02 May 2008

Opinion Tracker buzz

We've been helping our sister agency Delib launched a new online opinion research service called Opinion Tracker .

To launch Opinion Tracker we thought it would be a good idea to run an initial trial of the service alongside the London Mayoral elections, and track the levels of online buzz and public sentiment of each of the main candidates.

Opinion Tracker's findings have been fascinating, especially the trends we've uncovered - our favorite being "Tube-Stepping" , a kinda mix between old school door-stepping and happy slapping.

Check out our final election analysis here

01 May 2008

Ultimate Dog Racer flies from the traps!

We are proud and excited to announce that Ultimate Dog Racer has finally left the traps and is chasing electric rabbits as I type!

We made the game for Ward Lovet on behalf of the British Greyhound Racing Board and set it free on the web a week ago. An early beat-em-up style soundtrack, a selection of menacing-looking dogs and a plethora of bones, fire hydrants, meat and cats all trying to slow you down make Ultimate Dog Racer the perfect online time killer! Upping stakes, gambling your bone collection and slowing the other dogs down are the only way to become top dog.

As an added bonus the BGRC are putting on some amazing offers in order to persuade to people (when they are not online playing UDR) to spend a night at the dogs, at one of the associated tracks across the country...

Most probably the only dog-themed, bone gambling, hydrant dodging flash game on the web: Ultimate Dog Racer!

18 April 2008

Granny Storage

On behalf of Sketch Associates, Rubber Republic are currently seeding a campaign on behalf of Safestore.

The film viral contains dark humour andd a little twist. It's short and to the point. I wouldn't like to ruin the suprise, so take a look for yourself:

Safestore: When Did You Last Visit Your Gran?

11 April 2008

Euroball tops a million

Our online football game, ... Euroball- made for JVC, official sponsors of Euro 2008 football championships, has just gone through 1 million plays since it's launch, with 2 months to go until the tournament itself. The plays are made up of plays of the full version of the game as well as plays of the embeddable widgets that many people have added to their blogs. The figures to not account for the touchscreen version that is currently touring Austria and Switzerland in a UEFA display. WIth a conversion rate of 20% clicking through to the JVC football site from the game, we're delighted with the current sucess of the game and look forward to seeing it pick up as the tournament proper approaches.

Who said internet parties can get out of control?

Want to throw a party, invite everyone who's anyone and play the best tunes? Want to be known as the big cheese, Mr/Ms Popular, the party organiser extraordinaire?

...Yet are you strapped for suitable space in which to squeeze these aspirations?

We are proud to present a slick new solution to having your party crashed by Myspacers, Facebookers and the like. On behalf of AIS London, we are now seeding a campaign for O2 called 'Fill The Floor With Moby'...

This truly unique competition can only be described as a popularity contest as the guy or gal with the most friends will emerge victorious. This lucky socialite will then be given the opportunity to throw their very own party at the O2 Arena! Moby has been booked to headline the event; the support acts, the interior, the guestlist, the theme and even the choice of attire for the security staff will be entirely down to Mr/Ms Popular!

So, you think you're popular? Visit the 'Fill The Floor With Moby' site to prove it!

02 April 2008

Ad networks on the up

You shouldn't just take our word for it about the effectiveness of the Viral Ad Network- a recent white paper from investment bankers De Silva & Phillips lays out how "Online advertising networks have emerged as an essential vehicle for monetizing the
Long Tail of the Internet. By aggregating traffic that was previously too difficult to buy or which was otherwise undesirable, ad networks provide small and mid-sized
online publishers with significantly more advertising revenues than would otherwise be possible."

That small and mid-size publishers can make revenue from ad-funded content by serving it to relevant niche communities is an underlying principle the Viral Ad network- and the interest shown in larger networks by the internet big boys can only reinforce the importance of ad networks.

Read the full Ad Network White Paper

Posted by Kirk

06 March 2008

Beat The Boss?

I'm pleased to announce that Rubber Republic has begun seeding a game and competition for Galaxy FM, in celebration of their 'Love Music Love March' campaign. The game is simple but highly addictive, you must use the mouse to dodge the boss for as long as possible, but be careful, he becomes faster and more irate each time you duck his presence!

The best boss dodgers stand the chance of winning some absolutely fantastic prizes, like tickets to see Kylie in Paris, tickets to Sugababes and Girls Aloud concerts, annual cinema tickets, spa days, Ibiza trips and much much more!

Click here to see the Galaxy FM Love Music Love March campaign in full swing!

JVC Euroball Storms The Net!

Wednesday 5th March marked 100 days until the kick off to the Euro 2008 championships. To help build the suspension and dry those non-qualifying bleary British eyes, we're proud to announce (now with 99 days to go) the launch of our campaign for JVC, EUROBALL!

Euroball is as nostalgic as it is addictive and as kitsch as it is tricky. Euroball takes you back to those playground days, for a spot of tabletop penny football and it's more chalk and lunchboxes than jumpers for goalposts. You can play as any of the qualified teams in a number of locations from greasy spoons to beerhalls to cafes, with glove puppet cheerleaders and referees and tabletop paraphernalia as obstacles; What more could a lad ask for?! The most dedicated Euroballers, i.e. those with the highest scores, stand the chance of winning tickets to the games of their choice during the summer tournament. So get flicking!

We're not the only ones that love it, click here to check out the Euroball buzz from the industry press in Brand Republic.

Now all we have to do is shout "Come on you Engl..." ...oh.

14 February 2008

The continued shift to online music promotion and the loss of a 'middle man'.

Over the past ten years, the internet has affected many aspects of daily life, but arguably nothing has morphed quite as much as the state of the music industry and the attitude and trends of its consumer. At the turn of the century, the initial shift was catalysed by sites like Napster, the prevalence of online file sharing and the numerous loopholes in the law that allowed people - in a broad sense - access to music at home for free for the first time. Napster had even spawned a worldwide hit for Afroman with his song 'Because I Got High', after he put it on the site as a free download. As laws tightened the attitude towards the music industry had already begun to shift. By 2003-4 a wealth of artists were making their demos for free on their home computers and putting up their music free of charge on Social Network sites. In a sense, artists were managing to negate the need for A&R men and the necessity of label backing (and other 'traditional' routes) to make their music heard. Musicians had acquired their own marketing power in that they could actively seek out potential fans of their music, rather than waiting for support to find them through the reliance of third party promotion. This DIY ethic and process has gradually spawned successful and continually flourishing careers for many notable groups, DJ's and artists (Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen anyone?) and a more organically beaten path to success has become officially established.

