Here’s the full segment from last night’s Gruen Transfer where BCM’s entry in ‘The Pitch’ drew with the entry by Gatecrasher from WA.

Now it’s up to the people to decide the winner! Just go to the ABC TV web site and vote for BCM’s entry to ensure the IOC are persuaded to take the 2012 Olympic Games back from England and given to Australia.

Last night, BCM picked up some hard earned plastic-wear on ‘The Pitch’ segment of The Gruen Transfer. We were up against Gatecrasher from W.A, and the battle ended in a rare 2-2 draw, so both agencies went home happy with a trophy in hand. Having said that, we were thrilled to secure Todd’s vote on the night, considering he is clearly the brains trust on the pitch panel!

The task, in case you weren’t watching, was to “Convince the IOC that it’s not too late to switch the host for the 2012 Olympics from London to Australia.” A fairly tricky brief even by Gruen standards. Nevertheless, the challenge sparked vigorous brainstorming in all corners of the agency, followed by a week of panic-station production! Alas, we got there in the end.

So how did we cull a banquet of ideas down to a 48 second video clip? And what concepts died in the process?

Well, we certainly weren’t short of initial thoughts (some great, some average, some not fit for broadcast.) We conceived and considered everything from doing a Bin Laden style threat video, to piggybacking the global recession, picking on pom’s bad teeth, leveraging crap London weather, exploiting Princess Mary of Denmark, bribing IOC delegate’s wives with sexy Aussie hunks and more. Man it was fun!

As it turned out we got to a shortlist of four concepts, which we soon culled down a two horse race. One was the ‘Doomsday’ idea we ended up pitching, the other was built around doing a PR job convincing the world that the Poms just don’t WANT the games!

Ultimately, we chose the Doomsday idea as we felt it was more original, more insightful, and more ‘do-able’, given the time and resources we had available. Actually, it was rather surprising seeing just how ‘legit’ all video content had to be for Gruen pitches. Unlike normal agency Pitch videos where you pillage any images you want, this stuff had to be bonafide! That came neither easy nor cheap, but I guess every agency was in the same boat.

So, that was that. We agreed on a concept script, it was quickly approved by Mr.Denton’s crew at Zapruder, and we promptly went to work bringing our video to life. We enlisted Gerard Lambkin and Damian Tiernon from Zoom to help shoot a few clips with ‘star-talent’ from the agency, shot a scene ourselves using a ‘whinging pom’ in account service, and the rest was down to stock footage magic. (Sorry if I just gave away any trade secrets!)

Soon enough I had the ‘pleasure’ of being coated in man make-up and pitching the idea in front of an ABC studio audience, while a handful of my workmates sat in the green room sipping beers and eating crackers. My fears were soon confirmed. It’s much more comfy being on the ‘filming’ side of the camera, than the ‘filmed’ side of the camera!

As public-generated news content continues to flourish online a lot has been said recently about the future of journalism. This is understandable given the closure of many newspapers worldwide.

An interesting not-for-profit venture called Spot.Us offers a new perspective and hope for journalists everywhere. Basically this is crowd-funded reporting where the reading public gets directly involved in supporting news that’s relevant to them. For example, imagine that 50 people want to expose a particular issue. They each contribute say $15 or $20 to hire a journalist to investigate the issue and develop a report on their behalf. The stories can come from citizens who flag issues they’d like to see investigated or from journalists who might say “Here’s my story idea, is anyone interested in helping me develop this?”

The story is pitched via the Spot.Us website which acts as a marketplace where people can meet to determine what stories should be developed. The site provides a list of stories and funding updates so interested parties can get on board. Once sufficient funding has been raised and the project approved, the journalist outlines the deliverables that contributors can expect for their money. Donors stay involved through regular investigation updates.

The amount that any individual or organisation can contribute is limited to avoid the possibility of pushing a particular agenda. Stories must be developed in response to a community saying “this is an important issue for us that we’d like to see investigated”.

As the content is commissioned by the public it is owned by the public so it can be given away via a creative commons licence to any publisher to re-use. The exception is that if a news organisation wants first publishing rights then the original donors are re-funded in full and the story is on-sold.

So this is yet another example of control being handed back to the people. It should provide hope to journos everywhere that, now more than ever, they are a conduit to sharing stories that people actually want to read and hear about.

In talking about the death of newspapers Nicolas Carlson of Business Insider recently supported the thought that journalism won’t go away.

He contends that news reporting was and is about finding sources. Naturally those sources want to go to the biggest megaphone they can find to spread their news. To me all that’s really changing is who holds that megaphone these days.

A quick head’s up to all Two Cents readers that BCM will be appearing on one of Australian TV’s most popular programs, The Gruen Transfer, on Wednesday night.

We were invited to appear on the popular ‘The Pitch’ segment, where two agencies go head-to-head answering an off-the-wall creative brief.

Creative Director Nick Ikonomou headed down to Sydney recently to film the spot. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone who won though, so we’re all pretty excited to see the outcome!

Be sure to tune in tonight (Wednesday) at 9pm on ABC.

We’ve recently launched a great integrated campaign for Parmalat brand Zymil.

As you may know, Zymil is an easy-to-digest milk -- a great dairy alternative for those who don’t agree with regular milk. The new campaign seeks to convey Zymil’s benefits -- easy to drink, comfortable, never unsettling and never a pain in the guts -- with a TVC, website and blog that build on Zymil’s promise of ‘loving you’ like regular milk can’t.

The website -- www.zymil.com.au -- is brought to life with customer reviews of Zymil, recipes (which can be submitted by customers), news, an FAQ and, of course, all the basic info. It’s a great example of the Flash skills of our ID team here!

