Essential Reading

Contagious have just released their Most Contagious list for 2009 and as ever it's packed full of great stuff. You can download the full report HERE.
Along with Google's 87 Cool Things they provide a pretty good summary of the year!

The Ultimate Rematch

Definitely one of my favourite campaigns this year is Gatorade’s branded content piece Replay.
An epic documentary that sees two rival high school football teams from 1993 replay a grudge match that ended in a tie 15 years ago. As honorary coach Peyton Manning put “What athlete doesn’t have a game or a moment they wish they could do-over?”
A great example of a brand moving beyond traditional advertising and creating compelling content.
Check out the trailer:

Beyond Fan Pages

I've recently come across two simple but brilliant ways of using facebook to engage your audience.

The first one comes from Ikea who utilised the popular tagging tool to generate awareness of a new store opening.



The second example advertises the 10th anniversary edition of Fight Club. Rather than try and explain it you should try it for yourselves HERE.
A little gimmicky but lots of fun.

Normal Service Resumes

After a couple of quiet months the Book of Revelations is back! With the addition of an extra author, Tom Callard.
Tom is the new Insight Manager here at 80 Charlotte Street and will be co-authoring the blog with me. You can follow us on Twitter @saatchilondon or individually @tompgibson and @tomcallard.

The Nike Way

There’s a great article in Revolution on Nike’s approach to marketing which is summed up nicely by the above quote.
Given their approach to advertising it comes as no surprise that they’re venturing into the world of film, as a promotional partner for More Than a Game.

HT MakeTheLogoBigger
Original photo from eightfivezero

Ephebiphobia

Nielsen’s latest report “How Teens Use Media” aims to rid the marketing world of ephebiphobia, the irrational fear of youth, debunking the myth that teens are wildly different to other consumers.
The report challenges the popular assumptions about teens, showing that although they may be wildly different to their counterparts of generations past, they are not that different in their media use to other consumers.

A couple of things that stood out for me:

• Teens are NOT abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more TV than ever, up 6% over the past five years in the U.S. Furthermore 92% of teen viewing was live TV.
• Teens love the Internet…but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online—far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes. Not surprising when you consider teens spend much of their day in the classroom.
• Teens spend 35% less time watching online video than adults 25–34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television.
• The average US teen sends/receives 96 text messages EVERY DAY! This is up 566% in just 2 years. With this increase in mobile usage it’s not surprising that 62% of US mobile teens say that their parents have placed at least one restriction on their mobile use.
• It’s a myth that teens consume media 10 screens at a time. In reality 77% of the time teens are consuming media they are using just one at a time compared to 69% for adults.
  

Read the entire report HERE.

87 Cool Things

Google Creative Lab have put together a great presentation of well, 87 cool things from the internet. The list consists of:

1. Stuff they like
2. Stuff that's probably worth knowing about
   
3. Stuff they made
   

A really good summary of all that's cool from the web. Check it out HERE.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

Hats off to whoever managed to sell these ads to the client. The jury may still be out but I think they’re brilliant. They show a real understanding of consumer mentality; treating real-world stores as showrooms, then finding the lowest price online.
It’s refreshing to see a brand being honest about their strengths and those of their competitors. As I posted about previously in Reviewing Is The New Advertising, with the advent of the iPhone and the Android, for the first time ever, on-the-spot price comparison in the ‘real world’ is now possible. Customers won’t even need to leave John Lewis/Harrods/Selfridges to compare the price with online stores, they'll just use apps such as Shopsavvy.

Cultural Insights

A couple of great infographics to share this week that give a good insight into how behaviour and culture change over time.
First up is What Britain Eats, which brings to life three decades of grocery shopping in the UK, illustrating how what we eat has changed over time. The interactive tool allows you to search by the five main food types and then see how consumption of that food group has changed.

Secondly is The Evolution of The Household: 1950 to Today, which looks at various aspects of household life in the US and explores how they have changed over the last half century. More of a photo essay than an infographic, it shows things such as:

• Average home size has more than doubled since the 50s
• Pounds of chicken consumed eaten has almost trebled since the 60s.
• The total time spent watching TV per household per day has increased by 82% since the 50s. Even in the last decade TV watching has increased by 57 minutes.
• The number of TV channels available in the average home today is more than 6 times that available in the 1980s.
  

Whilst not all the figures are comparable for each decade it’s still an interesting read. See the full infographic HERE. Original article from Woman’s Day (a must read for all planners...)

A Planner's Dream

If you want to know the answer to such life questions as which moonwalk is better (Neil Armstrong’s or Michael Jackson’s) you should check out this blog. But for everything else, the new Google Internet Stats is a good place to start. The site collates stats on a range of topics from macroeconomic trends to consumer trends.