Onitsuka Tiger made them OF Japan, Adidas made them FOR Japan. There is a subtle difference in the copy (and maybe even in the concepts) of the two footwear brands presenting their collections to the Asian and International market.

It makes me smile a bit the idea that the second comer, Adidas, celebrates its originality with a campaign that, in my opinion, is not very original. However, if we pass over this "detail", we can get some food for thought (aka inspiration) out of the Japanese Celebrate Originality website.

This is the first time I hear about an online marketing action by Crocs, the footwear brand everybody has been talking about in the last two years or so. The Crocs Photo Community is an idea coming from Japan, where they've launched a website to collect and showcase photos of the Crocs.

The initiative is dubbed "My Crocs Contest" and, at first sight, it doesn't look very original (visitors are invited to submit photos of themselves and their Crocs, or just of their Crocs). But I like the design of the page, this is why I post about it :-)

Explore the world of Sony Walkman from a completely different perspective. In Poland they just launched a great website that illustrates the past and the present of portable music with illustrations and animations.

It's a must see even if you know from the beginning you aren't going to understand a word :-)
The characters are lovely designed and animated, and even if almost everything is just black & white nothing results boring nor gloomy.

I don't know much about ARG. At first sight, maybe because I'm kind of lazy as a user or too pragmatic as a marketer, I see them complicated, requiring too much of an effort to be really engaging. But I don't want to bias you, nor to pan a new trend in interactive marketing that I still haven't explored in full.

I assume you are as ignorant as me about ARGs, so I start from the beginning, with the definition, and Wikipedia has the answer: an alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.

And now let's go into two recent examples. The first one launched last week in the UK, it's called We tell stories, and it's run by publishing giant Penguin. As explained on NMA, for six weeks, a story a week will be added to wetellstories.co.uk. Each of the stories, written by top authors including Mohsin Hamid and Nicci French, will contain clues that will push readers to a real world location.

The lovely illustration definitely makes the difference in the website launched by Nintendo to promote the videogame for DS "Professor Layton and the Curious Village". Developed by Pop the offers an immersive experience for kids who want to discover the game and adults that still enjoy cartoon animations.

A mobile phone that can keep track of the calories you burn when you do sports is original (and weird). What is even more weird is the mini-site Casio has launched to support his cutting edge W61CA model.

In this lovely advergame you are a "piggy trainer". You have to help a young Miss Piggy finding a boyfriend. She has to run and loose weight with your support. Can you make it? Don't worry if everything is in Japanese, you can find your way through the game.

via The FWA.

I really like the website Motorola has launched in the US to present its government and public safety solutions. It's quite rare to find a B2B online marketing project in general, and it's even more rare to find a B2B website that is so well done.

The site launched last month, but there hasn't been much buzz around it in the creative/marketing community, which is a pity because the work is beautiful and inspiring.

Farfar is behind a new weird initiative launched by Nokia to promote its new N82 model. The concept is based on "position art", which consists in creating works of art, by physically walking them, and then transferring it on to a satellite image. Basically it's an art form that tracks your position using GPS.

At www.theworldismycanvas.com visitors can meet Stavros, the self-proclaimed Position Art "Genius" who uses the Nokia N82 Sports Tracker application as his tool while he walks around anywhere in the world to "draw" his motif.

Last Friday, on the website Nokia has broadcasted a live art performance by Stavros, who has been walking around Rome for the whole day creating his "greatest work of art ever".

To celebrate its 100th anniversary Converse has launched in Japan a "Thank you" project, to thanks its loyal customers and to involve them in a collaborative project to further promote its famous shoe model.

But let's go into the details of the campaign, thanks to David's post on Culture Buzz... Basically Converse asks the users to become their advertising agency, and to carry out a series of actions to promote the brand. The better (and the more) they promote Converse, the more points they earn, points that can later be exchanged with products.

In France, Coca-Cola has launched a mini-site to "hire" more people for its Happiness Factory.

In the UK Honda has launched a mini-site to support its upcoming new campaign dubbed "The Joy of Problems".

The full site will launch next February (and again I personally find disputable the decision of going live with a work-in-progress site, but they must have had their good reasons for this). For the time being the site features a nice Tetris inspired layout and a jigsaw that users are called to help solving.

One year after the Heidies project it's again time to talk about creative lingerie related projects.

KnickerPicker has recently launched an online dress room in which, even if the experience is virtual, models are real, they are presented in video and move around if you ask them too. It's an e-commerce store that definitely offers something new, and not only for voyeurs...

The other brand that tries something different althought not new for a fashion brand, is Passionata which will stream live on the Web its catwalk that will take place at the end of the month in Paris.

I really like the bravery of the project launched by Burton in North America. It's called "Sabotage Stupidity" and it challenges snowboarders to poach inside one of the four US resorts which still don't allow snowboarding.

Snowboarders are invited to submit a video that documents their experience, and the best video will be awareded with a cash prize worth $5000. Once again it's a challenge for user generated content, but it's a cool challenge, relevant and inspiring for Burton's target audience, so... well done! And let's see what happens!

via Direct Daily

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Meet@Teen Heart

Shave Everywhere 2

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Say a prayer

W for Vodka

Tom Tom secrets (service)

ING Lion goes crazy

Science Museum, edutainment 2.0

Warm up the house

Assassin's Creed, the "experience" site

Facebook: think communication, not advertising

Nokia Nonstop Living

New Ikea kitchens to dream

Share your stress and win an award

Can you Fifa 08?

Winter is back

Monopoly in the 2.0 era

Amazon and the Harry Potter mania

Sharp Aquos funky experience

The other view on MINI

Motorola meets Gondry

Adidas Football

World's Greatest Dice Roll?

Heavenly Halo

Night Driving experience by Golf

The Daisy of Marc Jacobs

The legend of Heavenly Sword

Heeeeers Stella!

Japanese Puma Tribes

Sony Television

Love is not just a game

Ever chatted with a Transformer?

AXE in Japan

The map of youth culture

She has your eyes...

The Polaroid experiment

Horror in Italian interactive

Agency sites try too hard...

Ikea, be brave... not beige!

NOTHING to hide

The interrogation of Leo and Lisa

The Royal Navy gets the message

Havaianas and the feet dreams

I'm a Barbie Girl!

Green marketing goes to Hollywood

Slap the mat

Ikea's twins

Jeep launches interactive comic book

Budweiser launches virtual currency

The web is a reality show

Coke begins brand invasion on YouTube

Keep the pace of "new" new media marketing

Sam helps Samsung, or maybe not

In the navy!

10061, Timberland gets into art

Online Halloween for kids

Beware of the Mystery Fabric

Reuters, real news from the virtual world

Nike, hybrid but lovely (and smart)

The "Second Life" of Leo Burnett

Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ

Diesel is recruiting...

Windows evolves communication

Lynx Towelboy stars on Myspace

Travel the Google Earth with British Airways

MySpace and music

The Ikea wardrobe

Online lifestyle magazine for Hugo

BBC launches the Musicubes

MTV meets AdSense

Online food marketing to children

Soccer should be... Adidas

The Barber Brigade

Google Earth and AdWords

Coca-Cola is now Blak

"Live with it" webisodes

Online marketing, Poland and the World Cup

Not the usual

Nike "Plus" Apple: wow!

The friends of Tele2

Sloggi and the sexy World Cup

Where is was your 360?