I continue to admire the chaps at Dare and me old mucker, Professor Emmel. Despite the flowery shirt. Here’s their digital essay. A lovely piece piece of storytelling and thought leadership. Cut out and keep stuff. Here’s a big version to avoid eye strain.

Just over a year ago, Microsoft released “Bring the Love Back” and received great acclaim. A year later, here’s the follow up.

Microsoft are looking to move beyond just the film and:

…we want to try and create an online marketing community and bring as much inspiration as possible to marketers and everybody in the marketing, advertising and publishing business, whether they are marketers, designers or developers.

The ambition is great. Here’s the site where it will come to life. In a bit of second album syndrome, the video itself is not quite as compelling as the original but then it’s just not about the movie this time. But it still has some amusing anecdotes that we’ve all suffered as digital marketers fighting the good fight.

A couple of weeks back I attended a CIM seminar on how web 2.0 can help your business punch above it’s weight. As it was local, for once didn’t cost the earth and had web 2.0 in it I thought I’d better pop along.

I liked this:

- the phrase “gifted amateur” basically covering how web 2.0 technology can make a broadcaster, DJ, journalist, dare I say professional etc. out of any of us.

- the chart on slide 12 that visualises the gap and opportunity for web 2.0 and how SMEs in particular can rapidly scale using this rather than high investment & expertise in IT systems and people.

- being informed about another social network called ecademy that is a niche for businesses. And if I can read my notes correctly has 150,000 users worldwide.

- a great example of a garden company who use their passion for their work to run a weekly podcast. Which lasts 45 minutes. And reaches 10,000 subscribers via iTunes. Wow. Imagine 5 years ago, no way could she have done that. She’d had to have wangled her way into a regular guest slot on a local radio station. But with a PC, microphone, freely available software and some time and effort, she’s channelled that passion and sharing it with like minded people. Extending the brand experience beyond the website and the printed ad. Someone in the audience didn’t quite get why anyone would listen to a 45 minute podcast but they missed the point. For niche audiences with shared passions, people do.

I was a bit bemused by:

- while I agree with the premise that SME’s can indeed punch above their weight (as can individuals like me) using the power of web 2.0, I disagree (and made the point in the discussions at the end) that corporates are not making strides as quickly in web 2.0 because of their IT restrictions (equipment, policies etc.). Having worked with a number of corporates of late, the IT department has been a factor but often the least of the worries. It’s more the scale of the organisation requiring multiple approval points, quite often fragmented budgets which restrict/impact decision making and overly protective legal and CSR teams who disable the art of conversation.

- some of the sweeping generalisations such as “if you blog once per week, you’ll be in the top 100 bloggers.” I found that misleading.

- that Twitter was being introduced to a relatively inexperienced digital audience. Even some of my colleagues who do digital haven’t got a clue what the point of Twitter is so to explain that alongside general social media principles seemed a surprising choice. Although saying that I’ve been following @lisaharris since the event and have found some interesting content.

- that Squidoo was brought into the mix as something every business should have. This confused me. A lot. Squidoo say: “Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.” Which is OK. But Squidoo is quite US centric. And doesn’t really get talked about that much as far as I can see. Certainly not with the thought leaders I sneak up on and read. I can’t help thinking Squidoo was being used because it’s founder is Seth Godin who does come up with some cracking business ideas. I’d love to have seen more on why this was pushed. I would have spent more time on what tools you can use to build a fantastic site with little/zero tech knowledge using tools that are already out there, e.g. freewebs, or more explanation on Google Ad Words and SEO which can scare people who work in digital let alone normal humans. Or maybe how you can see what people may be saying about you with Google Alerts. How to aggregate your data using Google Reader. Maybe I’m just being picky?

- surprised that Google docs had only come to the presenters attention the day before. But then maybe they’re surprised I hadn’t been aware of ecademy.

