The highly desirable 18-34 year old demographic are savvy and love to play hide and seek with advertisers. In 2004 many marketers got it and gave birth to some of the best websites we've seen, websites that were embraced by consumers and set the stage for the upcoming rebirth of marketing.
Armchair Media has reported on the highlights throughout the year—and we've picked our 5 favorites:
Vodafone Futures
Vodafone Futures is a triumph in so many ways. Timeless graphic design and flawless execution by our Swedish friends at North Kingdom that has set a new standard for experience webdesign.
Subservient Chicken
This risque concept launched unbranded and created a buzz. When the magic dust settled, the logo made an appearance and we will never look at Burger King the same way again.
Converse
Recruit 'Hollywood's finest talent'? BMW has been there, done that. Converse invites filmmakers to create 24 second short film for a chance to win a small prize.
Sprite Instinct
Nordic Brand Engagement for Sprite, The Instinct, staged as a faux movie site. Weird and hilarious.
I love bees
Someone hacked the laughably amateur site for Margaret's Honey bee farm? It might seem so - but it's actually a complex trippy viral campaign for the video game Halo 2.
Benetton's United People
Benetton offers their in-store shoppers join their huge network of video profiles. Although not perfect, this concept has the infrastructure and potential to be revolutionary. Who doesn't like people-watching?
What you've been searching for
Organized by categories such as popular celebrities, Froogle search terms, clothing queries and brand names, Google has indexed the most popular searches from 2004. An interesting way to look at the past year: Google
Asia Tragedy: How to Help
From CNN.com:"The death toll from Sunday's tsunamis jumped sharply today to over 116,000 after Indonesia reported nearly 80,000 people were killed in that country alone. Emergency workers said that in some parts of Indonesia's Aceh province as many as one in four citizens are dead."
From Partee:"I found a really easy way to help. You can go to Amazon and one-click donate to the American Red Cross, which is providing assistance to those devestated by this disaster. ARC was rated A+ by Charity Watch, so I feel confident this money will be well-spent. I certainly know it is much-needed."
At the time of this post, over $4M has been collected from Amazon alone. One-click donation to American Red Cross
Cost of a TV station, $4?
"The cost of bandwidth is going down to nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they're so cheap, that pretty soon you'll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content distribution industry is going to evaporate." [Bram] Cohen said as much at the conference's panel discussion on file-sharing. The audience sat in a stunned silence, their mouths agape at Cohen's audacity."
More from Wired
Link AIM'd over from Mason
The Determined Detractor
The NY Times is exploring "determined detractors" -- you know, the brand-busting folks responsible for things like ipodsdirtysecret.com, ihatestarbucks.com, Supersize Me, and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Below is an excerpt from the full article (registration required).
Determined detractors are persistent critics of a company or product that mount their own public relations offensive, often online. They have roiled corporate plans at least since Ralph Nader famously attacked the Chevrolet Corvair and other cars in his 1965 book, "Unsafe at Any Speed," which prompted General Motors to hire a private detective to investigate him.
But the Internet and affordable digital technology have made its far easier for detractors to contact and mobilize sympathizers, as the presidential candidates found this year: MoveOn.org was critical of President Bush, and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth posed a challenge to Senator John Kerry.
Now some public relations agencies and research companies are studying determined detractors, dividing them into different groups defined by motivation, monitoring their complaints and trying to help corporate clients decide how to react.
Silenced Yammerer
It's called Google Whacking. Try to think of two words that will produce only one search result on Google. It's a fun little sport that can quickly kill hours of your day. Learn more about it here: Googlewhack.com
Armchair Modern's Flight Through the Galaxy
It started as a logo for Armchair Media, expanded into a typeface named Armchair Modern and now it's shooting through orbit for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy website
• I.D. Magazine article on Armchair Modern
• Buy Armchair Modern at PSY/OPS)
Thanks for the tip Jared!
the kids in the suburbs are safe and sound, their bellies are full, and internet dating is really taking off.
An artistic and sociological commentary on one of my favorite topics: the suburbs. Brilliant!
