Sometimes you need to post a video online and the number of views, favorites and links doesn't matter. What matters is quality. Youtube's quality is a low 200kps and your video, let's say your show reel or beautifully crafted TVC, looks awful in Youtube's 320x240 blurry vision.

There is an alternative which offers all the community sharing aspects of Youtube but with increased quality. Not only that it supports HD. Upload a 1280x720 clip and Vimeo will auto create a small version (400x300) and allow viewers to watch the full HD footage. Here's Vimeos HD FAQ which explains more.

Users have the option of turning off HD at any time and load the smaller clip so bandwidth is not an issue.

Click here to see a comparison of videos on both Youtube and Vimeo.

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 11:18 AM | Link to this Article | 2 Comments
Archived in: Technology

Click here to read Ashley's tips on Getting a Job in design

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 09:00 AM | Link to this Article | 1 Comments
Archived in: Interesting Articles

Well we're a little late on the Xmas ecard round up. Blame Ashadi and his PS3 :)

Continue reading here to view all 68 agency xmas cards for 2007.

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 10:24 PM | Link to this Article | 10 Comments
Archived in: Interesting Promotions

An article here on Mashable reveals that Will Farrels web venture Funny or Die was funded with $15M VC.

I guess that goes to their bandwidth bill because they saved money on hiring a designer for the site.

It's like the DOT COM days all over again. I had this naive view that Will Farrel just did it off his won back. Silly me. I wonder what ROI the investors are expecting from the site.

Here's the top video on Funny or Die with 50 M views

Did Turner spend $15M developing SuperDeluxe? I doubt it but without the star power and media attention Will Farrel gains the site didn;t get anywhere near as much press.

Here's my fav video off Super Deluxe. It still makes me laugh.

And I doubt Vice had $15M to throw around with VBS.TV

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 05:11 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Industry News

This is f*cking brilliant. Everytime you visit the United Nations Free Rice site and play the word game, grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program.

There are reports of schoolkids from all over the world sitting in class playing this, increasing their vocabulary, and at the same time feeding other kids.

It's only been launched a month or two, and already the number of grains of rice donated (in lieu of click thru advertising revenue on the site), is in the billions.

My only wish is that you could play within a banner or widget. That way people could embed the service within their own sites.

Go and play for five minutes and see how many dishes of rice you can send.

Posted by pete at 10:39 AM | Link to this Article | 1 Comments
Archived in: Campaigns

This ad for Betta Electrical is causing a bit of an uproar here in Australia. Church Groups have claimed the ad by Sydney agency De Pasquale is "tacky and offensive". Still waiting on what the Rabbi and Mullah think of it, although I suspect their respective versions of the ad would have been slightly different, but let's not go there.

Personally I'm outraged at the Church Groups outrage. These groups have a monopoly on hang-over prime time TV from 2.30am-5.30am each night and a 24/7 cable television channel in which to pimp their beliefs. Outrage is coming home at 2.30 in the morning after a night on the piss and the only thing on the box is wall-to-wall TV evangelists like Benny Hinn's 'Miracle Crusades' or phone sex ads. Give me the phone sex ads any day, they make more sense and I reckon a few of those girls are miracle workers too in their own special way...

Anyway, enough ranting. Here's the ad :

A spokesperson for Betta has suggested the ad may be pulled if "community outrage grew". We'll it's on the interweb now, so unless the Church Groups have a Simon Wiesenthal type character that can track down and remove religiously offensive virals, then this half-arsed attempt at censorship has failed.

Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said "The advertisement is interesting because it shows how commercialised Christmas has become,"

Indeed it has Archbishop, and it seems the ad is working.

Cardinal Pell is presented with a High Definition Plasma TV

Posted by eric at 07:33 AM | Link to this Article | 2 Comments
Archived in: Viral

Tequila AU have launched the official site for Michel Gondry's new film Be Kind Rewind.
You can "swede" yourself into an existing film or view the "sweded" internet.

I like the cursor on the metal wire.

Here's the trailer for the film which might explain the concept of the site better

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 01:45 PM | Link to this Article | 1 Comments
Archived in: Interesting Promotions

I love this new campaign from CP+B. The guy in the white shirt at the end is the closest they came to a punch in the face. He looked like a kid at Christmas when he finally got what he wanted.

