Simply Brilliant,
Brilliantly Simple

If you’ve got a piece of 8-1/2″ x 11″ paper, a printer and a pair of scissors, prepare to load luggage-sized efficiency into your pocket. Slip your week’s schedule, travel games and puzzles, notes, conversion tables and much more into your wallet.

The PocketMod is easily customizable and immediately useful—the ultimate in low-tech Getting Things Done (GTD) tools. Create your own here.

[via: Tracy Lee]

An orbital 1,967,514 views,
and counting

Good. Clean. Fun.

For a good clean feeling, no matter what, we offer up this serial Wrigley’s Orbit® gum spot. Smacking wads of Orbit, this threesome pushes nearly every FCC boundary, yet never broaches one.

Add the signature Orbit brand sign-off: hand-held, frame-centered package; Vanessa, the onlooking, ever-white-bright and über-perky narrator with package-matching scarf; a tagline reinforcement finish; and this one’s a wrap.

Viral. Free. Fun.

At last count Orbit has enjoyed 1,967,514 brand impression-delivered views of this video on YouTube alone—part of what’s propelled Orbit to a top five chewing gum brand. Now that’s meteoric viral distribution. And for brand agents, that’s just good clean fun—key word, fun.

White Castle’s conversation-inspiring promotion.

Dining on Slyders®
by candlelight

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

This street sign isn’t advertising a 4-star restaurant, it’s a 24-hour White Castle that serves miniature hamburgers called Slyders®. A regional player, they consistently rank among the Top 100 U.S. foodservice companies, serving over 500 million burgers a year.

White Castle is running a serious business, but not too serious.

Love is in the Ambiance

A kitsch castle motif and hamburger joint ambiance doesn’t register as a romantic destination for most couples. Nor does dining on steamy Slyders® in a stainless-steel and plastic-laminate setting on candlelit, linen-draped tables. Which is exactly why White Castle’s charming Valentine’s Day promotion works.

Not your typical White Castle experience: waiters, flowers, candlelight and tablecloths.

Embrace Yourself

From a strategic marketing standpoint, White Castle understands and embraces their market space and brand persona—and are willing to leverage it by poking fun at themselves. This promotion transcends a one-way communication, inviting consumers to interact with the brand—sharing a little levity with others at White Castle’s expense.

Instigating Viral-ability

The promotion’s self-effacing humor became an opportunity for consumer-generated online viral buzz. The Brainstorm employee who took the picture emailed it to 3 people; two within Brainstorm and one in Oregon. Several weeks later she received the image back in an email from a former co-worker, unrelated in any tangible way to the original recipients with the subject ‘Valentine’s Day dinner plans?’ Who knows how far it traveled or how many people saw it?

Share the Love

Socially shared experiences both on and offline begin with transparency, relevance, and often wit. Inspiring people to talk positively about your brand requires involvement and reaching out to engage.

[Restaurant interior photo: Girlieleep]

30 Rock, The Simpsons, SNL, The Office,
The Big Lebowski and more—free. Pass it on at Hulu.com

Watch your favorite TV shows and movies.
Anytime. Anywhere. Free.

Save the TiVo

After five months of Beta testing, today NBC Universal and Fox launched Hulu.com, mainstream media’s online answer to socially networked video sites like YouTube. Unlike YouTube, Hulu offers viewers online-anytime premium, recognized content with full production values that can be viewed full screen.

Feature Rich; Feature Friendly

Amid an understated interface and tastefully-sized and unobtrusively placed ads, a simple slider bar allows you to select snippets of any Hulu streamed media and clip it—to the second. You can preview the video clip, email it to friends, copy its embed code for blog insertion, or share it on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Windows Live, or Google bookmarks.

It’s not exactly Consumer Generated Media (CGM), but it is a great first step toward engaging a post-conventional television audience anew.

Did We Mention Content?

The site offers free streaming video, ad-supported shows and feature films from NBC, Fox, E! Entertainment, the SciFi Network, USA Networks, Sony Pictures, MGM and others. Even the NBA, NHL and the NCAA are signing on. So far, CBS and Disney’s ABC are taking a wait and see approach before joining in.

A Step in the Right Conversation

Whether sites like Hulu can deliver mainstream media outlets from the bonds of one-way communication remains to be seen. But we Beta tested Hulu and think there’s a lot to like.

Snip a clip and send it to a friend on Hulu.

1 : 20 An appealing ratio.

The Story of Stuff Teaser #1

This one minute video employs the old adage: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.”

A simple storyline, childlike line art, straightforward logic, and narration combine verbally and visually to reduce a complex issue to an easily understood, engaging message.

Turning Less to More

The video culminates in an opt-in question designed to entice the viewer to engage in a 20-minute video that expounds on the basic communication. It’s served up in manageable segments at the viewer’s discretion. Nothing is forced or difficult to understand, just the way we like it—a concealed appeal.

See the longer video, produced by Free Range Studios, at storyofstuff.com.

[ via: Pat Coyle ]