Mobile

Sure, it’s got a name that can be easily confused with bands young and old, but Urban Airship is actually a three-year-old mobile tech company that’s joined forces with fellow Portland-based operation Wieden + Kennedy to define what the hell a “good push” is. From what we gather, there’s good and bad mobile engagement that could be created via push notifications including social push, news alerts, geo-based, or traffic/weather events.

Well, W+K and Urban Airship, the latter of which was actually developed in the former’s Portland Incubator Experiment (why are we itching to watch the Prometheus trailer again?) and has now evolved into an agency client/partner, aim to illustrate what positive push entails. How else? Animation, of course, and the parties involved regale us with “Tales of Good Push” via a handful of clips featuring a variety of cartoon characters who, without the help of narration, can perhaps better explain the whole message here.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Those of you ad folks who’ve been playing in the Twitterverse for the last few years have probably grown familiar with Midwest creative director/writer Jason Fox, or perhaps more so with his Twitter alter ego, @leeclowsbeard. Well, Fox, who has been tweeting out pearls of wisdom under the guise of said TBWA legend’s famous facial hair since 2009, has grown popular enough (25,000+ followers and counting) to merit bitter knockoffs and most significantly, both a book and an app. The title? You guessed it, @leeclowsbeard, which will hit bookshelves on June 12.

To promote the app and book, which you can pre-order here, Mr. Fox offers a slideshow that gives you the history of his Twitter effort. We’ve been told that Lee Clow himself flew Fox out to meet in person before deciding to go ahead and publish the title under the banner of TBWA\Chiat\Day LA’s content innovation studio, Let There Be Dragons.

Expectant parents, rejoice! You can get sarcastic, pop-culture laden quips from your baby before its born with “Wee Mail,” a new mobile app from Charlotte, NC-based BooneOakley and developer Limbua.

Now, if there’s anything a pregnant woman want to help her ease into pregnancy, it’s daily mobile updates from the tiny human growing inside her. And, Wee Mail’s nearly 300 one-liners aren’t limited to such zingers as “I’m always naked and demand a lot of attention. You sure I’m not a Kardashian?” for girls and “I have to admit, most days I feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body” for boys. In fact, by setting the baby’s due date, the baby will send you Wee Mail about growing various extremities, organs, and appendages as it prepares to burst forth into a world where people create iPhone apps likes this. Well, at least you no longer have to worry about going into labor unexpectedly, right?

Wee Mail is currently available as a free download from the iTunes app store (where it already has two glowing reviews), with themed add-on packages expected to be available soon for $.99 each. A marketing campaign for the app is currently being targeted toward mommy bloggers, baby photographers and parenting magazines. Credits after the jump.

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You work at an agency, and for some reason you have the word ‘executive’ in your title. This causes you alarm because you’re only 23, but let’s not get mired in details. You need to impress the boss, a goal that is only hampered by the fact that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing (don’t worry, neither does anyone else), and that every time you talk someone threatens to fire you. You better get some tools, fast. Luckily, you have a smartphone. Here’s the quintessential app list for you, Mr./Ms./Mrs./pansexual advertising account executive.

1. CNBC Real Time

As an advertising person, you make decisions (haha, no you don’t) based on real time info. Strategy, research, data; these are more than just words you remember from high school and sometimes hear in meetings, they’re actual things people create/do/collect as part of their jobs. But not you, because you’ve got CNBC Real Time.

Fire up this app when you need to impress that client with your counting skills (standing record for an account exec: 147) or when the boss lady walks by. Read the words you find in this app, and literally repeat them verbatim during meetings for an extra dose of savvitude. Whip out CNBC-RT in the elevator when you want to make that girl from strategy think twice about letting you have her digits, because nothing says “Do Me” like quarterly earnings reports and IPO valuations, am I right? I’m right.
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With the season of self-congratulation gearing up, it’s time to start rehearsing that awards acceptance speech. But, as you practice bursting into tears while holding your CLIO triumphantly above your head and thanking your intern for doubling as a designated driver, it’s only natural to wish that your moment in the spotlight lasted a little longer. Hey, the Emmys, Oscars and Golden Globes all get televised, and every MTV awards show gets repeated at least 50 times after its initial airing. Don’t you wish you could let everyone (who wasn’t in attendance) know that you won something? Better yet, would you like a portable validation of your braggadocio?

Luckily, we now have Awards Candy, the “essential creative resource app for anyone in the ad industry.” Claiming to be the “world’s first app designed for the ad industry” in the above iMovie-produced intro video, Awards Candy not only compiles lists of award-winners. It also displays the award-winning spots on your iPad or iPhone, convenient for boasting about your accolades wherever a 3G connection exists.

Of note is Award Candy’s creator, Wallace Seggie, and his arduous journey in bringing the app to life. As he says in his email to us, “I invested (when I say invested, I mean flushed down the toilet) the little money that I had into the idea. Three months later the developer sent me the final version of the app and my heart sank… It wasn’t what I had envisioned. With no one to turn to, no money and my second child on the way, I knew that if the idea was ever going to be realised, I would have to do it on my own. I taught myself how to design, build and publish apps. Error after error I pushed on.” Should you feel compelled to reward Seggie for his hard work, you can purchase Awards Candy for £1.99 ($2.59 USD) from the App Store.

