From script to screen, Connecticut based XVIVO is an award-winning animation studio that creates spectacular, custom visual productions for advertising agencies, broadcast companies, educational institutions and a variety of science, medical and technology companies.

Harvard University selected XVIVO to create an original animation that would illuminate the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. The objective for the project was to introduce a medium that could take undergrad students beyond the more limited perspective of their textbooks.

The end result was a masterful feature that explores and illustrates the different cellular environments and the inherent communications within this micro universe. “The Inner Life of the Cell” is a hypnotic, three-dimensional journey through the microscopic world of a cell. It’s an eight and half minute feature that took 14 months to produce.

Since it’s release, “The Inner Life of the Cell” has been well received – to say the least. This is an excerpt from a recent Wired News interview with David Bolinsky of XVIVO:

Wired News: What was the reaction to it there?

Bolinsky: We started receiving tens of thousands of e-mails and phone calls, the hits on our website went from 200 a week to 650,000 a week and it was picked up by ABC News. We were getting e-mails from major universities all over the world asking if they could use this for their students (and) calls from high school teachers wanting it for advanced biology classes … and museums that want us to work on museum exhibits because they want to modernize how they teach science.
This is what I hoped when I started this company — that it could change how people saw things. We (thought) this great academic animation would be shown at Harvard and would disappear forever under the Ivy dome of silence - We didn’t really anticipate that it would go anywhere and when it did it took us all by surprise.

The complete Bolinsky interview is at Wired.com -
“The Inner Life of the Cell”

While this video excerpt is set to music - the full eight and a half minute version includes narration that explains the dynamic processes that you’re watching.

So what does this have to do with marketing news? Well there’s the viral concept in play here – good creative takes on a life of its own. The publicity has surprised even Bolinsky who expected that his creative feature “would disappear forever under the Ivy dome of silence”. But the story has legs.

The following advert is the creation of Brazilian ad agency; Dez Brasil for the Asics athletic brand. The ad copy featured with the print ad reads:

Left is rational. Right is emotional. Left, right, left, right, left, right is balance.
Running is in our DNA.
Asics. Sound mind, sound body.

We wonder if the creative elements behind the print advertisement were in any way inspired by “The Inner Life of the Cell”. Strong symmetry between the two projects! Both thought provoking and both well done. Click the image for a good look!

The observant among you will notice the muscle of the “sound minded” Asics runner. The progressive marketers among you who want to thrive in your own business universe realize that you need your own Real Marketing Muscle.

eBooks are probably the most underperforming of all the internet related inventions. When the� ‘eBook’ concept was launched a mere 5-6 years back, we all expected a lot of miracles with this technology.� I was one of the earlier users of http://www.eBooks.org and really looked forward to a time when I could go online and buy a pdf version of any book I wanted.� But even after the technology is out for a reasonable time now, there are still no quality books out there in pdf format, except those cheap fiction and $ 2 ‘get rich quick’ books mainly promoting online scams.

The way internet has changed music and video is phenomenal. Look at Apple who has altogether shifted the way we used to buy and listen to music. It has now become instantly downloadable, easily portable and relatively affordable. � The same is true with video, Youtube has � transformed everything in a short period of time.

Then why not books when the biggest commodity on internet is still the written word or the content.� Like the demise of VHS tapes & audio tapes, ‘when will we see the end of printed books and why this has not taken off like other internet applications’ is an important question.� However the answer might not be very simple. Despite that books offer less interactivity and internet has found more interactive ways of sharing knowledge & ideas like Wikipedia and internet blogs, printed books are still the largest source of knowledge and many of us still love to read them.� I wish to see exciting developments on projects like Google Book Search and whether there is any significant development in this area with Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies.

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Anita Leopold has a little surprise for anyone who thinks vending machines were created to dispense lightly salted snack food and sugar-laced temptations.

The top treat in the sleek, high-tech machines operated by her company and ZoomSystems at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is a top-of-the-line Apple iPod that fetches $349 before tax. It comes with a money-back guarantee, and it doesn’t drop from anywhere.

A sophisticated robotic arm gently guides the mini-music machine to the buyer’s hands.

“We’ve done about $55,000 in a month in gross sales just for the one on Concourse A,” said Leopold, executive vice-president and owner Business Traveler Services. “This is becoming the future for some high-end products in places like airports where space is at a premium.”

