As per usual each bakery is assigned a unique number to identify them for judging and voting purposes. Then people can vote for their favourite bakeries by texting. This public text voting and expert bakery judges determine the winners. A special People’s Choice Award is determined through online voting.

Gingerbread Ed is right up there with their previous years campaigns of the Gingerbread Gangsters and the Gingerbread Haka.

For ANZAC Day this year the Returned Services’ Association were letting people make an online donation at www.anzacpoppy.com. In return for making the donation, they would plant a poppy on your behalf in the online Field of Remembrance.

When donating you could choose from some ANZAC memorabilia for your phone. You could choose either rings tones, including the “Last Post” Ringtone or wallpaper images for your phone.

You could also leave messages on the Wall of Remembrance. I am of the opinion that they could of represented the Wall of Remembrance in a way more visually engaging way.

There were also badges available to help spread the word about the campaign.

The Retweet was pointing people to the Girls Toys Blog to win an Ecostore pack of goodies. I was very interested because I use the Ecostore products myself. And besides freebies are exactly what a mother needs and every little bit helps!

Ecostore Prizepack
There were three ways of entering to win the Ecostore product giveaways. As a minimum requirement all you had to do was the 1st step, and then you could receive a second and third entry by following steps 2 and 3 below:

(1) Signup to their newsletter

(2) Follow them on Twitter and tweet about the contest.

(3) Join the Girlstoys Blog Network on Facebook and leave a comment there to let them know that you’ve joined.

I liked the way they make you step through a few painless social networking signups in order to get entries into the competition. Yes, the newsletter signup was simple, as is joining the Facebook group and it only takes a few seconds to send a Retweet on Twitter. I honestly cannot remember the last time when entering a competition was so easy.

Twitter Buzz
The benefits of them posting the competition link on Twitter sends people to their Blog and getting people to Retweet the giveaway gets their Twitter username more exposure as more people enter. To top it off they also get more followers on Twitter.

The Dick Smith site had been blacked out, as well as the prices for the Hot Deal products. Even the guys glasses on the Dick Smith logo had been blacked out. In order to find out prices on the Hot Deals you had to go into the shops. Well done Dick Smith for creating some advertising that plays on the New Zealand Internet Blackout campaign. Makes me wonder if they blacked out their site for the real Internet Blackout protest.

The humourous approach of taking the piss out of budget airlines and their hidden fees and silly clauses hidden under the asterisk symbol * in the small print, I think works as it’s something we can all relate to.

There is no mention on the SaverJet site as to who is behind the fictitious site. I wonder what was the reasoning behind Air New Zealand not acknowledging themselves. Maybe they could of quietly stated in the small print under the asterisk that they were responsible for this site. I learnt the other day that this could be termed as a ‘dark viral’ meaning the brand isn’t actually acknowledged.

Apparently viral marketing campaigns should entertain, inform and incentivise us enough to pass the viral on. I think the SaverJet viral is fairly entertaining, but I don’t think I’ve been informed. There doesn’t appear to be any incentive to pass the viral on either. Despite this, if I’d known about the viral at the time, I think I would of let other people know about the fake SaverJet site.

The campaign started out with the Creative Freedom Foundation asking people to protest by signing an online petition called Not In My Name. They also wanted people to spread the word about the campaign by either joining them on Facebook and MySpace, writing to a member of parliament or displaying an animated banner on your site.

Now the campaign has taken on a new phase calling for people to join the INTERNET BLACKOUT N.Z PROTEST from the 16th – 23rd February. They want people to BLACK OUT their Facebook, MySpace and Bebo avatars, your Twitter account and web sites.  It is proving to be a very powerful addition to the campaign as the protest has turned into a global viral, due mostly in part to celebrity actor, comedian and author Stephen Fry.

Day 1 of Campaign

• According to Mohawk Media, Juha Saarinen asks Stephen Fry to tweet about #blackout

• Stephen Fry shows support for the campaign by turning his avatar black, changing his Bio to: I’m blacked out: Stand up against “Guilt Upon Accusation” for New Zealand http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and talks about the internet blackout campaign on Twitter. This helps push the campaign global.
• He also tells people to Digg this

By doing this Stephen Fry gains 15,000+ friends overnight and he comes in as No.3 on Twitterholic with just over 200,000 people following him. Twitterholic tells you who the most popular – Top 100 Twitter users are based on followers.

