Nike wins FPM Best Olympic Themed ad. - I beg to differ!

FPM stands for Fourth Place Medal and is a series of awards given by a group of bloggers on the Yahoo Olympics Sports page. One of the awards recognizes the best Olympic Themed Ad. Nike's ad proclaiming "All that you need is inside of you" is the winner of the FPM Medal for best commercial.

The advert is motivating and well in line with the Olympics spirit but side-by-side, Visa's GO World advert stands out nicely. Whilst Nike's 'Courage' campaign revolves around the individual, Visa's 'GO World' puts the spotlight on the community. Nike's campaign seems to forget the social aspect of man, whilst Visa promotes that strategically.

Having said that, Nike's video out-performed Visa's online. The video has managed to capture 315K views whilst Visa's 'GO World' attracted some 65K views. Both videos are complemented by a dedicated online site. Visa's 'GO World' site also allows the public to tell their stories about how this year's Olympic Games inspired them. Athletes and spectators alike are the focus of Visa's campaign because they all make part of 'the world' of which Visa chooses to be the number one fan this year.

All the above arguments lead me to showcase one of Visa's GO World stories. Enjoy, it's very authentic and inspiring:

Agency Insider: Inside ME Magazine

Some time has passed since the last Agency Insider. In this issue we chat with Art Director Jon Banthorpe about ME design magazine, its local online presence and the local print industry...and promise this discussion will not end here!

KG: So ME was previously Modern Elegance and had been published for some time. The magazine worked and was one of the coolest around from the very beginning, but then there was a silent phase and a big come back which brought us the magazine as it is today...what happened?, what changed? What didn't?

JB: M.E. was initially a sold magazine based solely on Fashion. With the advent of more free magazines, local magazines with cover prices were very badly affected -even today not many people are considering producing a local magazine with a cover price.

The silent phase you are referring to was our redesign period. We wanted to broaden the magazine's base and take it away from just fashion, concentrating on design and lifestyle as a whole. If you compare today's issues to the past I think you'll find almost everything has changed apart from a few core elements. The main drive has been towards quality - of images, of editorial, and of journalistic content.

As with any changes, we made adjustments and responded to their success or failure, but magazines are very time based and changes must be gradual. The 2008 M.E. is the closest so far to our ideal publication, not that there aren't still adjustments to be made.

KG: The local print industry includes some 25 free magazines
distributed with established networks...does this worry ME magazine?

JB: There are a lot of free magazines, and we pay attention to all. But honestly I think there are only a number of magazines I would recognise. I would love to be in a position where we don't have to pay attention to anybody but that would just be complacency. Though I do think we lead the field in certain areas, and we plan to improve these and more.



KG: Who is in your opinion the typical ME reader?

JB: It's difficult to pin down a typical individual, we approach the magazine from so many levels. Ultimately our ideal reader is one that seeks quality in all things. This could be quality in products, but equally this would also be quality in ideas and execution.

KG: ME's editorial team includes contributions from around the world...is it the same with its readership, and how this fit in your online strategy (medesignmag.com)?

Our distribution is purely local, so other than foreigners in Malta that read the magazine, our readership remains locally based. We do send a lot of issues abroad to contributors, potential interviewees and others and always receive a positive reaction which is encouraging.

As for the website, all websites must have an international outlook, as is their nature. Our viewing figures tell us we receive a lot of foreign and local hits, and this is largely due to the breadth and quality of the subjects we cover. Ultimately I'd like medesignmag.com to be the most viewed site in Malta - once a month is not enough for the amount of material we generate.

Best Non-Fiction of the Year So Far

I've just received a list of Amazon Best-Sellers. I will not simply reproduce the whole list but I'd like to highlight this particular book. I love political campaigns, especially when these are seen from a purely marketing perspective. Hence, if you're into this as well, you may find this link quite interesting: read more

P.S. this is not a sponsored recommendation!

Baidu played home and made it away!

Baidu is often described as 'the Google of China'. Numbers show that Baidu manages to capture over 62% of Search in China and places 19th in Alexa's overall site ranking. Being a leading search engine and being in China, Baidu has come up with online services dedicated to the Beijing Olympics which unfortunately, I had to translate using Google Translator!

Whilst being big in China, Baidu has also placed 8th in Adage's Digital A-List. Baidu is experimenting with search and moving away from basic text search. You see...it's not all Google as yet, even though we love them.

Google at the Olympics

Since Google has set out to conquer the world it could not miss out on featuring the World's Olympic Games! The Google doodles (logos) featuring next to the search box are only a small part of Google's initiatives related to this year's Olympics.

Amongst these initiatives one can mention iGoogle's Olympics Gadget featuring the latest results and game information. The same information featuring in the gadget is also available on mobile via Google mobile. But this is not all, users can get the latest results, events and stadium locations mapped out within Google Maps. The Google Maps widget has been embedded on Google's official Olympics site (below).


Google's Olympics website is available in 66 countries and 31 languages.

An urban initiative by MINI

During the next 15 days you can spend sometime pondering on the 'Creative use of Space' and come up with a cool and appropriate design for minispace.com expressing your thoughts about the subject. Apart from getting the chance to feature your artwork on mini's site, you may also win some interesting goodies (including a 32GB iPod touch). More details here

If on the other hand you are too busy to participate, you may still want to have a look at this creative initiative from MINI

'Made by LAB1977': Creative to say the least!

It's August and the business world will soon be on shutdown, yet Lab1977 keep opening new online venues which are pleasing to the eye. The latest has been a brand new website for SMS Travel. Following the busy pre-summer months during which everyone was planning his/her vacation, SMS must have dedicated some time to refurbish their online space.

The website is animation based which for a corporate brand such as SMS may initially look strange. One would expect an informative, cluttered website full of the latest offers and all, yet the new SMS Travel website is an online journey, "inspired by travelers and their belongings" as Lab1977 put it.


I am no fan of heavy animated website and must admit that I tend to question their flexibility when it comes to website maintenance,updating and direct links. Yet brands such as XFM (Malta) and SMS Travel seem to be managing well with them (both sites were designed by the crew at Lab1977).


A humble constructive suggestion from our side would be to eliminate the flight rates in pdf and provide these within the animation, or at least in PDF. In my case the PDF document took sometime to load and had I not been interested, I could have moved away. A simple but useful add-on are the Social Networking functions at the bottom of the site. An further improvement to that would be being able to post direct links to specific web-pages on my social profile / or simply send the link via email.

Finally we cannot not comment about the Apple products which feature frequently in the animations (iPhone in this case) Why is it that we all want those cool gadgets around, even on our virtual desks?!

Read more: Related news from Lab1977, SMS Travel website

Vodafone Soundbites and some other red snippets

July has been a relatively quiet month on BLAB and we need some catching up on a number of interesting stuff happening locally and abroad. Starting off I'd like to introduce Vodafone Soundbites:



The site has been launched just last Sunday and is being run together with MTV networks. This is not the first initiative Vodafone has done within the international music scene. Vodafone's Music site is another very good example of how interactive Vodafone intends to be. The good thing about it all is that the network is as big as 26 countries and hence should bring much more to its customers than anyone else...but oh yes I am biased and very loyal to this brand.

Locally, and whilst I was on my way to Australia, Vodafone launched yet another interactive service: Breaking News Alerts in conjunction with TimesofMalta. This is no secret since the service is open for all mobile phone users for free.