NOW

Hundred seventy five and a quarter of a day to the Olympics and I am on a plane heading for New York. I haven’t left the country for over a month now and especially the past two weeks were quite tense. Intense. Also today we had the worst weather and pollution in Beijing since the winter started five months ago. Pollution covered in dust, as a friend pointed it out in his MSN nickname.

One fact in particular kept coming up over and over again, in media abroad, in comments made by friends and also by really getting the firsthand feel of it: the Great Firewall of China. While it has always been quite tiresome to live without access to blogs hosted on blogspot, pictures on Flickr, Google at occasions and never Wikipedia, this time the censors went as far as a total access restriction to Youtube.

The reason is Tibet and the way the government is controlling the public’s access to 3rd party information. BBC, CNN, news.google.com – sometimes they work, sometimes not. There must have been some serious movies on youtube, I might have to catch up on that while I am my New Yorker Hotel room.

The real annoyance though was me judging the Oneshow Interactive. This is the second time I have the honor to do so, and it is a heavy task indeed. Both, in responsibility, as it is arguably one of the two most serious and prestigious award show for the digital creative industry, and also by the sheer amount of work you have to consume, watch, read and understand in order to make your informed judgment. This year the organizers gave the judges 9 days to complete the first round. I just finished it, 503 entries in over two dozen categories. I counted every one of them from my ADSL connection behind the Great Firewall, I counted them and the hours that it took me to go through all of them: 52.

The judging is always the biggest eye opener of the year, it is the moment when you see your own work rubbing shoulders with the campaigns of some of the smartest brains in the industry. I get a constant rush of inspiration from dozens of amazing ideas that I can simply click through. But I also feel ashamed and stupid that some of the ideas I might have thought of before but never put them into reality. Out of laziness, probably, and if indeed I would have executed them, would they have been as brilliant as the ones before me?

Here are a few initial learnings after my first glance through the 503 campaigns

1. Video. Basically all major brand websites make heavy use of video. Hereby it is not just enough to use video, but to actually do so professionally. Actors, directors, producers, script writers. The internet turns into one big soap opera. Some of it done brilliantly, as smart as some of the best TV spots. Others not as good, amateurish, a bit foolish. The trick is, no matter the execution, still the idea shines through. Just now the ideas have to be executed brilliantly. Take a look at the Axe site "let the game continue".

2. Brands do use facebook. At least according to the submissions at the Oneshow. There must have been almost a dozen or so facebook applications to judge. Some of them as part of a bigger campaign, some of them as stand alone. None of them was particularly impressive though I thought and I doubt that the fact of simply creating a facebook app will win you an award. We shall see.

3. Web 2.0 is at another level. There have been a few sites that really impressed me with their smart use of web 2.0 features. Tagging, commenting, community, blogging etc all at a new level. The good ones really master to make the complex simple. They act as a tool, as a very smart, likable and powerful facilitator of communication and interaction between brand and consumer. Check out the Scientific American. Some of those sites were even done in flash.

4. Entertainment and branded content are huge. The branded content category was one of the largest in fact and it looks like the lines of media, content and advertising are really beginning to blur here. That is probably where we have to start the discussion whether or not the big advertising idea is still relevant in the online world. Ideas here are not as simple as in a banner or on a brand site. They come in the shape of entertainment, video, games, sequels, quests and competitions that span multiple channels and platforms. Check this out
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Second round judging will start on Tuesday and I am very excited to meet all the other judges. The next few days will really unveil what trends emerged in the digital space over the past 12 months. Posting more shortly.

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