Freedom bloggers
Design For Freedom, a soap box for designer collaborations is now blogging. I'm promised that early next year we can look forward to a range of T-shirts, pillows and other merchandise. Pay a visit and see how things develop.
When does bad become good?
It's when someone like Roland Berthel eats too much fast food and laboriously posts images of the litter on his personal website.
Thanks to the awesome Computerlove for the tip.
Geico-A-No-Go
Last week, Geico lost its attempt to stop Google from selling search terms linked to company trademarks. Geico was upset that competitors could appear in the sponsored links area at the top of the search results for the keyword "Geico." See full story
In a clever marketing ploy, blogger Dave Pell purchased the Geico keyword and his link, "It's Only Me, Dave Pell," now appears at the top of the page whenever a Geico search is performed. Dave Pell - you deserve all those links you're getting!
Give it a try.
Props to Rafat Ali's PaidContent.org newsletter for the tip.
The outing of Flickr
A Salon article yesterday is helping to out Flickr, one of our favorite new Web sites/services of the year. Flickr is just about perfect when it comes to photo sharing and browsing, and has great implementations of RSS, community, blogging, tagging, licensing -- the list goes on. Go there and get lost.
(Thanks Scotty for the origninal Flickr tip, way back when)
Who's Gettin' All the Good Cards?
In years past, we've seen some bizzare Flash holiday greeting cards. I haven't seen as many this year. Here's one from JibJab, but it's pretty mainstream. Has anyone come across any good ones out there?
Jib Jab's Santa
iTunes, therefore I am
Whenever I camp out with my laptop at my favorite coffee shop, Octane - my iTunes picks up surrounding playlists. After digging through them like a used record store junkie, I can't resist the urge to play a little game of matching the list with the person...
Wired has a good article on the playlist phenomenon.
Zoom
Nice optical journey through environments. Simple and fun for the whole family.
FYI: This Week's Future of Advertising
Last week it was all about BzzAgents -- unpaid, open source style, with word-of-mouth distribution. This week has kicked off with homemade ads -- unpaid, open source style, with word-of-mouth distribution.
My bet is that all this will blow up fast, as companies unknowingly begin inviting Yes Men-inspired cynics to have their way with company image.
Thanks for the link, Mason
SHHH
We've blogged about Coudal Partners (aka SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing) before – and we will again – as long as they keep producing terrific ideas like Dear Cellphone User.
Getty's Year in Focus: 2004
The first year-ender I've run across is Getty's exceptional Year in Focus: 2004. The downloads are huge, but worth the wait.
Branding For Heads
Every civilization in history has branded their young livestock with anything from hot irons to tattoos. Judging from this Ananova article, todays civilizations brand their young consumers using vegetable dye transfer on their forehead.
Thanks to Are You Generic for the tip.
From James Jean's Pencil
Some of James Jean's work reminds me of one of my favorite cartoonists, Milo Manara. — Be sure to check Mr. Jean's Travelbook sketches and purchase some of his work. I did.
The Gray Video
DJ Dangermouse remixed the Beatles White Album with vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album and in a brilliant marketing scheme, leaked it onto the internet. In a matter of days, then unknown DJ Dangermouse became as Lennon would have put it "more popular than Jesus." Here's the music video, featuring a breakdancing Lennon and turntablist Ringo. Enjoy.
Books For the Holidays
With the holidays coming up, there's nothing like a hot cup of Jule Glogg and a good design book. Nijhof & Lee booksellers has all the essentials for the Graphic Designer.
The Spawn of BMW Films
Business Week points out a recent explosion of online film projects following in the footsteps of BMW Films. Amazon, Dr. Martens, Ford Mercury and Jaguar have jumped on the bandwagon, following creative economics:
Instead of spending a few hundred thousand dollars producing a slick TV ad, and then tens of millions on airtime, advertisers are spending the big bucks -- in some cases millions -- to produce the short films and peanuts to distribute them on the Internet. When the films are good, consumers will seek them out.
Business Week link via AdLand