The FARM are excited to hear the Aveeno™ NZ online media campaign (under the Johnson&Johnson client suite) has won the first every Bolly Award! This is an award that has been set up by the Internet Advertising Bureau in NZ to celebrate the best digital creative in NZ.  

http://www.bollyawards.co.nz/

Feedback from OMD in NZ: "Well done, the creative for this campaign has been the talk of the industry and a lot of people (including me) think it’s just amazing."

The campaign performed really well with an average dwell time on the rich media placements of 76.25 seconds and engagement rate of 25.85%.

I downloaded the new Google Chrome OS and ran it on Sun’sVirtualBox VM software.

My first impressions...

It was only an 8 second start up time to the login screen. Awesome! Then a single sign-on to your computer with your Gmail account. Another 8 seconds and the Chrome browser was open with my Gmail account and Google Calander. Now that was impressive! Within 25 seconds of me turning on my computer I was reading my email.

What else is there to Chrome OS? It doesnt seem like there is anything else. I couldn't find anywhere to configure system preferences or anything. Do you want to open other programs or windows, or install other software (like Firefox)? Unfortunately you can't! It felt like I was in an internet cafe with a computer that is so locked down that all I can do is surf the web. A note to all internet cafe's around the world...None of the big players online support IE6 anymore. Please upgrade to anything else!

Anyway, Chrome OS is aimed at netbooks (at least initially). A netbook user would typically like to turn on their computer, have it quickly boot, have their browser immediately open, check their mail and calendar, and then continue surfing. That is what Chrome OS allows them to do, but thats it. The OS is merely a portal to the internet. You can't run anything locally. 

But I guess that over the years Google has been introducing online services and applications so the average consumer doesn't really need local applications. With Chrome OS, Google can encourage the use of online applications such as Google Documents, and (when it gets a lot better) it might actually start to rival MS Office, because it is free and online. After all, who needs local storage when there is cloud computing?

Conclusion... Google Chrome OS boots damn fast! It allows you to quickly get on the interweb. It's not exciting from an OS perspective as far as user experience goes, but damn it's fast!

If you want to try out, navigate your interweb browser to this hyperlink: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/19/guide-install-google-chrome-os/

P.s. Google seems to be putting all types of applications online. What is next? Is Google going to make an online Pro Tools? Now that would be impressive!

Movie releases, particularly those targeting families such as Up, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and the just-released A Christmas Carol, have been experimenting with 3D to add extra va-va-voom to the big screen. But now cognac brand Courvoisier has dipped its toe in 3D waters.
The ad, ‘Cognac With Another Dimension’, shows cognac in a balloon glass exploding and then spinning into a vortex that forms a cocktail. Don your 3D glasses and watch it in all its glory here: http://tinyurl.com/Courvoisier

You might remember Toshiba launching a chair into space recently from the desert in America. Well, the footage from that projectile has made its way back to earth and has been mashed together to form ‘Space Chair’, the brand’s latest TV commercial through Grey, London. Watch the biodegradable chair and its specially built camera rig’s graceful and surreal journey to the edge of space and back at http://bit.ly/1hflUf

BBDO Buenos Aires and Sake have completed the human race 10k campaign for Nike. Five celeb runners commentated on their race in real time, via a mobile phone and earpiece, and the resulting wheezing and insights were broadcast live and could be followed via Twitter, GPS and Google Maps. Over 650,000 people followed the race live and online. Watch the action at www.vimeo.com/7424458 and check http://thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo

I came accross some future predictions around Facebook penetration a couple of days ago and is it truly staggering.

Discounting China (Facebook is restricted there) it looks like we will  be approaching 30% of the worlds active internet population will be regular Facebook users by the end of 2009.

In the article they also talked about future projections and the possibility the Facebook audience could possibly top 1 billion users, the digital universe would sure be a different place, for a start we have to play by Facebook's rules while on their platform.

As agencies and marketers what does this mean for us? Well I guess it certainly means no matter who you are at the moment you cannot ignore the big F. The most obvious way to tap in to this huge potential audience is through ads but until now they have been targeted in a fairly standard way. These ads have been more effective in my experience than standard units due to organic impressions generated, context and their non banner like appearance but the targeting has been at best unimaginative, certainly not taking advantage of the social platform.

There is a new option open to us though which seems subtle at first, you can simply target your ads at friends of your connections. These connections are defined by Facebook as: Fans of your page, users of your applications, members of your groups or attendees of your events. Looking in to it a little further this is a different method than the top ten targeting methods currently available. 

Why? Well the ads can have social context which is after all what Facebook is supposed to be about. So if I am working on a new film theatrical release and someone fans my new movie page I can target ads at their friends which will list below the ad that their friend is a fan of my film. If the person viewing the ad would also like to see the film and I am offering pre-release tickets or a competition, who are they going to ask to go with them I wonder.

