And it starts with this company: Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is offering stone tablets with RFID chips to be placed in people’s headstones. Instead of trying to glean a lifetime from a pithy 10 word epithet, you can now use your NFC-RFIS enabled mobile to access someone’s personal goodbye, their favorite recipes, family tree, favorite songs, etc. It seems right now this is only text…but you know that in the very near future this will also include home movies, audio files, etc.

I can seriously envision people walking through cemeteries on a beautiful Sunday, using their phones to access this new Facebook of Dead People. It would completely change the dynamics of what a cemetery means.

Pretty Cool.

via PSFK

Through the last few years, the band has created a brand through content other than music. So much so that their latest video – over 14 million hits in two weeks – is sponsored by State Farm Insurance.

State Farm Insurance. There is no natural brand synergy there. But OK Go’s videos are now a communications channel. Content as channel. We see it happening with iAd in iPhone apps.

OK Go understands the inherent nature of new communication strategy. Stand for something – and deliver for the audience. Old school is thinking that advertising is – on a generous day – 70% about the brand and 30% about the audience. New reality is determining what the brand stands for – and the fusion of message and behavior into a delivery of what they want, and not just what I want to say.

Sure we’ve been saying for a long time that we’re trying to attract audiences and loyalists with our message, but 99% of car ads – one of the larger brand and utility purchases consumers make – is really a one-sided conversation of companies talking at you in their own way.

Look at OK Go’s videos – the goal is not about broadcasting a band image. It’s creating an experience with a set of (brand) principles at its core. It’s behavior over image. They treat themselves as a vehicle for the audience’s experience. And this necessitates creating an experience with the idea: what does the audience get out of it? Audience first. This is the essence of a brand putting guest engagement at the core of its messaging.

In the digital realm this is more essential than any other medium. It truly is an exercise in: if a tree falls in the forest and no one heard it, did it make a sound? Because digital is self-curated, and unless you make something that audiences inherently want – you didn’t happen. “Build it and they will come” might fly in an Iowa cornfield, but it doesn’t happen online.

But this doesn’t mean that this kind of communication strategy should be limited to the domain of digital. Did OK Go hire a director and production company to create their latest videowunder? No. They hired Syyn Labs – a company of creative engineers that create interactive experiences and digital gizmos. People who inherently understand the nature of experiential.

Anyway – soapbox aside – here’s the video. And special kudos to how they were able to elegantly synchronize so much of the motion and environmental sounds to the music itself. Exceptional work.

And here’s Stephen Colbert’s version for his show…again created by the always impressive Syyn Labs.

StruckAxiom came up with an interesting way to pull in Facebook and webpages into a framework that allows you to mess with them. This interesting piece of newness (to me at least) was created to help promote the film “How To Train Your Dragon.”

via Digital Buzz Blog

The French website Incredibox – a charming human beatbox mixer made of a human chorus of French slackers.  Love the little bonus footage buttons that light up when they’re ready to give you a treat.

Here’s a video of one of my creations:

via Very Short List

On both the app on your phone and on the window display, you can customize your rugby shirt with patches and lettering, you can save it, buy it, post it to Facebook, or email it.  You can even customize an avatar on the phone to wear your creation and upload it to the Ralph Lauren gallery where you can rate other people’s designs.  On the storefront, you make it all happen by touching the glass.  Meaning you don’t have to go inside to have a meaningful brand experience, and what a way to draw people in who are passing by.  The interactive store windows are in their Manhattan and San Francisco locations.

via PSFK

via Rhonda Forever