You know the drill – all you need to do to take part is tweet your “caption” to @revolverpr, post it to our facebook wall or add your comment to the blog below. We’ll announce the winner tomorrow – good luck!

This week’s winning caption, chosen by Account Director Helen Reid came from @anniemac63 :

This made us giggle – Garfield does indeed look very unimpressed with his get-up and ready to pounce! Congratulations, a virtual mulled wine is winging its way to you!

You know the drill – all you need to do to take part is tweet your “caption” to @revolverpr, post it to our facebook wall or add your comment to the blog below. We’ll announce the winner tomorrow – good luck!

This week’s winning caption came from @summerdaze7 :

That’s where Quixey comes in. A shiny new start-up company, based in California and providing a functional search engine for apps,  Quixey aims to address the common failings in adopting accurate app search keywords. Tomer Kagan, co-founder of Quixey, explains that many apps on Facebook, for example, “don’t even have a description attached –  just a name, (and) from a search perspective if all you have to work with is three words, it’s extremely difficult.”

With the app market growing rapidly, the problem could significantly worsen. To put it in context, across all platforms Twitter boasts more than 1 million apps; Facebook some 500,000. In Apple’s App Store, there are 400,000 apps. In the Android Marketplace, 300,000. This is coupled with web based apps and those developed with API’s from well-known sites like Dropbox, aswell as newer social networks like Google+ and a full array of mobile devices and operating systems.

Considering this dilema, Quixey came to the table recognising the increasing need to develop a new type of search, molded specifically on the unique characteristics of searching for hard to track down apps. Their solution is a “functional search”, which scans major app stores along with blogs, review sites, forums, and social media sites to build a comprehensive picture of what an app can do – through reviews, word of mouth, and demos.

This search engine allows users to type in queries such as “find the nearest Indian restaurant,” with results appearing as a list of apps which can be filtered by platforms. The search engine will also support Windows, Chrome and Mac apps and not just the usual Apple, Android and Blackberry options generally available.

The company will use investment of over $4 million to continue securing top-level partnerships with app stores and various other big third party app resources. In a recent interview with the Quixey team, they hinted that there are more than 25 potential partnerships in the pipeline with app stores, manufacturers and carrier networks. The more partners they have, the more effective the search engine becomes for users.

Along with their web based search engine, Quixey’s business strategy includes offering specialized search services to mobile providers, app stores and handset makers – at no cost to the company’s customers and uses their existing tools. One prominent idea is for a mobile provider or handset maker to fill a users phone with a selection of apps based on their personal interests. For example, one set of apps for journalists and a different set for doctors.

And for the future, the company has identified an opportunity to provide ad-supported search results along with organic results – similar to what you now get from Google. With a better understanding of how the world views an application, they can also allow developers to make changes on their end to better reflect that understanding. By tweaking these items, developers should be able to improve their rankings and ratings as they may think their app belongs in one category, while the public and apps users think it belongs in another. * Developer accounts are still in private beta for now, but Quixey is reporting a positive response from testers.

With reported competition among themselves and Chomp, Kagan says Quixey is thinking bigger than their mobile focused rivals: “We’re building with a different long term goal. We want to be a completely independent platform.”

After a play around with Quixey we found the results spot on! We’re looking forward to following it’s continual development and find it a useful tool for monitoring Digital PR, in terms of tracking the success and development of a variety of app releases.

Have a look at the below video from Quixey which explains exactly what they do:

We’ll finish this post with a quote from Revolver’s Managing Director Iain S Bruce:

“Steve Jobs’ major accomplishment wasn’t in business and his legacy won’t lie in the designs he left behind. What he did that was truly great was tune ordinary consumers into the technology dream – opening up the public imagination to the infinite possibilities the computing universe offers in a manner few could equal.”

“He was an innovator rather than an inventor, and it’s fair to say that he stood on the shoulders of giants, but without him the dot.communist revolution would be several years further behind.”

Posted to Chinese social media site Weibo in mid-August, the photos quickly sparked conspiracy theories, ranging from UFOs to secret military operations. The original posting of the photos has now been forwarded over 46,500 times.

• Three days later, the formations had already been picked up on by international UFO groups, one of which posted this video:

• By the 22nd of August China’s official news agency, Xinhua, published an article about the “abnormal desert rings,” going so far as to mention aliens.

