hand account of the Black Diamond experience by the folks at DesignBridge.

For the rest of us not lucky enough to be involved personally in the London experience, we can follow the story at the Stella Artois Black Diamond website. The site was created by London agency Unit 9.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Digital Culture, Experiential Tagged With: , ,

Syfy Channel Weaves Twitter Into Haven Storyline

August 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

HavenOn the Syfy Channel’s popular show ‘Haven‘ the citizens of a small Maine town are affected by a wide range of supernatural afflictions dubbed ‘The Troubles’.

Starting Friday, August 12 the show’s characters will face a new challenge as they be interact on Twitter with a mysterious stranger who seems to know a little too much about the secrets of the town.

The seven-episode story-arc will feature events that play out both within the show and through the Twitter profiles of brothers Vince (@VinceHaven) and Dave Teagues (@DaveHaven), owners of the Haven Herald and the unknown someone tweeting as @ColdInHaven.

Extending a TV show into another medium is not a new concept. The term Transmedia has begun to be used to describe a story being told across several different mediums. Just last month the producers of Spongebob Squarepants had several of the show’s characters on Twitter leading up to the Frozen Face-Off special episode. Over the last two weeks, Samsung and Intel sponsored the social experience Inside.

Haven viewers can follow the story on Twitter with the hashtag #HavenNews or by following the individual Twitter accounts. Haven is broadcast here in Canada by Showcase.

As a proud Nova Scotian I can’t end this post without pointing out that Haven is shot in and around the towns of Chester and Luneburg, on Nova Scotia’s south shore.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Social Media, Television 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:

Jane’s Addiction Comes Alive in Fan Shot 3D Concert for LG

August 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Jane's Addiction - LGVisitors to YouTube knows that most video captured by fans tend to be blurry, jumpy experiences with sound that makes you scramble for the mute button. So, when I heard that LG had handed out over a hundred of their LG Thrill 4G smartphone to lucky fans at a Jane’s Addiction show last Monday night (July 25) in NYC I was intrigued to see the results.

The 3D documentary and concert is posted now on LG’s Come Alive YouTube channel, but don’t expect the cutting edge movie 3D we’ve gotten used to at the theatre in the past few years. You’ll need a pair of traditional 3D glasses with the red and blue lenses to watch the concert. I managed to watch a few songs before my head was aching and my eyes felt like they’d pop out of my head. I’ve yet to see the 3D display on the LG Thrill phone in person, but we can see from this demonstration that it does indeed record in 3D.

The concert itself is great with the band performing their classics; Been Caught Stealing, The Mountain Song, Jane Says as well as their new single Irresistible Force from their upcoming album The Great Escape Artist.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Mobile, Music Tagged With: , ,

National Geographic Launches Remember 911 on Facebook

August 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

National Geographic Channel - Remembering 9/11For those of us here in the North America there have been few events in the past few decades that have affected our lives as much as the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. In a little over a month it will have been 10 years and we will again remember exactly where we were that September morning.

The National Geographic Channel has launched a special Facebook application to collect the stories of what people were doing that day. Right now there are 338 stories from people as far away as Australia and those who were only a few blocks away from the three sites.

Where was I on September 11, 2001

I had been working at home in Port Credit that day on some freelance web design work with several companies in Manhattan. I was eating breakfast and had heard that a small plane had struck one of the World Trade Center towers. It soon became evident that it was actually more serious than anyone thought as a second plane had struck the tower while I watched. The next few hours were a blur as a plane hit the Pentagon, another plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania and then the collapse of the two towers.

While I did not know any of the people who lost their lives that day, the horror of the events of that day will never leave my mind. It’s amazing to consider how the events of that day changed our lives. From simple things like not being able to fly with fingernail clippers to terrorist bombings in Europe to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Where were you when you first heard about the events of September 11? It’s interesting the memories of people who were still in school at the time. Check out their stories on the Remember Nine Eleven Facebook application.

The site was produced by Neo Pangia, who have produced several other projects for National Geographic in the past.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

350,000 Post-It Notes Animate Melissa Shoes’ Power of Love Campaign

August 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Melissa Power of Love Post-it Notion AnimationIf I have more than 4 Post-It notes at my desk I start stressing out, so I can’t imagine being surrounded by this many. But if the results were as beautiful as this I think I’d be OK.

Brazilian footwear manufacturer Melissa worked together with 3M to create this jaw dropping installation at their Galeria Melissa flagship store in São Paulo.

The project promotes their the Melissa spring/summer collection of footwear, Melissa Power of Love. Visitors to the store left their mark on the project, adding 30,000 thoughts of love on the Post-It Notes.

The project took 25 animators almost 5 months and 350,000 colored Post-its to create this amazing and inspiring piece of work.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Art & Design, Digital Culture Tagged With: , , , ,

Chicago PR firm Golin Harris Creates Lollaplooza Instagram Mashup

August 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

LollaGramThis weekend marks the 20th anniversary of the first Lollapalooza festival, and the sixth year it’s been held at Grant Park in downtown Chicago. The 2011 edition includes acts like Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, My Morning Jacket, Muse and dozens of others.

Chicago PR firm GolinHarris has created LollaGram, a nice little mashup application that ‘calls’ photos from Instagram. The application dubbed Lollagram searches from descriptions of photos that include Lollapalooza, Lolla or Lolla2011.

It should be a great weekend of music and seeing fan pictures of the performances, exhibits and each other will only make me regret not attending even more. 🙁

YouTube will be offering two channels of performances from Lollapalooza starting tomorrow, check out the jam-packed schedule.

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Music Tagged With: , , ,