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Most Contagious 2009 – Best of…

Morning!

I checked my emails this morning to find the much awaited Most Contagious 2009 report in my inbox. It was a nice surprise and definitely something you should read to remind yourselves what a fantastic year 2009 has been. You can download the 45-pages PDF here or you can read the slideshare document clicking the image-header above.

I’m taking the opportunity to put down some of the best highlights from the REPORT together with some extra content that have stood out during 2009:

Live Stream facility coming to YouTube, as seen with Alicia Keys and U2 special gigs. But also, the integration of a Facebook Chat facility on LIVE events as it happened with the CNN LIVE on the Obama inauguration and the Michael Jackson funeral memorial.

We’ve seen more and more brands using new Emerging Technologies to create outstanding pieces of work. The NIKE Chalkbot is a perfect example – A robotic chalking mechanism that receives, processes, prints, captures and delivers data (text, GPS coordinates and photographs). It received messages from anywhere in the world via Twitter to @Chalkbot, via an SMS shortcode, or from an entry form on wearyellow.com and printed them along the roads of the Tour de France in bright, LIVESTRONG yellow using 48 nozzles and vats of emulsified chalk. BakerTweet is one amongst many other tangible technologies using the Twitter API to create a rather useful tool. A London bakery called ALBION is using BakerTweet to tell their customers when the bread is hot and ready through Twitter. So customers know when they can come to the bakery and get the freshest bread. Check the video below:

The first real examples of Augmented Reality applications. As mentioned within the report, there have been way too many examples of brands/agencies jumping on the bandwagon to simply demonstrate a “look how cool this is and all this cool stuff we can do” attitude. Possibly the handiest AR application of 2009 was the United States Postal Service’s Virtual Box Simulator designed by AKQA, San Francisco. The website-based app allows users to place their parcels inside a series of virtual boxes, calculating the precise size needed, and in doing so, saving them money on postage and tying in with USPS’ tagline of ‘If it fits, it ships’. Another really good example were the Topps’ 3D Live Baseball Cards. When scanned via a webcam, these produce miniature animated players in the palm of your hand or on your desk, which can then be controlled to play a series of simple batting and pitching mini-games.

Motion Sensor Technology integration with AR. See the Fashionista demo-video below to understand more. I honestly believe that we are going to see a lot more exciting projects using this technology; definitely something to keep in mind dear marketeers!

In terms of campaigns (some of them featured within the report), imho the ones below are definitely the top 10 to remember:

2009 has been a very ‘profitable’ year for Mobile Branded Applications as well – mainly for the iPhone but there’s definitely more to come for the Android and the rest of mobile OSX. The best ones below:

Make sure you read Johnny Makkar’s blog at Attention Digital and take a look at his extensive spreadsheet of branded iPhone apps.

2009 has also seen the very first ‘Digi-Novel‘ being launched into the publishing industry. Called ‘Level 26’, this is a trilogy produced by the CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker. The first novel, Dark Origins, is the very first book that drives users to a comprehensive site with exclusive interactive cinematic content. Zuiker claims: ‘Level 26 takes the best features of books, film and interactive digital technologies and rolls them all into a unique storytelling experience’. I really hope that this is only the beginning for content to be available on different media and initiate richer branded user experiences using interaction through different engaging platforms.

As I predicted at the end of 2008, Crowdsourcing has indeed had a major push however it still hasn’t reached the mainstream level I was expecting. MySturbucksIdea, Threadless Twitter, Marmarati, Walkers Do Us a Flavour and Fiat MIO are just some of the brilliant examples of how important your community can be to the development of new services and products. I mentioned RYZ last year, however I’d still like to advertise it as it’s still one of the best crowdsourcing community to create trainers I’ve ever seen around the web… get on there!

The astonishingly well-known T-Mobile FLASHMOB advert has initiated a bunch of other brands using the same promotional technique hoping to reach those ‘viral charts’. Some of the ones which have managed to do so…

2009 has definitely been THE year for Facebook! With more and more brands understanding the platform and initiating conversations with their fans, the biggest innovation must be Facebook Connect which allows users to log in with their Facebook credentials on any website whose settings enable users to do so. Since the API was made publicly available, a lot of brands have been using it very avidly – either implementing the facility within their official website log-in sections or developing bespoke campaigns using the new tool. Some Log in examples are available at Dada.it, the Hffington Post, Vimeo and Joost. From a creative point of view, there have been many useless and superficial ways of using the tool however the very best implementation was the one used for the PROTOTYPE Game trailer. I’d highly recommend for you all to give it a go here and read some more examples here!

Last but not least, I can’t really say that 2009 has been the year of Virals in itself as it’s not a NEW trend. However, as it happens every year, there have been some really good ones; below the ones I think have stood out…