The latest KIT KAT campaign marks Nestlé’s biggest spend in digital to date. The campaign, with the strapline ‘KIT KAT Brings Music To Life’ sees KIT KAT team up with ‘Scouting For Girls’, the four times Number 1 hit band, with an aim to cement its association with music.

KIT KAT consumers will be given the chance to engage with the brand and the band through augmented reality. An AR marker will be featured on all KIT KAT 4 finger promotional packs – the first time an FMCG brand has used augmented reality on-pack. The campaign will go live from late August.

Through the AR marker, consumers will witness the band playing their next single ‘Silly Song’, released in late August, as well as perform an additional hidden track if the marker is manipulated correctly.

Users will also find other music related content within the site as well as a promotion to win £100 Ticketmaster vouchers. In addition to this, KIT KAT have partnered with MySpace to host four intimate gigs in different locations around the country. Scouting For Girls will launch this partnership and the gigs on Facebook via live streaming.

Jemma Handley, Brand Manager, KIT KAT comments: “Our first ‘Music Break’ activity proved a great success for the brand in 2009, marking a major touchpoint in its association with music. Through this current campaign, we are not only demonstrating our lead in the FMCG sector for digital execution but offering consumers an enhanced experience around ‘breaktime’ and music.”

Rupert Runewitsch, Account Director, Skive comments: “The FMCG sector has, by tradition, been slow to embrace the opportunities that digital offers. Through this campaign, KIT KAT translates its core principle message of ‘Have A Break’ to engage its loyal and the wider consumer using some of the most up to date digital capabilities.”

Insert cheesy stock photo here

We’re looking for an outstanding candidate to help support the office management and business development departments. 

You must be a recent graduate, ideally marketing or business studies, with lots of enthusiasm, common sense and a can do attitude.  This is a great opportunity to gain some invaluable experience in the digital marketing industry with a top London agency.    The work will be unpaid but expenses and travel will be covered.   The last intern was so good, we gave him a job.   So this is a real chance to make yourself indispensable. 

Please e-mail cover letter, CV and contact telephone number to: charlie@skive.co.uk

The release of the iPad has stimulated a lot of debate across various topics, not least on its possible implications for the publishing industry. With the device offering the potential for the books appearing on it to be interactive, its appeal to children’s publishers and their target audience is obvious. Some excited commentators are even claiming that education will never be the same again.

It seems to me though that a lot of these commentators have been so swept up by the iPad storm that they seem to think that Apple have invented a brand new concept – the interactive book. This of course isn’t true and interactive kids books have existed in various forms for years, many of which I had as a kid (an uncomfortably long time ago).

At their most basic level in terms of product complexity is the ‘Pop-up’ book which offers simple interaction with 3D shapes that appear as the pages of the book are turned (not sure why I explained that).

A step up from these is the ‘Choose your own adventure’ book where reader choice determines the outcome of the story plot. Many of them are a little bit less predictable than this.

Adding another level of complexity is the ‘Cassette book’. As the name suggests, this is a book with accompanying cassette that kids played while reading. The tape would prompt the reader to turn the page at the appropriate point in the story, usually with a sound cue relating to the storyline or the characters in it. For the (awesome) Indiana Jones version it was a ‘whip crack’ and for the (equally awesome) A-Team versions it varied depending on the story (yes, I had both of these).

Following on from these forerunners have been CD and audiobooks, which are now available across many different digital formats.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPad and other tablet devices clearly have the potential to do great things for the publishing world and many of the books already available on these devices are great, I just think that we need to maintain a degree of perspective on the level of Apple’s genius.

If I’ve missed any examples of other forms of interactive book then feel free to post below.

Online behavioural targeting is a controversial subject and has been the topic of many debates both within and without the advertising industry in recent years. Most consumers still feel that its drawbacks outweigh its perceived benefits and as a result are uncomfortable with sharing their personal information and/or browsing data with advertisers in return for the receipt of more relevant, customised advertising messages.

