Taking a Shakespearian ballet to the streets of Amsterdam

Seems like ambient media and SMS wouldn't have been the obvious choice, but thats just what the Dutch National Ballet did for the launch of their new production of Romeo and Juliet.

They used projections of the characters and missing image posters, some of Romeo, some of Juliet, each seeking their counterpart. The telephone number on the poster gives you a pre-recorded message asking for an SMS if they've seen their lost loves.

"This is Juliet. You are listening to my voicemail. If you have the answer to my heart-felt yearning and can tell me where I can find my beloved Romeo, please send me an SMS with details of where you have seen him, so that I can go to him straight away."

Callers who sent an SMS received a text in return from the Dutch National Ballet and pushed users to the website for a chance to win a free set of opening night tix.

What I love about this campaign is the fact that it takes something classic, and brings it to current day through use of new media. I also love how it integrates - each piece linking to the next and providing a pretty unique experience.

I gotta give the ballet company major props for pulling this off. I suspect this wasn't an easy campaign to sell in.

Be our Juke box hero: win $10k in music gear

Cheil and Samsung have just launched our follow-up UGC contest to Upstage. This time around,we're creating a mash-up with independent artists to create a virtual music video jukebox. The winner will walk away with ten thousand bucks in new music gear. So tell all your musically inclined friends to come and submit.

For the non-musically inclined, we have an equally tasty prize for helping us crown our hero by making a playlist.

Here's the links y'all:

The YouTube Contest: youtube.com/samsungjuke
Our Virtual Jukebox and Juke site: samsungjuke.com

Discovery's Live Billboard

A banner created by Discovery Channel for a new show "Everest" featured climber Philip Junaeus, who lived on the banner a week prior to the launch of the show. Great PR stunt to get exposure using a limited budget.

The stunt was accompanied by a web-cam and blog, and he had a laptop and called into a radio station with daily updates.

More Info, click here.

Virtual Payday

Mike Donnelly from Coca-Cola delivered my 500,000 lindens from my Virtual Thirst Winnings personally from his avatar in Second Life, which was very cool. He's a very nice guy - looking forward to meeting him sans-avatar at the SLCC Conference in Chicago this coming weekend. On Sunday, Aug. 26th from 1:30 – 2:30 C.C. Chapman and Steve Coulson from Crayon & Michael Donnelly from Coca-Cola will be presenting a case study on “Coca-Cola: Virtual Thirst”. I think it will be fun to be there for that.

You can check out more info on the conference here: http://slcc2007.wordpress.com

Virtual Thirst Update

We had an action packed day at MoU yesterday. The whole experience has been pretty cool so far! We've had limo service since the moment we left my house in New York. First class Flight, and we're staying at the Fairmont in San Francisco which is pretty opulent. When we arrived, there was a Coca-Cola Swag Bag waiting for us along with some spending money (thanks Coke).

Our first day at Millions of Us was more brainstorming and figuring out some of the dynamics of the object and how we want to distribute it. I think we got most of the kinks ironed out. It was fun being behind the scenes and watching some pro builders at work. God I feel like such a noob! Anyway, we're making some progress - but I still don't want to spill the beans.

My schedule left us enough time for a little road trip down to Napa Valley for a little tasting. We went to a small boutique winery called Delectus and was invited by the wine maker and his wife to do some barrel tasting which was totally cool. Their wine is amazing. I have no idea how I'm getting it all home!

Well, I'm on my way to Millions of Us for Day 2 of our collaboration which includes a call with Coca-Cola to talk thru how we've evolved the idea. I'll add some shots to flickr to keep ya'll up to speed ;-) Check it out for a sneak peek:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emerie/