Journey of a Lifetime...Please vote for me!

Quark Expeditions is searching for an Official Blogger to join a voyage to Antarctica. I want to be that person? Everyone who knows me knows how much I love the cold, how addicted I am to snowboarding, and that I’m happiest when surrounded by snow and ice. What they may not know is how much I love polar bears, penguins and all things from the polar region. This trip would be a dream come true.

I have until September 30, 2009, which is when the entrant with the most number of votes will be selected as the winner. I have along way to go so you can help me by voting. You have to register to vote but it’s for a good cause!

You can also help me by telling your friends. Here are a few ways:
1. Share this link on Facebook or in an email to your friends:
http://www.blogyourwaytoantarctica.com/blogs/view/371
2. Share this link on Twitter:
http://echothis.info/13D
3. Or view my profile on Twitter @catherynyork and RT my posting.

To help me get there and blog about Antarctica, vote for me!

 

Favourite Software

If your anything like me and get a huge amount of emails everyday you will understand the need to organise the amount of newsletter subscriptions you get. Recently I have welcomed NewFire onto my computer and it has been the best thing Ive done in a long time. Not only have I now directed all my newsletter subscriptions to the program, but Ive also signed up to a world of new blogs. The program collates all the postings and I can look at them whenever I have time. I find now I actually read them instead of deleting in my mail box because Im too busy. My email box is now not as cluttered and the program was free! I use NewsFire, its simple to use and made for Mac If your on a Windows based machine and have Outlook you can set RSS feeds up in that. Believe me it makes life easier and you actually get to read some great stuff...Highly recommended!

SuperGP Launch

 

The team from SuperGP held their official launch on Thursday with the countdown to the event kicking off in great style with the skies above Surfers Paradise filling with 24 parachutists carrying flags.  Less than 100 days to go now and you can checkout more info here - www.supergp.com

 

Did you Know?

A Pilot's Life

My best mate got a job in Perth flying Government lackeys around. He took this shot on the way to Broome from Karratha about 50nm out to see. It's cool how the slow shutter speed has caught so many propellers although it's not cool how crap the iPhone picture quality is. Boo!

 

Russia ranks first in social network engagement

A report by ComScore revealed Russia is the world’s leader in online social network engagement. The report looked at 40 individual countries and their total online population and then compared that to the number of people who use social networks. Russia ranked number one with 59 per cent, or 18.9 million people, visiting a social network at least once in April.

This surprised me as I assumed the likes of the US would be a leader in social network penetration because of the prevalence of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and MySpace, into their culture. The US however ranked ninth in the study, well behind countries such as Brazil, Canada, Puerto Rico and Spain.

The report shows of the 1.1 billion Internet users in the world, 734.2 million are using social networks. This means 65 per cent of the world’s online population is accessible - for free - via their social network of choice. Amazing!

Evian Live Young "Rollerskating Babies"

I love this campaign...Evian's "Rollerskating Babies" has smashed all previous records for viral video campaigns with 14 million views. It has generated buzz for its cuteness factor, its weirdness factor and, as Visible Measures pointed out, for having multiple creative iterations, many receiving more than 1 million views each. The website was a bit disappointing though as I found it hard to gather information

 

Art & Copy Film

I came across this film and I hope it becomes available in Australia. ART & COPY reveals the stories behind and the personal odysseys of some of the most influential advertising visionaries of our time and their campaigns, including Lee Clow (Apple Computer 1984, and today’s iPod); Dan Wieden (“Just Do It”); Phyllis K. Robinson (who invented the “me generation” with Clairol); Hal Riney (who helped President Reagan get re-elected); and George Lois (who saved MTV and launched Tommy Hilfiger overnight).

Directed by Doug Pray, ART & COPY captures the creative energy and passion behind the iconic campaigns that have had a profound impact on American culture. Featuring rare interviews with the aforementioned industry legends, the film seeks to identify the elements that transform an slogan into a pop culture catch phrases.

Check it out: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Vimeo / YouTube

2009 Facebook Demographics

According to Facebook’s demographics and statistics directly from their Social Ads platform there has been a staggering increase in the number of 55+ users - with total growth of 513.7% in in the last six month alone.

Additional top insights:

  • 70.8% increase in total users over the last six months.
  • 54.6% of users are female

Interestingly the statistics found that there are 16.5% less high school users, and 21.7% less college users. There have been rumors that these younger user groups are being aliented by their parents joining the service, and this data seems to prove it.

Bing Homepage Photography



The homepage of bing.com features a new background image everyday - you can use the arrow buttons in the lower right corner to view images of the last 7 days or check this archive that includes every single image that has been showcased on Bing since its launch on June 1.

Now there is an opportunity to get one of your images featured on the official Bing homepage for a 24 hour period. How? Upload a photograph to this Facebook page - make sure you check out the guidelines first. The winning photo will be selected on August 3rd by a combination of user ratings on Facebook and evaluation by the Bing homepage editorial team. So upload now and you never know....GOOD LUCK!

WikiPedia Printed

The English edition of Wikipedia Encyclopedia contains around 3 million articles as of now and if someone were to print the entire Wikipedia encyclopedia into a book, the size of that book would roughly be equivalent to 952 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Not sure if anyone is willing to go that far but a student in the UK has actually converted 0.01% of the Wikipedia encyclopedia into a printed book.This Wikipedia book has some 5,000 pages and it’s a compilation of 400+ featured articles all picked from Wikipedia. The book is huge - about 1ft 7in. The guy who came up with this idea (Rob Matthews) apparently plans to sell this book!

Advertising has Changed

Forrester Research interviewed marketers about their plans for the future and based on the response have made some projections. Here is a summary of the marketing forecast:

  • Marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased in this economic market, they decreased less than other budgets.
  • Digital marketing is no longer experimental. More than half of the marketers surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.
  • The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years.
  • It means we are all digital marketers now, since digital is at the center of many campaigns anyway. It means media is in trouble, or at least in the middle of a transformation.
  • And it means that social "media", which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn't even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

For the full article please see Josh Bernoffs blog entry

We are Hiring!

Tusk have a number of positions available. We are looking for talented creative and passionate individuals so if thats you or you know someone whos looking let us know....

Business Development / Account Manager
We are looking for a driven Business Development/Account Manager with excellent new business skills to join our team and assist in building the agency. You will identify, pursue, and drive new business assignments with clearly developed strategy.

Business Development / Account Executive
We are looking for a driven Business Development/Account Executive to assist in building the agency. You will develop, close and manage new business opportunities, achieving revenue and sales targets, developing excellent relationships with clients and working closely with the Business Development / Account Manager on sales and marketing strategy.

Flash / Motion Graphics - Freelance
We are looking for a creative, passionate Flash/Motion developer to work freelance with our studio team.

Effective Cut Through Advertising

This is really cool technology being applied to bus stops in Germany. They change their content when someone is looking at them by using a built-in camera with eye-tracking technology. This allows it to tell exactly when someone is checking it out and changes the content accordingly. This particular ad is an anti-domestic abuse message for Amnesty International. When no one is looking, it shows a man hitting his wife. But when you look right at it, it changes to a picture of the couple looking happy and normal. Effective cut through...



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