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 12:06 PM | Link to this Article | 1 Comments
Archived in: Viral

Has your agency spent the last 3 months slaving over an awesome Xmas card to send to clients and friends? If so please send them our way and we'll post them up early next week in our annual Xmas Card Roundup.

Here's an animated MC vs PC ad to get us started. I love the fact they used the old stop motion technique.

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 09:19 AM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Interesting Promotions

I might even let you park it in Myspace...

I'm a few weeks late on this, it's by Grand union out of the UK.

ok, so the release says "A great site, aimed to normalise the use of condoms amongst teenagers." - but I guess if they're doing it already - then at least make it safe.

When i was growing up, I was mortified at the prospect of going into the local country grocery store and asking my old bus driver and father of my girlfriend for a pack of "ticklers" or "mambo's" or even the strawberry ones...

So I'm a fan of anything that reduces anxiety and increases performance, even if it's not real - like having 300 facebook buddies and pretending they're ALL great friends.

Posted by tobie at 03:07 PM | Link to this Article | 2 Comments
Archived in: Site Launch

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is inviting you to commit a blatant act of road joy in a new Volkswagen.

Kinda like The Gypsy Cab Project meets This Diary Will Change Your Life.

There's some nice 'missions', like #003 Guerilla Carwash (wash the dirtiest car on your street), #068 Operation Warm and Fuzzy (deliver some blankets to a homeless person you see), and #080 Automatic Park Assist (guide some stranger in as they do a reverse park).

I'd have liked to see the missions that didn't get past legal : )

I have signed up to #075 (take someone to the airport), even though I'm not in Canada and not technically able to take part with my crap, non-Volkswagen car. But will do so anyway to avoid bad carma.

Although this improve-your-effect-on-the-world-with-our-brand type of campaign is becoming increasingly common, it works well for VW, because their brand is actually feel-good.

(Ie- it's harder to swallow when this kind of thing comes from a bank).

And yes, there are missions that let you negate the effect of greenhouse gas your Volkswagen has.

Nice work.

Posted by pete at 03:27 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Site Launch

With just 244 days (Aug 08, 2008) to go until the Beijing Olympics it's probably a good time to flag any Olympic promotions with your client. It's like the last minute Xmas cards they they forgot to brief you on.

Cashing In:

Just like The Ashes companies officially sponsoring the event will be there in full force but so will sidelined companies with no sponsorship dollars in the pot. Oh and the portals will be there in full force too capitalizing on increased traffic and page impressions that the event should generate.

Good news for Australian broadcasters is China shares a similar time zone with Australia so the events won't take place at 3am. Hazaah! for TV spends.

I checked out the official Beijing Olympics site and found a funny mistake in the first section I clicked on. They have a section to help people learn other languages. All the audio files are provided in an annoying Windows Media format but the English one I tested was wrong.

There is going to be a lot of people asking for their passport when they really want to change rooms. This section must have seemed like a good idea but the way it's presented online is useless. I could dissect it further but the mistakes are obvious.

You can also check out the Official Australian site for the 2008 games. In all it's blue and confusing hierarchy glory.

Mascots:
You can also check out the official mascots called FUWA, which are cute pandas.

Although not as cool as the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Mascots.

How long until we get pixel mascots?

Here's a site that has archived the Olympic mascots although hasn't updated for a while.

I'm looking forward to the Olympics next year(for both sporting and business reasons) as Australia just doesn't cut the mustard in the Winter games and in the Commonwealth Games we dominate too heavily. (Sorry England and Canada we kicked your asses.) With the Olympic games it's a real competition.

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 02:25 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Interesting Articles

**** Update : Thursday 6th December. As expected, the Federal Communications Minister has today ordered an investigation by ACMA into the sale of adult content ****

Australia's #1 Telcommunications carrier, Telstra is this morning embroiled in a scandal involving it's YouTube styled user generated content site WotNext, which was found to have a number of soft-porn clips.

WotNext is unique in that it has a revenue sharing model whereby contributors earn money each time a user of Telstra's NextG mobile service downloads a clip. Each clip is charged at $1 and Telstra takes 50%, with the other 50% being credited to the user.

The key issue is that no age verfication takes place either on the site, or the mobile handset, therefore minors can access adult content.

News.com.au and the Sydney Morning Herald are both reporting the story, with News.com.au having captured and censored one of the clips for publication.

It will be interesting to see whether Telstra will undertake an audit of its userbase to ascertain whether any minors have indeed accessed adult content and whether Telstra is prepared to refund any money it earned through minors having access. No doubt the incoming Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, will be asking Telstra to 'Please Explain'.