Day 2 of Campaign

• #blackout becomes the #1 search trend on Twitter, beating Heroes, 24 and Dollhouse
• The Internet Blackout campaign makes it into Wikipedia as a definition for Blackout
  
• People start blogging about the Internet Blackout protest including Richard McManus at ReadWriteWeb and Cory Dotorow at Boing Boing.
• A Guilt Upon Accusation anthem called the Copywrong Song is realeased under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License. A Copywrong Remix Challenge is issued calling for people to make the ultimate remix of the Copywrong song.

Day 3 of Campaign

• Chelfyn Baxter at Mohawk Media releases his ‘Kangaroo Court’ animation, a protest video for the campaign against Section 92 of the New Zealand Copyright Ammendment Act.

Day 4 of Campaign

• On Thursday 19th February, a public demonstration took place on the grounds of the New Zealand Parliament in Wellington with the ‘Not in my Name’ petition handed over. People were asked to come along in bright clothes and black placards.
• Stuff’s Blackout news story ‘Stephen Fry rails against NZ internet law‘ hits the front page of Digg.com

Day 5 of Campaign

• More web celebrities & supporters join the Blackout campaign including author Neil Gaimen, and Xeni from Boing Boing.

Day 6 of Campaign

• Cartoons start appearing about The Guilt Upon Accusation Law including Dylan Horrock’s and Mike Moreu’s.

Day 7 of Campaign

• Preparation and instructions go out on how to modify your web site for the final day of Internet Blackout protest.

Day 8 of Campaign

• New Zealand Political blogs and other web sites Blackout their sites including Public Address, Scoop, Kiwiblog, The Standard, No Right Turn, Frog Blog, Whale Oil, Not PC, No Minister, Just Left, The Hand Mirror, Roar Prawn, Policy Net, Kiwi Politico.
• Prime Minister John Key announces that Section 92A will be delayed until March 27th

SPRANQ, a Dutch creative communications company have developed a new font called Ecofont. It has been designed to use up to 20% less ink when printed. This means that you will save ink, therefore Ink toner or Ink cartridges could last longer. What an awesome idea this is!

As you can see from the image above, the font has small round holes or circles in it. The concept was to see how much of a letter could be removed while maintaining readability. They found the best results were achieved using small circles, after extensively testing with all kinds of shapes.

The Ecofont is intended for business purposes and works best when using font size 9 or 10, but the results vary depending on your software and the quality of your screen. It works best for OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007 and is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results.

Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans font and is free to download and use.

Do you illegally download music, movies or software over the internet? If yes then watch out, because New Zealand government is set to bring in rediculous new legislation regarding copyright infringment on the 28th of February.

Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation. This means that ISPs will be able to cut off internet access and web sites of anyone who is repeatedly accused of copyright infringment, based purely on accusation alone, without evidence or proof of guilt. There is no penalty or punishment for false accusation either and could be wide open to abuse.

So, if you download anything that is copyrighted without paying for it (which alot of people do)  you could be affected. It will be a three strikes and you’re out system. On the third copyright infringement your ISP will automatically cut your internet connection off, without being proven guilty in a court of law.

On the 18th December 08, the Creative Freedom Foundation was launched. It was founded in response to Copyright law and it’s effect on creativity, the economy, and public rights. They advocate on behalf of artists whose creative freedom is affected by major Governmental decisions made in their name, and in the name of protecting creativity.

Even though the Creative Freedom Foundation represents the views of artists, they have launched a campaign against the Guilt Upon Accusation laws in New Zealand.

Part of the campaign has involved them setting up a petition called Not In My Name.  Artists and non artists alike can sign it. Just over 4300 people have signed the petition at the time of writing this post.

They also want you to spread the word about the campaign by either:

• writing to a member of Parliament
• joining them on Facebook and MySpace
• using the below animated banner ad on your web site or emails

Please do take the time to have a read of the Creative Freedom Foundation site and sign the petition. It might just save your internet connection being cut off.

So, anyway about a week and a half ago they did some billboard advertising that ended up being short lived. Within 24 hours of their ‘Free Range Tastes Better’ billboard advert being up, it was taken down by the billboard company iSite.  I reckon someone other than iSite probably would of ended up complaining about the poor old bloody headless chicken . No-one (except for Murder Burger) will get the chance to complain now since it’s been taken down.

The Murder Burger web site says: “The iSite person said they would give us two hours to change the image somehow – by putting a paper bag over the chickens neck or something – so that the billboard could stay up.  We told him to go fuck himself.”

If you are already familiar with the Murder Burger site, then this is totally the kind of humourous response you would expect from them, along with their we don’t give a shit what you think type attitude .

As they say themselves, they got better coverage by them taking the billboard down than they would of got from leaving it up. This kind of controversial advertising tends to get alot of attention.

