Already the viral has been picked up by many of the mainstream press both here and in the UK.

Australia Press Coverage

Marketing Mag

Livenews

Sydney Morning Herald

Sydney Morning Herald (2)

Sydney Mornging Herald (3)

Adnews (subscribers only)

Brisbane Times

Canberra Times

UK Press

The Times

The Sun

The Telegraph

The Independant

London Paper

And various other places

• MySpace – ausports

• Australian Sports Commission Viral | Digital Possibilities

• Young Aussies called on to beat Poms – Marketing Magazine

• Noise in the hood: chav that will inspire Aussie muppets to put on a show in

• Australians taunt British with viral Olympic advert – Telegraph

• Desperate times Down Under | The Sun |Sport

• Let’s rip those Brits to bits is Australian Olympic ad campaign messaeg – Times Online

• Australia taunts Britain in viral Olympic advert > Sport > LIVENEWS.com.au

• Video – Mouthy Brit’s sports challenge – Sydney Morning Herald

• Australia : Let’s rip the brits to bits – Page 3 – General Discussion – Digital Spy Forums

• Lets rip the Brits to bits in 2012 – All Games

• “Lets rip the Brits to bits in 2012″ // Current

• Terence Blacker: No medal without winding people up – Terence Blacker, Commentators – The Independent

• Australia encourages athletes to ‘Rip the Brits to bits’ in Olympic ad campaign – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic

• Champions365 – The Complete Sports Portal

• Australian Sports Commission’s talent search for London 2012

• Hire a hoodie: Australia v Team GB | News | guardian.co.uk

• Let’s rip those Brits to bits is Australian Olympic ad campaign messaeg – Times Online

• Digg – Aussie ads leave Brits insulted

• LinkSwarm.com

• Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites | eBizMBA

• Aussie ads leave Brits insulted – World – smh.com.au

If you were at the Sydney Motor Show last month, and your eyes weren’t glued to the expensive-looking supercars and not-so-expensive-looking promo girls, you may have noticed a little something we did for Mazda. 

It was an interactive kiosk that allowed people to view car specs simply by touching the screen. For a designer like me (who’s used to 72dpi), it was a nice change to be working with high res videos and a fancy-schmancy Plasma screen. And when we actually saw the beast being used by real people at the Motor Show, it gave us a nice little tingle under the bonnet. Shout out goes to Dan, our Action script guru, who helped out a lot with research and testing.

Brian, Senior Designer

To promote the Sydney Running Festival, Blackmores asked Bullseye to design a site that helped runners get the best out of their experience on race day.

We came up with various tools that helped runners achieve their best no matter what their level of fitness. There were training tips, recommended runs, split calculators, even a personalised training program that catered for everyone, from first timers to the more experienced athlete. The training program was custom built for an individuals level of fitness. A number of ‘Challenges’ were introduced during the 8 week lead up to the run, including training sessions and organising running groups to meet up. You could even go round the whole course without leaving your armchair with a web cam which was condensed into a 5 minute timeline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwHMbOjh_I
This video brought the experience and flavour of the event to life online way before the big day.

Over 7,000 ‘Challenges’ were taken over the 8 week training program: The site was so successful after the event that we continued the ‘Challenge’ and re-tailored the training program to incorporate not just runs but walks and bike rides. Individuals can track and view the best walks or runs at a glance within Google maps. This fitted perfectly with the brand strategy to become part of the bigger ‘B Your Best’ movement within Blackmores set of sites.

The site is specifically targeted at an individuals level of fitness and a particular stage of life. From weight to pregnancy we developed interactive tools to help you ‘B your best’ this jump page was aimed at all Australians and was deliberately designed to become a rallying call for everyone to take the ‘challenge’ and strive to be fitter.

Another way we promoted the brand value of ‘Be your best’ for Blackmores was to keeep people motivated in preparing for the event and to continue to engage with them once they completed the run. Runners who participated in the Running Festival were able to see themselves cross the finish line by entering their bib number or name. They could also forward their very own ‘moment of glory’ to family and friends.
http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/  We also suggested people share their experience by tagging their pictures with ‘BSRF08’ which was then streamed onto the official Blackmore’s site for all to share in true Web 2.0 fashion. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/BSRF08/show/

Kevin Ferry our creative Director summed the whole event up by saying: ‘It’s amazing the web, yes I know we all talk about the fancy websites, cool interfaces, and slick animation etc. but for me nothing beats it when real people from real communities come together and contribute via the web; that’s what happened last week at the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, one of the best.”’ Visit the site

It’s quite amazing how a story can be created like this.  Because it’s different it rises above the clutter of content.

Can your brand message do with a new canvas?

via Chris Brogan

Obama sat with BlogHer on Sunday to answer key policy questions developed by this community of bloggers specifically for 2008 presidential candidates.

Blogher is one of the largest collection of blogs by women, and therefore a ripe audience of influential people that brands should include in their communication plans.

The system has been available as a trial program for about a year, and this announcement now opens the system up for everyone to use using this simple process.

-  Select your target audience

-  Choose the networks, days and times, and  the specific programs you want your ad to run on.

- Choose the cost-per-thousand impressions you’re willing to pay

You don’t pay until your ad airs on TV.

Like Adwords, Google is hoping to reduce the complexity of advertising and also providing the necessary self service tools that make the process scalable. 

Google’s Ad Creation Marketplace also provides you with the tools to connect with pros who will provide scripting, copywriting, editing, production and voiceovers for your ad.

The interesting thing about Adwords is that it levels the playing field for the advertisers, so big global brands don’t get a significant benefits for large spending volumes.  For TV advertising, companies get rewarded by distribution networks for bulk purchasing, effectively reducing the appeal to large brands. However, the transparency of the pricing may have an effect on the TV media buying industry.

Google is no doubt hoping that it can take advantage of monetising video content in the same way it has monetised search.

Video content will continue to grow, and whether the content is consumed via television or online, providing a simple interface that is open to everyone to both sell and buy advertising is going to have wide appeal. 

Listening to consumers has never been more important. 

What are your consumers saying?

Internet access speeds, lower cost of video equipment, and ease of video sharing has lead to an expansion of video content on the web.

3 former Google employees have launched a site that is positioned as a video based "how-to guide" to pretty much anything. In their words, "Imagine an ever-expanding universe of how-to knowledge, created for you and by you. That’s Howcast".

The site also effectively uses Wiki technology to encourage collaboration / updates from users.  Examples include "How to clean your ipod", "How to store an unopened bottle of wine".  The site is well laid out and designed to capture feedback as well as commentary in line with today’s "conversational web".  The videos follow a similar format where an instructor explains what is needed to complete the task, followed by step-by-step instructions explained in a voiceover. If users want to write their own "how to", they can use the Howcast template; scripts are then sent to film school students for production.

The "How To" web market has a number of existing players such as Instructables and Expert Village which have been focused on text / image based content.   

Contributors to Howcast also benefit from distribution deals that syndicate content through other channels such as Joost, Verizon’s VCast.  This is a clever business model as it will enable Howcast to grow quickly. 

I couldn’t help thinking of the possibilities this structure has for mainstream education.  Howcast generates the "learning objects" and then effectively uses latest technology tools for teaching.  All you would need to add is a module that tracks what learning objects you have viewed, and testing to measure both the effectiveness of the learning object and to ensure students have grasp the concept being explained.