For most of us the internet is a quick way to communicate with people, gather informations, buy all kinds of things or download porn for free. But today I read a interesting story that you may already know, nonetheless I will tell it again. Here. For free. Unfortunately not to download.

So you’re the president of a very, very, very small island in the Pacific Ocean. Your island is so small that not even Google Maps can show it in a proper size.

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Though that’s nothing to worry about. Everything is fine on that small island that even Google can’t show correctly. Life is good here. But one day, a lot of crazy guys from all over the world call your office. They tell you that they would do anything to have a domain of your small island. Because you small island is called Tuvalu and has the ending .tv, what seems to be something bloody important in other countries.

Now because you are a smart president and you don’t make that much use of .tv, you sell it to those weird guys from overseas. You make $ 50 million and now have enough money to become member of the UN and set up a proper internet connection for the government offices. Maybe to download porn, maybe not.

Isn’t that brilliant? Thanks to the benefit from selling .tv domains Tuvalu can become a member of the UN. Really liked the story. Absolutely charming.

A lot of the Wordpress themes you find on the internet look really cheap and ugly. But here is a really great source with the 100 best free themes, most of them really great:

We had some guys from Google over for a presentation of the newest gadgets form their labs and of some new features for Google Maps and Youtube. While thinking about it I wondered why no brands have used the hot links in Youtube videos to create interactive ads yet. Right now all the interactive videos are, well, shit. Now a brand could create something real cool if they’d only use this technology.

Especially the last Nike ad would have been perfect to do this. Through the hot links the user could make some decision during the commercial that would influence the outcome of the career. Like in the very first scene when the player has to take a free kick.

Depending on which corner you choose it’s either a goal or not.

Or take the Christiano Ronaldo scene. Side tackle or bodycheck?

The wrong decision and he’ll leave you as a crying baby.

I reckon it’s not as easy to make, because for each decision they would have to shot different opportunities to move on in the career of the player, your career. But maybe it would be very intriguing and definitely a lot of fun.

Over at Scamp there was some discussion going on about German scam ads. Well, you we’re all right. Most of the stuff from Germany that has won, was done just for awards. Certainly there are exceptions. Like the fair stand for Mercedes-Benz done by Atelier Markgraph.

It’s really embarrassing that our real work can’t really compete with the work that is done in the UK or the US, so that nearly all agencies do scam ads. But what’s interesting (or extremely odd) is to read the clients’ view on the Cannes Lions they picked up. Unfortunately it’s in German but here are some bad translated snippets from what they say:

“This award approves our belief that the importance of creativity in advertising will increase in the future.”

“We’re happy about this award and we believe it proves the position of Expedia as the worldwide leading online-platform for travel. [...] This award approves our communication strategy and we will keep on being innovative in the future.”

Well, apart from the journalist’s mistake to picture the German Marketing Director of McDonald’s next to the work of Leo Burnett Chicago for McDonald’s USA instead of the work by Heye, does anyone of you remember any billboards or ads for Matchbox in the recent past that could have been approved now? And let’s just take a snap at Expedia’s “innovative communication strategy”.

Blimey. As long as it seems to be okay for both sides to produce fake advertising to prove our ability to do exceptional work, things won’t change. Unfortunately. But on the other side, what should they say in a German marketing magazine. “It’s all a big fake. We didn’t ever brief them”? Probably not. I just hope that in the future both sides will be more open and brave when working on real tasks. It might do our business good.

I didn’t ever really notice that adidas had so many slogans of the years until some German marketing magazine told me. Now to be honest I have hardly even heard most of the slogans on their list. Though I think that some of them were only campaigns that adidas ran. But it’s impressive. And it demonstrates that a long-lasting management team and strong relationship to an agency result in strong brand building on one line for over 30 years. Just do it. Maybe that’s a thing adidas can still learn from NIKE.

A mate sent me a nice link today. It was for ArtPrint, a company that prints on skatboard decks. For fun I came up with some deck designs. One that uses a group of decks to collage a bigger picture and one single deck. This is one of the rough ideas. Jesus with his hands and feet placed at the holes for the axis mount. Might be a bit blasphemous, but hey.

Because you can see his arrogance burst into tears. Again, tonight he had some major problems with gravity. Laid on the gound. Looked like close to death. Then seconds later he ran like a young god up and down the pitch. But today the better team won. And it was not Cristiano’s. So congrats to the German squad for a brilliant game and to Bastian Schweinsteiger for being man of the match. Thank you for giving Cristiano the face I love so much. Now, could someone please lend him a tissue?