Here’s a nice little present from American Express in Australia. Every American Express cardholder was sent a “Talking Tag” which they could include with any of their gifts. Cleverly, the tag directs them to a site for an augmented reality experience customized (somewhat) just for them.

Using your webcam to scan the card, lips appear telling whether the gift’s recipient has been naughty or nice. Choosing from eight different voices ranging from a surly “scot” to “nanna,” they will get a gift message that’s sure to conjure a smile.

Interested in downloading your own set of tags? You can choose and print them out here.

Full disclosure, the interface is a little slow, the messages a little uninspired and the voice stereotypes a bit tired. But hey, it’s Christmas.

Are you like me? Do you dress up fancy and spend hours perfecting the moves from Dance Central for Xbox Kinect? Okay, me neither. But French fashion label Lanvin’s cheeky mash-up promoting its Fall 2011 collection found its way to my inbox. And I love it.

The video, which has gone somewhat viral, features models dancing to Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me” from the perspective of the Kinect. I guess what I love is that it ticks all the boxes fashion marketers deem obligatory in showcasing a collection – perfect models, perfect clothes, opulent/textured setting – but still manages to throw a curve ball. Lanvin is having quite bit of fun here, tapping into to a pop culture phenomenon, while still showcasing their clothing and brand aesthetic with a visual sensibility that’s familiar enough not to break their longstanding, high-end narrative.

All in all, I felt it broke the mold for a fashion brand (that dates back to 1909). And it works.

A game changer? Excuse the pun and tell us what you think.

Great branding is in the details. It’s granular. It’s about levering every possible touch point to reinforce a consistent message. So imagine my delight upon to discovering a brand that’s sweating their brand identity right down to a discount promo code.

Bonobos is an internet-driven men’s clothing brand and e-tailer that pride itself on a refusal to sacrifice comfort and fit for the sake of style. Earlier this week I came upon a web banner ad that drove that message home. Short and Sweet.

“Buttery Soft” it read. To be more precise, it read “20% OFF. Use this code: ‘Buttery Soft’ to get offer.” I clicked through. I poked around their site. I came away understanding a distinctive point of view – comfortable men’s clothing – from an online, everyman’s clothing retailer.

Comfort, in and of itself, may not seem to be a unique, or distinctive claim. In this case though, the comfort thread is sewn through every tout, copy claim and even the tone of voice employed on their blog. Bonobos owns it.

And I own a new pair of cords.

Last summer I wrote, with admitted enthusiasm, about an ambush marketing stunt by Dutch brewer Bavaria at the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This summer it is an upstart German Airline named Germanwings that has caught my attention – the attention of many, many others – with a Facebook Places ambush.

Instead of paying for an expensive exhibition booth at ITB Berlin (the world’s largest travel tradeshow), low-cost carrier Germanwings used Facebook Places to create check-ins at each one of its competitors at the fair. When someone checked in at an airline’s booth, their status update would read something like “Air France: France for a bargain price is only available from Germanwings,” or “Air Berlin: You’ll get to breathe Berlin air cheaper with Germanwings!”

The check-ins and hidden messages were distributed to the visitor’s Facebook friendsvia their newsfeeds, amplifying the reach of this cheeky campaign.

Ambush marketing is not something we associate with trade shows. We generally see it during the World Cup, the Olympics, TIFF and other high-profile events when advertisers try to associate themselves with the event, without having to pay exorbitant sponsorship fees (Google “ambush marketing” and you’ll find plenty of great examples.)

In the case of the Germanwings stunt, it’s not only innovative, but superbly targeted and marries offline to online in a way we’d all love to see more of.

Watch the video for yourself and see whether you appreciate their effort as much as I did.

I’ve started to notice friends “thinking about” stuff or “watching” this or that movie in their status updates. It turns out thinking about Labatt 50 or watching Withnail And I is a thing you can “check into” via the latest social networking craze/fad/revolution/gamechanger.

I figured it was time to sniff around.

For the uninitiated, GetGlue is more or less Foursquare for the couch potato. Instead of checking into restaurants, bars, or coffee shops, GetGlue lets you “check in” when watching a movie or TV show, reading a book, listening to music, playing a video game, or even discussing a topic. The mobile app (or browser add-on) lets you connect with friends via the usual social media suspects to share what you’re doing and get recommendations for new couch-centric endeavors, based on your history.

In addition to racking up points for check-ins, you also unlock sticker achievements (like badges on Foursquare) based on platforms (”the iPhone sticker”) or media (TV networks and magazines like Wired have partnered up for specialized stickers). There are also interest-based stickers you can earn – like Movie Buff or Foodie – for submitting ratings and reviews via the app.

Should marketers and advertisers care? I think so. This month, the app has passed a million users and boasts some hefty social media stats.  Its “stickiness” may not be obvious, but it is simple: for consumers who’ve wanted to jump on the Foursquare and Facebook Places bandwagon without the added inconvenience of having to leave the house, this is the perfect app. For marketers looking to reach those of us at home with one-year olds, the community aspect is rife with the potential and benefits (if you hurry) reaped from first-mover status.

Is GetGlue going stick with consumers long term? I’d love to hear what you’re thinking.

The Official Ralph Lauren 4D Experience – London from Ralph Lauren on Vimeo.

Every category, product or service, has its conventions. Things that are done over and over again either because they work, because we can’t think of anything new, or because not doing them would risk a tantrum from the otherwise slumbering executive floor. For fashion retailers and brands like Ralph Lauren, one of those conventions is the fashion show.

Earlier this month, RL managed to reinvent the conventional fashion show in honour of the tenth anniversary of their e-commerce site.