Due to the already established points raised in my above - hugely inexhaustive, yet concise - historiography, a recent piece of research on the trends between physical (i.e. CD's, Vinyl etc) musical releases and the amount of online activity that surrounds them served to highlight these modern trends further, rather than reveal untold revelations.

Over 8 weeks, 108 album's sales ranking were monitored on Amazon, while a tab was kept on the online activity that surrounded each release, in order to discover if the power of the internet and it's users had as profound an impact as everybody suspects. 'Online activity', although potentially an immeasurable variable, was calculated by the total of articles, blog posts and Myspace friends each album/artist had acquired/written about them. The results found that albums on both independent and major labels enjoyed increased success from increased online activity, so much so that if more than 250 blog posts were written about the release, sales of over 6 times the average could be traced. A higher number of Myspace friends also correlated strongly with better sales, although not quite to the same degree as articles.

The research couldn't conclude whether online activity was the cause of better sales or simply a product of a band or artist being popular in the first place, as people who are going to buy an album are likely to talk about it before, during and after its release regardless. But obviously, a large volume of online activity is going to draw the attention of potentially new fans/listeners. The research also mentioned the importance of not discounting 'traditional' catalysts of better record sales; like an excellent review from a respected music publication for example.

What it can conclude however, is the continued importance of the internet, and the ongoing shift in the fluidity and the mechanisms of the music industry is as evident as ever. It will be interesting see where this goes over another ten years, and how many of the existing Major players in the record industry manage to adapt to this shift and maintain their position. Conversely, it will be equally as interesting to watch the ones that don't.

Details referenced from a blog post that can be found here.

Ian.

12 February 2008

Does Google's personalised search suggest a shift from intention to attention?

If you're a Google account holder (e.g. you use a Google service like Gmail, AdWords, Analytics etc), you may have noticed a slight change to your Google search results in recent times. If you're signed in and search for something, the blue bar at the top of the results will likely start 'personalised results for...'.

I won't go into the full detail of this here (there's a good article at Searchengine Land that explains it very well) but the gist of it is this: Google monitors your activity and start customising search results based on your personal browsing preferences. That means that if you tend to go to Sky Sports (rather than, say, the BBC or the Guardian) for your sports news, you'll see Sky Sports start to climb the rankings in your search results, even if the terms are more precisely matched by another site.

The effect may only be small at the moment, but to my mind this ties in with a discussion we've been having internally recently about a 'marketplace of attention'. The phenomenon of Google and others' advertising centred around search has been marked out as a 'marketplace of intention' -- that is to say, when you search for something, your exact intention is made clear and results, content (and, yes, adverts) can be served up to match that intention. Thus it was that the most successful search engine was the one which was the most accurate.

However, there have recently been signs of moves away from this focus on sheer accuracy, with other factors being brought on-stream (see, for instance, the talk about social ratings of search results). In the case of personalised search, the factor being added in to the equation is centred around sites that you like and frequent. We are tentatively calling this idea of compelling destinations a 'marketplace of attention'; it's key to making successful virals because virals are something you discover or are sent, rather than search for (have you ever tried searching for something to make you laugh?) and it is, to get finally to the point, one of the reasons we've set up our Viral Ad Network.

Essentially, people are increasingly looking for things online to capture and hold their attention (like good virals), bringing interesting things to them rather than demanding they go out and find them (like good sites) -- this is part of what I think Google is recognising with the shift set out in its personalised search. To be able to take advantage of this shift, advertisers need to push their good content out to trusted, well-read publishing destinations and publishers need to have ready access to new, interesting content to hold the attention of their readers and keep their destination compelling. By bringing the two together, the Viral Ad Network facilitates the brilliantly mutually beneficial supply and demand of attention.

Posted by Ben.

08 February 2008

O2 Arsenal Campaign Takes its First Seeding Steps

Who's the biggest Arsenal Fan?
Several thousand red and white shirted men in pubs across the country would nominate themselves for this title, but who would have thought a Subbuteo figurine could have ended up as a candidate? Watch the O2 Arsenal Opus video to see what I mean...

Get it now? Well, Rubber Republic has begun seeding this video - on behalf of Agency Republic - across the world wide web. This is to celebrate the release of the all-knowing 'Arsenal Opus', a book so dense that if it were a person, I would definitely put my pounds on it being the cleverest Gooner there is!

06 February 2008

Rubber creates first ever viral library (maybe)

As you may (or may not) know, we're a pretty learn-ed lot at Rubber Towers. To match our brainy and bespectacled appearance we've decided to launch our very own library - what we've rather imaginatively called the Rubber Library (see what we've done there?!).

To share the Rubber book love with the world, we've sent a whole range of books to industry friends to get them thinking and inspired. The initial selection we've chosen are 3: the Tipping Point (an obvious choice), the Long Tail, and the Google Story.

The interesting (and relevant) thing about the Rubber Library concept is that it's designed to be viral, in that we encourage to people to share the books (and ideas) with others once they've finished. And the idea already seems to be working, with people reporting back to Rubber Towers to tell us that they're already inspired to spread and share . . .

01 February 2008

Michel Gondry's viral publicity machine rolls into town

Something Rubber Republic is itching to see is Michel Gondry's latest film Be Kind. Rewind launched next month, not least of all because of its excellent online (and offline) pre-launch publicity.

The film's premise takes user-generated content to whole new level as Jack Black & Mos Def have to re-film the shop's entire catalogue after it's destroyed by an overly magnetic Black. Recreating these films is a process called Swede-ing - or as Black's character explains “it's putting you into the things you like. The website takes this idea one stage further and encourages visitors to rebuild or ‘swede’ the world wide web.

