‘Cross The Breeze

• AdArchive / Coloribus.com - Advertising Archive and mysterious coincidences in commercials
  (tags: advertising archive collection creative database)

• Disruptive Conversations: The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007… (aka Why and How I use Twitter)
  Dan York gives a good overview why Twitter is useful for many reasons
  (tags: twitter communication media social tools microblogging)
• ANA Marketing Maestros: Trends to Watch in 2008
  Trends to watch for marketers
  (tags: accountability blog marketing trends)

Yesterday night at the movies, I saw a commercial from one of the Belgian health insurance funds, namely Het Neutraal Ziekenfonds. In Belgium the basic health insurance (which covers quite a lot) is free (as paid by the government) and offered by all funds. So you pretty much chose between the funds depending on all the other services they offer.

So last night I saw this new cinema commercial they made and it just made wonder what some people are doing in advertising. This is probably the silliest ad I’ve seen this year. I don’t regularly blog about bad advertising and rather focus on the good stuff, but this is just …

I have a link to the commercial a bit further but read through this first. Since the commercial is in Dutch, you might want some additional info. The slogan of Het Neutraal Ziekenfonds is ‘the essential, in all simplicity’ and that’s what this commercial is about, that’s what the voice-over is saying: losing ballast, going to the essential, …

Now go see the commercial for yourself and try to look at it with ‘essential’ in mind and like you have no idea what it’s about ;) Go to this page, ’skip intro’ and click on the link in the down right corner called ‘de bioscoopspot’. That should do it.

Now I’m a happy client of them, but this ad is just ridiculous.

The last video for LeWeb3 have been uploaded and so they’re now all available for your viewing. I’ve already written up a little report of my experience at LeWeb3, here are my highlights in video:

Panels:

• Web2.0: The Dark Side (moderated by Laurent Haug)
• Bringing social to software: radical change is coming. Are we ready? (moderated by Marc Canter)

Keynotes:

• Persistent communication and it’s impact on begin social (Evan Williams)
• Why books and school lectures still exist (Hans Rosling)
• What is social about design (Philippe Starck)
• Evolving entrepreneurship (Martin Varsavsky)
• Internet pollution and how to stop it (Jason Calacanis)
• New and improved biological methods for data transfer (Yossi Vardi)
• Turning the tables: what happens when the users are in charge (Doc Searls)

I’m pretty sure Janus Friis, Joi Ito and June Cohen’s talks were interesting as well but I missed them at the conference so I’ll have to catch up on those myself first. These videos and others are obviously also available here.

I’ve touched on this before (related to Advertising) and since I’m color-blind myself I hold a strong interest in the topic. Most important fact to repeat out of that earlier post: 8% of all Caucasian males suffer a color vision deficiency. And that might be more than you would expect.

With this in mind I said that it’s not that silly to have your ads tested to see if someone who’s color-blind can see/read everything alright. Same counts for websites obviously, but the most time I personally have problems with it is with presentations.

We all know that every single minute there’s probably someone in the world working on the most horrendous powerpoint/keynote presentation but apart from ugly presentations, some people use texts on backgrounds in a way that I can’t read the slides anymore. And guess what, If you have a reasonable audience, I probably wasn’t alone.

Last week AdLab did a post about this topic again and posted these 2 color wheels. The first one is the color-wheel as seen by a red-insensitive protopane, the second color wheel is a regular one.

So here’s the normal one:

Now it’s very hard for me to say if the first wheel actually represents what I see, since I obviously see both color wheels different then you, but it should give you a good idea. Also read Paul Martin’s post on color-blindness where you can see a whole lot more of comparison images.

