This new site Picnic Wrestling for Picnic is great. Plays on the ugly theme quite well. Although I got up too early in the morning to find anyone online to play. The art direction is fantastic. And the voice acting is spot on.

I'm not sure on the agency behind this?

Here's a digest of what's been sent to us recently.

I should probably wear these at Cannes. More info here

How did I miss this for so long? I love the music. I initially thought Uniqlo was an expensive brand until I visited the stores. They have really pushed hard online in the last 18 months.

This video was produced by Saatchi Moscow was put together to help sell Gmail's features to Russians. Reminds me of Doubleyou's Xmas card from 2006

Found via Adverlab

Adrants has acomplete list of Superbowl ads on Youtube with their patented form of commentary.

I liked this ad from Pepsi. The lack of audio would have at least got peopel's attention thinking their TV was broken.

There has been way to much talk about banks and we need to kick this blog into a more sexy gear. And what better way to do that than with a promotional site for K-Y personal lubricant.

Poke NY's new site titled Keep Life Sexy is a never ending list of things that peopel equate to being sexy.

The visual design and audio design is quite nice. The sites sections react to the touch rather than the click which I think works well. After seeing this buzz word last month I feel this is a good example of "crowd sourcing" and it's quite interesting drilling down the words and also sorting via age and sex. (Although this sorting mechanism has now been removed?)

There is also a Flickr pool which feeds into the list. Altough as the site is new this is still in its infancy.

The site reminds me of We Feel Fine which gathered people's feelings from their blog posts and displayed it in various visual ways.

Here's Jonathan Harris talking about the site at a recent TED.

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

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.

20th Century Fox wants you to Munk Yourself for Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Create your own chipmunk character and record a custom message (which gets chipmunkatized) and send it on to friends. It's similar to Simpsons avatar or Simponize Me, except the emphasis is on recording your own message and the users voice rather than uploading your face.

Designed and built by Soap Creative using Oddcast technology.

I mentioned the Mini Strike event that was held last weekend. I'm happy to say that it seemed to go down without a hitch. Basically you registered for a ride. You were then given a racing card which showed the order of the pins you needed to drive around. You then rode shotgun as a professional stunt driver went around the course of 7ft. inflatable bowling pins at breakneck speed. When it ended you got your photo taken and your race time.

I attended on Saturday and there was a constant stream of people. Reports from the previous day was that it was packed. My ride was #284 and they did a total of 500+ around the giant bowling course. Participant's can log onto the site now and download a photo of yourself.

The event was organized by Play Communications a "brand experience agency" out of Surry Hills. Who have created many of these "experience based" brand events in the past.

I made a quick video which shows one trip around the course. I'm sad that I didn't actually film on my 27 second trip inside the car but alas.

It certainly was a lot more fun that looking at a Mini on a rotating pedestal at the Sydney Motor Show which is on right now and I spent the next few days lusting after a Copper S of my own but realized I need to get my license renewed before even thinking about a car.

I'm excited about this weekend's events with two branded events taking place in Sydney and both in my neighborhood. No more will Bondi have all the fun.

Mini Strike combines two of my loves, Ten Pin and Mini Coopers. It's self proclaimed as "The World's First Car Bowling Experience".

Luckily I'll be driven around by experienced drivers in their MINI's and have a video and photo of my experience captured for me. The event is on this Saturday 13th and 14th October. More info here.

Mambo's Finders Keepers is a easter hunt around Sydney for original Mambo artworks and PSP's.

Mambo even put together a video to promote the event.

With just 188 views I'm hoping the turn out will be low on the weekend so grabbing the artwork won't involve arm wrestling some emo kids.

More info on Mambo's ugly Myspace page.

And if you're a little younger and in the Paramatta on the 12th you can help Kzone break a world record (these seems to just be fodder for brands now) for the most people playing a DS in the one spot. The record is just 250 which seems pretty low so the record could go down.

More info here.

