Damien Mulley

The Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources will hold hearings based on the proposed Broadcasting Bill 2007. These will take place in Committee Room 1 at 10.00 a.m. on 10 and 11 January 2007 and will be webcast.

Archives of the hearings will also be available on-line on this page the day after the meeting. Also of note:

An on-line discussion forum will also be available from 10 January 2007, where members of the public may make their vews known on the proposed Broadcasting Bill. For more information visit eConsultation.ie

Drop of milk with your coffee?

Law firm apologises for divorce advertisement

The advertisement, which was taken out last week by Farrell Family Law Solicitors, invited those who had an unhappy family Christmas to contact them.

Angelina Jolie as a god and Walmart as hell.

Free SEO consulting from Richard. If you want to get higher search engine rankings, give him a shout.

Blogging is gay. As is social networking. Or rather LGBT people are more into blogging and social networks than their their heterosexual comrades.

Get a “Best of” of the Portadown News. This was a great site.

Aluminium covers for iPod Shuffles. Cute.

Ads can be fun:Tickle me Elmo on fire. I’m reminded of this quote from Terminator 2:

“The Terminator wouldn’t stop, it would never leave him. It would never hurt him, or shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him, and it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers that came over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only thing that measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.”

Another legend departs for elsewhere.

On October 12, 2006, his 77th birthday, Magnusson was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Magnusson is noted as saying “this has to be one of my worst birthdays ever”. Sadly his condition meant he was forced to cancel a string of public appearances. He died on 7 January 2007.

The new Limerick Blogger home is at www.limerickblogger.org

Change your bookmarks, change your subscriptions. Well done to squid on the move. That new template is looking well. Is it a FG site? 😉

Do do do do do do doooo, de de de .. etc

Image stolen from the Fianna Fail front page:

Kerry North Fianna Fáil TD Tom McEllistrim posed with Face, aka Dirk Benedict outside the Dáil. Face, the pretty boy of the A-Team is the one on the left. The smiling divil on the right would be Tom.

God that so felt like a Blogorrah post.

Jason has blogged about a WordPress security issue which allows people to get the emails of all posters and event people who leave comments. Disabling public registration seems to fix it but see Jason’s blog for more.

All the Bebo haters can tune out now. 🙂 I’ll be on Spin1038 in a little while to talk about the Irish Bebo Profile competition that I’m running from the Irish Awards Bebo profile.

The idea for it really is to get the word out to the possible future bloggers about the Blog Awards, to see exactly how many people from Bebo take part in this (I’ve not seen any good metrics on Bebo) and possibly to annoy those people that don’t think Bebo deserves attention. Oh and maybe to see can I melt another Blacknight server. 😉

If you want to nominate yourself or a friend’s Bebo then fill in the Bebo Awards form.

Kudos to Jason Roe for writing the scripts and backend stuff.

Yes yes, I would think that the people that read this blog know about viral ad campaigns but I’m going to mention a few I like and what could be done in the small Irish market to send an ad around.

Even with little resources, a company or indvidual can get massive coverage for their product or endeavour. This seems to be happening more and more even in the little old broadband backwater of Ireland. Judging by the 10s of 1000s that visited my site to hear Twink tell her husband to zip his mickey (since removed after advice) and the loads of hits that Claire got for the Meteorite Gardai, it shows there is a massive potential audience even for something so parochial and the cost of distribution is zero.

These were, I suppose, very much unintentional viral campaigns. That’s the odd thing with a viral ad/viral video, they could be started by an ad company or by some joe public who just uses these products in a fun way.

I like what Viking did with their office supplies being used to recreate scenes from movies and the public being asked to guess the films. The site from what I can see was hugely popular and I’m sure most of the traffic to the site was seen during 9-5 by office workers, perfect.

A recent flickr photostream of a Jaguar being covered in post-its appeared to just be one of the usual pranks but I bet a post-it company could work on this idea and run a competition for car art using post-its. UPDATE: They made ABC news over this. Nice ad for the company and the atomsphere there.