Mark Mullins, Zoom’s executive vice-president, said his company now has machines, which, depending on the location, dispense everything from skin-care products to batteries. They are in more than 300 locations nationwide, including universities, military bases and more than 126 Macy’s stores. Mullins said there are 11 Zoom machines in metro Atlanta.

“We put in some iPods and found we couldn’t keep them in stock,” he said, “We found no customer resistance to swiping a card and buying a $300 item from a machine. We’re selling thousands (of iPods), and the machines at the Atlanta airport are major contributors to that.”

At a new breed of “Robin Hood” restaurants, diners pay what they can afford — and what they think the meal is worth. Deciding between the spicy peanut stew and the pesto chicken, or the squash soup and the avocado, chicken, lime soup, are not the only decisions tempting patrons at the One World Café in Salt Lake City and the SAME (So All Might Eat) Café in Denver. They must also decide what the meal is worth.

These pay-as-you-can cafes have missions that are unapologetically altruistic—call it serving up fare Robin Hood style. “Our philosophy is that everyone, regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy, organic food while being treated with dignity,” explains Brad Birky, who opened SAME with his wife, Libby, in October. Customers who have no money are encouraged to exchange an hour of service — sweep, wash the dishes, weed the organic garden — for a meal. Likewise, guests who have money are encouraged to leave a little extra to offset the meals of those who have less to give. “We’re a hand up, not a hand out,” says One World owner Denise Cerreta, who prides herself on the fact that everyone can afford a meal at her café.

On Aug. 12, a group of 12 fans of the Web browser Mozilla Firefox, which competes with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer, used two-by-fours and rope to hollow out a 30,000-square-foot impression of the brand’s logo in an oat field outside of Salem, Ore. The handmade crop circle wasn’t the first time Mozilla diehards had displayed their support for the brand publicly. In December, 2004, a group raised enough cash to buy a two-page ad in The New York Times to thank those who had contributed to the launch of the beloved browser.

But neither of these stunts was orchestrated by a PR firm or in-house marketing guru. What’s more, the more than 10,000 programmers who are constantly tweaking the open-source coding and performing quality controls on the Firefox browser are volunteers, not employees. And the 60,000 Web sites that have linked to Mozilla’s site to encourage people to download the browser receive no compensation.

It’s this growing community that has allowed Mozilla, a small company with about 60 full-time employees, to compete with juggernauts like Microsoft. “One of our distinguishing characteristics is that we’re a small organization competing on a large playing field,” says Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for Mozilla. He says the company owes its success to its users and their “passion for Firefox.”

The branding success of companies like Mozilla, Pom Wonderful, Craigslist, and others show that you don’t have to be big for your brand to be big. By building a dedicated group of users or customers, small companies can create formidable brand power.

Coors Light Beer has recently made a push to broadcast Super Bowl XLI in multiple languages when it airs on February 4th, 2007. The nation’s growing number of Spanish speaking citizens is the reason Coors is backing the initiative. As the official beer sponsor of the NFL, Coors revealed that 77% of Hispanic males ages 21 to 34 are NFL Football Fans.

“The popularity of NFL football among Latinos in the U.S. continues to grow at an accelerated rate,” said Paul Mendieta, Coors marketing director, U.S. Hispanic and Latin America. Expect to soon see Super Bowl themed packaging from Coors that uses both English and Spanish tag lines that read “One Game. One Dream.” Coors will also be sponsoring the Tazon Latino I (Latino Bowl I) which is the first nationally televised flag football game between former Latino celebrities and former NFL stars which will air Feb. 3rd at 5 p.m. on Telemundo.

In the latest Idaho Business Review there is an intriguing article on ‘The Cheesecake Factory’ and their effective word-of-mouth marketing campaign and the success that followed. The company has been around for a staggering 28 years and has never formally advertised (television, radio, or print) while relying on only word-of-mouth advertising generated from high-quality experiences with memorable visits. The passionate customers who crave the company’s delicious cheesecake are all the marketing that Vice President of Business Development, Howard Gordon, needs to keep them coming back.

Digg recently celebrated its’ second birthday with beautiful technical and functional improvements. Digg users are now able to ‘Digg’ their favorite podcasts on the Digg podcasting homepage by category. Digg hopes this marketing strategy will bring in web users who will use Digg as their first stop when looking for podcasts.