In this post-ironic-life-imitating-art age that we live in there's already a proliferation of postings on YouTube . There’s even mention of a real life Be Kind. Rewind video store

Let's hope the film's as good as the marketing . . .

29 January 2008

Recent Rubber Research Reckons...

Our watchful gaze over the web has recently led us to conduct some research on some Youtube statistics. As the leading example of a video sharing site, we have been intrigued by the nature of Youtube video distribution and the viewing patterns of its millions of users for a long time. We endeavoured to look into how many views Youtube videos get, including how many views the average video receives in its first month on the site.

We can decipher that a huge majority of Youtube videos receive a seemingly low number of views, yet a minority (around 1%) can reach figures of up to 500,000 in their first month. There are some interesting results that will hopefully spark some discussion and further study that could potentially lead us towards making some concrete conclusions and pattern observations from these aggregations.

Check out our paper on Youtube monthly statistics.

22 January 2008

Sports Hat-trick for Rubber Republic

Having just won a contract for the England and Wales Cricket board for a funky new viral that will come out in the next few days, we sat back to inspect our stable and realised the marvellous clean-sweep of top sports that we have produced virals for- for the uninitiated, here's a quick rundown

Our Rugby viral, flick'n' kick for the Principality Building Society has run for 2 seasons so far, alongside their sponsorship of the Welsh Rugby Union Team in the Six Nations Championship.

Our Football Viral, Euroball is flying at the moment for JVC, as part of their sponsorship of the UEFA Euro 2008 championship. This campaign is pan-european in a number of languages with great prizes up for grabs..

And now we have the ECB on board too, this time for Cricket Viral which will be up and running very soon, this time it's a film we're making that makes us chuckle plenty. Watch this space for more details soon.

...and we didn't even mention golf and football stuff done with other agencies.

Posted by Kirk.

14 January 2008

The Establishing of Viral Video as Social Norm?

Net measurement firm Nielsen Online and Pew Internet have reported a notable growth in activity within the burgeoning online video sharing realm during the latter third of last year. Nielsen and many other observant eyes on the web are beginning to conclude that 2007 was indeed the year that video sharing went from taking tentative steps to leaping bounds on its journey to an established, every day form of media. Tim Wintle, our very own internet mastermind had pointed out these trends to us last week, and his data correlates strongly with that produced by the aforementioned web watchers.

So are we experiencing a genuine online revolution, or merely an inexplicable blip?

Well, the statistics and the graphs certainly suggest that a boom in online video usage is underway, with the news making national and international press. According to Nielsen, 48% of US net users visited a video sharing site last year, and interestingly, around 22% of Americans make their own videos and 14% of these share them online. Tim pointed out in his data that the number of views per video on YouTube alone had doubled its value during the final quarter of 2007 in when compared with the first. It wasn't just YouTube that enjoyed this rise in interest; according to BBC News , Crackle's average also audience doubled throughout November and December.

During these uncertain and early stages a number of ideas have been put forward to try and explain this flourishing activity:

Firstly, the consequences of the Striking of the Writers Guild of America (WGA). It could be said that due to the threat of, or a genuine lack of 'official' or 'traditional' entertainment being caused by the WGA strike since November 5th, many have sought an alternative through the creation or the consumption of online videos. However, as plausible as this is, the data suggests that following the announcement of the strike, a significant enough surge in activity to render this an explanation is somewhat lacking. This notion would also rely on the public, as an audience, reacting in unison, completely independently of one another during a very short period of time. I would expect that for a pattern to emerge from a factor such as the strike, the data would have to be studied over a much longer period of time, or at least until a 'dropping off point' (the tail-end of work - previous to the strike - drying up) had been established.

Secondly, this trend could be at least partially explained by a maturing relationship between online video and memorable TV moments, or as Chris put it, "Is TV the real internet star?". Many users use online video sharing sites to view the best bits from television shows, like a memorable line, a funny moment, a great goal, a funny blooper or generally people acting or behaving ridiculously; and many of these moments derive from Television programming. Sites like YouTube allow the viewer to neatly view, share and voice their opinions on these highlights at their will, and it is arguably these elements - as the defining of the niche - that have gradually driven people towards the benefits of Viral Videos. Consequently, this could be the beginning of a new generation (70% of YouTube users are said to be under the age of 30) of mutual dependence between Television and Video sharing sites; with good TV as the catalyst for successful virals. This can be further clarified by seeing the rise in online video activity following memorable TV moments of 2007 such as Miss Teen USA or Rachel on the X Factor as demonstrated on Tim's white paper.

During these early stages, it is difficult to determine the definitive reason for this trend, or to clarify whether this is a permanent change or a manic three months for Viral Videos. Either way, it is going to be particularly interesting first quarter of 2008 for Viral lovers worldwide, and maybe, just maybe, some real and permanent patterns will emerge from this very interesting development!

See Tim's white paper for more information on the changing trends in YouTube views in the final quarter of 2007.

Ian Ochiltree.

10 January 2008

HP Happy People Campaign flies the nest

We're currently entering our first seeding phase for a Hewlett Packard campaign. A cool video currently fronts the campaign, featuring a multi-tasking boss, doubled up as a conductor, leading his employees through a version of Mozart's famous 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik'. A classical orchestral arrangement of strings, brass and woodwind are shunned in favour of everyday office paraphernalia.

The film is part of a wider campaign for Hewett Packard, conceived and coordinated by Tidal-Wave (www.tidal-wave.com)

Check out the HP Happy People campaign! Create your own symphony in your workplace... and win an office makeover (maybe).

07 January 2008

Debug launches to promote InfoSecurity Conference

At the end of last week we launched Debug- a fiendishly addictive game that has been designed to increase WOM and registrations for the InfoSecurity 2008 Exhibition , run by Reed Exhibitions.

The game has been made in a funky comic-book style with a malevolent computer bug who is rampaging, godzilla-style through a microchip city. The player is challenged to extract the bug as quickly as possible to get on the leaderboard- it's a great take on that childhood favourite "Operation."

