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I've decided to get a bit more professional and go all web 2.0 (what an awful phrase). The new, all singing and sometimes dancing Planning Arsenal can be found at www.alextlewis.co.uk Please visit here for future updates.

Ewe Media

Enterprising folk in the Netherlands , Hotels.nl, have begun displaying their corporate logo on royal blue waterproof blankets worn by sheep. The company spends 1 euro a day per sheep and sponsors about 144 sheep in flocks throughout the country.

If you’re interested, the ‘media owners’ are Easy Green Promotions and have a goal of expanding to 25,000 branded sheep in the Netherlands, and are negotiating with potential partners in France and Britain. There are even plans to diversify into horses and cows.

Biscuit typography

Anyone looking for a quick way to
brighten up Powerpoints could do worse than using this little gizmo. Particularly if you happen to work on McVitie's...

Kid tough gadgets

This

is a great idea - a "Kid-Tough" MP3 player with big buttons and simple operations, and a digital camera with double-eyepiece for kids who find it hard to close one eye. It reminds me of the classic brown cassette player that so many children happy during the 1980s... I'm somewhat surpirsed that they haven't launched one before now though.

BBC vs Google Maps remix

Mashups are websites that seamlessly combine content from more than one source into an integrated experience using things called API feeds. Taking their name from the music mixing technique where DJs take the vocal track from one song and combine it with the instrumental track of another song to devise a new composition, they basically involve combining existing data from sources like eBay, Amazon, Google, Windows Live and Yahoo in innovative ways.

They require minimal technical knowledge and thus custom mashups are sometimes created by unlikely innovators, combining available public data in new and creative ways. So you can have your flickr feed ‘mashed’ together with a google maps feed to create a cartographied (if ever there was an invented word) collection of photos.

Some examples include:

Garbage Scout – a Google maps mashup that allows you to find interesting garbage in NYC.
Flappr – a different way to search through all the millions of photos on Flickr.


Geobloggers.com

- a way to display pictures from flickr on Google Maps.

I think these are fantastically exciting. They require brands to have the confidence to give parts of themselves away, to let people play with them and give them back as new and different interpretations.

Now that’s fine is you’re the BBC. Because they’re public service, their backstage platform (‘Use our stuff to build your stuff’) makes sense. It’s another way for the BBC to give something back in exchange for the licence fee. But what’s the business model or the brand building model if you’re a corporate?

At the moment, the stakes are relatively small – although with mashup feed's list of sites is growing by an average of 2.6 a day, the big data suppliers are going to start to have their bandwith costs stretched. A brand might well be prepared to pay for this when a mashup increases their brand equity (Google Maps and flickr are two notable beneficiaries thus far). But what happens if an API feed is used in a way that doesn’t portray the brand in such a favourable light?

Hopefully, we’ll continue to see brands that are brave enough opening the floodgates and allow a whole host of fantastic new ideas emerge.

A warm (perfumed) welcome

I was interested to read about some new initiatives from the Sheraton hotel group as part of their new "Warm Welcome" positioning. New features include:

- A Sheraton Ambassador who will greet guests and make their passage into the hotel less transactional and more of a true and personal welcome.
- A signature lobby scent "Welcoming Warmth" includes notes of Fig, Bergamot, Jasmine and Freesia - it was developed exclusively for Sheraton to help settle and relax guests after a long journey. How’s that for sensory marketing?
- During check-in guests will be encouraged to keep in touch with the people that matter most to them with a free ten-minute phone card and a prepaid postcard.





I like all these little touches, but I just hope for their sake that they get all the other stuff right as well. Things like actually booking the right room, not having to wait 20 minutes for a receptionist, getting your name right upon arrival. Otherwise, all the warm welcome touches will simply serve to annoy guests who just want the basics done right.

I remember Russell Davies talking about how hotels always get a tough time from brand strategists and the like. I think that Sheraton might have a neat little idea here. If you set up someone’s stay with a great welcome, they are going to approach it in a positive mood and be more receptive to any other nice touches during that time.