last blog!

Dear apricot blog fans and friends,
as from now I will be blogging directly @ www.apricot.at

It would be a pleasure to welcoming you there as guests!

I'd like to inform you that your RSS feed, share or follower-functionality are not transferred automatically - please subscribe at www.apricot.at/blog to receive future posts.

I am looking forward to seeing you there!
stay tuned ;-)

YSL perfume "Opium D'Belle"

Currently, the new commercial of the YSL perfume "Opium D'Belle" is polarising the minds of the British advertising supervision: critics say, the viewer may have the impression that the commercial visualises the intoxicating effects of drugs.

Why?
The 20 seconds spot shows a long-haired blonde who is dancing seductively in ecstasy, then at the end of the spot she is lying on the ground, whispering the sentence "I am your addiction,
I'm Belle D'opium" – have a look

Good or bad commercial?
However, this public discussion is maybe the best PR the commercial and Maison YSL can get again it's confirmed: advertising works out, people talk about it… ;-)

uboot.com

Ganz nach dem Motto „einmal geht’s noch“ relaunched Uboot.com - die älteste und erste deutschsprachige Web-Community Plattform - seinen Auftritt.

Die neue Plattform soll das Leben in den Social Communities erleichtern und enabled daher auch posts mit facebook, Twitter & Co.

Mehr Insights gibt’s hier!

Visit museums by means of Google

Google yesterday announced the Art Project: a unique collaboration with 17 world-renowned art museums. The project enables users to discover online more than a thousand works of art.

For 18 months, based on its street view- and Google Earth technology, Google has been working closely with the 17 art museums in order to implement the joint project.

Here’s a preview in one of my most favorite museums
– the Frick Collection in New York ;-)

iPhone - design of the week

Yay!everyday awarded last week the iPhone wooden phone cover of Grove as design of the week – have a look

Unfortunately the iPhones do not grow like wood ;-) …

Toyota - the way out of the crisis...

On January 11, 2011, Jim Lentz, President and COO of Toyota Motor Sales Inc. USA, gave an impressing speech at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.

He gave insights in the tough past, the current situation as well as the future plans and activities of Toyota to put even more focus on its customers and he of course talked about the development of the automotive industry as such. Get here the whole speech.

Hungry Eyes

Hungry eyes macht Lust auf mehr – Essen!

Auf der im November 2010 von drei jungen Österreicherinnen gegründeten Plattform wird über Essen, Reisen und Shoppen sowie über Kuriositäten in diesem Zusammenhang gepostet.

Ob hungrig oder nicht: die sites sind jedenfalls einen Besuch wert!

Hier geht’s zu Hungrey Eyes auf facebook und Twitter

GEMA and Omnifon agree license for Sonys music streaming service

The German organisation GEMA music archive and the cloud provider Omnifone agreed to license the first time for Sony's music-streaming service, "Qriocity”.

For the first time in history, the gateway for the introduction of more internationally competitive subscription based music services to the German market has been opened.

This first step toward cloud-based music services could a number of usage advantages for customers as well as for vendors and musicians and will for sure help to generate a new source of income for the German music industry.

Read here for more details

Hermès - augmented illusions

The japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka blows all traditional lines when it comes to creating “special moments”.

In his assignment for Maison Hermès Tokyo, he created an augmented window display, which catches a moment of naturally daily life: a woman blows at a scarf and the scarf softly sways in the air in response to the woman’s blow.

Have a look at the awesome animation!

"likes" vs. community

Intersection Consulting is well known for its smart graphs: whilst others need two pages of text to describe a phenomenon, they are able to visualize facts in form of one illustration. So their Social Media House of Cards as well as the Social Media Iceberg generate lots of positive buzzing.

This time, it’s all about the campfire analogy “Just because you get a bunch of people to sign up for your website or “like” you on Facebook, or even follow you on Twitter, doesn’t make it a community. So stop calling it one” published by Spike Jones,
co-author of brains on fire.

Again, the Intersection picture speaks for itself - take a look...

Nivea - Dein Name auf der Dose

Dass „traditionell“ nicht immer mit „verstaubt“ gleichzusetzen ist, beweist derzeit der erfolgreiche Beiersdorf–Konzern mit seiner „Dein Name auf der Dose“-Kampagne auf facebook.