Summer is almost here and the battle for what deodorant guys will use is heating up. Here's what I've seen the leading brands doing lately. If I've missed anything please let me know in the comments.

World's Dirtiest Film

Axe has partnered with College Humor to put the call out for dirty directors to create The Word's Dirtiest Film.. They've enlisted David Spade to be the face of the competition which seems a good fit as does College Humor.

Bom Chicka Wah Wah Island

Lynx in Australia held a stunt on Bondi where 30 women landed om the beach and were met by the Nerds FC.
The girls are now all tagged with GPS wrist bands which you can track on the site and you can see coverage of the event on the site. It's a little fiddling navigating though, so be aware.

Lynx Showers

Lynx have also started Lynx Showers which doesn't have the same humor as Man Wash but anything with women in bikini's playing twister is good with me.

TAG Testees

I'm not sure guys want to be referred to as testicles but Tags new Tag Testees site doesn't hold back on the innuendo. Interesting choice of female talent. They seemed to have gone with a more realistic representation of females.

World's Biggest Bikini Shoot

Sadly they all get trumped by Cosmo who recently held the world's biggest bikini shoot at Bondi Beach. Now not exactly competing with the deodorant brands this was sent me to me by more friends than any of the other promotions combined. With 1010 women in bikini's they beat the previous world record of 300 by a long shot. It also got them coverage the world over.

See photos here on SI or video here on Reuters.

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.

This is a great initiative called The Good Food Fight from Daddy and Mono to get Americans eating healthier or more specifically the Eat Better America site.

If you watch mainstream news here in Aus, we're a bunch of fatties too. It's a wonder I can even type on a standard size keyboard with my fat fast food eating fingers.

Here's a few Behind the Scenes green screen photos T.Scott Major from Mono sent us.

And here's the treatment from Daddy from which the site was built from.

I wonder what the talent think when doing these types of jobs. "Yeah I was an angry lunch lady and I pretended to throw food at the camera"

I was delighted to see that after clicking the mysterious banner seen here I was taken to an even better experience on the site www.070829.com. The audio is particularly nice.

I'll let you all solve the site's puzzle yourself but here's what you are left with in the end. A silhouette of what looks to be a Nokia N81 (Nokia's iphone killer) and a countdown to it's release.

A quick Google search of "070829" reveals there was a lot of interest in this campaign. So I'd say it has been successful in generating buzz.

This type of marketing is also doing well for J.J Abrams new film untitled film codenamed "Cloverfield" with their site 1-18-08.com.

Here's one film that's generating lots of buzz by letting the fans imaginations go wild. As seen in the many blogs like Cloverfield Clues, Cloverfield News and Project Cloverfield. The guys at Paramount got this one right as everyone is doing the work for them.

If you need any more proof that this type of marketing brings out the nerds check this very nerdy Youtube analysis of everything released for Cloverfield. 350,000 views for this!? He sounds like Perez Hilton.

Also Ethan Haas Was Right is another recent promotion which I wrong stated was related to Cloverfield. It's actually for a new pen and paper based Role Playing Game Alpha Omega.

It's funny reading the comments in forums that people were actually disappointed it wasn't related to Cloverfield. And that the majority of the news coverage online linked it to Cloverfield.

B!X and his site OMGWTFEHWR was the first to uncover the link between EthanHaas and AO and covers the promotion quite well.

So let that be a lesson to all you experimental marketers. If you are going to go underground and do an ARG or mysterious promotion, make sure there is some link, even if tiny, to the product or service you're actually selling or risk having it attributed to something else and all your hard work wasted.

Have you seen any other good examples of this type of marketing? Please link it up in the comments.

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.

While looking at the Mad Men site I was surprised to see banner advertising for The World's Biggest Cross in Nazereth.

It feels like another one of those promotions where you fill out your name and it goes into a big list that you can navigate. But instead of typing in your name and seeing your details on the biggest cross you part with $100 or so and buy your name onto the cross in the form of a tile. One of 7.2 millions used to make this 60 meter high monstrosity.

