Now this has been worth waiting for. Over a year if the truth be told, but ‘All good things etc….”

Our good friends (and erstwhile Rubber cohorts) Thought Den have just launched the Magic Tate Ball app available on both iOS and Ovi store.

The app itself is both a thing of beauty and bringer of beautiful things. It ‘analyses’ your phone’s incoming data (GPS / time of day / weather / ambient noise) and then suggests a work of art from the Tate’s collection that best matches that specific moment. I got Peter Blake’s ‘Tuesday’ (above) while Tiff is currently enjoying Richard Long, another Bristolian.

The video below shows it in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are delighted to be seeding this gorgeous app and even more chuffed to see early coverage it is deservedly getting.

The ‘Magic Tate Ball’ is the third of the recent Tate apps which included the award-winning Tate Trumps and Race Against Time

It’s Friday.

That means delicious bacon sandwiches delivered to our office by the wonderful bacon fairies at 40 Alfred Place.

It also happens to be the same Friday that BreakingGifs launched an ARG to win some fabulous limited edition prints inspired by the best TV show ever made Breaking Bad and mandatory viewing if you work here.

[WARNING: Spoiler Alerts]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh and it looks like it might not rain this weekend.

Happy Friday

We’re pleased to announce that we’re running a Digital Shoreditch #KittenCamp Special

NEXT #KITTENCAMP LONDON date: Mon 28th May, in a special East London venue to tie-in with Digital Shoreditch

Expect the usual *viral shenanigans*, further *meme-battling* and free beer courtesy of VAN Bring your friends, and your East London swagger.

To get (free) tickets, check the following Eventbrite for London

http://kittencampdigitalshoreditch.eventbrite.com/

Get involved: suggestions for the best memes you’ve seen recently to #KittenCamp

@ViralAdNetwork

@rubber_republic

In case you missed the last #KittenCamp, here’s what went down.

Kaythxbai

I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable with the word ‘awesome’; even when it wasn’t a cliche, ‘awesome’ sounded a bit too American and shouty to be pulled off with conviction on this side of the Atlantic.

And while its sentiment is undeniably positive and superlatively bombastic, it’s also seemed to be more volume than substance. In fact the only inspired definition I’ve read (butI’m sure there are others) was Umair Haque’s a few years ago. And little since has persuaded me that this is a useful word to qualify success or direct ambitions.

‘Remarkable’: now there’s a strong word that sounds good in a British accent.

If something is truly ‘remarkable’ it has those outstanding qualities we strive for: originality, impact and energy. But it has something extra – the compulsive trigger to create a spontaneous response, remark or conversation.

And ‘remarkability’ has always been the primary objective of anything we work on: To make it all the more remarkable through shared conversations.

So you’ll be hearing a lot more from us about ‘Remarkability’. And while it may sound like yet more marketing hyperbollocks, it is our inspiration, strategic corner-stone and the benchmark by which we will measure future success.

We will also try to moderate* our use of ‘awesome’.

*I’d like to say refrain from using it altogether but its pervasiveness on our site, even blogposts I’ve recently written may make this may be harder it should be

Last week we launched this, a film featuring the genuinely awesome and jaw-droppingly talented dancer Marquese ‘NONSTOP’ Scott.

The video was shot in one take. There are no edits, no visual effects and Marquese just turned up and did his thing without choreography.

We (along with the 43 million+ others) first noticed Marquese last September when he uploaded one of YouTube’s most viewed videos of 2012: ‘Pumped Up Kicks’.

Around the same time, INITIALS Marketing and Peugeot asked us to pitch on a video to launch the new Peugeot 208.

The video needed to appeal to younger drivers, genuinely offer YouTube audiences entertaining content while reinforcing the new Peugeot 208′s global advertising proposition ‘Let Your Body Drive’.  It was a match made in heaven, Marquese was an absolute delight to work with and so far so very good.

In just over a week the video has racked up nearly 400k views on the Let Your Body Drive channel. We’ve had wide coverage on blogs and sites including YouTube’s ‘Most Watched’; Buzzfeed; The Sun; Hypebeast; Neatorama; The Awesomer and straight into No.4 on the Viral Video Chart.

