Technology Archive

Microsoft Advertising Story Awards Video with Felicia Day

I love BIG & BOLD productions and we’ve nailed one with the Microsoft Advertising Story Video featuring (the very lovely) Felicia Day.

The campaign centres around the Microsoft Advertising Story Awards which is a competition we’re running to challenge brand advertisers, marketers and agencies.

More on the competition in Richard Dunmall’s post: Challenging Global Marketers and Agencies to be Storytellers and Win a trip to Cannes! 

Check out Felicia’s teaser for the advertising awards too!

Enjoy and more coming soon!

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How to Win a Cannes Lion Tips in Japanese!

I love these videos the Cannes Lions chaps do. This one has Yukio Nakayama, Executive Creative Director at Dentsu giving 5 tips on winning one of the coveted awards.

Love the fact he says to keep the subtitles slow as many of the judges don’t actually have English as their first language.

Nicely edited and presented little clip too!

Now who’s going to Cannes this year?

Pioneers of Digital Book now on Twitter and Facebook

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Now we couldn’t write a book called Pioneers of Digital without helping it along with a bit of digital marketing, so we’ve added a Facebook Page and Twitter account so you can keep up with all our progress.

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Paul’s just got back to London from China where he’s been interviewing pioneers over there, and I’ve been rattling off chapters from interviews I’ve done with inspirational figures here in Seattle, California and New York.

As we go into 2012, we should have half the book written and have 2 months left to write 10 more profiles and a lot of analysis.

The Facebook Page and Twitter account are a good way to keep track of where we are and who we’re working on. We also want you to engage with us and give us your views on some of the people we’re writing about.

We’ll provide a bit of a list in the new year so make sure your follow and like the links below:

Pioneers of Digital Book on Twitter

Pioneers of Digital Book on Facebook

[Update 3/3/12: Now the website is live too Pioneers of Digital!]

Take care and have a great Christmas!!!

Review: Klipsch Image S4 Noise-Cancelling Earphones

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Up until last week, I’ve been listening to music and travelling with a pair of Shure SE310’s that cost me an arm and a leg a few years ago. They had excellent sound, but were sometimes a little uncomfortable and had very thick cables that would bang on my clothes when I walked and cause a lot of periphery noise.

Last week, I pulled them too hard out of a bag and one of the earphones came off. To replace them, I’d have to go for the SE315’s for $249 from a store or send them back to Shure who’d replace them for around $90.

Just to make sure I was plumping for the best, I did some research and discovered this review by Jasmine France of the Klipsch Image S4 earphones (affiliate link). I’d never really seen such a glowing report for anything in this area so did some more research and found a pair on Amazon for about $79 (affiliate link).

klipsch-s4-earphones-review-photoThey are, quite frankly awesome! They fit beautifully, the cable is light enough and doesn’t get in the way, and the sound is exceptional. I’m not a proper audiophile, but I know I like good quality and these work fantastically with all genres of music. The other thing I like about them is the price. How Klipsch did it I don’t know, but they’re giving more recognized brands a run for their money by probably shifting loads of these.

I didn’t like the tin box they came in though, so am using my old Shure case. The one I should have put my expensive ones in before I put them in my bag in the first place.

Nice to know if I’m an idiot again, it’s not going to cost me the earth any more.

Stephen Fry Interview for Pioneers of Digital

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Personal and career highlights collided last week as I was lucky enough to spend a whole 45 minutes with actor, writer, presenter and digital commentator, Stephen Fry, interviewing him for the book I’m co-writing called Pioneers of Digital.

I’ve been a monumental fan since the Fry & Laurie and Blackadder days, and have met him a couple of times (see Steve Clayton’s memories of one such occasion here) through his dapper business partner, Andrew Sampson.

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We met at the Groucho Club in Soho’s Dean Street, all for the book I’m writing with Paul Springer called Pioneers of Digital.

Chatting about his first memories of the internet, Stephen shared some personal stories about the early days of the web. We learned about how his site www.StephenFry.com came about and this history of his foray into social media with his blog “blessays”, and how he got into Twitter and changed the media landscape forever in the UK with one photo from a stuck lift.

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Extremely knowledgeable, frank and passionate, Stephen drove our discussion into areas perfect for profiling him in the book as a definite Pioneer of Digital.

We’ll be releasing some of the excerpts early next year.

Worth waiting for……….believe me!

Book Review: The Changing MO of the CMO

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I first met MaryLee Sachs in 2009, when she brought Twitter’s Biz Stone to the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

Working for PR giant Hill and Knowlton at the time, her team kindly let me chat to Biz about Twitter’s dizzy rise to success (worth a retrospective look at now given their current ubiquity), and then I got a few minutes with  MaryLee to get her thoughts on PR and social media, and how public relations was being seen more and more part of the marketing mix.

Fast-forward two years and MaryLee is back in Cannes launching her new book The Changing MO of the CMO which seeks to explain how, “the convergence of brand and reputation is disrupting the marketing function.”

Pioneers of Digital Book Contract Signing!

So we got the final contracts through for the book I’m writingPioneers of Digital – with Paul Springer.

It just happened to be my 40th birthday when I signed next to my name, so Ashley helped capture the moment on video with the wriggly help of little Maggie.

Posterity aside, now the actual work begins. We have a deadline of 29th of February to deliver the tome.

Anyone know any good  online touch-typing courses? Winking smile

P.S. Follow Pioneers of Digital on Twitter.

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