The effort (and this entailed considerable effort) was deemed “the world’s first 4-dimensional show” by the folks at RL. While this description is somewhat disputable according to many comments I’ve read around the blogosphere, in this blogger’s humble opinion it was nonetheless a spectacular re-imagining.

A 10-minute light show was projected onto the façade of Ralph Lauren’s stores on Madison Avenue in New York and on Bond Street in London. The façade of the two stores came to life with projected images of models and polo players towering over the crowd, amid ambient sound and a mist of Ralph Lauren fragrance.

Even more powerful, for me at least, was the behind-the-scenes story of how it was pulled off. A team of about 150 people worked for months: First, intricate architectural renderings of the New Bond Street and Madison Avenue stores were created using 3D scanners and human modelers. Then ¾ scale replicas of the stores were built on a Hollywood-style sound stage so that real models could be shot in front of the façade. The film was then pulled into a 3D software environment where a team of animators (some of whom worked on Harry Potter) designed and melded visual effects. Finally, projectors – of even higher resolution than IMAX – were positioned so that the finished 3D film could be lined up perfectly with each of the real life, flagship stores on Bond Street and Madison Ave.

In terms of reach? Hundreds experienced it live in each of the respective cities, while millions got to witness and share the spectacle across the web. PR, as you can imagine, has been considerable as well.

How well does Ralph Lauren’s 4D Fashion Show score for reinvention of this well trodden category convention? I’m thinking at least a seven, but that may owe to the fact that it marries my past life as a theatre tech with my current career as an advertising creative.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Would you pay for two minutes of pure silence? What if that silence was created by Bruce Dickinson, Thom Yorke, Bryan Ferry, producer Mark Ronson and other celebrities?  Okay, it reads a bit like an Onion article, but it’s actually a very real and very modern stunt for a very old and undeniably great cause.

For this year’s Poppy Appeal, The Royal British Legion has released a single into the UK charts. The track “2 Minute Silence” is exactly what the name says, 120 seconds of no sound recorded by celebrities. Their aim is to raise money and consciousness by sending the video to the top of the charts so BBC’s Radio 1 will play the silent tribute, live on air.

Along with the “song” a video has been released in which musicians join British Prime Minister David Cameron and several other familiar figures to stand quietly towards a very worthy cause: All of the proceeds from the single will go towards furthering the Legion’s very important work, supporting serving and ex-Service personnel and their families.

Crazy? I don’t think so. It’s a powerful video and a big idea that makes remembering very much a thing of the present via our i-obsessed culture. You can even show your support via Facebook and Twitter, furthering this forward looking take on a cultural event that’s been around since 1919 and has, admittedly, seen its share of ebb and flow in the public’s eye.

You can purchase your copy now at www.silentsingle.com or from iTunes, or preview the video and behind the scenes footage.

It’s two minutes. What are you waiting for?

There’s no scarcity of that headline. Innovations, as ubiquitous as intuitive search rankings and as inspiring as The Wilderness Downtown collaboration with Arcade Fire simply abound from Google.

But here’s another. The Virtual Paintout is a blog hosted by Bill Guffey. A site devoted to the display of art, painted or sketched using Google Streetview as its source for inspiration.

To participate in the project, artists must simply use a view found through Google Street View as the reference for the painting or drawing. September’s inspiration is the island of Manhattan.

Love or hate the work, love or hate the construct, Google has weaved its way into yet another creative endeavor, successfully and with little in the way of parameters or interference.

Perhaps my headline should have been “Google inspires.”

Consumers with limited time, plus the rapid emergence and popularity of mobile apps equals a new class of service-oriented “brand butlers,” according to consumer insights firm trendwatching.com.

The folks at trendwatching.com define brand butlers as brand-building efforts that assist consumers in making the most of their lives, as opposed to the traditional branding model of selling them a lifestyle or identity.

A splitting of hairs? Maybe. But it’s a good and timely read when you consider the proliferation of iPhone apps.

Here are some quick examples (from the article) of how major companies have implemented this idea of becoming a brand butler:

• MasterCard’s ATM Hunter iPhone app allows users to find their nearest ATMs.
• Domino’s Pizza Tracker allows customers to follow the progress of their pizza order from preparation through to delivery via a web interface.
• Beck’s Gig Finder app helps users find local music gigs.
• IKEA’s Covoiturage allows the furniture giant’s French customers to arrange car-sharing to and from their stores.

So, what do we think of these brand butlers? Simply cool tactics or an emerging new approach to branding as trendwatching.com suggests?

It’s risky. It’s not for every brand. And it’s inevitable.

This past Monday, more than 30 women showed up at the Netherlands-Denmark match wearing orange mini-dresses emblazoned with the name of a Dutch brewery – earning them a red card from World Cup officials who acted to quash what they called ambush marketing.

The women went to the Netherlands-Denmark game dressed as Danish supporters. But, in the 25th minute of the match, they stripped off their red-and-white gear to reveal the bright orange dresses.

Much PR for the Dutch brewer ensued. Much derision and outrage from FIFA as well. The latter, of course, is because this kind of ambush levers the spectacle of World Cup to garner huge awareness without paying hefty sponsorship fees.

Ambush marketing isn’t merely a tactic for niche and challenger brands either. One classic example occurred at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, when the iconic Nike brand covered the city in ads, benefiting from the focus on the city for the Olympics. The official sponsor that year? Adidas.

Ambush marketing is a source of frustration for the governing bodies like FIFA, and of course for the companies who pay the millions in sponsorship fees associated with legitimate marketing rights.

Me? I enjoy a bit of mischief.