We’ve combined with a group of other talented people to form 808south. There’s no firm category at present for what we aim to do but it revolves around the interactive space. We bring together emerging technologies and interactive thinkers to build complete brand strategies. Our projects fuse sensory engagement with marketing savvy to deliver brand experiences.

The sole focus is around the iBar at the moment, check it out on the 808south website.

A recent discussion with a client about the direction of the promotional marketing and promotional products industry got me thinking about likely trends in our space. We usually post about the current rumblings of the promo world but today I’m going to change the tune a little and post my top trend prediction for promotional marketing. A big call I know! but hey, it’s the blogosphere afterall. Read more »

What’s Joost? I hear you ask. Well first of all, it’s pronounced ‘juiced’ and not ‘Yoest” as my Dutch friend with the same name and I would have thought. Joost is an interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the web using peer-to-peer TV technology. It’s near TV quality video streaming to a PC or Mac. Read more »

Have you ever walked past someone on the street and asked in true Aussie fashion “hows it goin?” without really wanting to find out how its really going. Its like a form of saying a quick “hi” and communicating purely to show that we can. This is probably my first impression of the new buzz around the blogosphere - Twitter. Read more »

Back in January we told you about Trend Blend 2007+, a collaborative piece of work by the guys at What’s Next (nowandnext.com) and Future Exploration network. It was a good piece of work and now Richard from What’s Next has given us a new map - The 1900-2050 Time Line! Read more »

No its not the new metro Melbourne transit map, Nowandnext.com and Future Exploration Network have collaborated to create a map of major trends for 2007 and beyond, across ten segments: society & culture, government & politics, work & business, media & communications, science & technology, food & drink, medicine & well-being, financial services, retail & leisure, and transport & automotive. Designed like a transit map for a big international city, core ideas and trends are laid out like train stations and transfer hubs. Read more »

We’ve produced a fair few custom umbrellas in the past for our clients, but nothing like this one, which takes the rainy day blues into a completely different realm.

The Pileus umbrella has a projector in its handle that emits what would have to be one hell of ray of light to project photos or video onto the under belly of the old faithful umbrella. This is an interesting concept by the team at Pileus who also offers a web service type plug-in that will log into a Flickr or YouTube account and display your favorite pictures and video while you’re out and about trying to stay dry. Read more »

IBM has completed a comprehensive white paper titled “The end of TV as we know it: A future perspective”. It’s a very good future gazing exercise and definately worth a read if you have the time. Aside from the obvious, the paper touches briefly on how other things like marketing will also need to change circa 2012 as a result. In brief, one of the recommendations suggest:

“Segment: Invest in divergent strategies and supply chains for bimodal consumer types. Identify, develop and continually refine data-driven user profiles in order to optimize product and service development, distribution, marketing messaging, and service migration. Tailor content, advertising, pricing and reach dynamically”

It all about dynamic experiences…Exciting times ahead for everyone.

Download the entire paper here.