I'm very aware that this is my second 'Coca Cola' orientated article in a row and I don't want to turn this into a corporate blog (although if you're offering??!) but this is pretty damn sexy!

Please see the video above... this was installed at the National University of Singapore by marketing company Ogilvy & Mather.

As Anthony Kosney points out the genius of the campaign is that "In a world where Facebook likes and photo comments are considered  “social gestures,” manipulating consumers to make specific gestures is  top-of-mind for marketers today. This campaign[...] is an incredibly overt version of this trope."

The reason I like it, however, is the physical association of a 'Hug' with Coca Cola. An action is always the most memorable. In a digital landscape users often forget sites they have visited, purchases made, twitters followed and fan pages liked - that’s because the only aspect of that experience that ever changes is a small area of our vision - the patch of screen on the device we're using.

Our minds are wired to remember the physical experiences and journeys. Experience is multisensory (which is often why remember unrelated things when we taste or smell something out of the ordinary). Here Coca Cola are associating many sensory appeals - visual (the brand), touch (the machine) and taste (the product). Get a user to perform this task multiple times and it's not too far fetched (well, maybe a little) to assume that they might remember the taste of the drink the next time they hug their partner, or feel like they're getting a hug when they see the classic Coke brand.

With my digital cap on I can't help but wonder how this might marry up to Coca Cola other social project (CLICK HERE) might work!

After spelling out the virtues of responsive design in a number of blogs now I realised its time to actually pull my finger out and make dixign mobile ready... so I have...

If you aren't already - visit us on your mobile - it works!

This is an interesting concept... if a little troubling... and it makes me wonder about what the real-life implications might be.

Real-life-liking (in this incarnation) seems to be just the act of promoting what you're doing. However it seems to me that this could, in the future, work along the lines of the Pay With A Tweet service.

This could work on those occasions when the value of brand-promotion is greater than the profit of the item. For instance - when people are giving away product sample outside train stations... they are bargaining on future purchases and word-of-mouth marketing.

However, imagine if you were given the sample in return for a automatic tweet or like... instantly the brand would be promoted to your 500+ friends and followers.

The difficulty is the technology. CocaCola relied on RFID chips and pre-saved Facebook data. You would, I suppose, need some kind of Oyster Card type device or a scannable app that could be read at the stand.

Thoughts... comments?

It’s at times like this that I wish I worked for a mental health charity…

I’m trying to be very careful about how I word this so please forgive me if this sounds a little clumsy… but:

Whether or not Samantha Brick is actually a sufferer of a mental health condition, yesterday sure would have been a good day for self promotion.

I’ve just done a few cheeky sweeps of some of the main mental heath charity twitter and facebook feeds and there was no mention of the woman who was rapidly becoming a twitter sensation.

I’m not saying any one of these charities should have been wandering around diagnosing Mrs. Brick with x or y… but, as voices of reason and care a subtle tweet along the lines of…

"A lot of questions being asked over the mental health of #SamanthaBrick – find out more at…”

…wouldn’t have been all that bad?

Or is that just me?

The world is changing and the way it makes money is evolving.

Two quite broad and rather obvious statements I know, however in terms of marketing or (to be more specific) digital marketing or (to even more specific) third sector digital marketing there are trends that may need to be taken notice of.

What I'm referring to is advertising... or more accurately the placement of third party advertising.

This isn't a new thing in any way. Google has been making billions for years simply through the placement of adverts on its search engine and third party sites... and those site have, obviously, been displaying ads.

A couple of other interesting developments have also occurred recently in the world of advertising:

1 - Product placement within TV programmes.

2 - Ads at the beginning of YouTube videos.

This has, in general, been accepted by the masses as a great way to increase revenue.

Want some examples? I've got two very recent one's for you:

James Bond

Daniel Craig gave an interview in the Metro a few days ago talking about production team choosing to switch the international man of mystery's drink of choice from Martinis to a certain brand of larger. His argument: the sponsorship helps pay for the film - "There’s a big furore but it’s not what the movie’s about – we haven’t sold out completely."

Similarly movies trailers on YouTube are (ironically) often preluded with a short 15/30 second ad from someone else.

Simon Cowell

In the Evening Standard yesterday Simon Cowell spoke out about the sale of EMI. During the interview he spoke out about the need for music companies to diversify to survive citing that his own label - Syco - "[isn't]  a music company... Ten years ago, we realised we couldn’t stay as a record company and we created a TV company. Now the TV business is creating an ancillary business. That’s what all of the music companies have got to do with their artists or they are not going to survive.”

The beauty of Cowell’s business is that it provides three functions: 1 - it helps find "talent", 2 - it markets said "talent" and 3 - it presents opportunities to bring in marketing revenue.

So with most of the rest of the world leaping on every opportunity to bring in cash why have NFP sites been, on the whole, reluctant to include advertising on their sites, YouTube accounts and marketing materials?

I think the answer is in the title of this post - a concern for integrity. Are we selling out by associating with another company / organisation / product?

This is a valid concern - I'm not going to suggest otherwise. Most NFP organisations are very careful about their corporate relationships and have teams dedicated to managing them.

However - I'm not sure that the concern need be all that great. I think the majority of people out there realise that by providing advertising outlets on your digital portals you're not endorsing that product (not to mention that you can have some very strict control over who advertises).

The jist of what I think I'm asking is 'What is the value of this "integrity"?'

And this is probably quite a personal thing...

For me - well - I'm definitely not going to suggest that we start placing advertising banners all over our site at work. However I think I would feel ok allowing ads to feature at the beginning of our YouTube videos.

As always please feel free to leave comments below (that's what it's there for!)

OK - this might not have anything to do with digital, the third sector or web design... but this time-lapse video from the International Space Station is just phenomenal.