Get the economy back on track, get yourself a McCain '08 T-Shirt.

I made these using Spread Shirt, and put together the site using Big Cartel, as a little side experiment in e-commerce. This is after being inspired by all the election hysteria, and the massive social networking success that is McCainSpace.

Big Cartel is definitely worth checking out if you're after a non-lame, CSS customizable shopping cart.

ADMA Idols went off last night with a packed house and some real talent on display.

Foxtel won the band comp last night (and looked like a real band) while Soap picked up best dressed.
Mark put on a good show too although they had an Idol contenstant as a ring in.

Note: for entries next year. The later you go on the more drunk people are and the louder they cheer.

Here's Soap's Band Bath Scum performing.

Bath Scum Live - Night Train from mwg on Vimeo.

Bath Scum Live - Panama from mwg on Vimeo.

In a first for Nestle, a new Kit Kat product variant is being launched entirely online. JWT and RMG Connect Sydney have created the digital launch for the new Kit Kat Cookies and Cream.

The Australian reports "The company will spend about $1 million, more than 70 per cent of which will go to social media websites such as MySpace, to promote the face of Kit Kat Chunky: a character called Hans Fagerlund. Significantly, Nestle confectionary will not use any traditional media to promote the brand. "

Nestle will spend about $1 million, more than 70 per cent of which will go to social media websites such as MySpace.
Source : The Australian

The JWT/RMG campaign has been created specifically for digital communication and the content has been created to engage, play and share predominantly via social networking media. The digital media mix includes social networking & video sharing sites, instant messaging, search, mobile and interactive video banner ads.

In comments to The Australian, John Broome, Nestle's confectionery head of marketing said "that five years ago the money would have gone to television, radio and outdoor, but the internet and social media were now better for generating word-of-mouth among teens."

The comprehensive digital campaign features:

You read right. Bannerblog is now available in t-shirt format. We've taken Web 2.0 and blended it with a fine American cotton to create what could only be called T-Shirt 2.0.

Why you ask?

T-Shirt 2.0 is a cost effective medium to reach a highly targeted but fashion conscious advertising audience"

Seriously..

Blatant self promotion. We (Ashley (judge), Ashadi (delegate) and Paul (delegate) ) will be cruising the Croisette in a anything-but-limited-edition series of Bannerblog T-Shirts during the Cannes Advertising Festival.

We're using Red Bubble who digitally print excellent quality American Apparel t-shirts on demand. You can find out more here, they really do rock and like us they're also Australian (use them for your next campaign!).

We've got 3 designs to choose from, with a selection of t-shirt colours, cuts and sizes (measurement details here). All cost approximately $20 USD plus a few dollars for shipping (effectively the base price RedBubble charge us). Shipping takes between 5-15 days depending on your shipping destination. So you better hop to it if you want your t-shirt in time for Cannes!

Not attending Cannes? You can always wear it to improve your agency's digital cred. Wearing a t-shirt with a blog URL on it will instantly make you the dude that's down with this whole digital thing . While everyone else around you is wearing $100 designer t-shirts, you'll be the pixel pusher pushing all the right buttons for a mere $20 USD.

Buy 2 or more, and you've got yourself the beginnings of a t-shirt social network ;)

We've revisited our facebook presence, and have opted for a 'Fan' Page rather than a Group (which we'll now close). Fan Pages weren't around when we first got on the FB bandwagon and overall we found updating the group too much of a hassle. With the arrival of Fan Pages, comes application support and therefore closer integration between the website and Facebook page thanks to RSS. As a result, you can now :

We at Soap have just launched a new promotion for Foxtel called Feelsomething.com.au

The site extends their latest tag line "See something that makes you feel something". It's the first step in many to position Foxtel away from just price based offers and more towards emotional ties people have with their TVs.

There's four more people being added this week, along with the usual downloads and other media as well as a "making of" for those who are interested.

In and effort to help EMI promote physical CD purchases and their artists we created Sleevage: The world's best CD cover blog. This is purely self proclaimed but we needed Google to index us properly. Why buy a book on the best covers which is probably out of date by the time it's printed when you can get the best online for free. We also wanted to go one step beyond the usual "10 best covers" or "10 worst covers" you see occasionally.

EMI's presence, they use the name Musichead in Australia as EMI represents so many labels, has been kept quite minimal right now and EMI artists have been interspersed with other labels releases. This is all integral to it's success, as support by the other labels is very important. Just as support by agencies is on Bannerblog, we didn't want this to be a Soap Creative blog.

It's growing organically and has been well received by the design and music communities. Also as with most blogs the longer its alive the better it becomes. Also search engine traffic is growing exponentially as more covers are posted. This isn't a 6 month promotion that will be abandoned it will become part of EMI Australia's online arsenal.

We're hoping to grow it above and beyond what Bannerblog has become and with a broad topic of music and design this should be easy. Although there is much more competition for the topic of "album cover design". We've seen two new ones pop up since we launched Sleevage.

This is the main reason updates to Bannerblog have been slightly slower as my attention has been divided.

A 160x600 Skyscraper ad for Bannerblog invades the Palais des Festivals.

