• Schering-Plough's Experiment With Digital Out-of-Home Ads
  When Schering-Plough, the pharmaceutical/package-goods giant behind brands like Claritin, Dr. Scholl's and Coppertone, sought to move $8 million to $10 million of its $372 million TV ad budget into digital out of home earlier this year, vendors were eager to accommodate them. In what is believed to be the fledgling medium's biggest dedicated ad buy, Schering-Plough and its media agency, Havas' MPG, and its out-of-home division, Chrysalis, met with more than 30 member companies of the Out of Home Video Advertising Bureau in the spring to discuss which networks would be the best demographic and creative fit for seven of its portfolio brands. Participating brands in the digital out-of-home buy were Claritin Liqui-Gels, Claritin For Kids, Dr. Scholl's for Her, Dr. Scholl's Massaging Gels, Tinactin Chill, Lotrimin Ultra and Dr. Scholl's Pain Relief.
  (tags: advertising digital marketing ooh)
• American Airlines Meets Mr X
  A blogger apparently trying to help American Airlines inadvertantly gets an AA UX employee fired.
  (tags: americanairlines socialmedia)

Twinity – The Berlin Wall
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Twinity has reconstructed a true-to-scale section of the wall in virtual Berlin.

Linden Lab unveils Sadville: Enterprise Edition (theregister.co.uk)

Second Life Virtual Meetings (ecombizcenter.blogspot.com)

Second Life Goes Behind The Firewall (readwriteweb.com)

Fall of the Berlin Wall: 20th anniversary celebrations (guardian.co.uk)

Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2010: Flash, Crowdsourcing, Info-Art
As 2010 fast approaches, digital marketers are gearing up for yet another year of changes that will incorporate both the transformational and the incremental. From the economy’s influence on the burgeoning “do-it-yourself” culture to an increasing reliance on collective wisdom, information-based art, and remote computing, digital experts at Last Exit (via MarketingCharts) have put together the following list of top digital marketing trends they believe will play out in the year ahead.

2010: The Year of the Good Idea

Judy Franks believes that if the industry can begin to look at the media landscape as a whole and less at its parts, and understand the ways in which it is changing, 2010 can still be the “year of the good idea.”

Agency bosses too old and change resistant, claims Sorrell
WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell (aged 64) claims that brands are not spending enough online because the people who run their agencies are too old and resistant to change. Delivering the opening keynote session at ad:tech New York, Sorrell criticised brands for investing an average of just 13 per cent of their marketing budget online despite the rapid increase in digital media consumption.

Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead
Ana Andjelic opines: “Any conversation about digital marketing these days includes at least one mention that traditional agencies just “don’t get it.” While this may be correct, it’s equally true that digital agencies are not ready to take the lead. Look at the typical digital agency. It excels in exploring new horizons. It supports a flat and loose organizational structure in which a developer has access to the CEO. And it makes sure everyone’s opinion is heard. It’s one big crazy family. Digital agencies are having fun experimenting with ideas, technologies and strategies to find new alternatives superior to obsolete ways of doing marketing. That’s what they do best. The problem is, this is the only thing they are doing. When they are asked to actually follow through on their ideas, they often come up short. It is because they don’t know the business of marketing (or want to know it, for that matter), and they rarely have the organizational structure or past practices to guide them.”

Possibly related

“Sir Martin Sorrell: Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall plan is right (telegraph.co.uk)

Profits halved at advertising firm WPP (guardian.co.uk)

Does Sir Martin have another motive for peddling his alphabet soup? (telegraph.co.uk)

WPP profits down by nearly 50% (guardian.co.uk)

WPP sees little evidence of ’stouter hearts’ needed to spend during downturn (telegraph.co.uk)

KFC’s Colonel Sanders and the UN
Apparently, if you dress like Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Col. Sanders, you can get in anywhere. An actor wearing “the fast food icon’s familiar white suit and black bow tie” was able to “gain access to the restricted areas” of the U.N. headquarters in New York and even meet Ali Treki, president of the U.N. General Assembly. KFC is “lobbying” the U.N. for “the fictional Grilled Nation to be accepted as a member state” as part of its campaign promoting its new menu. Officials attributed the fake Sanders gaining so much access to a “lapse in security.”

Meteorite stunt goes down in flames
A publicity campaign involving a hoax meteorite in Latvia has backfired spectacularly with the Swedish telecoms company behind the stunt losing a government contract. Tele2 has admitted that it staged a meteorite crash in the Latvian countryside, resulting in a 10-metre wide crater. Emergency services attended the scene followed by scientists, who quickly identified that the meteorite was a hoax.