There’ll be more related NONSTOP video content released next Wednesday through the official Peugeot ‘Let Your Body Drive’ YouTube channel.

The track featured on the video is ‘Feel The Love’ by Rudimental ft. John Newman. It will be released on iTunes on May 27th.

I wanted to figure out how much time I’d wasted/procrastinated watching YouTube videos, since I set up an account in February of 2007.

The ‘videos watched’ feature is no longer available so if you’d like to find out your own shameful score:

1. copy and paste: gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/USERNAME?v=2 and replace USERNAME with your YouTube account username

2. Search for VideoWatchCount

3. Cover your mouth in shock.

Apparently I’ve watched 86,348 videos.

Not satisfied, next, I did a search for the average length of a YouTube video (4 minutes and 12 seconds) and used that to roughly work out how much time I’d wasted. This worked out as around:

21,759,696 Seconds
362,661.6 Minutes
6044 Hours
or about 252 Days.

Which is 3.5 times longer than Kim Kardashian’s marriage.

20 Weeks longer than Bryan Adams spent at number one with Everything I do (I do it for you)

and 183 days longer than the Chilean miners were trapped underground.

In the time I’ve spent watching endless kitten videos, I could have flown around the world 134 times, travelled to the moon 83 times or made to to Mars with 38 days to spare.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seriously.

BBC Comedy dude Will Saunders kicked things off with some exclusive new material including the lol-some Horse iPad sketch from Dawson Bros Funtime sketch show. We saw some really funny other stuff that is SO exclusive it hasn’t even been launched yet – watch out for them on BBC Comedy soon!

We also really enjoyed Paul McCrudden from AMV BBDO talking about their campaign for Snickers – ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’, which involved hi-jacking the Twitter accounts of celebs with a barrage of out-of-character tweets: Rio Ferdinand suddenly tweeting about how much he loved knitting, and Katie ‘Jordan’ Price confidently stating her view on the Chinese economy, brilliant!

Jon Burkhart took the stage to tell us about what went down at the previous Urgent Genius, featuring all sorts of things that were urgent or genius or both, including their parody of the Guardian Three Little Pigs ad. And here’s the original in case you’d missed it.

A tense meme battle commenced between Meme Master Meow and April’s LOLPuppy guest James Mitchell from BBH Labs. Here are the highlights:

Russian talent competition girls covering Bomfunk MCs ‘Freestyler’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dollar Shave Club

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Real Mitt Romney

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the rest:

Underwater Treadmill Cat

Guinness St Paddy’s day

Lionel Richie Hello collage

Pentagon shopping centre

Embedded

Horse_ebooks as read by James

Thus concludes the memes for this month.

You can see what Gus Ferguson thought of it in his lovely review

For more #KittenCamp news you can like us on Facebook, and follow the Kitten Tumblr. Join the #KittenCamp mailing list for all the latest memey news by dropping Ellie an email at ellie.robinson@teamrubber.com

Of the thousands of descendants into Austin every March, I’m almost positive that 86% of them are there to launch an app. Flyers are thrust into your hands everywhere you go, QR codes are attached to every available surface and downloads are traded for t-shirts. There’s just so much noise… Everyone is telling me that they’ve created something revolutionary, something unique, something jobs created the iPhone for.

All I want to do is nap.

We get it, your hot new social app is better than their new social app, and it’s going to be the biggest thing ever. Yeah, I promise to download it when I next get Wifi, now pass me a free burrito.

2) People are Cyborgs

In the same way that the 90s gave birth to the slashies (e.g. Model/Actor Model/Singer, Model/Model) SXSW has created a new race of humanoids designed to serve your every technological need. Phone out of battery? No problem, here’s a Fed Ex guy with plugs coming out of his arms. No Wifi? Don’t fret, there’s a homeless guy over there you can use as a hotspot.

Whilst the press went ape over the ‘Homeless Hotspot’ initiative (designed to be a source of income and a way to get members of the public to engage with rough sleepers) I thought that BBH had done a good job of creating a lot of debate and noise around homelessness.

That said… The irony of making small talk with someone homeless whilst they power your £400 iPhone 4s, so you can tweet about your £1000 platinum conference pass is almost too much to bear.

