McDonald’s in-house PR firm has pulled another great engagement trick out of its hat with an interactive billboard, Pick n Play.

The beauty of this idea is that with or without a smartphone McDonald’s still has its name up in lights; even if you don’t have a smartphone you’ll see the advert and those who do, well addictive gaming and a fast-food freebie await.

The concept is a hi-tech, but seemingly lo-fi, idea. A huge billboard allows smartphone users to play a Pong-like arcade game live on-screen through a mobile website. If players manage to keep the ‘ball’ in play for more than 30 seconds of increasingly difficult gameplay they are rewarded with a choice of;

• Free milkshake
• Burger
• McFlurry

Redemption is simple too. The website will display a code to all successful players that they can show over the counter.

PR genius

It’s a shrewd PR move, not least because of the increased footfall, and store awareness (the one closest to the billboard that is) but the PR coverage across media channels not normally frequented by the fastfood chain shows the burger empire in a different light, a positive one that has introduced a bit of unexpected fun into the lives of shoppers and commuters.

What’s more old arcade games are nostalgia-inducing and addictive; players will come back time and time again.

What’s clear is that the time to embrace smart phone marketing is here. Those who tried it too early and had their fingers burned need to step back, reassess and reconsider how the smallest screen has the potential to deliver the biggest returns on your bottom line.

Spotify has recently been valued at $1bn following a recent drive for investment and for me it brings some sanity to the current digital media market that has seen big social media sites receive valuations that seem to be based on guesswork alone.

Happily Spotify bucks this trend as it seems to be well monetized. Guaranteeing no advertising ‘wastage’ and offering a unique mix of audio and visual formats are huge revenue-generating tools. Spotify also offer their premium service which allows users  to avoid ads thereby generating money from people wishing to avoid ads they generate money from!

Now while I’m a complete convert to twitter’s microblogging service I don’t understand where the revenue is! Yes there’s a huge reach, but will Promoted Tweets bring in the dough? Does twitter have a viable business model to explain its recent valuation of £6bn on this year’s predicted sales of just £67m?

Perhaps I shouldn’t worry and just thank my lucky stars that there are seemingly plenty of backers willing to pay big money.

Here’s a video that asks a similar question

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZRd-xX5zk0A (check out the rise of Groupon)

Maybe you disagree? I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject so if you can show me the light then I welcome your comments below, but beware-i’m charging 10p per comment!

A new Ofcom ruling will allow product placement on certain programmes  from the end of February 2011 providing a much needed lift to commercial channels following a well-documented dip in advertising revenues due to the recession.

News, current affairs and children’s programming may be excluded from the new ruling but that still leaves  a wealth of opportunities in soaps, sports programmes and dramas where product placement could generate a huge additional income.

The advantage that advertisements hold over product placement is their ability to ‘go viral’. A great idea broadcast once can lead to millions of hits on free-to-use YouTube, adding reach and value to the campaign. Product placement has to be editorially justified and as such is unlikely to lead to a viral and any great amplification in audience figures. Of course some scenes in our favourite soaps are repeated endlessly, but, and this is just my opinion, the most popular soap scenes are grim murders, revelations, explosions and fights; what product wants to be associated with any of that?

I think 2011 will see companies getting to grips with product placement, we might see a few blatant initial offerings to begin with as producers fail to wrestle overall control from the fat cats chasing money. The ‘editorially justified’ clause certainly prohibits any characters in period drama Downton Abbey stumbling across a time-travelling Honda and racing to 2010 for a can of Pepsi but now that Ofcom has officially opened the floodgates anachronisms might well be omnipresent 10 years from now, if that’s where the money is!

Whilst trying to write a blog today that isn’t election based, I seem to be writing an election based blog; it’s just everywhere at the minute.

Before we get to the election part though, the inspiration for this blog is my parents, and particularly a conversation they had on Saturday night that followed the lines of: Dad: ‘shall we watch [ITV Morse sequel] Lewis?’ Mum: ‘let’s record it and watch it tomorrow or we’ll have to sit through all the adverts’.

I’ve been aware of this trend in my own viewing behaviour for a while, most things I watch are on series link and I simply whiz through the adverts and back to the action. Part of me though thought that this was a symptom of being the online generation; of wanting everything closer and faster. Apparently not as my parents proved.

One of the few things I’m so addicted to that I will actually watch it live is Glee (as previously mentioned on this blog) and in that case I am forced to watch the adverts  in the interlude before the next song and dance number, and actually I’m often pleasantly surprised by what I see. Adverts at their best can be funny, touching, informative and beautiful. Take this teaser released today by John Smith’s for their new Peter Kay fronted campaign.

