Now that the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games are nearly gone, and summer too is following suit, Virgin Media’s free Wi-Fi on the underground promotion will also be coming to a close.
Since the beginning of July, commuters, tourists and Olympic-goers alike have been able to log on, albeit intermittently (it’s on the platforms, not in the tunnels), by simply handing over a name and an email address… However, as Virgin have always said, it’s only free ‘for the summer‘.
Now, being British, summer part one ended at some point in June. Part two has just arrived (after a rainy intermission) and I doubt the Wi-Fi will match the same timeline.
So here’s the big question: how much will it cost when the summer is gone?
My gut says £5pcm.
My heart says it will be FREE to all existing Virgin Media subscribers.
My head says I’d probably £10pcm (but only with a guaranteed coverage increase of 50% of stations by 2013).
Creative print advertising on the tube shocker. 2012 edition.
While the above ad isn’t as inventive (or as contextually aware) as the awesome Limitless Clear Pill ads from early last year, the above ad for the new Total Recall film (yes, another re-make) the similarities between the two still shine through – and I like it.
Let’s start with the basics: the above ad is not for Total Recall. No no. It is for the entirely fictional company [from the film] ‘Rekall‘.
Using real world reference points for what is a very futuristic film is a touch of genius, I love it. There are two main variants on the ad, one puts you as a football star and the other gifts you women and a yacht.
“Tell us your fantasy,” the ad says “We’ll make it real*”
– the asterisk is used to perfection
Why else does this work?
1. Title [or lack thereof]
If you slap ‘Total Recall’ on anything the first question that’d pop into anyone’s head is ‘Where’s Arnie?’. The original film is such an iconic sci-fi of its generation; it’s cheesy as hell and some of its Paul-Verhoeven-directed moments are stalwarts of early 90s pop-culture. Getting over that is not easy. So just ignore it! If we don’t mention the original, we won’t get the Schwarzenegger mind pop! Win!
 2. They make it REAL
As I mentioned, it uses real world fantasies to bring the message home and to pique commuters’ interest. I love the idea of fictional companies advertising fictional products from the films that they feature in and communicating this in the way – making it real, if you will – works perfectly.
How could it be better?
First and foremost the ad doesn’t work as hard as the Limitless efforts from March 2011. The two call to actions (one web, one Twitter) are semi-usable in our new kind-of-online London Underground BUT I don’t think its strong enough to warrant an online only response. There’s no recognition that you’re without mobile signal, and for that REKALL lose points.
Overall though, it’s a good effort and hey, I’m blogging about it!
Grade: B+
Better than most, but still room for improvement.
Notes:
The website is actually ace (up until you realise the Facebook bits don’t work).
Apologies for the blurry photos; it’s really hard to take photos on the tube without looking like a complete weirdo.
Things of note for the week ending August 3rd, 2012
1. The London Underdogs “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting wellâ€Â
– Pierre de Coubertin. Father of the Modern Olympic Games, speaking at the London 1908 Closing Ceremony.
And it is with that gorgeous quote that the spirit of The London Underdogs is built upon. Yeah, that’s right – let’s hear it for the Olympic Underdogs!
Here we are, at the mid-point of the two week extravaganza, and if you’re still yet to go (but have tickets to spend next week), get your posters from The London Underdogs.
“We Brits love a good Underdog. The wild cards. The fighters. Those have-a-go heroes who haven’t a hope. We’ve never heard of them, we don’t know what they look like, and their fans are few and far between. But we cheer them all the same. –
So join us, and together, we can show the world that it’s definitely about the taking part.”
Well done my friends, very well done indeed.
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2. Cellophane Art: WIN
I absolutely love this artwork and have no idea why something like this has never been done before. ‘Cellograff‘, as its referred to by its creators, is French in origin, but universal in its appeal. I love it. I think you might too.
3. Blackpool’s Dune Grass What is it? Have you seen it? Never heard of it? Watch this…
Blackpool’s latest addition to their pleasure beach takes the shape of these rather quite enchanting blades of ‘dune grass’. Conceived and created by the geniuses at Freestate, these kinetic sculptures have been in the works for several years and it’s actually quite lovely to see them at last, living and breathing in the real world – where they belong.
Super regular readers may recognise them from an earlier video… say, back in 2009?
I’m saying nothing.
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4. Age-verified Following on Twitter
Earlier this week (or maybe the week before, I don’t remember), I was followed by the beer brand, Tsing Tao – Huzzah!
I quite like Tsing Tao and drink it fairly regularly, so a follow back was in order… but then, when I did, I got an auto direct message response.
Sidenote: auto direct messages suck. They’re spammy, impersonal and generally a one way ticket to an auto unfollow.
But this one was different, this one wasn’t asking me to subscribe to someone’s blog or to check out something else this new follower had done, no – this one asked me to confirm my age.
– I have not seen that before.
While this could be seen as merely a hoop-jumping exercise that alcohol brands go through to meet certain regulatory requirements (there’s no credit card details or anything that actually verifies a thing; I could be 17 and lie about my age), it does please me to know that these rules are actually being adhered to.
I’m not sure how long Twitter has made this feature available to brands, but I really like that it’s out there and I really like that Tsing Tao is doing things properly.