Early days yet, but we love this game for it's great looks and simplicity- we have high hopes for it! Have a go at Debug and see if your hand is steady enough!

Posted by KirkH

02 January 2008

Get paid for showing your blog audience great content

For as long as we can remember, any publisher rewards online have been gained by interrupting your readers with banners, sneaky advertorial links and Adwords. The Viral Ad Network turns this model on it's head by rewarding with real money for hosting games. Viral games are designed to entertain and engage people and are a great way of giving good content to your readers as well as converting each of their plays of the game into cash for you. Win-win!
Take your first step towards getting money for hosting games by signing up at the Viral Ad Network

07 December 2007

Ann Summers viral campaign gets public involved

As a general rule, sex always seems to work when it comes to viral. So it makes sense therefore for Ann Summers to use viral to push its product - sex.

Nothing really worth talking about so far then. However, what is definitely worth talking about is the fact that Ann Summers have decided not to get an agency to come up with ideas for their viral marketing campaigns, but instead is getting the general public to develop ideas for them - with the prize being to see their idea produced with a budget of up to £25k.

The campaign concept they've developed around this is called "Viral Academy" (OK-ish name), and the idea's been done before - most famously by Virgin who got massively slated by the B3TA community for being lazy cheap-skate exploiters of the free ideas labour of the net.

However, unlike for Virgin, Ann Summers may actually get this "brand participation" idea to work for them. This is mainly down to the fact that Ann Summers still has some of that small brand appeal that consumers love to get involved, whereas Virgin is now seen part of the brand establishment.

05 December 2007

Flash version stats - November 2007

Commissioning or producing a flash viral? You'll need to know which version of the flash plugin to specify, otherwise people with older plugins won't be able to see your viral.

Our viral tracking reports the installed flash version for millions of unique views across our network. These handy free stats can help you plan your viral campaign.

Stats for November
Flash version:
8.0: 4%
9.0: 94%
All other versions: < 1%

Full historical stats.

Posted by Andy

29 November 2007

Rubber Republic launch Greenpeace viral

Last weekend we did some low-level seeding work for our friends at Park Village on a Greenpeace film they've made encouraging the use of energy efficient light bulbs. We're pleased to see the film has had over 40,000 views already this week and shows little sign of slowing down. Click to watch Sunshine.

26 November 2007

Viral business

A while back we worked on a project for Fortis with the guys from Naked Amsterdam. Chatting to them it was interesting to hear that the success of Naked's amazingly successful campaign for the Number (more famously known as 118 118) was not routed in the creation of their famed wacky moustached 118 118 characters, but instead in a more fundamental piece of business advice - the advice to invest in buying the number 118 118.

This advice helped shape their business in a way that millions of marketing pounds couldn't have done - it was advice that made their business truly viral. Naked had turned the Number into a viral business.

Creating a truly viral business is every marketing manager and MDs dream. Owning a business with a product so unique or a name so catchy that it virtually markets itself is worth millions of marketing pounds.

Unfortunately most businesses don't have this, and so have to employ people like ourselves to try to cook up the viral magic for them. Which we do willingly (and well!).

Although interestingly we've been cooking up viral business ideas behind the scenes at Rubber Towers, and practicing what we preach. The first B2C business proposition we've been testing out is a sock subscription company called SocksforSir.com. We're still tinkering with the idea at the mo, however if you're looking for a present this Christmas look no further than our wonderful sock collection!

More on viral business ideas soon . . .

23 November 2007

Triumph viral gets on TV

On Wednesday evening our Triumph viral (made with the lovely people at e3) was aired on TV. Well TV off sorts - Nuts TV on Digital. Of course we're chuffed for our client to get their ad on TV for free, however we're even more chuffed for ourselves. As a viral agency our main goal is to generate the most marketing value for our clients - largely from free media placements, or "social media" i.e. people media.

So it's nice that our campaign not only has been pushing itself around the net (with nearly 400,000 views), but also has pushed its way onto TV. All via the power of word of mouth (mouse).

Perhaps more interestingly, is that the reach of views from a digital TV station is a tiny proportion of the reach of YouTube today, however getting on TV still has a good buzz around it and brings out the school boy in us all . . .

16 November 2007

TWO MILLION VIEWS IN ONE DAY!

Brilliant, those of you who sit and watch our Viral Manager stats will have noticed an increase of 2 million users in the last hour. This confirms 2 things:

1) We're top-notch.

2) That we've updated our system to include the 2 million-odd views that have been received by our oh-so-successful news series The Kensington Report on US site Heavy.com.

15 November 2007

European, I'm a......

Work has begun on a pan-European seeding campaign with a pan-European prize...

TeleAtlas Great Escapes campaign,, which we are seeding for Belgian agency These Days, invites people to win prizes by earning miles- you earn miles by inviting your friends to join the competition. The prizes are a big driver here- an all-expenses paid trip for you and six friends as the top one.

In a strange coincidence, this is our third campaign this month where we're seeding into UK, French and German markets - Linguaphone, here we come....

McCain potato parade marches onto the web..

This week we've started work seeding for Glue London on the McCain Potato Parade viral.

Potato Parade was created in collaboration with Aardman animations, the Oscar winning team behind Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. Together, Glue and Aardman have created a gang of walking, talking potatoes whose job it is to deliver messages in the form of a ‘personalised potato parade’ to friends and family.

As an FMCG brand, the majority of McCain's communications centre around their products. With this viral they wanted to take the opportunity to create something that wasn't product related and allowed people to interact and have fun with the brand.

The parade is doing the rounds of the office already and we're sure this will be a successful campaign for all involved.

Rubber Republic help Led Zep fans take over the net

Behind the scenes, our team has been furiously working behind the scenes to help Led Zeppelin fans take over the net - and generally cause some online mayhem . . . all in the name of rock n roll!

The campaign's been running for a week or so now and is really taking shape + we're starting hear some real rock n roll noise.

