'Cross The Breeze

Calling Marcus Brown and his 14 characters [interview]

September 27, 2010 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

When I started blogging again a couple of weeks ago I also knew that I wanted to do more than just write posts about stuff interest me. I also wanted to find a way to share small digital snippets of things that amuse me or inspire me for which I’ve ‘refurbished’ my Posterous. The other idea I had asked for a bit more preparation. The last few years I’ve met quite a few people via the blog or the work related travels, people that have inspired me and still do today. They inspire me because in my view they do something unique; because they are and think different. The idea was to have (and record) a conversation with them and to make sure you get to know them as well the way I do.

Marcus Brown is the first person I’ve interviewed this way. And thankfully (because he’s got all this tech knowledge) he is also the one who told me how to record this conversation so I could post it here. If I remember well Marcus and I first ‘met’ via The Age of Conversation, it was definitely around that time frame. Marcus is an Englishman living in Germany and does all kinds of fascinating stuff online, creating characters and stories that have amused me for quite some time now. So in case you didn’t know Marcus yet, here’s your chance to get to know him. Marcus and I talked about how he started creating transmedia characters, about the development of complex narratives and storytelling. The real thing, here we go.

Like Marcus mentions during the talk not all content remains online after finishing ‘a series’ but here are a few links:

And last but not least his latest project ‘I Walk for Dr. Peter Figge’ where you can follow the evolution of Marcus’ 800km walk from Munich to Hamburg to meet with Jung von Matt’s CEO. Follow progress and support Marcus right here.

Thanks for the chat Marcus! And thanks for being the guinea pig on this one ;) And to all of you who listened, feel free to feedback on the format and execution.

a call with, creativity, inspiration, internet, interview, technology

calling, chat, conversation, interview, marcusbrown, podcast, sacrum, skype, thekaiser

Using digital to make print come to life

September 27, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I didn’t have time last Friday to post it when this campaign was launched, so I’m bringing it to you know. Our client AXA launched their new iPhone app which helps you out when you have a car accident, making sure you deal with it in the right way. Since this is the first app to deliver such a service in Belgium, we wanted to find an innovative way to promote it as well. Here’s what the team created:

advertising, belgium, creativity, duvalguillaume, inspiration, marketing, presentation, technology

advertising, app, axa, duvalguillaume, inspiration, insurance, iphone, newspaper, print

Talking tree

September 19, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Really nice campaign for EOS magazine from our friends at Happiness creating some good buzz for the moment.

“Eos has launched “Talking Tree”, a campaign that turns the environmental debate on its head by giving a voice and “feelings” to a 100 year old tree living in living in Bois de la Cambre, on the edge of Brussels. The tree has been hooked up to a fine dust meter, ozone meter, light meter, weatherstation, webcam and microphone, providing regular updates to followers through YouTube, Flickr,Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud.”

I think the website isn’t the best part of the whole campaign but other than that, definitely worth checking out.

advertising, belgium, creativity, inspiration, internet, social media, technology

advertising, brussels, campaign, eos, happiness, inspiration, magazine, talkingtree

Facebook goes offline!

September 16, 2010 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

For real. So the site is still up and running (don’t worry about that!) but it is clearly becoming a trend to bring some of the key Facebook characteristics to the real world. The examples below are perfect proof of that.

During summer Coca-Cola in Israel introduced “The Real Life Like”. Together with Publicis E-dologic they figured out a way to embed user data in IDF bracelets, and thus allow people to “Like” real world objects, places and events spreading the word about it on their facebook accounts.

“The implemented these facebook-bracelets at the Coca Cola Village, a watersport, sunbathing, gameplaying amusement park activity-thing for teenagers. When the guests arrive, they are given a ‏ bracelet ID which transmits an RFID signal, which they program with their facebook login. They can then “like” activities and places in the real village, and their actions show up on facebook. Teenagers are driven by vanity like everyone else, so there was a photographer present as well, if you wanted to tag yourself in any given image all you had to do was wave your ID bracelet to the photographer.”

