I must admit, I’m not a big fan of the European song contest. But this Saturday, when the actual show was almost done, all the artists had done their bit, I zapped by the contest. And I stopped and watched… and watched… and watched… I was surprised because the Norwegian organizers had actually pulled of something “2.0″, something very nice. They pulled of a flash mob with people around Europe. I’m not sure if this is the biggest one ever, but it was fun. I had no idea it was coming and was pleasantly surprised. Has the oldest, most boring program in Europe finally grown up? Take a look at what they did:

By the way: as you may know I am a fan of these kind of initiatives, the T-Mobile efforts in the UK also were very nice and a simple search through YouTube also will give you some great examples.

 As a boy I grew up watching football a lot. And though I’m not a UK resident I did see a lot of Gary Lineker, England striker, Barcelona player. He was "the role model" for every player, never got a yellow card, always nice, yet succesfull. Yet I never dreamed (or wanted for that matter) about seeing him in his ‘birthday suite’. The former England captain, now BBC Match Of The Day anchorman, showed up in this commercial. 

So why post it here? Well, for one thing because it surprised me, second I believe this is one of those commercials which could go viral. I talked about linkbait the other day in a training session I did on search marketing. Here’s an example of some brilliant linkbait by Walkers Crips…

Everybody hates commercials. There’s no television show I can put on without first having to see commercials. But why are these commercials so annoying? After all they are important. They pay for the programs and make sure we want to buy what we buy. After all, would you have bought that Samsung tv if Samsung hadn’t advertised for it?

There is a change going on though. People don’t want to be ‘forced’ to waych commercials. They want to choose if and when they watch them. Therefore commercials on YouTube are watched more often. Besides that, commercials have to be a lot more creative.

The video I found on YouTube is in my opinion a great example of ‘advertising 2.0′. This kind of commercial makes me happy. T-Mobile is giving the right example. It brings people together to do a fun thing (in this case singing) and make the ‘brand’ T-Mobile a fun brand.

It’s not the first time T-Mobile has done this. Earlier this year they did a probably even better one, with dancing.

That Americans want to do everything to get elected we knew. We also knew that most Americans don’t even bother to vote. This group of American celebrities tries to get people to vote. Funny sometimes, but also a bit ‘preachy’. But I guess Americans need that?

Last year I visited AdTech London. It were a couple of nice days where I learned a lot about Internet Marketing stuff and got to know some nice people. This year the organizers want me to come back and visit AdTech again. So they keep on sending me e-mails. And to be honest, if I weren’t going to PICNIC I think I would go to London.

Today I received another e-mail from the organisation. It immediately got my attention because of the title: "Are you a marketing cow?". Of course, being a blogger on Dutch Cowboys, this got my attention.

It turned out it was a little quiz to find out what my ‘IQ on Internet Marketing’ is. 15 questions about hot items concerning Internet Marketing, combined with questions about knowledge of specific subjects. Off course it’s nonsense, but still, its funny! Try it out (here) and let me know what your IQ is (and then I’ll tell you mine ).