Wer mitmacht wird belohnt und bekommt – mit ein bisschen Glück – eine limited edition der Nivea-Creme-Dose, auf deren Deckel die Namen von 500 Fans verewigt sind ;-)

Die gute Nachricht ist: es gibt noch Platz! Also schnell mitmachen
– hier geht’s zur Anmeldung

MINI - Auto des Jahrzehnts

Eine Jury des Fachmagazins “Automobilwoche” hat den Mini zum
"Auto des Jahrzehnts" ernannt. Kein anderes Modell habe die Entwicklung der Automobilindustrie seit Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts stärker beeinflusst.

Woman & wine - the Austrian winemaker calendar

Twelve young winemakers are taking an exceptional way to promote their wineries and products: with the slogan "young, successful and sexy" they presented their photo Calendar for 2011.

Target group: male wine lovers ;-)

Cadbury

Cadbury, the Kraft-Foods-owned British chocolate producer, is a trend setter when it comes to marketing:
their commercials for TV and their viral productions set high standards of entertainment, feature fair trade and are full of (British) humour.

Here a selection of the most popular TV spots and virals:
- Eyebrows
- Gorilla Advert – based on Phil Collins’ song “in the air”
- Fish battler
- Big Planet Cocoa-Farm in Ghana and last but not least the famous
- Lily Allen’s Cadbury cover versions

Enjoy ;-)

Brian Dunn loves social media

The Social Media-enthusiast Brian J Dunn, Best Buy’s CEO, recently made the experience how it feels when being hacked:

Blogging and Tweeting about a variety of private and business related subjects like about his kids, his experience in Best Buy stores or his impressions of and with Business partners, suddenly one subject stood out in an surprising way:

The “unusual” message “I’ve been having a lot of great sex lately, and here’s why” on his twitter account caused quite some reactions and a short crisis @ Best Buy internally:
recognizing that the password of their CEO was hacked, the IT department reacted quickly and put some additional security steps in place to avoid any future digital intruders…

Today Brian Dunn says he learned his lesson: he changes his password frequently and despite the headaches Social Media can cause, he still loves to keep posting in purpose to spot trends and to communicate with employees and customers.

discarded tires - what to do with them?

Disposing old tires adheres quite some challenges when it comes to think about the environmental aspect.

The Austrian WIL AG has the answer:
recycle and use the newly gained material internationally for playgrounds, manufacturing and industrial purposes.

This is how they put their effort into sustainable recycling and how they market new products: from the wire to playgrounds - maybe your child is playing on one of these… ;-)

The iPod ecosystem

One could think that in times of iPhone and iPad the times of the iPod are over – but on the contrary:
Steve Jobs said once “like the portable CD player revolutionized the mobility in the 80ies, the iPod will revolutionize 2K – and he was right:

If it is music, videos or sports, the iPod reaches and appeals all kinds of target groups. It inspires its users to share their most treasured, private and fun moments and activates them to change their life styles. Some of these geeks are so into it, that they develop gadgets and even features for the iPod.

According to Apple, which meanwhile confirms Kane Kramer as the inventor of the origin iPod, an average iPod-user spends about 150 USD for gadgets.

Find here some inventions inspired by loyal and enthusiastic iPod-users:
- Nike & iPod Sport Kit
- Kensington International Travel Charger for iPod and iPhone
- the cool iwearable-bags from urban tool
And for all iFans – join the iPod-community! ;-)

Mashable awards 2011

On January 6, the very best of tech and the web were honored at the 2010 Mashable Award Gala in the Cirque du Soleil arena in Las Vegas!

Here some of the winners per category:
Best Social Media Management Tool: HootSuite
Most Creative Social Media Campaign: Stand Up For WWE
Best Social Media Customer Service sponsored by BlackBerry: Eurail.com
Best Internet Meme sponsored by Dynadot: Bed Intruder
Best Music Discovery Service: Fizy
Must-Follow Personality: Super Junior
Best Social Media Service for Small Business: ReachCast
Entrepreneur of the Year: Doug Walker
Best Location-Based Service: Foursquare and of course last but not least ;-)
Best New Gadget: iPad

Get the list of all winners here

Wake up! - the iPhone clock hassle...

It's an old law: winners provoke jealousy and therefore criticism:
When the iPhone clock gave troubles when turning the clocks from normal time to summer time (daylight saving time (DST)) and back, the critics of malfunction could be calmed down quite easily.

Now, entering the New Year, the same bug occured and could not be solved by Apple until January 3.

Certainly this causes criticism and others are just mocking around a bit – some in quite a funny way:
Mashable, e.g., gave some hints how to install a reliable clock ;-) and Padmini Harchandrai (CNN) summarizes as the following:
"Really Apple? Y2K was so ten years ago!"