Probably sometime during the same period, Diesel introduced Facepark aka The Analog Version of Facebook as part of the Be Stupid campaign. Go outside, speak with actual humans ;) Definitely my favorite of all these examples btw, just watch the clip if you haven’t seen it before:

As part of that they also invented the Facebook Ass Status, no sign of that being used within my network yet though :)

The last example to pop up onto my screen is this one from Saatchi & Saatchi in Budapest: Taking Facebook to the streets for T-Mobile:

“At a busy downtown square in Budapest, they painted a Facebook wall(it was not an LCD screen). when users update messages on the online, they will manually place the messages with caricatures on this street wall.”

Not the most brilliant example if you ask me. Anyway, if you’ve seen other examples that would fit this trend, let me know in the comments.

advertising, creativity, inspiration, media, social media, trends, video, viral

advertising, assstatus, bestupid, cocacola, diesel, facebook, facepark, israel, marketing, publicis, saatchi, socialmedia

Pac-Man: the human stopmotion edition

September 10, 2010 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

Some inspiration for my ex-colleagues at Kinepolis? Stop motion video of a Human Pac-Man Performance by Guillaume Reymond, the 5th video of his GAME OVER Project.

“PAC-MAN was played by real human-beings sitting in a cinema: it’s the 5th video performance of the GAME OVER Project from the French-Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond. This stop-motion video was shot and played for the new ProHelvetia’s programme GameCulture at the Trafo cinema (Baden, Switzerland) on August 28th 2010. This giant game was played by 111 human pixels that has moved from seat to seat during more than 4 hours…”

[Via laughingsquid]

creativity, fun, games, inspiration, movies, video

cinema, gameover, pacman, project, stopmotion

Life Cycles Film

September 9, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Here’s the trailer of the HD movie Life Cycles. Beautiful! Makes me want to go out there right now – luckily for me the mountainbike season is about to start.

Talking about the new mountainbike season. If there are other mountainbike enthusiasts out there that work in marketing/advertising then you should consider joining the Mud Men aka Mad Men ridin’ the mud.

Also makes me want a new bike btw. Nobody doing blog seeding for mountainbikes? :)

[Via Fubiz]

consumer, creativity, inspiration, movies, racing, video

film, fubiz, hd, lifecylces, mountainbike, movie, mtb

I surf because…

September 8, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

It’s been a really long time since I surfed for the last time, too long really. I used to go windsurfing during the summer holidays when I was younger and always loved to be out there on the board. I might not have been great at it, but enjoyed it as much as the next guy.

Part of why I like the ‘i surf because’ campaign from Billabong so much is that it seems to capture really well what surfing is all about. Nice visual experience, the right music and the question – why do you surf? And that’s exactly what Billabong is trying to capture with this website, the question is to you (surfers), why do you surf?

Nice execution as well. Like.
Cowabunga!

advertising, creativity, design, inspiration, internet, marketing

advertising, billabong, campaign, inspiration, surf, surfing, website

Lucky Counter: more tweets, lower price

September 8, 2010 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

Uniqlo has a new campaign out there, pretty simple as well. Tweet about an item on the page and it will lower the price of that item. It’s a win-win. Really simple and a nice way to get free promotion for no risk at all for Uniqlo (there’s a minimum price anyway). End at the same time it’s not much to ask to a consumer either (it’s just a tweet) to to get an immediate benefit.

Like.

advertising, creativity, design, inspiration, internet, marketing

lower, price, promotion, reduction, twitter, uniqlo, value

Is creativity a dirty word?

September 7, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Posted in June of this year, the cartoon below is probably yet another one of Hugh’s classics. I don’t think ‘creativity’ is a dirty word for big companies, I actually believe it’s pretty popular. Still I agree with the point that Hugh is trying to make. I hear a lot of talks about ‘creativity’ at the start of a product/campaign, but once things start going it seems like creativity is the first out of the door.