So the race is on for other religions to make the world's biggest something. Unless The Church of Scientology can just claim The Big Pineapple as their holy place (L. Ron Hubbard did like pineapple) then they have already won.

Below is an artists impression of the COS headquarters for SE Queensland.

But back to being all serious and stuff. It's amazing to see charities and religions take to the web so well. While some brands struggle to understand and use the web properly, religions on every side of the fence have been using it to great effect for many years.

Host have launched a new site for NZ Airlines called Home Sweet As. (note: Sweet is a Kiwi term meaning good)

Kiwis back home can send messages to their bros over in Aus vi a billboard that'll be moving around. It's currently in Martin Place.

While I like the idea of the campaign what I love is the felt art direction. It just looks so nice you want to touch your screen.

The official sequel to Tea Partay by JWTNew York.

This is doing pretty well with 300,000 views in just over a day.

The original 'Tea Partay' was produced by BBH and was apparently inspired by this Dynamite Hack's 'Boyz in the Hood' which can be seen below :

BBH has also released a music video for Lynx/Axe for The Bom Chicka Wah Wah's

And let's not forget Amalgamated's Rap Cat

Everyone is still trying to forget the Dizzy Bananas and Starburt's Get Your Juices Going.

As there have been so many new The Simpsons Movie promotions I thought I'd post an update.

Homer Hosts the Leno show:

Statue of Liberty Vandalized Viral

180ft Pegan Homer:

Via The Sun

And a B3TA animated version of it.

Burger King are making the most of their cross promo deal with these other ads being released to support or in addition to the online activity.

Check out the German Buger King commercial that featured a German Homer. He kinda sounds like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

Here's the American version we know and love.

And I totally forgot about the Springfield Challenge. Where Vermont won the right to host the premiere.

All this lead to an impressive $70M opening weekend for The Simpsons Movie and Australia doing 18% of this in the same timeframe. 8% above the average!

Google and Sony (with Big Spaceship actually creating the site) have teamed up for an online experience to promote Bourne Ultimatum called The Ultimate Search for Bourne.

This is similar to the Mission Impossible: The Ultimate Mission or the Da Vinci Code Quest promotions that ran last year players are asked to complete a series of missions using Google products, fake sites and the site to ultimately find Jason Bourne (the hero of the movie) and win a prize. Here's the official press release.

What I love best about these type of promos is you can instantly gauge its success. By using Youtube videos as a clue delivery service one only needs to check the view stats on said videos and you'll know how many people are playing. Day 4's clue (we're up to Day 5 now) is sitting on 800 views. The first videos are at 7,000. (see below)

Maybe people do what I did and just Google the questions and cheat?

It looks great but its tiny type and super long UI is annoying as is Flash's limitations with copying and pasting text but that's not the agencies fault. Also I would have liked to have done more than just find answers and past it into a message window. Mini games or anything would have been a nice change.

What's interesting is Google didn't charge Sony for the privilege of hosting the game as it saw the benefit as mutual. Without Google's support this would have made the whole thing a lot harder to pull together.

Updated: (Sorry I had my agency's wrong)
The level of complexity for this game is quite easy compared to Red's ARG game out there called Ethanhaaswasright.com And yes I can't get past the 2nd puzzle!!! (it's shitting me)

Update 2: I was completely wrong (like most other people) Ethan Haas Was Right is actually for Alpha Omega a new RPG. More info here.

Thanks B!X you tried to set me right but I didn't listen.

McDonald's have launched a new campaign to name their new burger. Yes I know its so exciting that why are they offering a $20,000 prize when the act of naming a burger should be the prize itself.

Another promotion running where consumers are giving the power to determine product decisions is Master Foods' Dolimio pasta sauce promotion. Wow and you thought naming a burger was fun!

Doritos did this earlier as did Pepsi when they let people design their cans.