• By the 26th of August however BMW had come clean through China’s massive news website sina.BMW explained the crop circle viral by saying it aimed to highlight the “UN1QUE” characteristics of both the BMW 1 series model and its prospective driver. Also, UFO is short for “UN1QUE For One.” Hmm…wonder if it makes more sense in China?

Have a look at the advert in full and see what you think:

While the stunt itself was a clear success, it begs the question: was it successful as a brand-building act? The viral created a lot of web buzz, but a great deal of that was from UFO-watchers and conspiracy theorists; is that BMW’s target demographic? And if so, is mocking them the best approach?

BMW is however having a successful year in China, with sales up from 2010. As the nation’s car market contracts, BMW is repositioning to appeal to a different consumer group. The BMW 1 Series is a Chinese made offering: less luxury, more middle class, targeting the sporty, urban, youthful Chinese consumer.

What do you think? Is it clever advertising or are they alienating (sorry) Chinese customers?

Have a great weekend folks!

The campaign’s message ‘Can You Solve This?’ has a double meaning. The first element is for people to “solve” the code’s meaning by scanning it. The second part asks people around the world to join together to fix the problem of educational inequality in Iran. Ruha Reyhani, an organizer from Berlin explained that:
“Normally with human rights campaigns people are overdosed with information, but because this appears like a riddle, we hope that people will feel inticed to participate.”

The campaign was created to raise awareness of the Iranian regime which discriminates against many students, including those who follow Baha’i Faith. (A monotheistic religion founded by Bahá’u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá followers around the world.) Students of this faith find that they can’t register for classes, take exams or are not accepted at universities. The Baha’i Higher Education Institute, an online school set up by Baha’i officials for excluded students, was closed in May. The Iranian regime also arrested dozens of the institute’s staff, media reports said.

The site tells users to scan the code, watch a video, send a letter, and forward information about the campaign to social media friends.

“In Iran, the denial of education is a reality that many young people are being forced to accept as they are directly being denied access to universities and institutions of higher learning,” the Can You Solve This website explains. “This is not because the institutions of learning are not available, but rather, because these young people have different political views, social affiliations or religious convictions.” Student political activists, feminists human rights activists and young girls in general are amongst those most affected.

The below video explains the campaign in full:

What do you think of QR codes being used as an innovative way to engage people in campaigns? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

The idea of a flagship store is to create a unique experience for customers that cannot be found in any other branch of the store. If a company can get their flagship store as near as possible to a stop on tours of the city it can substantially increase foot traffic. Tourists are known for spending money whilst on holiday, and are more inclined to purchase merchandise and souvenirs which are ‘exclusive to a flagship store: a key source of revenue for companies making the investment in the store.

An impressive and unique flagship store can help to successfully communicate brand image to consumers. We’ve found some great examples of flagship stores from around the world….

M&M: Times Square New York and Leicester Square London

M&M’s are a globally recognised product. The company however has managed to differentiate itself from competitors by promoting strong brand awareness. ‘M&M’s World’ in Times Square NY allows customers have fun with the brand by interacting with giant M&M characters, taking pictures and plating games in-store.

M&M have also opened a four-storey store in London’s Leicester Square, making it the largest sweet shop in the world. The aim was to create a fun and exciting atmosphere to attract both local residents and tourists to the stores. The store features seven feet statues of M&M’s characters and an iconic 1963 London double-decker bus with large interactive screens. In the centre of the flagship store is a custom-made M&M union jack flag and sweeping red staircase, which is lit up by a multi-coloured M&M’s chandelier.

The M&M brand is a prime example of how retailers are adding entertainment and interactive experiences to the retail mix. The trend which has even been given it’s own name: retail-tainment has become increasingly popular during the economic downturn, with retailers increasingly looking for new and creative ways to draw consumer’s in-store.

Apple’s ‘Qube’ Store Time Square New York

Apple’s qube store in Times Square is constantly surrounded by tourists taking pictures. When you enter the big glass cube, you walk downstairs where the store is underground.
Open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year(!!) Apple took the approach of designing a building that people want to see to increase traffic through its flagship store. If tourists stop to take a picture of the outside of a store, the likelihood is that they will venture inside.

