The image of a remote phonebox with tumbleweed blowing past it has long been a symbol of isolation and the wilderness. Will the phone work? Will someone have hidden some sort of message there, perhaps instructions on how to get to an old school rave, or will it be full of old takeaway and worse? Placing itself firmly in the middle ground between fixed landlines and the always-on lifestyle associated with a mobile phone is Skype, thanks to a new campaign from the Viral Factory, London.
www.phoneboxexperiment.com 

We wouldn’t normally sit glued to a two minute TV ad, but this is spine-tingling. Colenso BBDO in New Zealand came up with this beautiful animation for the New Zealand Book Council: http://bit.ly/nzbooks

Innovative retailer Miele has opened a London store which encourages people to trial the products before they buy. Any students not wishing to take their laundry home for Christmas, this is for you: http://bit.ly/dirtysocks

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

Dell has partnered with MTV to try and create the world’s largest online choir, Amplichoir… in their words ‘we have no idea just how big it could become, but, deep down, we really want it to be the biggest one there is’. http://ema.mtv.co.uk/amplichoir, http://amplichoir.com/    

The Icelandic village Seydisfjordur was filled with speakers broadcasting music from an eclectic bunch of artists including Bob Dylan, Federico Cabral and Guillemots as part of a film by Fallon to promote the high sound quality on Sony TVs. According to Fallon's Juan Cabral, who directed the spot, Sony turned the village into ‘an extraordinary sound-system for a week’. Watch it here. http://tiny.cc/Soundville

On the subject of Sony, three new Sony Ericsson handsets - the Yari, Aino and Satio - are being championed via a global campaign masterminded by Saatchi & Saatchi, Iris and Dare, London. It kicked off last week with a viral video showing a flash mob of 500 brightly coloured space hoppers invading Barcelona which has racked up nearly 30,000 views on YouTube. Watch it here: http://tiny.cc/Hopper161.
Anyone envying those bouncing Barcelonians can create their own hoppers online and join in the fun. www.hopperinvasion.com

New Balance goes straight for the sneaker freak jugular with a beautiful campaign via Mother, New York. Each pair of the new limited-edition '574 Clips' shoes comes complete with a unique Polaroid picture showing where in the US it was made. This has a code on the back which connects the consumer to their own video hosted online - expanding on the origins of each individual pair. Users can then 'claim' their video before sharing with friends across various social networks and blogging platforms. http://574clips.com

Pop art via paintball on behalf of snack brand, Bon Yurt for Leo Burnett, Columbia http://tiny.cc/popart515. The full campaign features seven limited edition labels made by students www.bonyurt.com

In the US, BF Goodrich has launched a new app and online community through The Martin Agency, New York, similar to Nike+ that allows you to plot favourite driving routes via google maps or GPS and share them with other members. The campaign’s highlight is an iPhone app which automatically plots routes and tags any photos with GPS co-ordinates along the way. www.nationofgo.com

It’s been a busy week for everyone’s favourite micro-blog. There are now 18m US adults alone who access Twitter on any platform at least monthly, indicating a 200% increase over 2008 levels. Next year, that figure will be 26 million US adults, a further 44.4% climb. Twitter also announced new terms of service last week which will enable brands to embark on more targeted ad campaigns. In Twitter’s own words: ‘We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open’. Read more on the Twitter blog here: 
http://tiny.cc/Twitter744

Hockey Moms are the subject of a witty campaign to launch NHL 2K10, a hockey game for the Nintendo Wii. Via 72andSunny in Los Angeles, the campaign stars three moms who use the game to vent their aggression. http://tiny.cc/nhl2k10Wii 

Finally, check out Champagne Valentine’s beautifully interactive promo for The Never Ending Why, the new Placebo single. Through Nexus in London, the multi-sensory experience steers the viewer through a landscape of shadows, monsters and psychedelic colour. http://tiny.cc/PlaceboChV

Hasbro has just kicked off Monopoly City Streets. The game is a limited-run massively multiplayer online interface that, thanks to Google Maps, allows players to develop property anywhere in the world in real time. More here www.monopolycitystreets.com

According to Facebook, 65 million people around the world now regularly access the social networking portal via their mobile phone, a figure that has more than tripled from 20 million at the start of the year. 

Some digital delights courtesy of M&C Saatchi, London, whose interactive posters for the RNID (Royal National Institute for the Deaf) hammer home the message that 1 in 7 people is hard of hearing. Different executions of the posters are running on different sound waves, incorporating microphones to interact with their environments. The posters appear black until the microphones pick up a noise, and after 10 seconds of interaction the graphic equalizer images are replaced by the RNID’s logo and tagline. 

It’s not quite Mark Ecko tagging Airforce One, but Red Bull Cola has taken laser tagging to the M16 building in London thanks to Agents of Change, making the point that the brand’s natural cola has nothing to hide. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbShQOwjjo  

Nike Stinkween Bash 

There are some great examples of brands nailing the mass/niche balance and exploiting its treasures, but you have to take your sombrero off to the guys at Nike for some of the work they are doing with SB and 6.0, its skate and youth focused extreme sports sub brands. There have been a lot of kids digging the latest Paul Rodriguez spot which is apparently advertising his new shoe, but doesn't feel like it at all. Very watchable indeed and backed up by a beautiful microsite with additional content and downloads, check it out here www.nike.com/nikeskateboarding/paulrodriguezIII/