And speaking of McDonald's I thought I'd throw to these great posters for McDonald's in France done by illustrator Andy Smith. I'm not sure what they say but I probably wont eat at Quick Hamburger when I'm in Paris next time.

The Simpsons movie is 8 days away (I would say how great it is but I've been told not tell anyone I've seen it) and we're heading into the biggest marketing push Fox has ever done. So big they have put together a website to showcase the promotions. See Yellow.

What's not on there is the new Simpsonize Me tool for Burger King. Just launched by CP+B.

Now it's a little rough around the edges (read: buggy) but when it does work it's actually pretty cool. Uploading a face definitely takes the grunt work out of creating a character.

Here's me Simpsonized. I had to adjust the hair but it's a pretty good likeness. It's even captured my terrible fashion sense. I also Simpsonized myself age 80. As you can see I no longer wear glasses and my ears are bigger but I've now got a great sense for fashion. I look forward to my Versace days to come in my 80's.

What's confusing is that the official Simpsons site has their own Create your own Simpsons avatar tool. Here's the Simpsons character I created a few weeks back. To launch two similar online initiatives seems a waste and also takes the allure off the BK one.

What's missing from both is a gallery function. I want to see other people's characters. I want to see them all in a huge crowd shot. I guess I'll have to browse the Flickr groups and fan forums for my fix.

And and if you dial you age in at 200 this is what you get. Don't do it as you have to upload your photo again after.

As for what else is happening outside of what's mentioned on See Yellow, there is also:

Harpers Bazaar:
This great Simpsons Harper's Bazaar spread. That will tickle the fashionistas.

Vans:
Twelve artist inspired limited edition Simpsons Vans. That should keep the sneaker freaks happy.

Samsung:
Samsung are releasing a Limited Edition Simpsons mobile. This and the Yellow XBOX 360 will keep the tech geeks happy.

And finally we have the Limited Edition Donut Packaging for The Simpsons Movie soundtrack. Now trust me when I say that you will be singing the Spiderpig theme when you leave the cinemas. This will keep me happy at least.

Both Samsung and Vans should have created official sites for these promotions. Their corporate sites (Vans | Samsung) don't even mention these at all. You can't rely on bloggers as your only form of information distribution!

Even more detailed info can be found on Wikipedia.

From Grand Union [UK] comes Private Dick Movie

It's a mock 70's porno. You could say a "spoof" but that word has a different meaning in the world of porn.

This is the latest work for the Department of Health, the previous campaign (one of my favs) can be seen here & here.

We'll post up the banner campaign for this soon.

And if the world of porn is something of interests you, then you might want to check out Ron Jeremy's The Hardest (working) man in Showbiz Rob at Soap is currently reading it and says it's a great read.

The press release explains this better than I can:
"Celebration Dance is where football fever meets Saturday Night Fever. Choose a Socceroos player and make them move. Pull off a star celebration dance routine and hear the crowd roar."

The 3D is a little uncanny valley for me but well animated. I would have also liked an endurance mode but like most people you only have a minute to spare for these things so the short gameplay works I guess.

I actually didn't even know there was an Asian Cup. So hopefully no dodgy Italian type team to steal a victory :)

Publisis & Hal Riney have launched a new site for Sprint in the US. With the video production done by Mekanism. Who have a history of doing great viral work. We're taken inside a Centre for Connectile Dysfunction. Basically poking fun at guys who can't maintain a steady internet connection. The innuendo is thrown at you thick and fast. The video is shot well, the script and talent are good too. But for me it's the little things like the way you transition from section to section that really show attention to detail. There's even a Aveaword style send to friend form where you can alert peopel to the CD centre.

Tooheys Extra Dry is launching its new campaign today. The website Harvested.com.au is not up yet but you can see a special preview of the TVC here, thanks to Campaign Brief.

Oh and try to ignore BMF talking the ad up before you watch it.

It feels very Japanese or Playstation to me. (I guess Playstation is Japanese but that's not the point I was trying to make)

Hyundai have launched a new competition called Mash and Seek which will mash up your face with 3 other random entrants. The first team of 4 people to correctly identify all team members wins a car each.