This view is supported by recent UK research which revealed that approximately half of UK internet users would opt-out of online behavioural targeting if given the chance. This research tends to be supported by other markets and only last week, the federal government in the U.S. mooted the possibility of a ‘do not track’ system which would allow U.S. users to completely opt out of online behavioural targeting. Clearly the debate still rages and will go on for some time yet…

It’s easy to forget though that behaviourally targeted advertising isn’t just confined to the online space.

I subscribe to Sainsbury’s’ Nectar Points scheme for example and was surprised to get to the checkout at the weekend to be met with printed coupons directly relating to some of my previous purchases, some made weeks ago. The scheme is obviously opt-in, but I hadn’t realised that the data it accrues from previous purchases would be used in this way so to receive specific coupons like this was a bit creepy. This is probably exactly how many users feel when they’re served online ads based on their previous browsing history, ie: ‘how do advertisers know I’m interested in these specific products as I haven’t told them I am’?

It’s been clear for some time that the digital industry needs to work harder to educate users about online behavioural targeting (what it is, what it does and how to opt-in or opt-out), but the wider advertising industry would do well to remember that digital is not the only channel where education is needed.

I wrote a blog piece back in February highlighting a trend I’d noticed. It seemed to me that Facebook terminology and imagery was beginning to be used more and more by consumers and brands as the platform becomes an integral part of more lives. I thought it was worth posting an update that since then, I’ve noticed a fair few more examples from both a consumer and brand perspective.

You can now buy Facebook stamps for example, that allow you to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ anything in the real world. Looking at the user comments at the online store where you can buy them, they seem to have proved immensely popular. I haven’t seen an example of their use though, so if you have then please post below.

Another example in high demand from consumers is this tongue in cheek t-shirt.

From a brand perspective, this brilliant Wonderbra ad has been around a while and is a nice play on Facebook friend requests. Other brands have referenced the social network a little less successfully – like this Vileda ad from Ecuador. That took me a while to figure out, but I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out, you’re probably cleverer than me.

It also seems that more brands are mentioning their Facebook pages as part of their offline executions. We did it for Skinny Cow last year and After Eight have done it here.

With the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph and the forthcoming September roll out of Facebook Credits set to further strengthen Facebook’s permeation across the digital world, it seems inevitable that these releases will also drive their further presence in the offline world.

If you see any other examples, please post below…

I’ve had an iPhone for over a year now and have become worryingly used to it’s touchscreen interface. I say worryingly as I tried to use my girlfriend’s phone last week which has a mixed interface (part touchscreen and part errr, ‘analogue button’) and I really struggled. I kept touching the screen to select different icons, ignoring the mini joystick nav bar thing on the front of the handset. It seems my iPhone has surreptitiously brainwashed me into assuming that all phones are now fully touchscreen and so using an older handset has turned into a real struggle.

Using Sky+ has had a similar effect on my TV viewing. I now pre-record most of the programmes I watch so I’m used to skipping through all of the ads (and yes, I realise the irony of this). When I now watch a TV programme that I haven’t pre-recorded, I get really annoyed when I can’t fast forward through the ‘live’ ad breaks.

If I use a new technology enough it seems, my brain considers any new functionality that it has applies to all other devices as some kind of ‘default’.

On a larger scale, this general trend has implications for the future.

If you haven’t seen any of the clips on YouTube of very young kids playing with iPads then have a look, they’re pretty amazing. Kids are unbelievably comfortable with the touchscreen interface and as a result, there are already loads of apps out there geared to child education and plenty of great kids books like these.

This next generation of digital users are going to drive market demand for touch screen interfaces in the future across a range of digital touchpoints as a result of using them from a very early age. ‘Stupid’, non-touch screens could well be deemed obsolete to them as touchscreen will be this new generation’s ‘default’. It’s also likely that they’ll find many new ways to use these interfaces as they become inherent to their way of life.

Remember setting the video recorder or setting up the computer for your technophobe parents? Prepare to be taught a few digital lessons by future generations…

Moody stills of our new gaff. That's Charlie in reception.

Hello there artists, illustrators, painters, printmakers, weavers, solderers, sculptors, thinkers, crafty kids, creative teams and creative types.  We’ve just moved into our shiny new studio. Unfortunately the walls here are blank, and we badly need something inspirational to look at.

This is where you talented lot come in.