Furthermore, Telstra may have potentially committed a criminal act by selling porn to minors. The Australian Media and Communication Authority's (ACMA) "Internet Content Guidelines" and "Adult Verification Scheme" has specific guidelines relating to the access of adult content online.

Earlier this year, the site was lauded for its effort by the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) when it won Best of Show at the 2007 Mobile Marketing Awards. The agencies credited include, George Patterson Y&R and Tiger Spike.

Unlike YouTube, Telstra claim the site is moderated. However this Google cache snapshot, clearly shows at least one of the controversial videos was posted back in July 2007, casting doubt over Telstra's assertion that the site is moderated.

Beware the pitfalls of user generated content!

Posted by eric at 11:05 AM | Link to this Article | 1 Comments
Archived in: Industry News

Some weird and wonderful work amongst the stuff that's been awarded at this year's AWARD and ADMA awards.

Big kudos to Saatchi and Saatchi New Zealand who picked up Agency of the Year, and to Tequila and Host, who had a number of winners peppered through different categories

It seems AWARD certainly hasn't been easy-going with the pencils, and I've heard from one judge who confirmed that it was indeed "a tough year".

Some of the categories are of course getting even more blurred. Mobile and innovative media? Should that be included here?

More work is spilling out into other sections, which is awesome. Mobile is crossing over into online (and vice versa), and integrated work is becoming the standard rather than the exception.

Hmm.

Well, below are the main winners in the categories that as of 2007, are currently known as "Interactive".

(Compare to what won at Cannes in the Cyber category here.)

BRONZE - DIGITAL CAMPAIGN, SILVER - ONLINE AD
Only two banner executions picked up anything, and those were part of the follow-up Staedtler The Pen is Mightier than the Mouse campaign by Host.

BRONZE - WEBSITE
Nicely-told story of the Battle for the Bronchs done by Tequila



The black character does look a little like Allen Iverson, no?

BRONZE - MICROSITE
It almost looks like Tenacious D themselves had a hand in The Greatest Website in the World again by Tequila Australia

BRONZE - MICROSITE
Tight make-your-own-ad for Nike with Kimewaza Battle by Beacon Communications Japan

GOLD - ONLINE AND MOBILE GAME, SILVER - WEBSITE
ElectroCity by Rivet New Zealand is the kind of game you would have tried to get your school teacher to let you play instead of doing real work. Nicely crafted too.

BRONZE - INTERACTIVE VIRAL
Golden Compass Daemons by Tequila again. (You might have to dig deep into the Flash for it.)

BRONZE - OTHER DIGITAL MEDIA
And the Hallensteins Interactive Changing Room by Saatchi's New Zealand which I believe also won in the newly-created Dressing Room Innovation Category

Over at ADMA, some of the big winners were the lovingly-crafted Home Sweet As by Host, the Aussie-as Ashes Viral by Tribal DDB and Clemenger Proximity picking up a big tick for "social networking" withV-Raw

A text only PDF of ADMA and AWARD winners can be found here and here respectively. And Campaign Brief, in a great move forward with digital technology, have actually got color pictures of the winners in their PDF round-up.

More work to be posted as we come across it.

Well done to those who won. To those who didn't, we best get working for next year.

Posted by pete at 05:45 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Awards

It's December which means that all the universities and colleges will be hosting their graduating exhibition. In the hope that the students will get a good job somewhere.

You would expect this part of the course to be the most important. The entire 2-4 years of study is wasted unless you get a job. Theory, attendance, attitude are all meaningless it all comes down to how good your book it. Does your work stand out from the pack? But how do you stand out when ou'r work is shoved into a corner of a room somewhere.

With that in mind why don't the uni's make more of an effort to sell their students to prospective companies. Why isn't there a special screening of students just for potential employers? Why doesn't every uni have an online database of students with their work samples?

Hyperisland seem to do this well but no uni (well none that I have seen) even come close to having a way to access a list of students and their work online.

There's talented people all around Australia but there's no way I'm going to Canberra on the chance I can see someone. Let alone Perth, Adelaide or any of those states.

What this does create is a way for the determined students to get a leg up on other students, but sadly the most determined students aren't always the best.

Does anyone else have the same experience? or am I expecting too much?

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 12:19 PM | Link to this Article | 4 Comments
Archived in: Interesting Articles