Louis Vuitton Store Shanghai

The Louis Vuitton flagship store in Shanghai was designed by New York architect Peter Marino to feel more like of a presidential hotel suite than a retail store. The message that Louis Vuitton wanted to convey was that of pure luxury. The store carries all the product lines that Louis Vuitton sell anywhere in the world, has a separate VIP entrance with valet service and VIP fitting lounges for men and women.

Wouldn’t it be nice to visit some of these cities this weekend? Ah well, we can dream! Here’s hoping Glasgow provides us with some sunshine!
Have a great weekend folks!

The most recent visual assistance product to hit the app store is VizWiz. As well as giving you automated image recognition from intelligent software, it throws your questions open to a small band of volunteers standing-by on the internet – a human cloud, willing to donate ten seconds of their time here and there to describe photos which come in.

“The most popular type of question is a product that they have which has text written on it, a label with instructions. People want to know what it says, how to cook it or when it expires,” said Professor Jeff Bigham, the man behind the service.

In a perhaps unexpected technological development, blind people are now finding they need to learn the basics of photography in order to take advantage of these text and image recognition services on smart phones.How do you hold the camera up? And how close do you put it to the object you want to know more about? Angles, perspective, distance and light, are concepts that we take completely for granted but that don’t come naturally to people who have never been able to see.

The oMoby app is capable of recognising products from a photograph, and it it can’t automatically work out an image by comparing it to an image search engine, it sends out the request to a network of humans who answer in a similar way to the VizWiz app.

Steve Nutt from Hertfordshire who has been blind since birth explained how it took him two weeks to master how to frame a shot which he does in a very functional way, quite different to how sighted people would do it.

Jeff Bigham’s team sees the results of the camerawork coming from users like Steve. Not everyone gets it right with their first shot as it’s not always easy to frame the photos. Sometimes the centre is out of the photo. if they’re asking what is on a can of soup label, we generally tell them that ‘we can’t tell what this is, the label is likely on the other side of the can’.

These smartphone apps are a fantastic example of the difference to peoples lives that such technology can have. Makes angry birds seem a little frivolous!

Amidst these acts of mindless violence, there have been numerous heart-warming examples of community spirit. The #riotcleanup movement is a fantastic example of such community service. In the early hours of the third night’s rioting the hashtag #riotcleanup started trending, and by 5.30am of the 9th August the website was up and running. The platform was used to organise people who wanted to help clean up, and hundreds of people turned up to various locations in affected areas the very day. The site is now serving as a portal for information, listing where you can donate to people who have lost possessions and other useful contacts.

Another story we stumbled upon when reading about those affected by the riots was that of Aaron Biber, an 89 year old barber who has lived and worked in Tottenham for over 40 years. When Aaron arrived at his shop on the morning of Sunday the 7th August after the previous night’s disturbances he found the place smashed up, with windows broken and everything of taken by looters.
Aaron said at the time – “I will probably have to close because I haven’t got insurance and I can’t afford the repairs.”

Two interns who are currently part of Ad agency BBH London’s intern programme BBH Barn realised that with the riots came alot of negativity towards todays youth and the use of social media technology to mobilise people.
They wanted to show that youth and technology could also be a force for good, so they came up with an idea that enabled them to use social media to help someone that was neither young nor technology savvy.

They started a campaign called ‘Keep Aaron Cutting’, a blog that has used the power of social media to spread the news and encourage people to make donations online. They asked each of BBH’s twitter followers to donate just £1 to the cause.

The campaign has raised an incredible £35,000 not only for Aaron, but for the surrounding North London community. An open letter on the blog from Aaron’s Nephew says that “…the knowledge that the shop will be secured and repaired, has given him the strength and heart to continuing cutting hair for many years to come. He really is at a loss for words of gratitude and has told me he thanks everyone from the bottom of his heart, who has made a donation”.

News of the campaign has spread to the local Tottenham FC, and star striker Peter Crouch paid Aaron a lifelong Tottenham fan a visit earlier this week to show his support (and to grab a free haircut), joking with him that the only thing that hadn’t been looted was a signed picture of Crouch himself!

After the predictable backlash against social networking from politicians blaming it for spreading the riots in the first place – it’s valuable to remind ourselves how it can also unite people for the better. The emotive action has demonstrated the massive influence that effective use of the internet and social media communication can have in digital campaigns.