Ho ho ho Merry Christmas! 
This will be the last Four Eyes post for 2009. Bring on 2010! As is the norm with Christmas-time (TV schedules, newspaper content, etc) I’m going to keep this relatively light-hearted and low on substance. Noone wants to work hard in the lead up to Christmas!
Maybe informative
There’s this guy in Poland who is redefining the look and feel of newspapers, and actually increasing circulations. This is how he did it. (6min video, the best bits are from 2:30-5:00). How can this new thinking be applied to advertising?
Firms who kept up marketing during the recession are now ahead of the game. Well, duh! But this is an expert analysis.
Stats show that despite the popularity of social media, email is still the preferred tool for sharing online content. And the humble email isn’t just about text any more, with the advent of technology that can embed LIVE streaming video into emails.
Somewhat interesting
Internet monitoring allows us to see at a glance the ups and downs of a brand/personality/issue. 
From Google’s Zeitgeist to Nielsen’s Buzzmetrics (online perceptions of John Key and Bill English here) to measures of Tiger Woods’ “celebrity score” (he’s more well-known than ever, but not as liked, surprisingly), if you want to know what the masses are thinking then the internet is the place to look!
The Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen has made that a hot topic recently and it has been interesting to see the approach taken in advertising to encourage consumers to change their behaviour. Social marketing in New Zealand has typically used scare tactics, but these examples use humour to get the message across. In Brazil, they want people to pee in the shower. And in Britain it’s as simple as turning the lights off.
Purely entertaining
I just discovered yesterday that Google Earth has a cool, free feature. You can turn it into a flight simulator and fly around the real world. I crashed several planes into Wellington yesterday! Instructions are here. Have fun!
Have a four eyes christmas, don’t go swimming with sunglasses on, and see you all back in 2010!