It is a great step in the right direction I believe for Facebook, there is still much work to be done, I could rattle on for hours about the numerous ways I would like to use the platform but lets save that for another day and simply be happy they are thinking about us little agencies and marketers.

[2009] The FARM is very proud to announce that WiggleTime! has received a Highly Recommended mention in the 2009 Kidspot Best of Awards! We are very pleased to be recognised in the realm of children's education and online learning. A testament to the heights achieved by the FARM's design and development teams. Let's get Wiggling!

Yesterday the DDB WWF ad sparked a little debate round the office on the subject of shock ads, it was amazing how quickly and fiercly the fuse burnt once lit! THis section of the email trail literally flew around in under five minutes. Some interesting questions were raised, does the message get lost? Is any conversation good conversation? Do shock ads work? What I really would like to see is what impact the ad has on donations after this little storm. Anyone else have an opinion?

Read from the bottom up.

From: Wade

Ahhhh … but we are critiquing the ad from the perspective of “is that an inappropriate message in relation to 9/11?”

The WWF message is getting lost …….. we are debating the WRONG topic.

Well done Drew – you Sh*t starter …….. my turn now

Ok … so which religion is BETTER Christianity or Buddhism?

From: Chris

Can an ad’s success be measured by the conversation it produces or the opinions it polarises?

From: Phillip

Agree with all comments, Wade definitely agree comparing man made to nature is ridiculous. What we need to do with things like the tsunami is humanise them, they are seen as things that happen somewhere else and a number is just a number.

Having said this look at the email trail, definitely got the office talking about serious issues....

From: Kristina

Fair point, but surely  there is a better way to show the value of third world life than belittle that of the US?

Though I guess it may indirectly touch an element of human nature we might not like to admit – we only instill value on something by taking it away from something else.

If we are talking about minute silences, there isn’t actually anything official for 9/11 in the States that I’m aware of… or the Bali bombing for that matter which was in the same vicinity of the tsunami..

Lots of talking points here Drew, nice debate starter!!!!

From: Tom

Disagree.

I think it makes an important point (perhaps unwittingly) about the value of third world life in relation to US lives. Where is the one minute of silence for the Tsunami victims (which seems far more relevant to Australia than terrorism to me).

From: Nikk

I completely agree. Never would have thought an organization like the WWF would stoop this low and feel it necessary to compare with and almost belittle 9/11.

The hell?!!

From: Kristina

Agreed Wade.

I actually find that disgusting – the comparison holds no merit whatsoever, how can you compare the two?!?

And more importantly WHY should we compare the two?! They are two equally devastating events, the body count should absolutely not be used as a hook to “respect” one over the other..

Very powerful image and it will no doubt get people talking but I think it’s a really poor way of getting this message across.

From: Wade

FAIL

I get that they tapped into the destruction of 911 because of the global impact that story had to get cut through, but it feels a little icky because the comparison is made to a man made act of terrorism which takes it off brief in my opinion.

I look at the ad more like -  “imagine if terrorism escalated” rather than going “isn’t mother nature a powerful thing that should be respected.”

From: Drew

http://blog.stephengates.com/2009/09/03/ddb-wwf-tsunami-twin-towers-ad-powerful-or-despicable/

Well Game two snuck up on us, still no training session! The team was in high spirits though as most of us have been personal training twice a week for the last five odd weeks.

So whether it was the exercise endorphins or just the promise of a run around we took the field with a bit of a laugh and plenty of enthusiasm!

Early on in the game Brooke Blakeslee a new FARM recuit overcame his American sensibilities and crossed the line for a try.

This was soon followed by tries from the design department in Hugo and the Dev boys in Aaron. We let one in but went to the break up on the scoreboard.

Now here is where we fell asleep int he last game, fatigue took over, legs got heavy and we slowed down, but not this time! Everyone in the team shared their tactical genius in a round the circle half time fire up speach and on we ran, more charged than kick off!

And thats how it continued a few more tries to the boys and one spectacular cross in the corner by Designer Nikki, it was magic. 

Final score 8-3, a good solid win for TheFARMERS. As this was our goal for the season (to win one game) we now must turn to the secondary goal, win the whole thing!

So here I sign off but I will ntoe that the win has energised the team, there is even a training session scheduled for  Sunday this week, followed by a few cheeky beers int he sun though I suspect :)

For the first time in Farmer of the Month history, the September award after much deliberation was a tie! The masses celebrated the leadership of Executive Producer, Chris Rann and Creative Director, Wade Kuhn for the hard yards they consistently put in at The FARM.