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April 2008 Blog Posts (6)

The Pepsi challenge continues

Many years ago the Pepsi challenge caused Coca Cola to make an error and bring out New Coke. Today the bettle continues between the super brands, I know it's all down to strategy because I worked BBDO, the agency that advertise Pepsi globally.

Last year I read Malcolm Gladwell's book that cited the Pepsi challenge and the result of new coke and consequently old coke that was… Continue

Added by mark stone on April 30, 2008 at 3:09pm — No Comments

Mobile Wallet & Twittering: Big in Japan

Finally we catch up with the Japanese, this has been a long time coming

Then again, some tech trends follow reserve patterns, Twitter (the leaders in is reaching a new high in popularity but has now opened up to a second language: Japanese. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets") as text-based posts.

As… Continue

Added by mark stone on April 29, 2008 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Insanity Fair

I love when other industries do a Vanity Fair style cover version in which the leaders of that particular industry are immortalized by them being the chosen ones and juxtaposed with their competitors, friends and allies.

Vanity Fair's fold-out cover "kings of Hollywood" (below) shows that Tinseltown is one cover concept that sells lots of magazines, normally a few 100 times more than a standard edition. The style has also been noted in my blog post about Old Speckled Hens… Continue

Added by mark stone on April 22, 2008 at 1:08pm — No Comments

Seize the day! Sees the French

Seesmic.com is a new video conversation site. Their idea is simple, they say, they want to have the same quality of conversations we enjoy on blogs, twitter and other social software, but in video.

The content is a dashboard blog interface using YouTube.com format video although currently i'm unsure as to whether they are trying to rival YouTube or enhance it with this twist. This video cafe approach has… Continue

Added by mark stone on April 11, 2008 at 2:02pm — No Comments

Kanye Dial-A-Flight

Kanye West, the politically tinged hip-hop dude who rips off tunes and raps over the top. He's a hip-hop bling dude who is often seen sipping on some Cristal in a swanky penthouse 7* hotel. Well he probably booked himself in on his own company. Part of his hip hop empire is Kanye Travel Ventures

As a DJ i'm familiar with the question 'have ya got… Continue

Added by mark stone on April 9, 2008 at 1:53am — No Comments

Lucozade with added Mark Stone

Lucozade's user content generated site is another big-brand attempt (in this case GlaxoSmithKline) in riding the (now flat) wave of encouraging Joe Public to upload their interpretation of whatever the strap-line of the campaign is. In this case it's asking to upload a video of you losing your edge, hence the campaign being about giving you back your edge. Basic brand strategy in a digital world.

However the offer of a free big £1.60… Continue

Added by mark stone on April 4, 2008 at 2:30pm — No Comments