Kookmeyer Institute

Cadbury recently used three tonnes of chocolate to send a giant ‘thumbs up’ to fans who now number one million. A nice touch. But they probably didn’t anticipate the negative feedback posted on YouTube. I see the main Cadbury FB page has 465,214 likes – it couldn’t have lost half a million fans already could it?

It must be pretty hard to stand out from the competition when every ski field has, well, er, snow and mountains. So if you can come up with something novel that adds value to skiers’ experience, as Vail has done with its EpicMix app, then all the better. Using the radio frequency identification chip in lift tickets, EpicMix tracks the progress of skiers, giving them rewards, badges, live friend connectivity, statistics and instant access to photos taken by the resort’s photographer (as you will see from the video). Very cool.

I love the way PNC Bank celebrates each and every festive season with its Christmas Price Index (based on the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’). A very neat and original way to dull the impersonal corporate edge of a banking institution, indeed. This year PNC upped the production ante with the creation of a train world that lives inside a department store window. Great craft work as you can see from the ‘making of’ video. By the way, merry Christmas.

Introducing the first microwave to play music when food is ready. For me, the opportunity to come up with a product innovation would be far more exciting than most run-of-the-mill digital briefs, especially when there’s nothing new to say. BGN did an initial run of 1,000 units which sold quickly and plans to increase production next year. I wonder how long songs play. And do they rotate? It could end up being just as annoying as the beeps!

Here’s a nice simple idea from Asics. To leverage their sponsorship of the New York City Marathon, they installed a 60-foot wall in a subway and challenged people passing by to race one of the top US marathon runners. Someone could easily have done something similar for the Rugby World Cup – maybe at Auckland International Airport where all those 95,000 tourists came through.

MahiFX is a new forex trading website that was recently launched with an interactive infographic teaser campaign. The site basically asks you to enter your salary so it can hit you with some (rather depressing) statistics comparing your earning power to that of super trader John Paulson. This is a good lesson for anyone with next to no budget that you can create engaging communication with not much more than great type. It also proves there’s nothing wrong with a little humour in the serious world of finance.

Neat idea for Heinz fans in the UK – send friends suffering from the autumn chills a personalised can of soup (£1.99 including delivery!). This certainly has novelty value and it’s bound to put a smile on the faces of recipients. The company says: “Because Facebook is a place people choose to engage with our brand, we want to be there…  Our use of these channels doesn’t replace TV, but it is a great compliment to it because it allows the consumer to spread the word and they engage more than they would with traditional channels such as TV or Radio.” Good stuff.

The man had exceptional speech writers as well as designers.

Funny, tongue-in-cheek video from the Dutch National Maritime Museum that shamelessly piggybacks off the popularity of Facebook and its creator Mark Z. I’d give it ten out of ten for execution, especially the voiceover. Tonally it looks pretty progressive for a museum. I imagine the brief said something about attracting a new generation of visitors.

Okay so not the best campaign thought (on a par with ‘That man deserves a DB’) and not really digital but I still like this idea for Carlsberg, particularly as the basis of a TVC. Kind of like a poor man’s version of what Heineken did for the Real v Milan game last March.