A cricket clap for for all of you.
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5. (Fake) Injuries up your social status
This is old but apparently, back in 2009, it was fashionable in Beirut to sport your very own nose-job bandage. This trend was born out of the rise of the nose job in Lebanon and, given their expense, pretending to have had one implies that you have $1,000 to throw around on plastic surgery. Incredible.
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Bonuses this week: as it’s that time of year, then it’s worth re-watching Monty Python’s Silly Olympics; More Olympics-based chatter from Herdmeister but this time focusing on what the event actually reveals about us, as human beings; and this map of the internet is awesome too.
The really funny thing is, the image above is nothing to do with the Olympics at all. In fact, it was taken about three and a half years ago, back in the early part of December, 2008.
How do I know?
Because I was there when I took it.
(2989 views, 8 favourites, 6 comments)
It was lunchtime and I was on my way into central London to meet some bloggers I was hosting for The SpinVox Wishing Well, which had just opened in Covent Garden.
One of the bloggers in attendance was one Annie Mole – aka the editor of ‘Going Underground‘, London’s best London Underground blog. So, when I spotted this stuck on the inside of a Piccadilly Line carriage, I immediately snapped it so I could share it with Annie when I saw her.
The best thing was, after I took the original photo, the couple sat behind me tapped me on the shoulder and offered me their laps to sit on (to much laughter from our fellow passengers), it was a lovely moment.
“One evening five dramatically different and challenging speakers, together with their equally unruly audience, go to work on the soft edges of a common theme.”
Each of the five speakers were given the same brief of which one part was this –
This, was their theme, if you will. Using that, in part at least, as an inspiration point – each speaker had to give a ten minute talk about how said theme had inspired them.
Discussions from all sorts of weird and wonderful minds filled the air, from Captain Scroggs‘ tales of flipping the music industry on its head through the fetishisation of product in the digital age (see real world example, Tom the Lion); to JeremyHutchison’s dissection of the centimetre-thick glass that stands between us and the goods we so desperately want… His description of last year’s London looters as ‘the over-performing consumer’ was a definite highlight.
My section, at the mid-way point, took a more futurology-based approach. With homemade slides to boot (thank you, Paper). They’re embedded below, however I would recommend that you click through to the slideshare page where the accompanying slide notes are also available.
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Overall, In The Theme Park was a wonderful evening. Good food, both for the brain and for the stomach, good company and a thoroughly entertaining way to spend an Wednesday evening in London town.
FreeState, the agency behind it, did a superb job in speaker selection (if I do say so myself) as well as audience curation. Which, funnily enough, is probably the one thing that most event organisers overlook.
UPDATE: In The Theme Park have published their own blog post documenting the evening and, to be perfectly honest, having my talk referred to as ‘a digitalised version of Edward de Bono’s thinking hats‘, is quite possibly one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.Â
One of the blogs I read fairly regularly is that of ex-BBC chappy, Hugh Garry.
He’s a smart chap and I finally managed to meet him at a social media week event a little while back, which was nice. One of the things he mentioned back then was an attempt he was making on his blog called ‘5 things I liked this week‘.
Once a week [well, nearly – get back on the horse Hugh!] he just puts exactly that: five links to five things that he liked that week. I’ve been doing something similar for the ‘heads for a while now and, well, I think I’d quite like to do something similar, for myself, in 2012.
Every Friday (hopefully on my way home from work) I’m going to jot down the five things I’ve done or seen that week. Or perhaps even five things that have happened to me or that I’ve seen or whatever. Either way, it’s going in the Moleskine and then, naturally, it’s ending up on here.
To kick off, and for memory’s sake, this is the one I started God knows when earlier this year, but with a much larger number than five. Call it ‘Cool things that happened in 2011’ or something.
Note: this is not your average email, but we’ll come to that shortly.
If you’ve not seen the film before (I haven’t), it’s about a teenage girl (the amazing Saoirse Ronan) who has been trained by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to basically be a complete bad-ass. Think Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass [but slightly older and with less pink wig-ness] and you’re probably halfway there.
Anyway, like I said, she’s been trained to be THE PERFECT ASSASSIN and then well, from what I can see from the trailer, Cate Blanchett turns up and the proverbial really hits the fan.
Speaking of which, the trailer is worth a look –
What do you think? I missed this at the cinema as I had only just got back from my mad trip across Siberia, but it does actually look quite good. IMDb gives it a solid 7/10 and, I think I probably will pick this up at some point also.
So, why am I blogging about it? Given that a) I haven’t actually seen it yet and b) although the film looks good, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of epicmasterpiece that normally drives me to put e-pen to e-paper.
Well, it’s that email I mentioned at the top. It would seem that HMV and Universal have teamed up to create a rather awesome Foursquare-based treasure hunt across three major cities in the UK (London, Birmingham and Manchester) that kicks off this weekend.
Based around the central themes of the film, each hunt contains six codes that need cracking and from there you end up with six locations that need checking into.
The prize for completing said task? Er.. a weekend in Berlin! Sweet.
If you’re any of the above cities, your orders are available c/o The Galinka Project (but be quick, you only have until Monday). In the meantime, I have codes to crack.
whatleydude.com 