Zymil are also embracing the world of social media and have kicked off easy2digest, the Zymil blog -- a way for Zymil lovers and the wider community to have a deeper conversation about all things Zymil and healthy living. Keep your eye on it, because it will be rolling out a heap of great content throughout the year.

Take a look at the TVC:

There’s also a fourth, quite amazing, element to their interactive approach launching in the next couple of days  -- stay tuned!

Congrats to Parmalat on the launch of all their great new interactive assets! And congrats too on the fantastic increase in sales that Parmalat have enjoyed since the commencement of the campaign.

News has recently come to light that Tourism Australia is again in the crosshairs with an advertisement which forms part of a high profile campaign.

Despite having awarded the $180M account to a new agency in the middle of last year, after 2006’s much maligned campaign featuring Lara Bingle, it seems this industry body is still causing a stir.

The controversy has been sparked by an ad which ran in the Weekend Australian Magazine on April 11-12. The ad encourages Australians to “win the work/life battle” by recreating an iconic WW2 photograph from the Battle of Iwo Jima.

In place of the American soldiers raising the flag on the summit of Mt Suribachi, the Tourism Australia image depicts a family battling to put up a parasol on the beach.

If you think it’s a little insensitive, not to mention disrespectful to the families of the 27,909 casualties and the 6,825 US soldiers who were killed, then you may not be alone. In fact, three of the American soldiers featured in the original Joe Rosenthal photograph were actually killed in battle. We must also remember that 20,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives at Iwo Jima.

Whilst this is not directed at the international tourist (it is understood that it focuses on the domestic conundrum of “no leave, no life” – see www.noleavenolife.com for more information), Tourism Australia should be aware that two of their key overseas markets are Japan and the United States. Combine the borderless nature of the internet with the viral fuel that is public opinion and it is certain that some sectors of US and Japanese society will have already been exposed to this material.

Even more disturbing is that this appears to make light of another nation’s struggle during a time of great sacrifice. I somehow doubt that we would rest easy if another country returned the compliment and disrespected our war heroes. Clearly this only highlights further Tourism Australia’s cultural insensitivities when marketing to both national and international audiences, as already evidenced by their wide-of-the-mark “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign.

Of course you could argue it’s precisely this sort of tactic that gets people talking but at what cost? This particular campaign element has perhaps crossed a line in good taste which should not have been crossed.

Coming originally from a DM and printing background, I have been watching and reading with some interest as to the dire predictions of some with regards to ‘hard copy’ printed material. In light of global pressures, we are ‘greener’ than ever before. But that doesn’t seem to stop our consumption of this precious resource. Office paper usage is on the rise as we ‘print’ emails before actioning them (of course not here at BCM), but there are some instances that paper is, well, indispensable. Take a look at this recent campaign for Marcal Small Steps in Times Square.

Certainly declining circulation figures of traditional newspapers and the meteoric rise of the online eNews sites would indicate that we are inclined to get our regular daily dose of news via the web. Even the book industry is suffering a blow as more people look for cheaper alternatives and turn to electronic channels for their entertainment and information.

A Global study of the Printing industry conducted by PIRA shows that while conventional offset (and web press) printing has been shrinking over the last 5 years, digital printing has shown rapid growth largely due to the technological advances with DM personalisation and greater cost efficiencies for short print runs.

Personally I can’t imagine life without books, magazines and newspapers or heaven forbid trolling through my ‘mail’. A laptop is so hard to balance on your lap while dozing on the couch.

Sure, social media’s doing its best to bugger up the established media order. But many of the fundamental laws of communication are out the window too.

It’s intriguing that a communication’s success no longer is necessarily determined by things like originality, newsworthiness, currency, relevance or proximity to the receiver.

In the Too-Much-Information Age, stuff that’s inherently pedestrian can become disproportionately saleable, while the serious and the significant and the consequential can come across as so much fluff.

It can happen to the best of us…

Regular readers of this blog have probably noticed we talk a lot about the brave new world of social media around here. After all, as somebody much more clever than I said some time ago, markets are conversations, and no longer are marketers in full control of their brand and consumer interactions with their products and services.

We have been offering our clients solutions for their social media needs for some time. But the amount of social media work we are now doing necessitates another expansion of the BCM ID team. We are pleased to announce the appointment of Anthony Dever as Social Media Manager.

So, what does a Social Media Manager do? Anthony will primarily be listening and responding to the masses of ‘virtual chatter’ out there about our client’s brands and campaigns within all forms of social media. He’ll be teaming with ID strategists, developers, designers and channel planners to ensure we harness the power of social media for all BCM clients.

Anthony is an experienced blogger, social media commentator and consultant, specialising in blogging content and strategy, social media networks, and online user behaviour and engagement. He has previously acted as a technology correspondent for ABC Radio, and was the creator and organiser of the TV Fugly Awards (anti-event to the TV Logies Awards).

Welcome to the BCM team, Anthony.

I’ve seen some bizarre uses for Twitter in the last few months (augmented reality t-shirt anyone?) but this one takes the cake (quite literally). If it wasn’t for the fact it’s now 8 days into April, I thought I would have been well fooled by this one.

It’s called BakerTweet. It’s so simple, it’s almost genius:

BakerTweet is a way for busy bakers to tell the world that something hot and fresh has just come out of the oven. It’s as simple as turning the dial and hitting the button. All of the baker’s followers get a Twitter alert to tell them that it’s bun-time. Or bread time. Or whatever.

And it’s not just a concept either – it’s up and running at Albion’s Oven in London. You can follow their freshly-baked delights at @AlbionsOven.

Watch a video!

A truly tasty and wonderful way of using Twitter! Really though, something like this says less about tasty treats, and more about what happens when you give clever developers a ball. They’ll run with it. The open nature of Twitter has allowed people to do pretty much whatever they want with it. Which means, thankfully, that way cool stuff like BakerTweet is only just the beginning.