The overarching idea of the campaign is to help Led Zep fans "Zeppelise the net" by taking part in a whole range of activities all run through a central campaign blog www.theZep.net - run by Zep fan Ian Ochiltree.

The activity's that's been creating the most noise so far is our "Zeppelising" task run in partnership with NetDisaster in which fans can destroy websites around the net by flying digital zeppelins through them! So far, over 100,000 sites have been Zeppelised including No.10's (one of my favorite).

And check out the montage of Zep destruction.

The campaign's still ramping up - so stay tuned for more Zeppelising.

Heavy.com campaign reaches 2 million views

We launched the Kensington Report a few months back as part of a campaign to help launch US broadband channel Heavy.com into the UK.

The campaign's now had nearly 2 million views + many many plaudits from the web community - which is nice!

One key thing this emphasises from our perspective is the role good quality advertainment can play in the advertising space online. In the US brands and publishers are whole heartedly embracing this model - with people like Michael Eisner (ex Disney CEO) launching his online content studio Vuguru - and producing series like Prom Queen (an 80 show internet series).

The UK ad industry will catch up soon - however, as always we're the ones being led by the bold innovators on the West Coast of America, and endlessly buying banner ads when we should be out their making great content and entertaining the good people of Britain on behalf of brands.

07 November 2007

Rubber Republic launches Viral Ad Network

We've finally officially launched our "Viral Ad Network". The network has been developed for the last 6 months or so, however over the last few months we've been developing the backend management tools to help us manage large seeding campaigns. Viral Ad Network is now up and working and ready to rock.

We've also been extending the reach of the Viral Ad Network, which now means we can seed campaigns to over 14 million people (if necessary and budgets permit!) via our 2000+ publishing partners.

There'll be more developments on this front soon - with reach ever-growing, through more and more partnerships.

06 November 2007

Dove's new interactive Beauty spot

Check out this new interactive spot from Ogilvy in Canada for Dove. It's part of their "Real Beauty" series and is a really great idea.

I haven't managed to find the interactive app which allows you to customise videos, however you should get the idea from this vid.

02 November 2007

Green Cross Code in Buxton

Earlier this week I spoke to the National Road Safety Partnerships annual Conference in Buxton (where they make water). The idea was to show what viral marketing could contribute to the PR mix of a road safety campaign.

Interestingly, before my little skit, there was a talk from Clive Blair-Stevens from the National Social Marketing Centre who pointed out that for social marketing messages to penetrate through all the other messages pushed out to young people these days, the proposition needs to be "fun, easy and popular". With these words ringing in their ears, I was able to show just how virals can achieve this requirement.

Being invited to speak at this event reflects a trend we're seeing where virals are considered as a tool for raising awareness of social issues (See post about our Hepatis Film) as well as a vehicle for brands to advertise.

Posted by Kirk.

It seems like only yesterday that we were 18 (million)

Our Viral Manager tracking of unique viewers across our network ticked through another milestone in the last few days - we're now well past 19 million views tracked and pushing up at a nose-bleed inducing rate. This last million has been achieved in 10 weeks, meaning 100,000 a week across our campaigns.

Posted by Kirk.

Viral Manager - updated

After a month of hard work, we've just shipped a great update to our Viral Manager service for tracking and seeding viral campaigns.

We'll post more soon - things we're excited about include more campaign stats than ever, clean new look, and a very exciting automated system for seeding to our network of key influencers.

Posted by Andy.

30 October 2007

Sex sells

It's not new insight, but it's true insight - sex sells, and definitely sells when it comes to viral.

Why do I mention this?

Well, because a viral for MTV our sister agency Rubberductions worked on with Ogilvy has just tipped over 400k views. There's nothing startling about those kinds of numbers, however with little seeding budget the campaign's sailed along getting serious amounts eyeballs of the back of the free social media gravy-train - the gravy-train that all brands want to jump on . . .

The Joy of Non-Sex is worth a view.

29 October 2007

The world's longest commercial

To promote their new non-stop service from Dubai to Sao Paulo, Emirates have filmed a guy called Fernando Ferreira talking about his home country - Brazil - non-stop for 14 hours and 40 minutes non-stop (the time it takes to fly from Dubai to Sao Paulo).

From the bits I've seen through YouTube, Fernando really manages to pull this off well - creating an amazingly engaging film + also a great promo for Emirates.

Check out the full campaign at www.NonstopFernando.com.

Or watch the condensed Fernando YouTube clip.

26 October 2007

Happy Bristol Day!

Posted by Andy.

I am working today (who takes their own advice?), but most of our staff have the day off for our 'not-quite-statutory', self-declared unofficial bank-holiday, Bristol Day.

Britain has not enough official holidays in our view. We can't change that across the country (Gordon Brown could, if he chose to), but we can give Team Rubber people one extra 'statutory' holiday. So we did, and our staff looked frankly gleeful as they left the studio last night. They've got a range of things planned: pleasingly, quite a few are taking a long weekend to see friends and family (which is what we hoped as that's supposed to be a GENERALLY GOOD THING), but really we don't mind what they do, that's their business.

Our business of course is running Team Rubber (Rubber Republic's parent company): our income comes from billable time, so the cost to us is around £6000 in lost billings, but we think it's worth it. One way to look at it is that £6k is less than the typical recruitment fee for a graduate, so if we can attract (or retain) just one person through this kind of thinking about our employment culture, that's a winner. Or we can look at the health and productivity benefits of giving our staff a break between August and Christmas, just when those dark days come in and everyone gets a bit under the weather. And if that doesn't convince, then it's still a great story that's got us good PR and is a nice thing to talk about.


Why is it Bristol Day? Because we thought it up in Bristol - the city that brought you an extra day off. We're not the only ones doing this either, thanks to the magic of Pledge Bank, Bristol Day has been adopted by a bunch of other businesses who are imaginative about their employment culture. We'll be doing it again next year, same time (October), same place (Pledge Bank).

So happy Bristol Day. Will you join us?

25 October 2007

Wahey for Bristol Day!

"Brizzle iz gert lush innit bled?" I think what the Carling scented and Lonsdale attired individual is implying is that Bristol is in fact, well good.