• The Power of Community « NextUp
  “I’ve experienced this support from my digital friends first hand, so I knew that when Susan Reynolds (@susanreynolds), informed her Twitter followers that the had been diagnosed with breast cancer, the community would be there to support her.”
  (tags: twitter peach frozenpea community power)

• Email Standards Project: Yahoo! Signs on 100%, GMail Bad - ReadWriteWeb
  “Yahoo! representatives have agreed to adhere to 100% of the recommendations for email clients made by the Email Standards Project, according to the group. “
  (tags: email gmail google web Yahoo Standards)
• OpenSocial Coalition Faltering | Joshua | MIX Online
  “This past week has been a perfect storm of bad news for OpenSocial, the Facebook-killer that was announced to much fanfare two months ago. As more people understand it’s limited scope, criticism mounts that OpenSocial doesn’t focus on the right problems
  (tags: opensocial facebook bebo linkedin socialnetwork portability)
• Adscene #1: The George Parker Interview | Werbeblogger - Weblog über Marketing, Werbung und PR » Blog Archiv » Adscene #1: The George Parker Interview
  “Well, it took some time; in fact it took forever but here it is. Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present the very first Adscene: The Kaiser Report, featuring the one and only Mr. George Parker.”
  (tags: thekaiser georgeparker report podcast advertising agency)

• This Year in Blogs: The Definitive Posts of 2007
  “While this may not represent all of the year’s best marketing bloggery, it’s a start.” Good list with top blog posts of the year, including ‘bring the love back’ :)
  (tags: blog links marketing trends bringtheloveback)
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/windows_live_upgrades_mobile.php
  “The Windows Live Maps team announced today an update to their mobile browser-based map and search service, m.live.com.” Good review from RRW on the new mobile Live Search
  The new version includes greater detail in listings, aggregated reviews and photos
  (tags: livesearch live mobile windows wap search maps)
• Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: Does Google have its head in the clouds?
  Don Dodge on S+S: “Software plus Services as opposed to Software as a Service. Microsoft is giving customers the best of both worlds; powerful desktop software, complimented by web based services. It may not make headlines with the Web 2.0 crowd, but it i
  (tags: business google microsoft cloud services desktop software office)
• » I’m a weirdo, I live in The Cloud | Irregular Enterprise | ZDNet.com
  “A statistically unsound study shows that comparatively few PC people have heard of, let alone use online applications As sure as night follows day and the blogs go bonkers. Attention is naturally directed towards a Google v Microsoft shoot out.”
  (tags: saas microsoft google cloud livespaces office software business)
• Advertising of the Year (Part Two)
  “2007 saw the definition of advertising broaden, while the arrival of the iPhone presages a new battle for consumers. Simon Waterfall, co-founder of London ad agency Poke, shares the view from Europe”
  (tags: 2007 marketing media Advertising europe trends)
• Viacom and Microsoft Announce Long-Term Digital Content and Advertising Partnership: Companies sign landmark multiyear deal to collaborate on content distribution, advertising, event promotions and gaming; Microsoft’s Atlas to become exclusive ad servin
  “Viacom Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a broad-based, strategic alliance under which major divisions of both companies will collaborate on advertising, content distribution, event promotions and games over the next several years. “
  (tags: microsoft viacom adserving content distribution partnership video games)

Contagious magazine just released it’s ‘most contagious’ overview for 2007 which you can get here (in PDF), and which is “a round-up of the most intriguing, effective, and downright exciting happenings of the past year from landmarks to gaming, from design to social media”. In the report you’ll find Facebook, the iPhone but also Photosynth, Halo3 and ‘The Bomchickawahwahs’ and much more. Enjoy the read.

• Ads-Click Introduces MicroSocialAds In Beta. Now Get Paid to Spam Your Friends on Facebook.
  “Why should Facebook, its advertising partners, and application developers be the only ones to be able to make money from spamming your friends with ads and come-ons?” Even more spam from my friends :|
  (tags: advertising facebook marketing ads-click)
• Influential Marketing Blog: The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007 - Part I
  “We all know marketers love metrics. Flashy award winning campaigns are great and celebrity spokespersons are always appealing, but most of the time we try to base judging the success of a campaign on hard and fast metrics. “
  (tags: analytics marketing metrics)
• Influential Marketing Blog: The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Metrics To Track in 2008 - Part II
  “This post is the continuation of a topic I started yesterday all about the right metrics to focus on and how many marketing teams may be using the wrong ones without realizing it. “
  (tags: metrics marketing analytics)
• Enhanced Feeds liven up your feed « WordPress.com
  Nice little update from WordPress.com
  (tags: wordpress delicious digg stumbleupon comments tags rss feed)