These were created by artist Neil Wax as a comment on consumer culture and the value judgements people place on feeling "good" vs. feeling "bad". I love the way feelings are expressed through cleaning products. Cleaning is much more value-laden than you might think. It was once a major source of pride to have a pristine home. Now there's greater pressure to have a full life, not just a well-kept house. People who are meticulous tend to hide it, so they're not labelled obsessive, or worse, considered to have no life.

Walk of Shame - Harvey Nichols

An alternative Christmas spot. I particularly like the "pie at bus stop" scene. Check out #walkofshame.

Adidas Face of the Marathon

This is an inspired use of technology to convey a personal experience. Adidas have captured what it's like to run a marathon through the facial expressions of runners. Head mounted cameras filmed the experiences of 15 participants throughout the duration of the Berlin Marathon. See the profile of the runners here.

Carlsberg Biker Cinema

From Carlsberg in Belgium, a nice study of preconceptions. Would you stay or would you go?

Algorithmic Search Engine for Video

 We've all come to rely on tagging to order our online worlds. It's how we label and find things. But effective and reliable video tagging has so far relied on people painstakingly going through the film and labeling the content manually.

Now Julian Palacz has created an algorithmic search engine for video. It's a great breakthrough in that it's able to search the spoken word directly. His project The Algorithmic Search for Love is currently being exhibited at Sao Paulo's FILE festival. It demonstrates how the search engine works by finding all the scenes with the words "I love you" from Palacz film collection.

Wagon Wheels and Artline on Facebook

A bit of self-promotion for George Patts Y&R, but what the hell it's my blog. Our Facebook pages for Wagon Wheels and The Mighty Artline just exceeded 20,000 fans - credit to all, especially Michaela.

If you harbour a fondness for old skool, random but right, circular confectionery, or share a predilection for perfect pens, join the throng!

Intel's Museum of Me

It's done the rounds already, but if you haven't seen it, check out Intel's Museum of Me. It's just an aggregator of your Facebook information, but with lush production values and a touch of narcissism.

The Information Blanket

What a great contextual media idea. As they say, "every baby needs a blanket; every parent needs education and training about how to raise a newborn." You can donate a blanket to a family in Uganda for US$25 at the information blanket website.

Fiat Street Evo App.

This campaign is inspired. Fiat appropriated everyday street signs, so people could use their mobiles to scan, for example, a stop sign and information about the car's breaking system would appear on screen.

So the entire city became a hidden catalogue, just through the use of a simple app. called Street Evo. They took it further, and turned the campaign into a game, with hidden prizes behind certain signs.

Fiat effectively turned familiar objects into QR codes, that is, patterns that phones can scan to extract information. QR codes are increasingly included as response mechanisms in print or outdoor campaigns. But they often fall flat because a lot of people still don't have a clue what they are, or or how to use them.

By turning everyday road signs into codes, Fiat took away the barriers and the uncertainty around QR codes and generated massive participation in their campaign - in a week over a million signs were spotted.

Cadbury's Charity Shop

A Glass and A Half Full of Joy continues with "Charity Shop". Kind of twee but maybe in a good way, as it raised a smile. Sadly, I remember when the original song came out.

Ben & Jerry's Fair Tweets

In support of World Fair Trade Day, Ben & Jerry's have come up with an initiative to use the spare characters from people's Twitter updates with their permission.

You install a browser plugin from Chrome or Firefox, or bookmark the Fair Tweets mobile site and Ben & Jerry's algorithm will automatically populate the unused space in your message with World Fair Trade Day communication.

This is a smart media idea, which hardwires communication to personal networks. Although it could result in message overkill from heavy tweeters. It uses the permission of the tweeter, but not their followers, who are subjected to news they didn't sign up for.

Choice Architecture: Using fun to change behaviour

Following on from my Play it Safe post, here are some more examples of how you can change people's behaviour simply by appealing to their sense of fun. Some call it choice architecture, others behavioural economics. Whatever it is, it's simple, playful and it works.

VW's The Fun Theory includes Stockholm's Piano Staircase, above, which got 66% of people to choose the stairs over the escalator.

The Speed Camera Lottery was the winning idea, implemented by The Swedish National Society for Road Safety in partnership with VW. Fines collected by speeders were put in a lottery, which safe drivers snapped by the road camera could win. The average speed dropped from 32 km per hr beforehand to 25 km per hr during the social experiment.

SMS Slingshot

Nice. The SMS Slingshot draws on gaming culture, seamlessly combining digital and meatspace. I wanna have a go.

The Mighty Artline - turning stupid into cupid

Does your Valentine's message lack lustre? Add some erudition to your prose and turn stupid into cupid with The Mighty Artline's Love Translator. Go to Pitt Street Mall today to get your personalised lurve message from Mills & Boon author Melanie Milburne, or visit the Facebook page.

Bingoogle?

That's a bloody big visual for Google. Particularly in the context of all the clandestine activity the search engines have been engaged in lately - dubbed the "Bing Sting". Is Google becoming more visual, stealing Bing's thunder in retaliation?

When you click on the Google logo, it directs you information about Jules Verne, in celebration of  the author's 183rd birthday. Rather like Bing's homepage hotspots allow you to explore the visual.

BrandZ

BrandZ's study of the Top 100 Brands 2010 has some useful data, which support arguments we repeatedly make about the value of brands.

The resilience of a strong brand: over the past five years, the value of BrandZ's Top 100 Global Brands appreciated by 40% to $2.04 trillion, even as the S&P 500 declined by 11.5%.

Rebuilding trust: trust works in tandem with recommendation to build brand value.

Value is more important than price: even during the recession, only 7% of people bought on price alone.

Value is delivered by own-label brands: while people select brands for the reassurance of authenticity, quality and value, these needs are increasingly fulfilled by own-label, across all price brackets. 

Value is important not only to everyday but to luxury brands: even those who can afford to spend lavishly choose not to spend frivolously.

Strong values and leadership: all of the world's Top 10 most valuable brands were created by visionary leaders. They continue to be lead by the same people, or by successors who share the same unshakable principles.

Philanthropy or "CSR" isn't enough: post-recession and natural disasters, people are feeling personally responsible towards others and to the environment and they choose brands that reflect their wishes and values.

Position brands for emerging markets: as Y&R points out in "How to Dominate the World" 85% of humans live there.

Epic Fail

You sometimes learn more from failure than success. Not in this case. It's such a blindingly stupid blunder that flouts any basic manners or empathy.

For more epic fails, see ViralBlog's social media fail compiliation.

Update: The post was followed by an apology and a whole load of parody and it quickly blew over, as Adage reports. It was that misguided it was almost laughable.

Wish Tree

The Wish Tree is a way to share your wishes for your local environment and help realise them. An iPhone app geolocates your suggestions so others can see them and build on them. An apt metaphor and visualisation, each wish starts life as a seed, then grows into a tree and bears flowers as it's cultivated.

Tag Clouds on Steroids

Check out Tagxedo. You can make tag clouds in all sorts of shapes, drawing in data from your blog, Twitter account, or just about any data source. Hours of fun.