breakfastinbates.com

look at this post, now look at yourself, now back to this post. the post is now… diamonds.

if you have no idea what we’re babbling about, you must be one of the disproportionately tiny group of people who haven’t had their lives changed by the @OldSpice guy. kickstarted by a tv spot (the kind of spot that makes you wonder what the creatives at W+K are smoking), the man your man could smell like, packed with random one-liners that internet memes are made of. or maybe you just weren’t reading our blog. we’re hurt.

i’m on a horse!

in a fit of brilliance, the oldspice team took it a step further on twitter and facebook, replying user comments with their own video responses. previously unknown actor isaiah mustapha answered questions in the comfort of his manly bathroom, entertaining @AlyssaMilano, @guykawasaki, @kevinrose, interacting with @Starbucks and even helping a certain @jsbeals propose to his girlfriend.

why we think it’s brill:

finally! a  campaign that makes no pretenses, pokes fun at itself, and manages to capture the rock solid frozen hearts of our cynical consumer without resorting to trickery, incentives or the usual guerrilla marketing ploys. people shared it because they enjoyed it, brand awareness has gone through the roof, and everyone wants to be that man your man could smell like.

no more ladies-scented body wash for us.

we’re not really sure how you win the ipod touch 8gb. we just now that playing it, posting a photo on the facebook group and getting friends to like it, and voila! you suddenly have a chance to win it. which is more chance than you’d have if you didn’t. right? right?

for the uninitiated, steam is a gaming distribution platform developed by valve. basically, now you have something else to spend your money on. on games. tasty tasty games (which steam lets you download straight to your computer).

and if valve sounds vaguely familiar, they’re the ones who brought us that uber hit – portal.

so what’s the big deal with steam anyway? now, its available on mac. okaayyyy… and?

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you poke, you plant and you dispose bodies, all before lunch. yes, of course, we’re talking about facebook. it’s all fun and games till your privacy has been encroached no? we wonder how many people actually read the t&cs of well, anything. fun fact of the day: facebook’s privacy policy is longer than the united states constitution. wonder what it is that they’re hiding in there, eh?

you may not be as cultured (or pretentious as some may say) to ever have watched the 2004 movie “downfall” about hitler’s well… downfall, but popular internet culture insists that you must have at least seen one incarnation of the “angry hitler” parodies. from xbox live to conan leaving the tonight show to the alternative watchmen ending, the dude’s put out about all sorts. while my personal favourite is the one where hitler gets mad at grammar nazis (lol) the latest hot remix is undeniably the latest one after “downfall” producers issued youtube nasty court letters ordering them to remove all parodies.

will free speech and fair use prevail? or are we doomed to this DMCA dictatorship?

p/s oddly enough, the director of the movie is a big fan of the spoofs/spinoffs. go figure.

oh the irony. the last post mentioned last year’s twestival. so what can we expect this year? hmm, the biggest gathering of people/tweeps/tweeple/twitterers taking pictures of themselves at starbucks (ooh. even the location’s perfect)? we’re pretty curious what’s gonna pull the best auction action… a night with josh lim? a date with joyce? a train ride with pole-dancing girl? someone please update us. we’re sending jeremy over, but it appears he’s already light years away from sober so our fingers are nowhere near crossed.

When? 25th March 2010 @ 7pm. Today la.

Where? Starbucks, Ground Floor (G-01), Tropicana City Mall

How much? RM 5 for tickets (includes a drink and lucky draw entry).

another great example of how social media has spurred on globalisation, the twestival (a portmanteau of “twitter” and “festival” for those of you still suffering from hangovers) is a global series of 100% independent charity nights. from its humble london beginnings, the twestival sparked a global movement less than 6 months later.

kl has embraced the twestival local, a spin-off for smaller charity events. and it’s happening soon:

mist club bangsar @mistclubbangsar
12 september 2009 :: 7pm to 10pm
18, jalan liku, off jalan riong, bangsar, 59100, kuala lumpur, malaysia

all proceeds from tickets and the sizable auction will go to destiny starting point, a home for delinquents aged 13 – 17 in klang.

related links: kl twestival @twestivalkl nikicheong rage suanie

if you’re the teensiest bit interested in the internetz and harnessing its power for the better good (but mostly for worse in this country) of communication, then you obviously know of the latest cutting-edge marketing tool – twitter.

say what? hasn’t twitter been around for ages?

well, judging the light speed at which the local industry paces, we’re glad anyone is taking web seriously. so, be nice.

skittles made digg frontpage by doing away with the typical corporate site, choosing instead (wowee junior juice) to create a mashup of skittles identities on other popular social sites: twitter, flickr, wikipedia, facebook and youtube.

the bibgang has to hand it to them, they have balls. with absolutely no control over displayed content (their landing page pulls all results from public tweets with the word “skittles”), skittles ain’t sweatin’ because, hey, exactly what kind of PR and media coverage are they getting here?

more than likely this hype will serve to excite and delight our stone age advertising brethren, who will in all probability clap their hands at the prospect of “going viral” (another overused, much-hated term of ours). like we said before, having one solitary and inactive facebook group does not a new media campaign make.

so before you start prancing around in your social media tights and tutu, do read up what other brands have been doing first.

the world we live in is a scary place.

but the world wide web is just downright freaky.

few individuals have experience the true destrucitve power of the digital mob, and they’re still recovering from the shockwave of the “human flesh search engine”.

despite its name, it isn’t some cannibalistic online retish ritual, rather a transliteration of “human-powered search engine”.

in 2007, a beijing woman leapt to her death after discovering her husband’s extramarital affair. the mob chinese netizens who were following her saga sprang into action to expose the villian who drove her to suicide and to mete out justice.

with pitchforks and torches in hand, they tracked down her husband – a saatchi & saatchi executive – uncovered and posted his personal details online, protested outside his office and smote him with the furious anger of thousand angry cyber vigilantes. he ended up losing his job.

this hive of digital intelligence has also dealt with Gao Qianhui for her rantings on the Sichuan earthquake, the kitten killer of hangzhou and grace wang the “free tibet” traitor just to name a few.

the phenomenon is one belonging uniquely to china. news spreads like wildfire (sometimes within mere hours), gathering speed and numbers as it goes along, recruiting slueths and experts (the hangzhou case was solved largely thanks tourism experts who identified the location where the video was filmed) and infecting everyone with similar moral outrage. many sources credit this to their giant online population which stands at over 250 million and confucius teachings to take matters into their own hands.

think of the “human flesh search engine” as a swarm of fire ants that devours everything in its path, stripping away anonymity in your online haven where you used to be able to say and do anything you liked.

so if you’re planning to arouse anti-chinese sentiment on the web, don’t. just don’t.

thought this one-panel’er apt in light of the lively – some say robust – digital (ugh) discussions.