Ad agency Wieden + Kennedy’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV spot for Old Spice has won the Emmy for Outstanding Commercial.
The spot starred former NFL wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa as the Old Spice Guy, a character now well-known in pop culture thanks to the TV ads and a highly successful social media campaign.
The Old Spice Guy solicited questions from fans on Twitter, Yahoo Answers and other websites, then answered them in short, humorous YouTube videos. Total upload views for the Old Spice YouTube videos (including both the TV and the social media campaigns) currently stand at almost 135 million. “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” has more than 18 million.
Mustafa joked in one of the final videos that he was a struggling actor, but the ads seem to have stripped away the “struggling” bit. He’s been signed to two movie roles, and will also appear in the NBC TV series Chuck.
Though Mustafa’s performance was a hit, the Emmy actually went to the creative minds behind the ad campaign, Wieden + Kennedy’s Portland office. The team won an Emmy last year for the Coca-Cola Super Bowl spot “Heist.”
The social-media effort for “The Blair Witch Project” has been ranked by Forbes and a panel of marketing experts as the best campaign of its type. Other social-media campaigns making this “best-ever” list include Old Spice’s “Smell Like a Man, Man,” Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” and OfficeMax’s “Elf Yourself.”
The top ten picked by the panel of judges were:
“The Blair Witch Project”
Blendtec: Will it blend?
Old Spice: “Smells Like a Man, Man”
Burger King: “Subservient Chicken”
Pepsi Refresh
VW: “Fun Theory”
OfficeMax: “Elf Yourself”
Evian: “Roller Babies”
Ikea: “Facebook Showroom”
Hotmail
Not sure I agree with all those entries, but I’m certainly a big fan of #2, #3, #4, #6 and #8 - what are your favourites?
According to research just released by Nielsen social media usage has gone up by 43% in the US over the last year, meaning Americans now spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs.
The graphic below shows how the typical US internet user’s online hour breaks down:
Other highlights of the research include:
Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks – accounting for 10 percent of all U.S. Internet time. Email dropped from 11.5 percent of time to 8.3 percent.
Of the most heavily-used sectors, videos/movies was the only other to experience a significant growth in share of US activity online. Its share of activity grew relatively by 12 percent from 3.5 to 3.9 percent. June 2010 was a major milestone for US online video as the number of videos streamed passed the 10 billion mark. The average American consumer streaming online video spent 3 hours 15 minutes doing so during the month.
What’s interesting about these stats is how precisely the amount of an hour’s time online a US user spends in social media matches that of UK users (both 13m 36s – see the Nielsen UK data from May), although US users spend almost 50% more time playing online games.
Starting today, airplane passengers who check in to Foursquare via Gogo’s Inflight Internet service will be greeted with a nice surprise — the “Mile High Badge.”
The “Mile High Badge” is nothing more than a digital token you can use to celebrate your location-based conquest. But the Foursquare-Gogo team-up suggests that in the future, mobile phone checkins may have an important place in the sky too.
Gogo Inflight Internet is available in the United States on Air Canada, AirTran, Alaska, American, Delta, United, US Airways and Virgin America. A la carte, Gogo service costs around $10 per flight, depending on the airline and the destination. The provider also sells service by month, in six packs and as 24-hour passes.
As Wi-Fi in the sky becomes more ubiquitous, the competition to attract passengers who pay to surf will only grow for both Internet carriers and airlines alike. Gogo’s Foursquare “Mile High Badge” is a clever promotional vehicle that, if successful, will have flyers promoting their service across social media channels.
Rare pictures of the Royal family have been posted on the internet after Buckingham Palace opened an account on photography website Flickr.
The images of recent royal events, archive pictures of the Queen, Prince of Wales and other members of the monarchy can be seen from today.
More than 600 photographs have been added to the British Monarchy’s Photostream account. The images will be updated as new engagements and events take place.
