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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…?

Kellie, one of our digital designers, emails us all links to her favourite digital marketing ’stuff’ of the week every Friday afternoon. Here’s what she rates this week:

Coca Cola – Heist
This beautiful advert for Coca-Cola was unveil at the Super bowl on Feb 1st.

Pong Clock
Pong Clock is a limited edition of 400 clocks which tells the time in hypnotic arcade style. The clocks have already sold out but you can download the screensaver for Mac and PC!

Google – Latitude
Google Latitude was launched on Wednesday for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Sybian operating systems and will be out in the next iPhone update. Latitude basically that allows you to locate your friends on a map on your mobile or on a computer once they accept your invitation. There is much controversy surrounding this new location-sharing service as it could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners, and obsessive friends. Latitude will have major opportunities once Google opens up the API, think about integration with Facebook!

Smirnoff – It Started with a Mule
The experience site from Smirnoff takes to back to LA in 1940 on a journey to save the sexy gal Ginger Beer.

So the Competition Commission has gone and done it, and killed off Project Kangaroo.

Our first reaction when we heard the CC’s preliminary judgment was ‘how stupid’. Who wouldn’t want what Kangaroo was planning to offer – free catch-up, and archive of top shows across decades of BBC, ITV & C4 programmes? And who wants to have to visit many different websites (or worse download many different applications) to watch TV on the web? You don’t have to have different TVs for BBC, ITV, C4 etc.

So to us this seemed like while the CC were preventing a monopoly, and avoiding a theoretical and technical price fixing scenario, in the process they were actually denying consumers’ choice. Or worse handing a bye to the US-owned Hulu to steam in and charge for what previously would have been free (well, free at the point of use).

But over the last couple of months, other parts of the story have emerged, and have caused us to change our minds.

Project Canvas is another cross-broadcaster initiative to put web TV in Freeview set-top boxes, bringing the iPlayer and other services, to the living room in a way that normal people might use. And it sounds like it is open from the start, providing a platform anybody (?) will be able to access.

To us, this means one of two things will happen:

1. iPlayer will become the default platform for getting web video onto those set-top boxes. Someone (the BBC Trust, the CC) will make the BBC open up the iPlayer to other content providers. It’s easy to put Flash video on the web; the trick is making it scale. And why should the viewing public have to pay for that again?
2. The opportunity of Project Canvas distribution will incentivise content providers to unify around a common set of web video standards, and the content will be set free of any particular destination, so we can just watch what we want without having to learn how to use multiple sites / apps.

Which will be A Good Thing, and we’ll still get the service we so yearn for as consumers. Maybe even a better version.

Andre spotted this snow foetus from his window. It’s a sign. But of what?

Kellie, one of our digital designers, emails us all links to her favourite digital marketing ’stuff’ of the week every Friday afternoon. Here’s what she rates this week:

Beacon – Installation
A kinetic light installation by Chris O’Shea and Cinimod Studio showing at Lightwave, Science Gallery, Dublin (23 Jan – 20 Feb). Watch the video to see it in action!

Idee – Mutlicolr Search Lab
Search for Flickr photos by colour. It serves no real purpose…but fun!

Barak Obama’s Social Media Toolkit
Lessons of social media from the Obama campaign. WARNING – it’s an 11 page pdf.

Kellie, one of our digital designers, emails us all links to her favourite digital marketing ’stuff’ of the week every Friday afternoon. Here’s what she rates this week:

The Gherkin – 4030 Experience site
View the fullscreen site to explore the restaurant at the top of 30 St. Mary’s Axe and see views you that would otherwise be reserved to members.

lastminute.com – nru phone app
nru is a new G1 Android app from lastminute.com. It uses the the GPS and compass to give you information such as nearby restaurants.

Magic socket – slot car racing
Magic socket is a flash agency in Italy, but the part I’m interested in is clicking on ‘race now’ and playing slot cars around their site!

Kellie, one of our digital designers, emails us all links to her favourite digital marketing ’stuff’ of the week every Friday afternoon. Here’s what she rates this week:

Dare – Get a job your parents won’t understand
I thought this was very cute way for Dare to promote their graduate campaign.

Ikea – Embrace Change 09
Customise the oval office for Obama, you can even add a puppy!

Durex – Get It On
Please be warned this advert contains sexual scenes between balloon animals, and is so cute!

Underworld – Rise of the Lycans
An experience website for the new Underworld movie.

We had a great Albion Society on Wednesday evening, with Clive Dickens and Chris Lawson of Absolute Radio.

As regular readers will know, the ‘Society is a forum where we invite entrepreneurs to talk to Albion staff, client and friends about what makes them tick.

Clive and Chris led a fascinating conversation about what motivates them, how they came to takeover Virgin Radio, and gave us some real insight into their back story and their ambitions for Absolute.

Some of the highlights were:

• Clive’s story about deciding to buy Virgin Radio when he accidentally drove past Richard Branson’s Oxfordshire home in January.
• Learning that Clive and his partners had been exploring opportunities in India, or partnerships with Indian companies, for years previously. A far cry from the oversimple ‘the Indians take over another British company’ story that the media tell.
• Chris’s background in online community marketing, whether for charities or Bauer, and the different perspective it gives him on what the Absolute brand needs to be, and how it needs to behave.
• Their simple measure of success: “If we’re still a radio brand in 12 months then we’ve failed”.

“Very energising” is the consensus from the people who were there. The Absolute story continues to build and build. we’re delighted to be part of the journey. We didn’t even mind missing the Keane gig they’d invited us to on the same night!

We’ll post some video highlights of the talk here soon.

I rode the Albion boat over to the Criterion Theatre to see The 39 Steps on the weekend.

A brilliant adaptation by Patrick Barlow of Hitchcock’s 1935 film, the play doesn’t pause for breath. The plot galloped along with only 4 actors playing over 100 characters. This means lots of running around putting on different hats and using props in ingenious ways making the play hold-your-sides-wet-yourself funny. Full of comical chase scenes, secret agents and murders it even fits in a love story and some Shakespearean cross-dressing. Flippin’ brilliant!

So totally randomly here are some other facts about the number 39.

• 39 is a song by Bryan Ferry and also one by Queen.
• 39 is the atomic number of Yttrium, used to make the red colour in your TV.
• 39 is the number of times citizens in Ancient Rome beat their slaves.
• 39 is the number of smarties on the perfect chocolate cake.
• 3×3=9 and then, that’s like, both the numbers right there!

Crew member Aimee over and out.