Check it out for yourself if you haven’t seen it already:

It’s already received around 2.3 million views on YouTube, and has elevated the starring duo to pseudo-celebrity status in their home town. It featured on all the prominent media channels in the UK, including the BBC and Sky News, and received massive coverage in the press.

This is yet another example of how well-executed digital content can reach a massive audience, cross over into “traditional” media, which in turn drives more people back online, adding to the viral effect.

Everybody say “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”!

We’re sourcing case studies from various places, and will feature a mixture of different online campaigns in the book, from award-winners to more obscure but successful campaigns from all sorts of businesses spanning a variety of industries.

We’re a bit short of time to truly crowdsource all the case studies for this edition – but we are looking for your nominations to help us identify truly exceptional examples of online marketing that we may miss through other channels.

You can use this form to submit your favourite campaign for consideration. We’ll let you know if it goes on to be featured in the book.

Thanks a million for your input.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about shipping the Kindle to Ireland:

Ireland

We are excited to now ship Kindle to Ireland. Customers in Ireland will enjoy:

Books in Under 60 Seconds: Think of a book and you could be reading it in under a minute
Free Wireless: Free 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle. No monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. For non-U.S. customers, there are also no additional charges for wireless delivery in or outside your home country. See Coverage Map. See Wireless Terms and Conditions
Growing Selection: Over 300,000 English-language books to choose from; plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines are available for your country. Because publishers give us eBook rights on a country by country basis, available titles for your country will vary from our current U.S selection. We are actively working with publishers to get the rights to all titles for every country and adding this selection every day. Check the Kindle Store to see available titles.
Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99 to $13.99 (prices include VAT), unless marked otherwise. You’ll also find many books for less – over 70,000 titles are priced under $5.99
Learn more about Kindle features on the Kindle product page

---

Important Product Information for Your Country

• Your international shipment is subject to VAT. This is the same VAT rate you pay when you buy products in your country. There are NO customs duties or any other fees. We will show you the estimated VAT upon checkout. Learn more
• Kindle ships with a U.S. power adapter and a micro-USB cable for charging your Kindle via a computer USB port. The U.S. power adapter supports voltages between 100V – 240V.
• You can transfer personal documents to your Kindle via USB for free at anytime. Service fees for transferring personal documents via Whispernet are currently $.99 per megabyte. Learn more
• Wireless download times can vary based on 3G or EDGE/GPRS coverage, signal strength and file size.
• Kindle books, newspapers, and magazines are currently priced and sold in United States dollars
• Blogs and the experimental web browser are currently not available for your country. You will have free access to Wikipedia.
• Kindle includes a 1-year limited warranty. See details
• Use of the Kindle is subject to the Kindle License Agreement and Terms of Use

Pretty impressive stuff.

You still have to order your Kindle from the US via Amazon.com.

While it might be a bit early for that, I have to admit that some of the stories they come up with are surprisingly good, as long as you’re prepared to gloss over the spelling and grammar errors endemic to an eight-year-old’s writing. They’re entertaining, have a good balance of dialogue and narrative, compelling characters and even a workable plot. It’s fantastic to see the girls ready to engage with and explore written language at this age, but I guess making up stories is an intrinsic part of childhood, and writing those stories down is simply a natural progression of that.

For the last week or so they’ve been putting their love of stories to good use on the web, in an online competition being run by smoothie-maker, Innocent. The company has taken the classic paper and pencil game “consequences”, and adapted it for kids to play online. Traditionally the game involves writing a sentence on a piece of paper and passing it on to the next person. They then read it, and fold the paper over, hiding the original sentence before writing their own… and so on until the conclusion of the story. The web version Innocent has come up with is much simpler… and all the more ingenious for that.

They asked children’s author Francesca Simon, of “Horrid Henry” fame, to write the first sentence of 26 consequences stories, one for each letter of the alphabet. Every day from the 19th of October to the 12th of November anyone between the ages of 4 and 18 can go to www.innocentkids.com and add a line to any or all of the 26 stories. At 4pm a winning line is chosen for each letter, and the story moves on, with everyone’s free to enter again. The daily winner for each letter receives a set of Innocent alphabet fridge magnets and vouchers to buy innocent smoothies. At the end of the competition the writer of the overall winning line wins a book containing all of the stories and a Horrid Henry goody bag.

The twins are hooked! Every day after doing their homework they scan the entries and come up with new lines for a selection of stories. They spend ages at it, all the time on the heavily branded Innocent website.

It’s a clever bit of marketing by Innocent, tapping in to children’s natural tendency to connect with stories and keeping them coming back to the site and engaging with the Innocent brand day-after-day. As a marketing concept it’s brilliant… even if the online execution could perhaps have been better.

On one level it’s a bit of fun with some cool prizes that exercises children’s brains and nurtures their budding creativity… that’s the good part. On a more cynical level I can’t help thinking that this is a highly targeted marketing campaign designed to build brand awareness and encourage consumption of innocent’s range of drinks by children and, by association, their parents, who do the shopping.

I’m always a bit wary of marketing that’s targeted specifically at young children. Kids don’t have the same filters in place as adults when it comes to making sense of advertising in all its many guises. They’re much more inclined to believe what they see, hear and read. As adults we can look objectively at the message being peddled by marketers, identify the motive behind it, and process it in the relevant context. Children on the other hand are much more accepting, and therein lies the danger.

The Innocent campaign, while not necessarily “innocent”, does stay on the right side of the line in terms of responsible marketing for children. Other brands may not….

Speakers at the Understanding Digital: CREATIVE event

Disclosure: Shameless self promotion to follow

As most of you reading this probably know, last year, together with my co-author Damian Ryan, I had a book called “Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation” published.