The Flickr account is timed to coincide with the summer opening of Buckingham Palace, as it features photographs commissioned for the exhibition The Queen’s Year, which opens next Tuesday at the London palace.
Royal children
Highlights from the photo website include early pictures of Queen Victoria and other leading figures from the era, images of Queen Elizabeth II as a baby and pictures of the latest royal events.
The account has been divided into two categories - the first, Royal Collection, contains images commissioned for The Queen’s Year exhibition and the Victorian pictures.
There are also behind-the-scenes shots showing the Royal household staff working at a state banquet. And there are images by photographer Marcus Adams showing royal children, from the Queen as a baby to Prince Charles as a little boy.
The Royal Family section groups pictures of the monarchy by individuals. Prince Harry is shown as a newborn baby, in the arms of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, for example. His older brother, Prince William, is pictured as a youngster with his parents and sibling, on exercise with Royal Navy in the Caribbean and meeting David Beckham in South Africa.
According to this BBC article, The world’s biggest video site wants to dominate every screen where content can be viewed and created.
YouTube is already a leader online and in mobile and has firmly set its sights on the living room.
The company charted its course during the launch of a new product called Leanback, described by some as web video for couch potatoes.
It also unveiled upgrades for its mobile site which has over 100 million playbacks a day.
“You can start to break down the mental picture of ‘these are the videos I watch on my computer, on my tv or on my phone,’” Hunter Walk, director of product management told BBC News.
“Now you just say ‘these are the videos I watch and I watch them wherever I happen to be, or whoever I happen to be with’. We are going to have a world where people increasingly expect their content to be available to them on anything with a screen, whether that be a computer, a phone or a tv. That is the vision,” said Mr Walk.
ITV has apologised to its HD channel viewers after a “transmission problem” caused them to miss England’s first World Cup goal.
Viewers did not see Steven Gerrard’s early strike against the USA in the 1-1 match. Some reported seeing an advert.
ITV said coverage had encountered an “interruption” and presenter Adrian Chiles apologised on air at half-time.
Last year, ITV viewers missed the winning goal in a Liverpool-Everton FA Cup tie when coverage cut to an advert.
ITV1 unaffected
One viewer writing in the ITV.com forum said: “I’m watching the game on Freesat HD and ITV cut to adverts just before England scored the first goal.”
Another wrote: “That was a disgrace, I miss the first England goal of the World Cup as ITV cut us to an advert break on ITV1 HD!!!”
Those watching ITV1 were unaffected by the error. The match was seen by an average audience of 13.2m, which equated to 56% of the total number of people watching television at that time.
An ITV spokeswoman said: “A transmission problem temporarily affected ITV1’s HD service during the England/USA match.
“ITV standard definition service continued uninterrupted. We apologise for the interruption in transmission.”
Last year’s FA Cup glitch led to 1,000 complaints.
ITV boss at that time, Michael Grade, described it as “inexcusable”.
YouTube has announced that it has reached a new milestone, serving over two billion views per day:
Today, thanks to you, our site has crossed another milestone: YouTube exceeds over two billion views a day. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined.
What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries. We bring feature films from Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers to far-flung audiences. Activists document social unrest seeking to transform societies, and leading civic and political figures stream interviews to the world.
YouTube has been the biggest success story of the new media revolution, but they’re aiming higher, gunning for traditional TV audiences:
Although the average user spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube, that’s tiny compared to the five hours a day people spend watching TV. Clearly, we need to give you more reason to watch more videos! And we want to give you all the tools and support to make YouTube both your career and your community. After all, this is only the beginning of the video revolution. We’re just getting started.
To do that, YouTube is going to need to need to attract long-form content and remove some of the barriers that keep people from sitting back and watching for longer periods of time.
Ad agency Wieden + Kennedy’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV spot for Old Spice has won the Emmy for Outstanding Commercial.
Starting today, airplane passengers who check in to 
ITV has apologised to its HD channel viewers after a “transmission problem” caused them to miss England’s first World Cup goal.
