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Laphraoig You Tube video/ad

Amazing ad/video made by a random consumer! Many brands would give their right arms for this kind of consumer engagement - this isn't a one off for Laphraoig either. They have a really well written Wikipedia page demonstrating how much love the brand has as well as loads of photos of their brand being portrayed in a cool way on Flickr



Better still is Johnny Fubar's Laphraoig photoshoot on Flickr. He's basically taken 42 pretty stylish, arty photos of Laphraoig and posted them online. To see more click here.

Starbuck's Salon

At one of their coffee shops in NY Starbuck's are running a month long Salon concept. It's designed to be a cultural hot shop with artists, musicians, poets and a host of other creative people contributing to the Salon's make up. It describes itself as a "nomadic interactive coffee house" that plans to pop up all over the world.

One of the coolest things on the site is a tool to let you draw a self portrait. Give it a go here.

Banksy and Paris

Watch how Banksy doctored Paris Hilton's new album and secreted them into HMV stores all round the country! "Watch him doctor the packaging then secrete 500 copies in stores across London and the UK like some latter-day Willy Wonka." From Londonist.



Before long the the CDs were being sold on Ebay for hundreds of pounds. Poor old Paris hey!

For images of the prank click here for the Flickr set.

For more blurb about the stunt click here.

Grand Theft Auto and Coke

Coke has received a range of feedback from genius through to abhorence. Either way it's a neat idea and a sign of things to come.

Made by Wieden and Kennedy and Nexus Productions.

I can't help thinking that other brands would be more suited to exploring GTA's possibilities. A brand with negative baggage such as Coke is always going to be accussed of interference and ulterior motives whereas a brand more in keeping with GTA would have been more successful.

Thanks Mike for this.

Pop up restaurants / bars

Pop up restaurants have been an exciting phenomenon in Holland in recent months. Now they are set to hit London. In the Observer last weekend, there was a brilliant article about it. Here's an extract:

"First came the 'guerrilla store'. In warehouses or disused buildings in the hippest parts of London or New York, fashion designers would set up shops that lasted only a couple of days, allowing them to off -load stock or try out new creations to an audience restricted to those hip enough to hear about the openings by word of mouth.

And now we have the guerrilla restaurant; usually housed in makeshift structures and situated off every beaten track, with top chefs but a deliberately limited lifespan. For those drawn to restaurants with three-month waiting lists and secret phone numbers for the privileged few, this is the next step - a restaurant so exclusive that there's no advertising, it's very hard to find, and that if you're not in the loop it will have vanished by the time you even discover it.

Earlier this year, the Antwerp restaurateur Vinko Pepa opened a temporary dining space called Mist, crafted with postmodernist flair from rough, cheap materials and designed to vanish after five months. 'A temporary restaurant allows for more risk taking,' says Pepa. 'I had some talented chefs, Njegosh Kalicanin and Tim Teck, whom I wanted to give free reign to in the kitchen. It also allowed us to experiment with the interior. You can surprise people.'

There have been supperclubs across the world for some years, with club promoters taking over existing restaurants for one night only - Modern Times, for example, the London based retro jazz club, hosted a dinner at the old Titanic space this summer and at the Chelsea's Bluebird Dining Rooms last year. The guerrilla concept merely takes the exclusivity to another level - it's the foodie equivalent of the Eighties rave, where finding that elusive field somewhere off the M25 was all part of the experience."



The article likens these guerilla restaurants to the foodie equivalent of an 80s rave. Excitingly, Bistrotheque is planning to open an underground guerilla restaurant in the near future...the buzz has already started.

Whilst some of these ventures are commercial operations in many ways I find Ghetto Gourmet's model more interesting. They are a group of people in America who meet up regularly for spontaneous banquets organised entirely using the web.



They use Flickr to share their community's pictures and have a video on You Tube to drive support. It's a great example, although a bit rough and ready, of how to create a cult movement and keep a community alive.



The concept of a pop up restaurants is rumoured to have started in Cuba with the secret restaurants that Castro banned called Paladars. The most famous of which is La Guarida where I can personally recommend the seared tuna with sugar cane and lobster sauce followed by vanilla creme brule with a curry sauce!



It would be great to launch and underground, guerilla bar movement supported by one of our brands.

Thanks to the amazing Sarah Cowie for finding the Observer article.

Bud.TV

Bud is set to launch a TV website next February and will spend 10% of their budget on internet marketing.

From Herald Tribune:

"The site — called "Bud.TV" — is aimed at consumers between the ages of 21 and 27 who routinely visit popular sites such as MySpace.com and YouTube, said Tony Ponturo, Anheuser-Busch's vice president of global media and sports marketing.

"The use of the Internet is clearly a space that this generation has grown up with," Ponturo said. "The main reason that we're doing this is that we need to connect to these new beer consumers."

The Web site will have seven "channels" of original programming, said Jim Schumacker, who will oversee Bud.TV. The channels will feature sports shows, standup comedy and reality shows that are set in bars and restaurants.

Schumacker said one channel will imitate the YouTube phenomenon, letting views produce their own skits and advertisements featuring Anheuser-Busch products like Budweiser and Bud Lite.

While the shows will be original, Anheuser-Busch will not make them itself, Ponturo said. The company will act like an executive producer, choosing ideas to fund and buying completed shows to broadcast."

From Ray Bacon's blog:

"Anheuser-Busch will use its Super Bowl commercial time to launch a direct to consumer network called "The Bud Screen." The network will offer all manner of programming, branded content and advertising delivered to the desktop or an iPod. The brewer intends the network to be long-lived and to eventually be named "Bud TV." We've said it before and we'll say it again, the middleman - the networks - just aren't needed any longer. When a brand or program producer can deliver content directly to the consumer, there's no need for the current TV network set up. Oh sure, big changes are years away but it's happening and it will continue to happen faster and faster as more brands and content producers realize they can have their own channel of distribution."

Several alcohol brands already have pseudo TV channels such as Crown Royal, Cuervo and Jack Daniels but their content simply derives from their TTL marketing materials. Bud is set to embrace the "current.tv" trend and we will watch with interest.

Thanks to Mike Iskas from Zenith for this.