Soundbites

10 05 2008

Ferrari is launching the new Ferrari GT in a few days. Now this is not something I would follow normally, but the teaser campaign site is interesting. Simple but pretty execution where Ferrari for once uses it’s typical engine sound to promote one of their cars.

FerrariGTNEW

Well I liked it, still short of cash to buy one though.




Flanders

13 03 2008

A bit more than 3 weeks to go to Blogger Social in NYC, a unique gathering of mainly (but not only) marketing & advertising bloggers from across the globe. With just over 80 attendees and a fun agenda of events this is really something a lot of us are looking forward to for many months.

There’s one downside to it though, and that is that it takes place the exact same weekend as the Tour of Flanders, the classic of all classics in road cycle racing if you ask me. The race, first organized in 1913, is an experience of its own and (trust me) appeals to everyone who is up for a heroic day of sports. With many steep hills, often paved with cobblestones over a distance of approx. 260 kilometers… it sure isn’t just a race like any other.

I’ve watched the race on television for as long as I can remember, most of the time with a bunch of friends, and for the last few years we’ve been going to the ‘Muur van Geraardsbergen’ (or ‘wall’ of Geraardsbergen) to watch it live, courtesy of Lotto. With several thousands of people at the key positions of the race and close to a million people over the whole length, the ambiance is incredible.

Ronde 13  IMAGE_030

So not this year, and the Social will rock for sure, but a part in my heart will miss this raceday a lot. I’m sure Tim ‘Masiguy’ Jackson understands ;)

Here’s a great ad from Het Nieuwsblad (newspaper) for their upcoming coverage of the Tour of Flanders.




Where boys become men

17 07 2007

Ask a (European) race driver for it’s favorite corner and chances are quite big he (or she) will say: ‘Eau Rouge‘. This corner, in the Ardennes is named after the little river that runs under it and is colored slightly red: ‘Eau Rouge’ or ‘Red Water’ if you would translate it literally but it sounds less sexy that way. The corner is part of the circuit of Francorchamps, and it is the greates corner on one of the most beautiful race tracks ever made. It could just use some marketing.

eaurouge

Isn’t it weird that Francorchamps struggles to sell enough tickets to get break-even? It’s one of the longest (if not the longest) tracks in F1 so plenty of seating around it. It’s loved by most F1 drivers who think it’s the most exciting track to race on. It’s in the center of Europe so close by for German, French, Dutch, English and other European fans. Looking at all these aspects, it can’t be that not having a Belgian F1 driver is the reason. It’s got to be marketing.

A circuit like Francorchamps needs to have about 100.000 people visiting on the whole weekend (so not just on Sunday at the race). There were almost so many people on the Renault Days in Zolder, without all the star element to it of F1. So how did they make that work then? It’s definitely cheaper but they did a good job on marketing for the event.

It’ll be curious to see how the event goes this year. With Hamilton in such a good shape there’s a whole potential group of fans from the UK for whom this GP is the closest to home apart from Silverstone. And hopefully the organisers up their marketing efforts a bit.

Thanks to GPUpdate for the title (dutch).

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Branding at 200Mph

20 06 2007

I just found this picture at istartedsomething, where Long Zheng is making fun of a recent AMD announcement stating that the new AMD Phenom logo appears on the Ferrari Formula One Helmets. I like F1 and watch it quite often, how come I haven’t see that logo before? :)

amdphenomlogo

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When reality looks like a game

14 06 2007

This is kind of funny. Most of the time we’ll see references on how realistic games can be. Remember these screenshots of racing cars where it’s very tough to say which is actually in game footage and which isn’t.

In this case, it’s the other way around. Today I noticed this image on a blog called Asfaltkonijn (don’t ask me to translate that). West of Antwerp (linkeroever) there is an abandoned school with a (crashed?) jetfighter on the playground. In itself this is already a pretty weird thing and if you want to see what that looks like, check it out on this map.

Yesterday these guys went to check it out and Tupid made some amazing images in colour and black&white of this jet, and looking at these you can only confirm that it might just have been a scene in some type of shooter game, but I can assure you it’s very real. Really cool pics Tupid, subscribed!

FU-36_CL (0)
(Courtesy of Tupid)




If pigeons are ‘rats with wings’ then …

23 05 2007

If pigeons are “rats with wings,” then cab drivers are “pigeons with cars.”
- Andy Nulman

Today I saw this truly great post from Andy Nulman at his blog Pow!Right between the eyes and it just made me smile, this really is very recognizable. If you’re a traveler such as myself or apparently Andy, then you probably take a lot of cabs as well to get around. And just like he writes, they are ’superhuman’. Read on here.




Game or reality?

8 05 2007

Take a look at these stunning images. Stunning, you ask? Yes, knowing that only one image is from a real life situation and the other one is a computer generated one from Gran Turismo HD for PS3, I think you can call that stunning. Do you see the difference?

ps3gtvsreality.jpg

[Via fosfor gadgets]




Baseball & Silverlight

1 05 2007

Today I’ve actually got some time to blog using my pc. The last few posts where via mobile, using the great http://m.wordpress.com page, but it doesn’t allow you to link easily to other posts nor to include images, hence the lightweight posts.

Baseball funny enough was a bit of a theme for the start at MIX07. One of the most exciting demos during the keynote on Monday was about the MLB that also included a preview of what you can expect from Silverlight mobile once that will be released in beta I think during summer. More on Silverlight later but here are a few interesting links already: official Silverlight site & Tim Sneath’s blog.

The second link with baseball was the activity we did with a few people from Europe at the Sports center on Sunday. Since Bert decided to expose me on his blog (but look at that hit), I can only return the favor here ;)

ibert.jpg




Listen to this!

7 04 2007

Watch this great 2 minute video created by Partizan for Shell featuring some great classic Ferrari F1 cars. Given it’s F1 weekend in Sepang (Kuala Lumpur) this today and tomorrow I found it the right time to show you this ;)

[Via Djivy]

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Mission Zero: missed opportunity

22 02 2007

Uma Thurman in a nine minute shortfilm for Pirelli, it had to be good: Mission Zero. On Marketing Alternatif they also said it was about a pursuit in a yellow Lamborghini… with Uma, sounds good right?

Yeah, sounds good, but it was boring. I really wanted it to be exciting, and watched it until the end hoping for improvement… I really think Pirelli could have done something great with this, as it seems all elements to do that are there, but it didn’t work out that way. Bummer.

[Via Marketing Alternatif]

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