This year, Bannerblog is undertaking the holly pilgrimage to the great advertising Mecca that is Cannes. That's right, we'll be cruising the Croisette in true advertising style with a t-shirt emblazoned with the words Bannerblog (lime green of course).

We'll be there to cover the best of the festival from a digital perspective, covering the winners and bringing you the work as quick as we can.

We'll also have our Bannerblog Paparazzi camera to catch all the fun, and we'll be putting together a Flickr stream of all you digital mugs.

So if you're in Cannes for the festival (17-23rd) and fancy a drink or want to woo Bannerblog with an invite to your party, drop me an email ashadi at bannerblog [dot] com [dot] au or during the festival call +61 438 808 630

We (Soap Creative) just launched one of the largest sites we have ever done. Frubalia. Well Rollups.com.au actually.

The site introduces kids to the Frubas and the world of Frubalia. Uncle Toby's Roll-Ups have now been fully rebranded with the Frubalia characters on them.

The TVC's by Singletons are running now across all the kids shows. Too bad they omiited the Rollups URL or they might actually help drive people to the site :) They've veen disabled embedding and commenting on Youtube for the ads. Oh dear.

Commarts mentions us in their "Web Watch" page in the September/October Issue - which also happens to be the Interactive Annual. Lots of other good stuff in there too

Check it out at http://www.commarts.com/ca/interactive/cai06/

and Commarts - Thanks for the Props!

We've (that's Soap) just created a naughty pinball flash game for the release of Artie Lange's Beer League. In our defense the movie is rated (R) and Artie is a regular on the Howard Stern show so we tried to keep in theme. I hear that The Pitching Machine can be booked for weddings, bar mitzvahs and corporate functions.

So those easily offended should not play Pingball.

Soap Creative have just launched X Planet, a Google Maps powered X-Men community site to promote the film release of X-Men: The Last Stand.

The key element is the integration of Google Maps within X Planet's interface, enabling users to move around the world and into any location within it - right down to street level. Users are able to develop mutant profiles and "pin" themselves to any location, which can be found by other site visitors. They're also able to include a link to their personal website or blog within their profile, and add other users to a planet-wide "buddy list".

The "Mutant of the Day" feature, direct linking to profiles and a MySpace/Blog badge creation tool ensure that the site generates that sought after "community" aspect.

X Planet steers away from traditional online campaigns that are competitive in nature, such as entering first, collecting puzzles and solving problems to win. Instead it encourages the audience to actively share, rather than compete with other users to create interactivity with each other and the movie.

Beyond the networking features, content from the first two X Men movies, and behind-the-scenes material from the latest one, will be planted around X Planet following launch, further encouraging people to explore and discover.

Personally (as someone who worked on it's initial conception) I'm pretty happy with the end result with only a few tweaks form the initial concept. It's also great to see our idea embraced by Fox in the US rather then being reduced to a small local initative.

On the back of phils entry below...

this site we produced here at Poke last year for Christian Aid -The Big Cow Farm. The database has been reset since it ran so the premise of multiplication is lost somewhat on the counters (it's now a show piece only really). It would have been pretty cool to have them combined me reckons.


And accompanying banners here.

cows are cool.

For the last bit myself and the gang at Peel have been busy with one of the oddest assignments we've had in a bit - perhaps ever. We've been putting (and continue to put) cameras on cows, and recording the "cow's eye view". A rather silly endeavor, with much grass, and the occasional blair witch bit of motion, but all in all, rather fun. But I'm of course biased, since I've been in the fields of Texas following around longhorns with a crazy wireless video recording setup, and it's been quite fun.

See for yourself MooTube.com

We (Soap Creative) have just finished a game for Fox's horror remake The Hills Have Eyes. You'll need headphones or speakers to enjoy this one though.

Check out Mutant Hunt game here.

And those people who are tired us us posting our own work here in the news, then pull your clicking finger out and submit some breaking campaigns.

We're here to pimp ya work so abuse us.

Yahoo7!, NineMSN and News.com.au wouldn't run 20th Century Fox's Basic Instinct 2 banners.

Luckily FHM after first rejecting the ads then requested the "muff version" for their homepage.

Didn't they know that "A muff a day helps you work, rest and play" (Sorry that was terrible I know)

We (Soap Creative) have just finished three games for our The Real Australia promotion for Tourism WA.

Relax with your mate hawkeye in Reel Fishing,
flip some tourist with a giant egg flip in Tan Command
or experience a Real Australian washing machine with Real Surf.

RMG Connect (Sydney) is hiring. We're looking for a Flash Developer and Digital Art Director to join our creative department here in Sydney, Australia.

So if you're keen for a move to the land down under and want to know more about the roles or RMG and our work, drop me an email

Soap Creative have launched Tourism WA's latest online campaign The Real Australia.

The site allows visotors to explore WA's top destinations while hunting for pieces of a map to win the major prize. They can also let Dr. T. Ravel recommend a holiday spot and tour package by answering a few simple questions or just simply get a price on a holiday from Austravel.

The main website is being supported by a large online banner campaign as well as a print and TV campaign created by Market Force. Currently targeting UK visitors, if successful, the campaign will be adapted for other markets.

Three games are currently being developed to help drive traffic in addition to the online media spend.

My apologies for the blatent self promotion.