The book is doing well… and we signed contracts with our publisher, Kogan Page, last month for a follow-up book. This one will highlight the world’s best examples of online marketing. We’re very excited about it… but more about that nearer the time.

Creative online marketing is the key to better ROI

There’s no getting around it, online marketing is the key to maximising the return on investment from your marketing spend, but to do it effectively you have to get creative. Try new things, analyse the results, experiment, and use the unique measurability of online media to inform your decisions.

Do more of what works, stop doing what doesn’t, and never stop innovating.

Get creative with your online marketing… think outside the digital box… and you’ll reap the rewards. But where do you start?

Well, you could join us at the National College of Ireland in Dublin of the evening of the 5th of November for Understanding Digital: CREATIVE. We’re bringing four of the brightest creative minds in online marketing together to share their expertise with you as part of Design Week 2009, in association with ICAD and Results International Group.

Check out the event micro-site for more details and to book your place… see you there!

Image by gin soak via Flickr

Because this week’s column about working from home with children, was career related, I’ve posted it over on the new Career Moves blog, where you’ll find lots of other great career, jobs and recruitment related content from the Evening Echo Career Moves section and also stuff written exclusively for the blog.

Check it out, share it with your friends, and don’t forget to let me know what you think via the comments ….

As time (and budget) allows I’m also working on an Ireland’s Wildlife website, sort of an online “hub” for all things wild in Ireland – a jumping off point, if you like, for Irish wildlife information, resources, links and discussion.

Wanted: wildlife content!

Core to the site will be the 200 or so species profiles I’ve written for the back page of Ireland’s Own over the years. I’m also on the look-out for potential regular contributors to the new site – so if you have relevant interests or expertise in any aspect of Irish wildlife and would like to volunteer your services / allow use of your content then please leave a note in the comments below, or drop me a line.

You can stay tuned here for updates by subscribing to the RSS Feed, become a fan of Ireland’s Wildlife on Facebook and/or follow Ireland’s Wildlife on Twitter.

Unfortunately neither this blog nor the SOHO Solo West Cork blog made the cut — but I can’t say I’m surprised. The shortlisted blogs are superb, and I’ve been neglecting mine a bit of late. I was plenty stoked just to make it to the long-list .

Anyway, this is just a quick post to congratulate all those who made it through, and to wish them all the very best on Saturday night in Cork.

If you haven’t already, check out the blogs that made the cut… they’re well worth a look.

Image by kajvin via Flickr

I was reflecting recently on the Christmas and New Year break.

Over the holidays I took some time off, like lots of people, but as well as taking time off work, I also found myself paying little attention to the various blogs I look after (this one included). Family, friends, children and the like took precedence… which is only right and proper.

So why did I find myself feeling guilty for not blogging?

As I pondered this question I had to ask whether a line been crossed somewhere in my subconscious. When had blogging taken on such a level of gravity in my life. How could I possibly feel even the tiniest twinge of guilt for choosing to spend time with my family instead of posting stuff online?

It’s a fine line… and while it’s obviously important to keep a steady stream of content flowing on the blog(s) there are many, many things in life that are far more important.

Sometimes I look at the flood of posts from prolific Irish bloggers like Damien Mulley, Alexia Golez, and others in my feed reader and despair. Between work, family and other commitments I don’t have time to read all this stuff, let alone write my own.

But then I realised that it doesn’t really matter… not in the grand scheme of things. Different people have different priorities, are at different stages in their lives and are blogging under vastly different circumstances. A missed post here, a sparse week there… so what!

I enjoy writing the blog – that’s why I do it – but feeling guilty for not posting isn’t an acceptable part of the equation.

I purposely didn’t make a new year’s resolution this year… but in hindsight I think I probably will take up a belated one: I WILL NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR NOT BLOGGING!

In 2009 I’ll post here and elsewhere when I can, when I want to and as time allows… without any guilt, remorse or regret for failing to maintaining a punishing posting schedule.

What about you?

Always on internet should come with a Government Health Warning.

No, seriously, it should!

I’m sitting here at daft o’ clock in the morning writing this blog post wondering where the time went to.

My wife is away for a couple of nights, the kids went to bed almost eight hours ago and are sound asleep, and I should be too… but I’m not.

Why? Because we have always on internet, that’s why. I’m not going to call it broadband… because to do so would give it delusions of grandeur, but it is, demonstrably, always on.

And that means I’m always on. On the laptop, on the netbook, on the WiFi enabled mobile.

…must sleep. Kids will wake up early regardless and I won’t be able to cope if I don’t get four or five hours in. Will finish up tomorrow

Right… morning all!

Woken up at 7:30 by the little one. Don’t even want to reflect on how little sleep I’ve actually had. Looks like I’m running on caffeine today folks!

Now… where was I… oh yes, always on internet.

It’s like heroin… only worse, because while getting your fix online might make you look a bit geeky, it doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it as hard narcotics. At least not yet. But it is addictive, and if it’s suddenly taken away you do go into a kind of withdrawal.

But wait, you cry, while it might be an insidious habit, unlike a drug addiction it won’t lead you down a spiral of deceit and criminal activity to get your next virtual-hit, will it? I’m not so sure. Hands up how many people out there have casually hooked up to a conveniently unsecured wireless network “just to check e-mail”, or a profile page, or twitter or whatever?

It’s a slippery slope.

So, I’m thinking of starting a new group — perhaps on facebook (lol) — welcome to Internet Addicts Anonymous (IAA). To kick things off, I’ll go first:

My name is Calvin Jones and I’m a always-on-internet-oholic.

Admitting it is the hardest part — go on, try it for yourself in the comments below, it’s cathartic. I feel better already .