Also widely reported today is research stating that we now watch four hours of TV a day (although this is to be taken with a pinch of PR salt as it’s been carried out by the marketing body for TV advertising). We are sitting ducks for the messages of advertisers and if they can get it right, with a Russian meerkat for example, then adverts can seep into our cultural conscience as effectively as they have ever done.

TV is still as powerful as ever, if there was need for further evidence, look no further than Nick Clegg. Getting your face, or product in front of millions of viewers is a powerful tool, but the pressure is on to keep our attention as we  now have the power to fast forward  if you bore us.

Today sees the launch of the new online TV streaming service SeeSaw. The concept is that, in a similar way to Google it doesn’t create content, just aggregate it.

So there’s nothing on it that you couldn’t watch on the sites of the channels it streams, at the minute the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5, yet it’s all in the same place. The immediately useful feature is that you can select your content by channel, or by genre; so if you’re in the mood for something factual SeeSaw will offer you programmes originally broadcast on all channels.

It’s also visually very simple and easy to use, closer to BBC iPlayer than Demand 5 in design, and it seems to be using the same strategy as 4OD to get us to re-live great series like Teachers and Queer as Folk.

It’s free to view at the minute and funded by advertising, but according to its controller is planning to charge for some content, like US dramas, as it grows.

I can definitely see the possible uses of the service and am impressed with the design and ease of use, I guess it just remains to be seen, as usual with online services, whether it can attract loyal users and advertisers and make enough money to stick around.

If you want to be at the forefront of any subject there is no better way than to check it out online.

This week, I’ve been swotting up with Stanford University, who have utilised iTunes-U (a learning focused section on iTunes) to go one step further and produce a series of free public lectures. They focus on how to build iPhone applications and have proved incredibly popular with over one million downloads in only seven weeks.

The lectures are recorded from live classroom teachings delivered by Apple engineers. Apple currently has around 40,000 iPhone applications with new and amusing ‘apps’ being created daily.

With applications being touted as the new brand advertising – it’s no wonder the lectures have been so well received.

This week the Grocer tells me that “successful retailers need the human touch in tough times”. The thrust of the article is that Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have achieved a personal touch in their adverts and this has stood them in good stead.

Between Jamie Oliver and Feed the Family for a Fiver, Sainsburys has positioned itself as not just a good value retailer but one with a heart. Whereas, the report, carried out by Cognosis, warns that Tesco is sliding towards being cold/aloof.

Yesterday, I noticed an advert for activia which told the viewer nothing about the product, its health benefits or even how happy and attractive I’d be if I drank it – simply that it’s cheaper than you’d think at 25p a bottle.

The human touch means more than understanding the ‘credit crunch’ effect on customers wallets. As always, brands need to capture the hearts and minds of the public.

Saturday’s Guardian magazine carried an article about Internet TV “celebrities”; the people behind such vodcasts as Diggnation, Rocketboom and Ze Frank (ZF’s “The Show” has actually ended but the entire archive is available online – watch it now… I’ll wait).

Without exception all three are well-written, well-produced and feature people with real talent that comes across on-screen.

But are they the exceptions?

It’s true there’s a lot of cack out there – any 14 year old with a web cam and a broadband connection apparently fancies themselves an undiscovered comedy legend in waiting or, even worse, a junior Fearne Cotton – but there are also an awful lot of gems outwith those highlighted by The Grauniad, especially for people with “non-mainstream” interests.

And these people are an advertiser’s dream come true. Why? Let’s use little old me as an example…
As a I drive round during the week, I tend to listen to my iPod rather than the radio. The podcasts that fill my commute include Radio 4′s comedy, MacBreak Weekly, Ask a Ninja, High School Musical (for my daughter you understand, but the songs are so damn catchy… anyway…) and Fighting Talk.

So, ignoring the tweeenage Disney-backed shenanigans for a moment, what do my choices of podcast say about me? I like comedy, Macs, ninjas and football. It’s a small leap but imagine if that was the perfect demographic for a product you were trying to advertise. What mainstream media could reach that audience?

A podcast may only have an audience of, say, 100,000 people – but these are 100,000 people who have sought out that podcast, religiously download that podcast and hang on every word of that podcast. How else would they find out about the latest developments in their tabletop war game?

And – most importantly for advertisers – these are 100,000 people who are active consumers of the product relevant to the podcast’s content.

You could be sure that this wouldn’t be the wasted half of your advertising budget.

ps I’ll blog later about maximising these opportunities. Cause the old methods don’t work!