The Diet Coke and Mentos videos that went all over the planet were started by a bunch of fun-seeking people but now both companies are apparently getting into the game and running competitions. I’d prefer people drinking or chewing my product more than wasting it but extra sales are probably more important for these guys.

I thought the best ad for Toyota in 2006 was what the Top Gear team did to a Toyota Jeep. I’m sure the video predates 2006 but I found it a testimony to the Toyota brand. I bet it helped increase sales of Toyota jeeps. I’m surpised Toyota didn’t cash-in on this. Maybe they didn’t need to do anything and just watched sales increase. Were I them I’d licence that segment from TopGear and free it to be used online. Stick it on YouTube and all the rest of the video sites. The original version of this I found on Google Video but it since got wiped.

An intentional (I would think) viral video campaign came from the Will It Blend? crew who were there to sell their blenders but blending things you didn’t think possible got them worldwide attention and a segment on the most watched American morning show. Cost? (If we are to believe there wasn’t a PR company with shills pushing the thing down every journo’s throat) – Safety glasses, electricity, a few working iPods and a dustpan and brush. How much would their competitors have spent on ads to get the attention of the same audience?

I don’t think that Dove makeup and photoshop ad was that good. It was viral though but I’m not sure did it want people to actually try out their product the way the Diet Coke and Mentos ad did but it sure as hell got them some great and free brand recognition for an area of the market they want to target. It did however seem costly to make and the ad wasn’t fun or funny. It stimulated the deep thought part of the brain and for some reason laughter travels faster than consideration on the net. Alsot the Beeb made that Toyota “ad”, the kids made the Mentos “Ad”. Fair enough Viking did make a website for their campaign.

Suggestions for Irish Companies:
So could small Irish companies use viral ads to spread the word and either sell products or at least create brand recognition? What cold we see some of the blogging companies do?

Pat Phelan and Roam4Free could create a stop-motion video of clamshell phones singing some song. Not really showing off the product itself but definitely getting brand recognition and using a tool for free roaming.

Maybe Mary Gilmartin at AdvancedTechnology Products could create a video using their products. Maybe film the reaction of people when people in the cleaning room Space Suits just walk around like tourists in the streets of Ireland or do a whole John 3:17 thing and appear at numerous public events in the suits. Then there’s puppetry with the latex gloves and other such products…

Bubble Brothers – Hard to do something with an alcohol product. Get engaged couples to talk about their cute engagement stories or to even re-enact them and have them put them on YouTube. Have engagmentStories.ie host the best ones. Bubble Brothers will send 10 bottles of champagne to your wedding.

Aer Arrann – Just dozens of clips of Michael O’Leary mouthing off and just at the end have white text on a black background. “If you fly with us then this arrogant bollox doesn’t get your money”.

Woah, just 3 sponsorship slots left for the 2007 blog awards. That was fast!

USB heated slippers. Seriously like, why? The market for stupidity ins infinite.

A good idea is heat senstive spoons. That makes much more sense. Have they these on baby bottles yet?

Bono wants to squeeze more out of his back catalog. 50 years is enough surely. Surprised PJ Harvey is also wanting to have copyright extended.

Guy sues GF over her blogging about their sex life. Was only a matter of time for this to happen.

Geek out. Comparison of spaceship sizes from popular sci-fi franchises.

A frank note to one of those people with ultra-senstive car alarms. I must print out some red cards or notices for asshole Mahon point drivers who block multiple lanes so they can get shitty bargains.

Bo Selecta interviews Meatloaf. This is brilliant. Pity I couldn’t find it without commentary:

Bill Bailey on Argos:

Bill Bailey – Kraftwerk Tribute( as already seen on Blogorrah):

Matches in a Microwave:

I’ve signed up to attend BarCamp South East on January 20th and I’ve put myself down to give a talk too. The talk will be my experiences of working in IrelandOffline and my views on how to effectively lobby the Government and big business with a budget of zero and no fulltime staff. It will not be a talk about telecoms/broadband in Ireland.

Off the top of my head it will cover:

• Setting up a lobby group structure
• How to engage the public/get supporters
• How to engage the press
• How to engage industry and the Government
• How to research and fact-check