Click n Mix n Collaboration: Woolies 2.0

Bringing back Woolies was never going to be an easy task given that the old Woolworths was such a loved institution.  So it's been nice to see the Woolies team embrace social media, and place collaboration at the core of its brand strategy.  To a point it was a no brainer - if people love the Woolies brand and (mostly) loved the Wollies product range,  then why not get those people closely involved in developing the newly revamped Woolies 2.0.

Over the last 20 weeks, since the Barclay Brothers bought the Woolworths brand, the Woolies team have been getting their loyal following involved in the relaunch process as much as possible by blogging, Facebooking and Twittering.  And with much success: the Woolworths blog has had over 500,000 visits and nearing 1000 comments;  Twitter  2380  followers; 5,865 Facebook fans.

Importantly the Woolies team seems to have been genuinely listening to the their customers - and in particular have brought back an online version of their much loved Pic n Mix - which they've dubbed Click n Mix - which I love!  

Happily the guys at Glue kindly dropped off a bag of Click n Mix to the office yesterday, which I devoured like a school-kid.

You can see my v.amateur video tour of Woolies' Click n Mix here:

BP's creative trickery revealed

The guys at Ogilvy London have just released this new making-of video, showing the behind the scenes trickery involved in their latest viral campaign for BP Ultimate.



Having worked on helping seed the campaign over the last few weeks it was a real eye-opener to get an insight in to how exactly they did manage to shoot a group of people carrying a car across a city (Cape Town to be specific).  I particularly love the interviews with the kids involved in the shoot who are not the most articulate interviewees!

If you haven't seen the viral campaign already, you can check out the film here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILPBWQzC5x0

and the teaser clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3xZNrIJWe0

Comet turns itself into "petrol station"

Am loving this idea from Comet . . . they're offering free charging points for electric cars at their stores.  Or at least they're planning to - starting with a pilot scheme at their Purley Way store (Croyden)

Check out the Register's coverage here: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/06/11/comet_e_power/

I love the idea from a business model perspective - essentially turning Comet into a 21st Century retail-driven petrol station.  A great innovation for a chain that's having real trouble coping with the likes of Amazon.

 Though am not sure they've fully thought the concept through, as given the amount of space in the present range of electric cars, the only thing someone's going to be able take home in the back of their car is a toaster!

The year the media died

As a digital boy this made me smile - especially the line "Algorithms got me crossed eyed"!

An agency website that doesn't suck

Agency websites suck.  It's official.  And every agency would (should) agree.  I can't think of a single quality agency that has a website that truly reflects them (and their work) as an agency.  That was until I came across this piece of genius from US agency Boone Oakley - a website as a YouTube vid.  Can't think of anything more of the moment than that - other than maybe a company website made from Twitter, which wouldn't constitute social media a*sery . . .