And for the many companies who choose to occupy Bristolian offices there will be an extra bank holiday, aptly named 'Bristol Day' on the 26th October. That nice chap Andrew Parkhouse from media coolkids 'Team Rubber' thought to himself "There are no bank holidays between August and Christmas. How silly," and an energy efficient lightbulb illuminated and Bristol Day was born.

Well, nearly. Naturally he didn't want to look foolish and so he set up a Bristol Day pledge asking ten other companies to do the same. There's even a campaign group of Facebook devoted to Bristol Day which gained 133 members. And Andrew has great enthusiasm for the name of his annual holiday. "Because we thought it up in Bristol - 'The city that brought you an extra day off.'" Better than Vicky Pollard putting us on the map, eh?

By Joanna, the Bristolian coolkid.

Mobile advertising - 10% response rate

Interesting post at mocoNews.net discusses 10% response rate in mobile. Most of our campaigns are web-based, but we've done some mobile and we know the issues for both are similar. Key points we liked:

• a 10% response rate would actually be considered pretty good by most advertisers (we think people should aim higher - our viral campaigns aim for a 10%-25% conversion rate).
  


• Relevancy is crucial: 53 percent of those polled said they ignored ads because they were not interested in the product being advertised. Targeting advertising is both an art and a science - and we're taking both very seriously.

Flash stats go live

Through our Viral Manager tracking service, we track millions of viral campaign interactions and collect huge amounts of data on the users who interact with our campaigns. Our team use this info to develop great campaigns.

Slowly over time we'll be open sourcing this information to help other marketers plan and commission the most effective campaigns.

The first bit of information we've opened up is on the usage of Flash versions amongst web users. If you're commissioning a flash-based viral campaign, you need to know what flash version to specify, otherwise people may not be able to see your viral.

You can use our handy free stats to help you plan your viral campaign. » Check them out at ViralManager.com.

02 October 2007

Radiohead - back with a buzz

Like all the greats of music, Radiohead are not only geniuses at music but also at marketing. A few years back, Radiohead pioneered the use of video on the net with their blips (30 second music videos) for OK Computer, and they've launched their new album "In Rainbows" by letting fans decide how much they pay for downloads.

This is a fairly canny approach to the digital download issue which record companies have been wrestling with for a while. Thom Yorke has been a fairly strong voice promoting free file sharing in the past - regarding it as a great natural way to promote music (against the likes of Guns n Roses who think all file sharers should face the death penalty).

The main reason I regard this as canny is from my own experiences of democratic / honesty pricing. A few years ago I visited a bar in East Berlin where customers weren't charged for their drinks at the bar, and there wasn't a pricing structure as such - all people were expected to do was pay as much as they thought suitable to the doorman as you left. If you had a good time, then you'd pay more. A bad time, less.

According to research (I don't know by who!) punters are more likely to pay more than less when an honesty system is put in place - so the East Berlin bar and Radiohead's model makes sense. Having said that I haven't been back to the East Berlin bar since, so I'd be interested to see if it's still thriving - or even open! Likewise, I'd be interested to see if Radiohead's record label is happy with the results - although with all the buzz generated by it, I expect they'll come out on top . . .

28 September 2007

Hepatitis Animation creates conversation

This recent blog entry, has appeared that shows just the sort of conversations we hope virals will spark.

The comments below about the cartoon are really powerful and show the difficult balance that is to be struck when using a viral to raise awareness of a touchy topic.

Some comments:

"I agree humour is not something you'd normally associate with a potentially fatal virus, and I sympathise with the loss of your husband. However a dry straightforward video about the risk factors is going to struggle to get attention, and would probably never feature on a site like this. If it takes off the wall humour to get an important message across then so be it. "

"Satire: from the word satura, meaning a mixed bowl of fruit. I used to explain it to my students this way: you mix the sweet (humor) in with the bitter, to make your point.
It is sad and I am sorry for your losses, but if a silly, satiric cartoon can save ONE person from making a mistake, it's totally worth it, don't you think?"

"I got Hep C nearly thirty years ago in a transfusion after an accident. Five years ago I was cured with PEG-Interferon and ribavirin. I still suffer memory loss and neurological problems from the treatment. The idea is to make people aware of it so they don't get it. I didn't have a chance. I got my transfusion more than ten years before there was a test for it in the blood supply. The only way to really win against this disease is not to get it. Don't tell me about offensive-if it spreads the word, who cares?"

"I found out I had hep c after donating blood at work.I thought it was a mistake[.........] I think any information is good information. In fact I need to remove my razor from the shower now as my daughter is beginning to ask if she can shave her legs. I never thought about that until I saw this story.Thanks"

Online growth- more stats, no surprises...

A Guardian special Report, earlier this week outlined the trends and growth of online advertising which confirmed a lot of what we're seeing in the viral industry and supporting our claim that viral is a most effective way of reaching consumers online.

A few interesting points from this report:

-The value of online advertising passed the total spent in the country's national newspapers last year and, by mid-2008, Google will suck in more ad pounds than all of Britain's TV channels put together, according to Mindshare and Initiative, two top media-buying groups. That will mean that Google is taking in morethan £1bn of UK ad money.

-86% of UK internet connections are now broadband and, by the end of next year, two in three households in the UK will have broadband, according to internet researcher agency Point Topic.

-A third of Europeans watch less TV once they have broadband, according to Forrester Research. The average European spends 14.3 hours online each week, compared with 11.3 hours watching TV. The growth of online video beyond the low-quality (but hugely popular) clips on YouTube looks to only accelerate as more homes gets broadband.

This associated article, flagged up some other good stats:

-A study by ad agency Carat and released by the Internet Advertising Bureau says money spent on online advertising is 2.4 times more effective than the same amount of money spent offline.

-Many web surfers are actively filtering out requests to "click here" on banners and skyscraper adverts. The latest figures published by advertising researchers at AdTech show that only one in every 500 banners are clicked on.

