My friend Zeb decided to create a special video that shows how I’m an up and coming candidate for president. I must admit that the email I got from him was pretty compelling, with the following vague text:

Hey Amanda,

I went on this online community thing and everyone was talking about you… what is going on? There’s even a video about it on News3Online. www.News3Online.com

Let me know,
Zeb

and the linked video was fairly well done, but a bit long. I’m still not sure exactly who did this, or why…

The title of this Nike sponsored stunt of Laker Kobe Bryant jumping over an Aston Martin going 50 miles an hour states:

Laker Kobe Bryant attempts massive stunt…and succeeds! Real?

This tactic of creating a controversy (i.e. a viewer would question if the stunt Kobe pulled real or faked) is a good way to use YouTube to increase video views. The video description also reinforces that skepticism:

When an Aston Martin is coming at you at 50 miles per hour, what else can you do but JUMP! That’s what Kobe does, but is it a special effect or is he that talented?

Of course the person who uploaded this film knows the answer, but the technique of creating a question that draws people in to view the video is a very smart tactic in viral marketing.

Also note that Nike products are subtly mentioned just at the very beginning of the clip, and not even mentioned in the tags. Did it work for Nike? Guessing so, with over 1.7 million views in 4 days, and top honors on YouTube (#7 of most viewed on YouTube this week). Overall, a very nice deployment on Nike’s behalf.

The New York Times featured the company Naked in an article today about communications planning and advertising. The focus of Naked is different that many shops — they are essentially consultants to clients and agencies, and claim to be media agnostic when coming up with communication strategies for their clients.

Naked breaks the planning component of advertising directly away from the creative development process, which may be good for some agencies who are addicted to execution instead of strategy. Advertising is more and more about multiple agencies and partners collaborating together, so I wonder if more companies will start to model themselves into silos — focusing on one thing extraordinarily well, instead of trying to be a one-stop shop for everything in the advertising arena.

The Webby Awards have announced their 12th annual list of nominees up for this year’s Webby Awards. I always take time to check out all the sites nominated, as I often discover interesting sites that I would never have known about otherwise. It is an incredibly useful tool for folks in advertising, as it provides a wide palette of sites that feature the best in design, navigation and overall best practices.

I also use it as a historical reference, as a zeitgeist of what is popular at a given time on the Internet. It is fun to also check out nominees and winners from earlier years to see how this space has evolved in the past 12 years. And now, the fun bit begins–take some time to check out the People’s Voice Awards, which allows the public to make their opinions heard about the best on the Internet and in mobile.
(Full Disclosure: I am a judge for the Online Advertising category at IADAS, the organization that selects the nominees for the Webby Awards. That means that any sites that I have a conflict of interest with getting a nomination, I did not personally vote for.) 

The following PSA points to how our attention can be incredibly selective:

I must admit that I fell for the trick, even though I had seen this original test from Daniel J. Simons of University of Illinois Visual Cognition Lab a while back.

The PSA is a elegant re-use of the original concept that points out the need to be aware of our own perceptual blindness (specifically for automobile drivers who forget to be aware of bicyclists sharing the road).