It's a confusing premise for a comp (people are confused by the format of Grindhouse) but it should generate a lot of activity. You'll need to make yourself visible and be on the lookout for other people participating in the comp. I wonder how Myspace, Facebook and the like will play a part in this. I'm not sure on the mechanics on how identifying the person will be done but it would be as simple as entering their email address to confirm.

Let's see how this one pans out. The game needs a large number of entrants to make it work properly but I like the original thinking behind it.

Oh and if you are a contestant please let us know how you're going.

To promote her new book "No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July" the author herself has created the website to promote the book.

It breaks all the rules but sometimes you need to do that to stand out.

I haven't been this impressed by a low tech, original idea since I saw Will it Blend?.

I vaugly remember posting a banner with a wierd celebrity in it but at this time can't remember. Until then enjoy this gem from Japan.

Hosting a art/design competition isn't just for brands like Red Bull and and Pepsi. Now even brands like Tupperware are getting in on the act.

Art of Can
The Red Bull Can entries are for me the most exciting and varied. It's quote amazing to see what can be done with one base element and some imagination.

Translations in Tupperware
With the variety of products that Tupperware offer it should be easier to create something special. Entries close August 31st so there's plenty of time to get creative. Click here to view last years winners

I still remember my mum hosting Tupperware parties in the 80's. Do people still do that now or is it all Mary Kay these days?

Designer Glass
Bombay Sapphire has been running it's Design Glass competition annually and while it doesn't use the actual product itself the entries are created for the act of drinking it so I think this counts. The entries must also be functional glasses used for drinking which adds an extra element of difficulty above the previous two comps as they just need to look "cool".

Design Our Pepsi Can
Pepsi have gone design crazy with 35 different can designs and a comp calling for people to design their can aptly titles Design our Pepsi Can. They even created a site for the designs called Pepsi gallery. Don't hold your breath for a travelling exhibition for any of the designs. The winning can will receive $10,000 and have their design displayed on 500 million Pepsi cans.

These types of comps, when done right, can be a great way for people to engage with your brand.

Are there any other "art of the product" competitions I've missed?

Here's an interesting promotion for Doritos chips called Fight for the Flavour. Similar to the BK Chicken Fight this pits two new flavors against each other in a multiplayer fighting game. They also want you to vote on which flavor you like with the winning flavor staying on as a regular.

The art direction and flash work is great and the game is quite good. Worth checking out.

Below is the stop motion TVC which is quite fun too. Oh and those who can't get enough brands as their friends on Myspace you can check out the Myspace profile here.

Full TVC credits can be found here.

Jeep has been busy with 3 big online promotions launching recently.

First we have Goonies: Return to Astoria produced by Fuel Industries. The game looks great, there are 4 levels and a fitting 80's soundtrack.
I guess all the kids that liked the movie will now be old enough to buy a Jeep.

This leaves just Tron, The Breakfast Club, Revenge of the Nerds and Ferris Bueller's Day Off as cult films of the 80's that haven't been turned into a marketing campaign. (Let me know if I'm wrong here).

Next up we have The Way-Beyond Trail for the Jeep Patriot. A choose your own adventure style game. The production is good and the adventure fun and with 45 scenes it's large enough to have reply value.
I also like the data entry at the beginning and that choices there affect the content of the videos.. Look out for some nice little Easter eggs if you linger on some screens for too long.

Lastly we have The Patriot Factor. No, not a game show where they test your level of love for your country but a Jeep and Marvel online comic where the users suggest the story. A nice feature for comic book buffs is being able to see the pencil and ink artwork as well as the final colour rendering.

I'd love to see a case study at the end of the promotions to see what was successful. I preferred the Way Beyond Trail myself even if it was a little cheesy in places, the humor was actually funny in places which is rare for this type of content.

Jeep have certainly gone all out and while not as focused as say Mini's online endeavors,