But overall I enjoyed it. Also made me chuckle when they said they’d been working on this research project for over a year. I can imagine we’d probably get a couple of weeks tops in agency world to deliver thinking on this if it was a client brief

Here’s a link to the team’s blog. Get in touch with them if you need SME and web 2.0 stuff.

I love this. A fantastic example of user generated content. Dare are doing some cool stuff for Sony right now. I see myself using this as an example in future “digital wtf?” sessions.

Who’ve you got a grudge against? Shout it here. I enjoy the retro feel of this.

Awesome business cards. Does what it says on the tin.

Amazing stunts without photoshop trickery.

Google broek? Or Google domination? You decide. (via @MusaAykac)

A new ezine that “prompts the positive, kindles the constructibe, highlights the hopeful and leaves you feeling… well, up.” (thanks to Mel Ferguson)

More proof that people trust people rather than brands when finding out about stuff.

Future aspirations survey from Chartered Management Institute. If you’re a “young manager” fill it in.

If you haven’t found Groundswell yet. And make sure you follow Charlene Li on Twitter. And read the blog. And if you have any web 2.0 tchotchkes, please send to her for a project. 950 Tower Lane, Suite 1200, Foster City, CA 94403. If you have no idea wtf a tchotchkes is, try this. Look forward to seeing what the project is all about.

I might go to this next week. Anyone fancy holding my hand?

Image source

Tip of the hat to Greg Verdino.

Interact Congress 2008 is a conference about Connecting European eMarketing to be held in Berlin across 2-3 June. And being in Germany, it’s hosted by the German IAB and supported by all the national IABs (UK link here) and the European IAB.

And I’m truly honoured to have been invited to collaborate on the Interact Congress blog for 2008. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with some of Europe’s top bloggers on the blog when I get back from hols in 2 weeks. Please drop me a line either through the comments section below or direct to nr_gill@hotmail.com and let me know any thoughts or subjects you’d like me to raise.

I wonder if my new employers would like to send me out there to hob nob and spread the love?

And download an IAB report on UGC here.

Think you’ve got the next Gorilla inside you? Do you have Heidi’s in your sub-consciousness? Or could you bring a fresh take on a global issue? Creativity doesn’t always reside in the creative department. And here’s your chance to prove it and win a luxurious Cannes trip so you can be demanding, eccentric and quaff litres of fine wine and worse.

Getty Images have created the Ultimate Pitch competition: challenging you to respond to their creative brief with the propisition:

Express an idea that could make a world of difference.

The only catch is you have to use some Getty imagery, choons or video in your submission. Not too much of a hardship considering the breadth and quality of their work.

The competition is open to everyone from one man bands to global goliaths and is being judged by some of the most well-known big cheeses in the industry. So how about it?

Competition closes May 14.

Thanks to Andrew Ballantyne Gilbert from DDB London who created this and told me about this direct as an outreach to the AdAge Power 150 bloggers. Will share my pitch with you in due course.

Starbucks want your ideas to develop their future offering. A really simple concept - ask your 50 million customers what they want. Especially as they’re basically the nomadic home of the homeworkers or those wanting to escape the office. I’ll be interested to watch how the “see” section develops as that’s basically the proof of the pudding.

Thanks to Charlene Li on Twitter. Additional info from AdAge.

I forgot about this when I posted my somewhat lengthy stuff about New York until I found the flyer in my bag. Puma have joined forces with W Hotels to allow guests at this trendy venue to… well, let’s use their words:

… bring you the freshest and most fabulous ingredients so you can spice up your step with custom sneaks that sizzle!

Despite the fact it’s trainers rather than sneaks, a really good idea. Puma became cool again by getting in on the street level action of boarders and skaters and this then facilitated their cool factor with the kidz. Recently this has extended to aligning the brand to anything and everything to do with stylish, contemporary living. And W Hotels does just that.

The site itself is not unlike Nike ID and allows you to choose oodles of combinations sans a Manchester United line. Thankfully. They also have a gallery where you can see what other like-minded stylish folk have created.