If you work in advertising, you know the drill: A brief chat between a creative and an account person begins. Then, a second creative shows up with an opinion and some insight on the topic at hand. The account person, overwhelmed, decides that the discussion calls for a meeting.

Suddenly, meeting invitations go out to copywriters, art directors, ACDs, CDs, GCDs, account execs, account coordinators, account managers and assorted interns. The issue at hand is resolved. But, someone feels compelled to belabor a minute detail. By the time the meeting runs over an hour late, 30 people have had a large part of their days wasted. Just think, you could have been doing actual work instead of playing around on your iPhone for three hours! Do you need to convince your agency to stop wasting its time? Well, LBi that’s why created COMA, the “Cost of Meeting App” for mobile devices.

Now, you can be the agency’s MVP in three simple steps:

Step 1: Start the app.
Step 2: Casually point out how much money has been wasted already.
Step 3: Meeting adjourned.

Way to go, hero!

It’s been in beta for a couple of months now, but today marks the official launch of “Crash Corsage,” an app that lets you, yep, play wedding crasher. How it works: The app, which is the brainchild of former Tribal DDB NY/current R/GA ACD Eric Schlakman, collects data from open directories of wedding website providers, then creates a filtered lists of nearby festivities and includes specific information (attire, etc.) for each.  The fun part, we suppose, is that Schlakman and crew encourage users to battle fellow crashers, create galleries of their exploits and more.

We’re not sure who exactly would be that into bringing a fairly amusing Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson vehicle to life (and when have we described any of these guys’ recent movies like that?), but if that person is you, feel free to sign up for “Crash Corsage” here. Full credits below:

 

A few months back, we briefly mentioned a call for entries for the Original iPhone Film Festival, which featured a panel of judges ranging from Maroon 5 and director Lasse Hallstrom to ad folks such as Chuck McBride, Court Crandall and Regina Ebel. As you can deduce from the title of the inaugural competition, the OIFF was launched by obvious Steve Jobs fans Matt Dessner and Corey Rogers to show how the iPhone 4 can serve as a powerful filmmaking tool.

Anyhow, the 12 winners in categories including Music Video and Brand Film have been announced and below, you can see two examples of how the “mini-film studio” that is the iPhone 4 was put to good use. With the dozen top entries in tow, the guys behind OIFF are now asking you to pick a Grand Prize winner by liking you favorite film from the winners showcase here. The Grand Prize-winning effort will be announced at the MacWorld/iWorld Expo in San Francisco on Jan. 26.

2011: The year that “Instagrapher” became an actual job title at General Electric. I wonder what Jack Donaghy would think of this hip, social media-motivated development at the ol’ “General.”

From SF-based digital creative agency Mekanism comes the above video for GE’s “Be the Next Instagrapher” contest. It might seem a little odd at first for an old-timey brand like GE to create a contest based around hipsters’ favorite mobile photography app, but if you’ve ever seen GE’s Tumblr page, you already know that the General has been using Instagram and the social network to add a youthful, vibrant spin to its 120-year-old brand. After all, at 120, you’re not old, you’re “vintage.” And, don’t forget that GE was co-founded by the Steve Jobs of the late 19th century, Thomas Edison. (“Light bulbs were the original iPhones, bro.”)

Anywho, the best photographer Instagrapher gets a ticket to the UK to photograph a “world-class jet engine facility.” Interested parties can submit photos based off of GE’s designated themes on Twitter using the hashtag #GEinspiredMe or by posting them on GE’s Facebook page. And, though this idea may seem a bit ludicrous to the skeptical eye, realize that GE is actually doing better at engaging with a social media audience than the vast majority of comparable megabrands. Don’t believe me? Just wait and see how many people actually participate in this contest.

No digitally savvy shopaholic’s visit to his or her local mall over the next month is complete without a new holiday-themed mobile app for download. Fortunately for patrons of Westfield Malls, they now have access to the “LOLiday App,” courtesy of the minds at EVB, who are no strangers to holiday projects.

After downloading the app for iPhone, Android or iPad2,  shoppers can then visit the “LOLiday Card Set” at their local participating Westfield Mall. Here, using the magic of mobile technology and augmented reality, shoppers can insert images of themselves into wacky holiday scenes. Why would the nation’s consumers want to insert themselves into a photo that depicts them kissing a buff, shirtless Santa Claus? Well, ladies and gentlemen, they do it for the LOLZ (see also: “lulz”). And, for those avoiding the mall completely or still incapacitated after suffering injuries from a Black Friday Wal-Mart stampede, a completely new silly photo experience awaits on the LOLiday Cards website.

Remember, a new iPad starts at $499 retail, but LOLZ are free. So, this holiday season, give the gift of laughter, and you might even win $10,000 as part of Westfield Mall’s “Laughing All the Way Sweepstakes.” Participating malls and credits follow after the jump.

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