A final thought from the articles:

All too often advertisers simply reuse their conventional 30-second TV ad on the internet - widely regarded as lazy and ineffective. The trick is to adapt content to your internet audience - make it shorter, quirky and engaging and you're onto a winner. Marketers worldwide are now looking to the medium as more than a direct response tool - it's great for brand-building, too.

We hate to say we told you so....

Rubber push BBC Electric Proms

It's been pretty crazy at Rubber Towers over the last few months, helping push out virals for brands and agencies across the UK.

Our latest viral seeding campaign is for the BBC's Electric Proms - which takes place in Camden in late October.

The campaign is based around two viral activities, and has been masterminded by the guys at Fallon, together with the digital gurus from their sister agency Hyper Happen.

To check out the first in the series, visit: www.newmusicexperience.com

The strategy behind the campaign is to target core music-fans of the 80 different bands performing at the event + also reach across the wider music loving community at the same time.

Bands performing at the Electric Proms include Paul McCartney, Sean Lennon, Sigur Ros, Ben Westbeech, the Kaiser Chiefs and Jamie Cullum - so a really eclectic line up.

Enjoy!

27 September 2007

Viral viral

In one of our favourite projects this year, Dennis (not sure where the name came from) has been brought to life in an animation to raise awareness of World Hepatitis Awareness Day.

The simple, cute animation has been an instant hit as Dennis sets out on his quest to catch Hep C., little realising he may already have it after some wild (and not so wild) times.

Dennis has is a mainstay of the WHAD website and will be seen soon giving an interview for the event - it seems a long time since we were sitting down, trying to work out how you could make something that was funny about the ways you can catch hepatitis (without offending an awful lot of people).

Still, Dennis lives - for the time being at least - so go have a look at WHAD.

07 September 2007

Rubber win JVC Euro 2008 account

Viral specialist agency Rubber Republic have been awarded JVC Europe's UEFA Euro 2008(tm) football campaign after a competitive pitching process.

The campaign will launch in October 2007 and run during the qualifiers and through to the finals of the European Championships in June 2008.

JVC are the Official Partner of UEFA Euro 2008 (tm), and the campaign will run across Europe in order to drive awareness of JVC's official football website www.JVCfootball.com.

Bart Somsen of JVC commented "We're pleased to be working with Rubber Republic on this campaign as they've got a strong track record in delivering great viral creative and intelligent seeding strategies."

Chris Quigley, Managing Director of Rubber Republic, commented "JVC obviously have had a strong and long relationship with the football community with their official partnership of Euro 2008, and we're excited to have the opportunity to strengthen this relationship further online with this campaign."

04 September 2007

Chris and our shiny new sign

24 August 2007

Metro newspaper fall for viral stunt

You've gotta love viral marketing. An ordinary woman puts her 18-month-old baby in her bullet-proof buggy invention, opens fire with an automatic rifle, and then retrieves the baby unharmed.

On sale by the fictitious company Bulletproof Baby are a wide selection of goods for the paranoid parents such as "My First Riot Helmet" (in which a testimonial claims saved their baby from being hit in a baseball game). Conveniently all their goods are out of stock so you'll have to make do with their not-so-bulletproof Cafepress gear.

Hate to rain on anyone's parade but the video is clearly staged (and if it wasn't child protection surely would've said something by now) - the site is actually a great marketing campaign for forthcoming Clive Owen movie "Shoot-Em-Up." Yet Metro newspaper were either heavily bribed or just a bit naive by running an article deeming the whole stunt true. Surely the "Copyright Shoot ‘Em Up Holdings" on the BPB website gave it away. But still, check out the staged shooting here.

17 August 2007

18,000,000 People Can't Be Wrong...

Break out the champagne! We just hit 18 million unique viewers on Viral Manager - our little tracker on all our viral campaigns! It's one of the first milestones we've actually been awake for (that little number keeps on rising all through our bedtimes) and lets hope the visitors keep on coming. Well done us!

Wij's Polar Peril

Furthering our post detailing the increasing amount greenagers populating the internet we at Rubber Republic have jumped on the eco-friendly bandwagon in the launch of our new game for the kid's network Webbliworld.com, a site made by Enable Interactive with funky design by Aardman Animations.

The "Wij's Polar Peril" game allows the young online environmentalists to shoot eco-baddies with their highly efficient EcoZappa. It's also designed so your aware just what kind of an environmental impact you'd have if you were to input these practices in real life.

The Webbliworld community has been labelled "the new Myspace for kids" where interactions include personalising Webbli character and sharing interests with other users, earning virtual currency known as Webbles as you go. It really is too cool for school.

09 August 2007

New UK web usage stats- the important bits!

Internet usage in the United Kingdom is showing no signs of slowing down according to this report as the online population is said to be 63 percent of the total UK population (aged 15 and above) which equated to 31.7 million unique visitors in the month of June. The average member of the online population is also said to have spent an average of 35 hours surfing the web during that time.

There have also been significant increases in unique traffic in comparison to May, the most being seen in Mozilla.org whose main program Firefox is the second most popular web browser behind Internet Explorer. Channel4.com's traffic increased by 39 percent likely to be caused by the launch of Big Brother 8 and their 4 On Demand service where you can watch their shows on your computer for free. Facebook also showed growth of 25% making it the fastest growing social network of June.

It's also worth noting that Mozilla's Firefox and Facebook are both open to users developing 'widgets' allowing full customisation and expansion, meaning their services are effectively constantly updated.

Never get lost online again....

Another colourful map of the interweb has been released resembling the Tokyo Metro network. Now you can hop on the various lines such as the busy Music or Social News line, stop off at the high traffic Junctions and browse the visitworthy Stations. The map also gives you the forecast at each destination - whether the future looks bright or if there's a storm ahead.

And for those who are familiar with the Tokyo Metro you'll be sure to find the positions of certain websites rather amusing, particularly Shibuya's station (a popular and fashionable haunt for young people) being YouTube on the web map.

02 August 2007

Greenagers rule the roost...

Contrary to the belief that teenagers are all heavy smoking anti-social types - the next generation are developing a growing environmental conscience and are now more receptive to 'green' advertising.

