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The Microvision Pocket Projector
Here’s an interview with Russell Hannigan from Microvision on the pocket projector that is due to be released mid this year and cost around $500. The idea is to plug the pocket projector into your mobile phone to free yourself from laptops and projectors. Microvision’s goal is  to make the smallest engine to project from mobile devices. No where is safe from Powerpoint!

ICA – Upload face onto video
For those interested in what we’re going to be doing for The Famous Grouse this father’s day, you may want to check out this microsite for the major Swedish supermarket ICA. The production values of this site and the smooth way it functions are what we’re aiming for. Yes I know you don’t speak Swedish so to help you out, these are the buttons you need to click on.  1.“Ladda upp”  2.Tick the box  3.“Sok”  4.Zoom & rotate  5.”Nasta Steg”,  6.Move the points over eyes, nose & chin,  7.”Nasta Steg”  8.”Se Din film”  9.”Sticka till en kompis” is “Send to a friend”

Cadbury Goo the Egg – Bus Shelter Game
Although interactive bus shelters have been around for a little while, nothing particular innovative has come from them as yet (Coke bluetooth interactions, animated advertisements). Here is a nice example of a game by Saatchi & Saatchi.
I’m still holding out for when I can get a pizza delivered to my door from a bus shelter, that will officially be, THE FUTURE!!!

Lastminute.com – Mexican Thumb Wave
On Saturday 28 February, tune into ITV at 9.50pm, change to Channel 4 at 9:51pm, then change to Channel 5 at 9:52pm watch a television first of a Mexican thumb wave. Why would you bother to do all this to watch an advert you may ask? Well, you can enter into a draw by guessing how many thumbs you saw in the three adverts and you could win prizes, but is that enough incentive for me? I much prefer the T-mobile – Life is for sharing ad, every now and then I go back and watch it, and they don’t have to make me…

Marketing magazine today has a brand health check on our client Absolute Radio.

The editorial set-up is a bit shallow, stating “it has lost one-fifth of its listeners since rebranding from Virgin Radio last September”. But Kathleen and Cable’s comments are pretty fair – question over the RAJAR methodology, pointing out it’s early days, advising us to stick to our guns, focus around the brand proposition.

Is the recession somehow responsible for making all advertising on the Tube the same?

Red background? Check. Barely witty headline? Check. Too much body copy? Check. Logo bottom-right? Check.

We’re loving Twitter’s branding at Albion, for three reasons:

Firstly, it’s a great name. Less than 8 letters 8 letters or less (which @cdickens says is critical for any modern brand). It’s kind of onomatopoeic – it reflects the 140 character limit of the messages. It’s fun. It’s nice to say.

Secondly, they’ve been relaxed about letting their ecosystem use it, or variants of it. So it’s everywhere online.

Here’s a selection of the hundreds (thousands?) of apps that have sprung up using the Twitter API. It’s adapted from www.twitterapps.co.uk, but we’ve sorted them into categories according to how they’ve co-opted the ‘Twitter’ name:

It’s the third column that’s the really clever bit though.

Customers love to turn brand names into verbs. And you’d think that would be the ultimate accolade, when your service is so ubiquitous it enters common language. But that also means you lose control over your trademark as it is no longer ‘distinctive’. The list of words that started as brand names is long: Yo-Yo, Zipper and Heroin… That’s why Google issued instructions telling people not to use the verb ‘to google’. Of course people still will, but they have to be seen to play the game.

Through accident or design though, the verb that is most commonly used among Twitter users is ‘to tweet’. Not ‘to twitter’.

If they can encourage this action, persuading the ecosystem to use more ‘tweet’ derivatives and less ‘twitter’ derivatives, then perhaps they can have the best of both worlds: a strong protected brand name *and* an associated verb in common usage.

Unless a trademark lawyer can correct us…?

We’re really pleased to announce that we’re now working with pioneering Fairtrade coffee, tea and cocoa brand Cafédirect (as tipped by Marketing Week a month ago!).

Cafédirect were doing fair trade before Fairtrade was invented, and were the first coffee brand to carry the mark. Today they do so much more than just pay the Fairtrade premium to a coffee broker. They pay a premium on the premium, return 60% of their profits to the growers to fund development projects, have two growers on the Board, and adhere to a ‘Gold Standard’ of ethical and environmental business practices. And they’re a really lovely bunch of people too!

But that story isn’t coming across well in the face of fancy marketing and price discounting from supermarket own labels. So we’ll be working with them on various communications ideas to re-invigorate the brand and get people talking about their amazing story.

In fact our first work is already live. Check out the miscrosite and blog for TasteFair, Cafedirect’s event at this year’s FairTrade Fortnight.

We helped them develop their online strategy for the event, designed and built the site, and are helping them with their blogging and social media.