Today we gathered around and shared videos of animals that… ok I’m not going to spoil it. Just have a look for yourself:
(It helps if you watch them in order…)
The AFL ‘dickileaks’ scandal has been unfolding for nearly three days through mainstream news and of course, social media. Where it all began.
Ahh, social media. That sinister, loud-mouthed influencer of the digital playground where content goes to become viral, get blown out of proportion and break all the rules. Or does it?
The controversial story about St Kilda FC player, Nick Riewoldt and his team mate Nick Dal Santo has been flooding the Twitter stream since Monday night when the naughty photos were posted by an unnamed 17 year old teenage girl on her Facebook page. The pics have since been hidden (I feel that ‘removed’ is too strong to use when referring to anything on the Internet), but social media is still buzzing and amping the hype. Since the ‘dickileaks’ hashtag went viral yesterday, it has been mentioned over 1800 times by more than 970 contributors and been repeatedly mentioned in mainstream news reports. It is also still trending in Australia. 
Hours after the material was posted, her Facebook profile was closed down and the Police had been contacted. So with the photos, she took to Twitter where her follower count exploded from 200 to 8200. Talk of legal action has been thrown around but in Oz, Social Media and the law meet at a very blurry line. An article on theage.com.au has suggested that she could be charged under the Surveillance Devices Act or the so-called Upskirting Law (prohibits the visual capture and intentional distribution of photos of another person’s genitals) if it is proven that she did take the photos. It also carries a two year jail term.
So, should Social Media be bound by the same legalities that is abided by, by other media types through communications law? Why isn’t it already?
Copyright, Libel and Slander, Liability and Deceptive Acts and Practices have been identified online as areas where social media needs to watch it’s back. In the UK, privacy laws would apply to this situation and in the US, the ‘right to privacy’ could be brought into play. Should we follow suit?
This is the 3rd nudey Australian celebrity incident to circulate, escalate and Twitter-late this year.
This. Year.
In March, we saw Lara Bingle’s ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ naked shower photo appear on the Internet (but not before Woman’s Day reported it) and in early November, (then) Canberra Raiders player Joel Monaghan was snapped in a compromising position with a Labrador while celebrating Mad Monday festivities with his team mates. (See the censored pics below)…
Here’s a nice idea for a game. Smash the living daylights out of this Piñata using facebook, a robot connected to the internet and baseball bat. When the Piñata bursts it’s a free for all to grab a prize.
Here it is in action. It’s a little like watching cricket … the difference is the English are actually smashing the Aussies.
Anyone discovered any cheats to make the robot smash the Piñata a bit harder?
Lovely idea though. I’m jealous. @handypearce
It’s not often you see something quite this, urm… well you just have to watch this to believe it.
The actual rap starts at around 3mins so feel free to skip the ‘acting’ part at the beginning.
RAED says there are No More Tears To Cry. We disagree, the tears are flowing. Sheer interwebs awesomeness.
Currently sitting at 16,884 views at time of publishing.
It’s been in the news UK now has its very own Space Agency.It’s a serious business and cost 40 million pounds to set up and has 230 million in funds. So how will they prevent disaster and stop asteroids (or NEO’s)? Turns out a small Yorkshire fencing company is the solution (although they probably have no idea about it yet).
http://www.ukspaceagency.bis.gov.uk/Discovering-Space/Our-Solar-System/8037.aspx
The UK Space Agency links directly to the SPACEGUARD CENTRE that will save us all if there is a problem. (original page here).
Welcome to Spaceguard, protector of the earth and asteroid attacks. Yep, they sell fences in Yorkshire…
Obviously this is a mistake. Rather an amusing one though…
We think they probably meant to send people to this site http://www.spaceguarduk.com/ not this one http://www.spaceguard.co.uk/
Conclusion:
Digital Marketing Lesson #276: Always check your Hyperlinks 
“I was walking home from work and saw this cat wander out in front of me. I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly thought it would be funny to put it in the wheelie bin, which was right beside me.”
Happens to the best of us, eh? This is how 45 year old Mary Bale from Coventry in the UK described the bizarre lapse of judgement that has catapulted her to global interweb fame in the space of a few days.
Lola the cat’s owner, Darryl Mann, heard her piteous yowling inside the wheelie bin outside his home fifteen hours later. Unluckily for Mrs Bale, her random act of kitty cruelty was captured on Darryl’s security cameras and promptly uploaded to YouTube by his wife, Stephanie. It wasn’t long before the resourcefulness of crowds tracked her down, and now she’s news from the Washington Post to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Her name, address, manager’s phone number have been posted online; there are at least 8 Facebook pages denouncing her villainy (not counting ‘Death to Mary Bale’, removed by Facebook). The Sun newspaper in the UK has published a Flash whack-a-mole game (renamed Whack-cat-woman) allowing users to smack Mary’s wicked head as it pops out of wheelie bins.
Back on YouTube there’s a video entitled ‘Cruel Cat Dumps Woman In Bin (Revenge of Cat)’ in which the tables are turned – a man in a Sylvester the Cat suit dumps an old lady in a wheelie bin.
Mary’s even got a fake twitter account in her name, CatBinLady, which has her tweeting pathological random acts of weirdness as she goes through her day: “Just kicked the head off next door’s gnome. For a joke. Who’s laughing now though? Not me. Not me.”
In short – she’s gone VIRAL! In just days.
While notorious Mary is barricaded at home, pilloried by the world’s media, menaced by crowds outside her house and expecting to lose her job, you’ll be pleased to hear that Lola has recovered from her ordeal purrrfectly.
I stumbled across these nutty sports whilst doing some work for our client, Tourism New Zealand. Thought I’d share them:
1) Pomparkour Ladder Sport
This sport is either invented by V energy or just used in it’s latest campaign, but it’s still pretty cool.
Another parody of the Sony Bravia bouncing balls ad from TBWA Paris. It’s been ages since the last one so it actually made me laugh.
The Cannes award winning VW Fun Theory set a competition to come-up with cool ways to make boring things more fun. Here’s the winner
So Hi-Tec has come clean by admitting it was the brand behind the “Liquid Mountaineering” documentary, which has attracted over 4 million views.
We’ve seen many a fake viral fall flat in the past; most notably the high profile backfire of Naked’s Witchery viral in early 2009. It’s true you can’t fool a YouTube audience. However, Hi-Tec have made a masterful attempt at tricking YouTubers into thinking a group of european thrill seekers have managed to run on water. Gullible bogans. Lots of people have called it, but many people seem to have been taken in:
… or are they?? Or have CCCP (the dutch ad agency behind this genius) done the sensible thing and flooded the comments board with a load of bollocks to make you put all logical thought to one side and think this is actually real. I sincerely hope these comments are genuine, but sadly I suspect the most gullible ones are not.
I have to admit it had me going until I saw this shot:
… and the bit with men running on water.
As an agency, we don’t create “viral videos”. We create pieces of content that, given the right ingredients, we hope will achieve viral status.
So I thought it would be worth deconstructing the ingredients of one of the best ‘fake virals’ I’ve seen.
Here’s my learnings from CCCP’s viral miracle.