Even though this auction is not a commercial marketing campaign as such, there is apparently a marketing lesson to be learnt from these kind of auctions. Over at the Herd and Servant of Chaos they both say something similar along the lines that the Jesus Christ Pita Bread auction is a reminder that marketing is based entirely on emotion and we make decisions not based on what we know but on what we feel. That the auction seller engages his audience into a feeling about the item through the auctions Question and Answer section.

As you can see from the image below, other related products also began to pop up…..

.

….including a set of Jesus Christ Pita Bread holders.

And it also looks like there will be more to come according to the sellers last comment below.

Tourism New Zealand have recently launched a second phase of an online marketing iniative here in New Zealand. The Pure New Zealand ‘Have your Say’ studio is the second phase of the ‘What Do You Say UK?’ campaign that was launched in London. They want people to use social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook to spread the word about New Zealand as a holiday destination.

How this will work is a mobile recording studio will be touring around the country collecting tourist stories of their time in New Zealand, in the form of a video diary. They will be able to edit it with their own photos and video footage, then post it on to social networking sites.

YouTube Channel – PureNZ  ‘Have Your Say’

The videos are being published into unpaid media channels, including a YouTube PureNZ ‘Have Your Say’ channel which will be fed on to Tourism New Zealand’s consumer web site. Their goal is to record about 3,500 video diary clips during the tour around New Zealand.

In their press release they say “If every clip is viewed by 10 friends and family back home, and if 3000 clips are filmed that’s thirty thousand messages about New Zealand sent to our key markets – a very cost-effective form of marketing.”

John Key’s video message removed?

To help promote this New Zealand’s Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism, John Key recorded his own video message. Unfortunately John Key’s video (which had over 3000 views when I last saw it) came across as kinda cheesy and the 20 text comments in response to his message hadn’t exactly been very nice either.

And low and behold, I was just about to embed John Key’s video into this blog post, when suddenly the video isn’t available anymore. The video has been removed? My guess is that they may have removed it due to the unflattering text comments people have left. If you want an example of the type of comments people have been posting in response to John Key’s message, then check out the responses at the Spare Room.  You’ll be able to relate to it more if you actually saw the video, but the comments are spot on, wet your pants funny, with people taking the piss out of John Key.

Is it a case of  ‘Have Your Say’, but no actually you can’t have your say if you ain’t got anything nice to say about John Key or New Zealand for that matter?  I’m sure everyone would love to hear from Tourism New Zealand as to why they decided to take down John Key’s message!

Tourism New Zealand have also launched a 100% Pure New Zealand Facebook page and a 100% Pure New Zealand group on Flickr around the same time as this campaign.  But after corresponding with Tourism New Zealand, they confirmed that actually neither of these were part of the ‘Have Your Say’ Campaign.

YouTube video responses
Searching on YouTube for the ‘John Key victory speech’ turns up 2 listings under those keywords. The correct John Key victory speech listing to add your video response to has had 672 views. So far there have been 7 video responses uploaded and 17 text comments (at the time of writing).

So it’s been 2.5 weeks since I received that first email and only 7 videos have been uploaded. It’s not a huge response, but it’s good that they are trying to get people involved and participate through web 2.0 intiatives. A video response is getting people to commit to being responsive in real time. Plus you get to see the real people behind the messages, a private conversation being made public. And this is what social media is all about trying to engage people meaningfully through the use of social media.

The New Zealand vodka, 42Below have decided to create a web based movement to celebrate people who live by their own rules and those who follow their own dreams. They wanted a platform to unite the free thinkers, the independent spirits, the creators and the artists of the world, so have set up the site Because We Can.

To capture the spirit they asked like minded people to create an endeavour that had the potential to delight and surprise, but most of all create something that meant something to them. To unify the contributors, they got them to use white coverall suits in their creation. The reasoning behind the wearing of the suits is to have viewers focus on their endeavour rather than on the people behind it. To be anonymous, universal and generic. Here’s one of the videos called: The cycle of power.

Monthly video competition
To get you involved and get your creativity flowing, there is a monthly competition where they want you to create and submit your own videos to show the ‘Because We Can’ spirit. Entries for this month have to be in by 12.00GMT time on 30 November, and for your effort you could win $USD4200.

My initial thoughts on this movement is, where is this movement heading, where is it taking you in the long run? What happens after you’ve created a few videos and it’s six months down the line, then what? It’s a big call though, trying to create a movement. My thoughts are, if you’re creating a movement then I would tend to expect big things. We’ll just have to wait and see what eventuates.

Pretty average web design
The other thing I’m going to comment about is the web design. It’s a pretty basic site – design wise. One thing I don’t like is the spaced out U P P E R C A S E type that is used for the intro paragraph on the main page (as seen below) and the headings. The Reason being is simple, it’s because I find it visually hard to read.