If this is successful, look for Digg to launch a whole new slew of features and content areas. Another new feature of Digg is the ‘Top 10 Stories” area where users can see the hottest stories of the day. Seperate ‘Top 10′ areas are made available for each category on the website. Other changes include Digg being widescreen now with a flexible layout for bigger computer screens and video enhancements which allow you to view videos directly on Digg with a ‘lightbox’ feature.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just issued a staff opinion letter (PDF) that could quell marketers’ enthusiasm for “stealth marketing.” That practice, where people are paid to use or pitch products in public settings without disclosing the fact that they are being paid to do so, falls afoul of the FTC’s “Endorsement Guidelines.” The agency concludes that “the failure to disclose the relationship between the marketer and the consumer would be deceptive unless the relationship were otherwise clear from the context.”

The occasion of the opinion is a letter from Commercial Alert (PDF), a group dedicated to “protecting communities from commercialism.” Commercial Alert asked the FTC to launch a full investigation of the buzz marketing industry, claiming that “some of these companies are perpetrating large-scale deception upon consumers by deploying buzz marketers who failed to disclose that they have been enlisted to promote products.” One case in point, mentioned in the complaint, was a campaign by Sony Ericsson that had the company pay 60 models to hang out at New York tourist attractions with the T68i cell phone. The models would ask passers-by to take their pictures using the phones in an attempt to build buzz about the product.

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Zillow.com was recently opened up by Expedia (DOT COM!) founder Richard Barton who wants to quickly gain ground in the competitive U.S. property business. The Zillow website is a user generated content site similar in concept to MySpace.

Homeowners and real estate agents alike can use the website to upload properties, photos, descriptions, and improvements along selling prices. The Financial times reports that Zillow will combine elements from Myspace, Wikipedia, and Craigstlist.

Currently, Zillow has 3.5 million members but the site still faces competition from Move.com and other similar concept websites.

These ads were developed by Leo Burnett, Frankfurt. I love how they split the billboards in two to show how easily their knives cut through different types of animals and food.

OK, so this innovation takes the cake. If Paris Hilton doesn’t float your boat, or you think Mel Gibson is a real stinker and George Bush’s policies are a little whiffy, then get a load of this. An ingenious lot down at Celebritybuttplugs.com have developed a range of sex toys with more than a passing similarity to America’s most talked about stars.

For only US $17.95, plus postage and handling, you too can have your choice of Parass Hilton, Smell Gibson or George Dubya Tush. But, of course, any resemblance, real or imagined, to the aforementioned celebrities is purely coincidental as the site claims - “these products are not intended to depict any specific celebrity” and “all the characters shown on this site are fictitious”.

In honor of December 19th, the World AIDs Day, a New York wedding gown was created to raise awareness. It is comprised of 12,500 condoms which were stiched and sewn together to honor the day.

Here’s one of those products that you tell yourself that could have came up with lickidty split. It’s a solution to dunking your cookies with your drinks without getting too many crumbs in the cup. The dunk mug has a compartment at the bottom to store your biscuits prior to dunking, so you can hold the mug in one hand and and retrieve one biscuit at a time ready for the dunk. The dunk mug is available from Firebox for £14.95.

The quest for the male pill is, in many ways, the search for the holy grail of contraception. More and more people are clamoring for options that would allow men to share in the burden of preventing pregnancy. Having a birth control pill available to men will mean much more advertising in the pharm world that one could imagine. This is why it is best to explore the possibility of having such a pill in the near future.

A 2005 study showed that nearly 50 percent of men in the United States would be willing to try a new form of birth control, and up to 72 percent of men in other countries are interested in new forms of male contraception.

So why don’t we have a male birth control pill?

“Certainly, contraception has commonly been the responsibility of the woman in the past,” says Dr. Peter Schlegel, Professor and Chairman of Urology at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. “But there’s no reason that couldn’t change.” Standing in the way, however, are many factors that make it difficult to produce male contraception.

“Stopping all sperm production or disabling all sperm is a real challenge, when you’re making [millions of] sperm a day,” Schlegel says. Male physiology is a lot more complicated than female physiology,” says Daulat Tulsiani, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “Initially, [it was] thought there was one molecule on the egg and on the sperm that played a role in their interaction.”