Tell us what you’d do to make our boring walls look better. You can submit your ideas in the form of a moodboard, a written proposal, a sketch…whatever. Just post it to our Facebook group’s wall.

The people whose ideas / designs we like the best will be invited into the studio to paint, draw or install their creation. Not only that, but the person with the most votes will get a full paid placement in our agency. The deadline is the 30th July. The Creative Directors will then announce the winners the week after!

Good luck!

As we all know, the publishing industry is currently experiencing major upheaval as  it struggles to cope with the fallout of the battle between digital and print. Publishers are being forced to trial new revenue models as they battle to survive and the media world is enthusiastically debating how this will all pan out and which is the right horse to back.

There are commonly two main schools of thought.

The first is that print media as we know it will die as it’s swallowed up by digital formats. The new consumer will be so indoctrinated into digital media during their formative years that they will not demand printed media in the future.

The second is that it’s possible for digital and print to co-exist as separate formats on a long term basis. After all, many consumers love the touch, feel and smell of the printed page, something that an iPad or Kindle can’t provide.

It wasn’t until this week that I noticed there could be another possible outcome – digital and print media could come together to provide a unique, integrated format. A great example of which is the PhoneBook.

This format takes the traditional story book and makes it interactive through the use of an iPhone. The book becomes peripheral to the main story with the phone sliding into it to create a richer, interactive experience for the reader.

This example is obviously targeted at kids and parents, but this broad concept can also be applied to other audiences. Out of the Box targets users who have difficulty learning how to use a new handset. This would be of particular use to older audiences used to learning about new products from an analogue instruction manual and who don’t have the younger user’s mindset of  ‘play with it and see what happens’.

Could formats like PhoneBook also support a new revenue stream for the publishing industry with users first purchasing a book peripheral and then downloading an app? This seems unlikely and at present, it seems this particular example is only available in the Japanese market, but according to their website, demand does seem to be quite high.

Having downloaded the app for the ‘Ride! Ride’ book, it is quite appealing, but I’m not sure it’ll take off as a format. I fall into the camp that print media is living on borrowed time given the digital indoctrination of this and future generations.

There does seem to be at least some legs in the integration of these two worlds at least in the short-term though and having looked into this general premise,  it seems there’s even a name for it, PaperComp, or ‘paper computing’ where the worlds of digital and print literally collide.

Not only have we found another Sean celebrity look-a-like in the form of the great David Baddiel but, we found out today (Just in time for England v Germany on Sunday), that Sean stars as German captain in the 1998 version of Three Lions by The Lightning Seeds. Enjoy his German mullet and trendy 90’s backward cap in all its glory from 2:30. Amazing.

The Lightning Seeds feat. David Baddiel & Frank Skinner – Three lions (1998 version) from Electro Meriadoc on Vimeo.

Find Sean@
http://twitter.com/PAULPINGLES

http://foursquare.com/user/paulpingles

In case you hadn’t noticed, the World Cup started last Friday and predictably, there’s been no shortage of big brands jumping on the bandwagon to empathise with fans’ excitement – with varying degrees of success.

Google, recently voted the world’s most valuable brand for the fourth consecutive year, has also climbed aboard. Before the tournament kicked off they made sure that all of the World Cup stadia were added to Google Street View.

Now the tournament is under way, they’ve subtly changed the way search results are presented when users search using the keyword ‘world cup’. At the bottom of the search page, instead of seeing the normal ‘Goooooooooogle’ page index, users see ‘Gooooooooooal!’ instead. Yesterday’s results and today’s fixtures are also directly displayed under the search box – very useful to your average football fan.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s Bing have tried a similar thing, but their effort seems a bit half-hearted in comparison.

Google’s changes may be subtle, but they’re an effective way of strengthening their brand in the eyes of users by portraying Google’s empathetic excitement towards the tournament with fans around the globe.

As we all know, Google has been cleverly changing their logo on their homepage for years to celebrate the dates of key events and this practice has proved very popular with users, strengthening their brand. These occasional changes will probably continue, but with the general online trend of users visiting search homepages less and less, as search becomes more and more integrated into web browsers and the wider web, their impact will reduce.  Expect to see more little touches to specific search result pages from Google in the future as a result.