You are able to follow them on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Delicious.

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand turned their ‘Vote for me’ political billboard advertisement into a viral for the recent election. You can create your own ‘Vote for me’ billboard on www.voteforus.co.nz. All you have to do is upload an image and then send it to your friends via email. What a good idea this is. Simple but highly effective. It’s nice to see a viral thats not video.

Hell Pizza in New Zealand have hit the headlines again with more controversial advertising. The latest is a Halloween pizza promotion that was on the microsite www.backfromthedead.co.nz. The animation depicts Sir Edmund Hillary, Heath Ledger and the Queen Mother emerging from graves and dancing to Michael Jackson’s song Thriller. People have found it offensive and in bad taste. The site has been taken down.

According to the BBC News, they say the firm’s marketing director Rachael Allison told New Zealand media that the latest animation was part of an e-mail campaign targeting existing customers and that around 5,000 people saw the advert before it fell into the hands of the media.

Mash-up on YouTube
A search for the animation on YouTube comes up with only one video posted. I’m not even going to bother to insert a link to view this video because the video clip doesn’t actually show anything of the animation and it doesn’t deserve anymore views.

When I begun my research on this latest Hell Pizza controversy, this YouTube video had been viewed 15,371 times. Looking at it the following day it had received 17,177 views. So, around 1800 views in one day. For a crappy, dud mashup that doesn’t show the animation, thats not bad in terms of views for that amount of time. And of course the only reason why it has had so many views is because it is the only thing you can find relating to the advert.

I am amazed that no-one managed to get the actual animation onto YouTube, as this is where a lot of banned advertisements end up. Okay, so now you’re curious and probably want to go and check out the mashup video anyway. Honestly, I wouldn’t bother.

The New Zealand Bakery of the Year 2008 competition run by the Baking Industry Association of New Zealand (BIANZ) ended in August. Last year I wrote about the 2007 New Zealand Bakery of the Year campaign on onlinemarketer.co.nz. The viral video for last years campaign was of the animated Gingerbread men Haka. This video proved to be controversial, so enhanced the viral marketing aspect of the campaign. This year they have done another Gingerbread man video, but in a scene from The Godfather film.

YouTube reach
A search on YouTube using the keywords: gingerbread men gangsters turns up 2 listings of the video. It is now a couple of months since the competition finished and these 2 listings together have only had 534 views. At the time I was writing about the 2007 campaign, around a 100 people had uploaded the Gingerbread Haka on YouTube, with them getting an excess of 300,000 views. Okay, so the Gingerbread Gangster video is not as controversial as the Gingerbread Haka, so it was bound to not get as much attention as last years campaign.

The campaign was run in similar fashion to last year. Get the bakeries to register online, assign them a unique number to identify them for judging and voting purposes. Then get people to vote by texting, online voting or instore voting. Once again people were encouraged to send the Gingerbread viral video to their friends on the web site. I am not sure as to whether they did any TV advertising this year. I don’t watch much TV, so I don’t know.

Even though this years Gingerbread Gangsters Viral video does not appear as successful in terms of reach on YouTube compared to the Gingerbread Haka, I still think the concept of the Gingerbread Gangsters is just as good as the Gingerbread Haka.

Murder Burger is a new Gourmet Burger joint that opened on Ponsonby Road in Auckland last month. A bit of healthy competition for Burger Fuel and the likes. So apparently they were looking for staff and placed a job ad on auction site Trade Me and had a less than satisfactory response. They placed a humorous “staff needed” ad in their shop window. Looks like a few people took photos of the job advert and put them up on the photo sharing site Flickr.

Photos on Flickr

Now, almost a month after their launch (and at the time of writing this post) this job ad photo under the title of:

• Staff Wanted has been viewed 129,128 times on Flickr.

Another job ad photo under the title:

• Want to work for Murder Burger had 24 views.

And this one:

• An honest job in Auckland had 65 views on Flickr.

Actually, now after closer inspection, all three photos appear to be the same photo.

Due to these photos being uploaded on Flickr they ended up getting over a thousand applicant emails from people all over the world. I guess that was a bit of an unexpected twist in their recruitment drive and online marketing strategy. It just goes to show the power of social media when a local offline job advertisement goes global online.

The Murder Burger site is up on WordPress and you can also find Murder Burger on Facebook, of which currently they have 60 members.

Our 2 year old son got to touch farm animals, especially the sheep and lambs for the first time. It was a fun afternoon in the Spring sun after such a wet winter!

A great little video for the Ponsonby Primary School Fair was created too.