3) Intel are pretty much the coolest brand ever.

After seeing the magnificent Alejandra Carvallo speak at at the Sheraton, I’ve suddenly come over all dewey eyed for the big brand that thinks digitally.

Amongst other things, she spoke of brands trusting the wisdom of agencies, always thinking like a start up, offering artistic freedom for brand ambassadors and of listening to the conversation. Not just choosing to listen to the fabulous feedback their agencies give them, but reading every single YouTube comment, every single tweet and every single wall post themselves and responding when appropriate . The talk was called ‘Big Brands and You: Make The Love Connection’ and I walked away with a new thing to get fangirlish about.

Touche’ Intel. Touche’ indeed.

Liz and Chris at the Microsoft/Frog opening party.

Robot Boxing at Frog/Microsoft Opening Party

Austin at night – Tech Karaoke

Man Vs Machine – Who curates content better?

Light Trikes: Opening Party.

Too much excitement! Grabbing some laptop charge on the floor of the Convention Centre.

Are you at #SXSW ? Have you been instagramming too? Tweet us

It’s impossible to pack in everything you want to see (there’s just so much) but here are my highlights so far.

* Chill and The Daily What went head to head to discuss Man Vs Machine. In content curation, who does it better, the humans or the robots?

The Results:
Man, but with the help from machine. Also some very good points raised about making ads and content that influential curators will want to share, and how being an influencer comes with the weight of responsibility when it comes to finding content first, and preserving your integrity.

* Tech Karaoke
Get a load of geeks in a bar downtown and make them sing karaoke.

Highlights: The whitest man in the world singing Gangster’s Paradise by Coolio.

* Epic Meal Time – Meat is Might
‘Team Cuisine’ talk through their massive success and continued expansion throughout the web and get to the root of why they’ve succeeded in a (massively) saturated corner of digital space.

The result: Bacon. Bacon is at the root of their success.

* Catch Me If You Can: Frank Abagnale 10 Years Later
Charismatic confidence trickster talks about his life, experiences and what he’s up to now.

Result: Hoodwinked faces and two standing ovations.

If you’re not at SXSW (or are feeling overwhelmed by everything!) head over to Ogilvy notes for a consolidated list of everything that’s going on.

The next #KittenCamp is landing just in time for you to have recovered from SXSW and the delicious chaos of the #PopTartTour. Woo hoo!

NEXT #KITTENCAMP LONDON date: Mon 2nd April

Manchester date coming soon

Expect the usual *viral shenanigans*, further *meme-battling* and free beer courtesy of VAN   Bring your friends!

To get (free) tickets, check the following Eventbrite for London

http://kittencamplondonapril.eventbrite.com/

Get involved: suggestions for the best memes you’ve seen recently to #KittenCamp

@ViralAdNetwork

@rubber_republic

In case you missed the last #KittenCamp, here’s what went down.

And finally: POP TARTS. We know you love ‘em. If you want them delivered straight to the door of your agency, tweet using the #PopTartTour hashtag.

Kaythxbai

February’s #KittenCamp for Social Media Week London was a big hit! Thanks to all of the meme fans who made it along, it was great to see you all. Check out all the LOL cards!

Ed Walsh fought valiantly as the LOLPuppy (see him winning the Standing Cat Cup below), and the Don’t Panic boys gave a smashing talk on some of their video work.

…AND NOW FOR THE MEMES…

Here’s a selection of the best of the memes from the evening’s fierce battle:

Ecotricity’s nice little vid of collapsing cooling towers

Click here to view the embedded video.

The awesome stop motion video: The Joy of Books

Click here to view the embedded video.

The undeniably cute Depeche Mode cover from Dicken feat. Milah & Korben: “Everything Counts”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And here’s the rest:

In-bread cats

Ok Go’s Chevrolet music video

Hilarious Old spice VS Bounce commercial

The first Lego man in space

Receipt Dog

The creators of Chuck Testa bring you Dope Zebra

And finally, horror of horrors: Antoine Dodson (of Bed Intruder fame) has released a single.

Look out for more meme fun on our Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, and more info about the amazing #PopTartTour coming up soon

See you soon, #KittenCampers!