According to a this report 38% of online teenagers have environmental concerns and of those 15% are labelled as "Green Teens" who are seen as being especially responsive to online marketing. This group also are more likely to buy products online and use other online services such as chat rooms, mobile content websites and digital photo services.

They're also good advertisements themselves - 45% of them liked to be the first to hear about new products and their self-proclaimed popularity made them trendsetters among their peers. If we need evidence of the rise of the greenager, our sister company Delib recently launched an environmental game aimed at this age bracket called MyAbodo for Defra and has received over 100,000 views in the past fortnight.

01 August 2007

Who are Jamodu?

During our Ashes victory over the Aussie's in 2005 cricket fans were left slightly bemused over the 'new sponsors' of The Ashes - an unknown company called Jamodu.



One clever-clogs had gone about setting up a blog under the name of Jamodu and is offering your company "to be part of the craze that is currently sweeping the country" in the form of advertising space, just to earn back the cold hard cash he has said to be spending for his own advertising. Jamodu even got a heads up from Henry Blofeld on Test Match Special. While the Jamodu blog hasn't had a post in nearly 16 months, new BBC TMS discussions have led to a new wave of traffic and discussion about this mysterious company...

And for reference, the domains Jamodu.com and Jamodu.co.uk have been registered by a company in the radio frequency sector. I wonder if they're benefitting from the free advertising from npower, and now us of course.

24 July 2007

Google to target casual gamers

With 1 in 4 web users playing online games, Google are making moves to deploy Adsense more strategically, reports GigaOM.

At present, games can be played with strips of adverts around the outside- the player is able to ignore the ads easily and revenue from those adverts remains low. In their “AdSense for Games” presentation at last week’s Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Google outlined plans to integrate Adsense into flash games to ensure people see them a little bit more.

As the report says, "An AdSense optimized to Flash and other game-centric platforms would mean more revenue, would mean more companies jumping into this space, would mean tremendous shifts toward an audience of casual gamers which is (as the presentation noted), upwards of 200 million. The size of this audience cannot be understated: 1 in 4 of all Web users visit gaming sites, primarily to play casual titles. So a system which monetized this usage better wouldn’t just influence the game industry, but the development and direction of the Web in general."

Kensington Report viral series launches on Heavy.com

We've just launched a new viral series called the Kensington Report for Heavy.com - the US-based entertainment site.

Check out a couple of clips from the series here:
Racist Cheese
Alien Babies

The Kensington Report is a series of 8 short Chris Morris-syle satirical news reports ,taking a look at phenomena such as Mindjacking and posing questions such as "Does eating cheese cause racism?".

The answer's of course yes . . .

The series has already had over 400,000 views - so is flying around the web and doing its job of establishing Heavy.com in the UK.

More advertiser sponsored Kensington Reports are in production at the mo - with the next out in a couple of weeks. Keep tuned . . .

23 July 2007

A map of the social space

As the British summer is looking so darn awful it's definitely time to escape the eternal rain, so you might want to choose a lovely location from around the world by putting a pin into a map of the world and jetting off there!

But if you (like us) are addicted to the recent social networking phenomena like Facebook and MySpace you may want to take a look at this new Social Networking map to escape... and place your finger on the next sunny virtual destination - rather than real one . . .

This treasure style map, created by the guy behind xkcd.com, provides a creative depiction of the mass of online communities that have been conquering the internet in recent times.

We have already seen map-like depictions of countries based on pretty much anything: worldwide gasoline prices, polluting nations, income, internet diffusion... or the other way around! Similar to these, this nifty map of Online Communities shows how sites like Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Xanga, Orkut, and Second Life dominate the world.

The actual design and geography are not as random as it might initially look like...
Country size and position are significant. Each community’s geographic area represents its estimated size, and the ‘compass-rose’ next to the "straits of web 2.0" gives clues as to what each quarter signifies:

* Practical’ communities in the North.
* Nerdy and intellectual ones in the South.
* Communities connected to real life on the West.
* Those with a focus on the web itself on the East.

To check it out, visit: XKCD here

19 July 2007

Facebook limits app virality

Here's some interesting stats from inside Facebook re: the Facebook apps phenomenon.
Here you go (thanks to Nick Denton of Valley Wag Valley Wag for this):

- There are a total of around 1,131 apps
- Of the last 500 approved, only 5 have over 100,000 members, and none have over 200,000
- Only 5 within the last 500 have between 10,000 to 100,000
- Meaning that 489 out of the last 500 apps have less than 10,000 members
- The two main reasons for the slow down in virality of apps are: 1) Saturation 2) Facebook clamping down on allowing members passing apps to their whole address book

So there you go, as with much of web 2.0, Facebook apps are more hype than reality, and certainly aren't the route to rapid virality now that the Facebook team have limited the networking routes.

The message for any brands (or anyone else for that matter) who are thinking of developing a Facebook app is therefore: is it a risk worth taking? Especially given that a Facebook app without Facebook isn't worth the code its written in . . . This situation may change in the future, however for now Facebook's ability to generate true app virality is limited.

17 July 2007

Internet Ad growth will slow to a measly 30% in 2008

WPPs GroupM report makes interesting reading about the projected growth of internet advertising (and the demise of more traditional forms)

Perhaps the most interesting prediction though is that, while online growth is expected to be about 34% this year this will slow to 30% next year. A factor behind this slow-down is the move of internet users into social networks which are more difficult to access with traditional online ad methods.

Advertisers licking their lips at the prospect of breaking into these networks are increasingly looking to the 'viral effect' to achieve this....

13 July 2007

Superheros r us!

We've launched our latest viral campaign in partnership with entertainment site Heavy.com, this time to promote the Sci-Fi channels "Who wants to be a super hero" programme.

The film "Superhero next door" is the latest addition to our Kensington Report series of spoof news documentaries.

The film was shot by our sister company Rubberductions, and all creative was developed in-house in partnership with Heavy's team in New York.

The viral is similar to our recent Triumph campaign, taking a longer format at around 3 mins, and is designed as true advertainment - by incorporating the product within the creative.

Check it out here