This holiday season, keeping in touch with the loved ones, seeing and talking to them seems to be as important as sharing gifts and cards. But a lot people are out of home these days, so they may be missing out on something essential. Skype is addressing this problem by offering travelers in airports across the U.S. a great opportunity to connect with their family and friends for free. The Internet phone service, which was acquired by Microsoft in May, is now offering a free hour of Internet access to third-party wireless hotspots within the Skype WiFi hotspot area in 50 airports in the U.S., so that travelers could see and hear their loved ones between flights.
Author: Anna Rudenko
The popular camera brand Canon and Hollywood producer Ron Howard released a short film entitled ‘When You Find Me,’ inspired by eight crowdsourced photos. In summer, the brand and the filmmaker encouraged photo enthusiasts and professional from all around the globe to submit their stills that would represent one of the upcoming story’s facets. The competition dubbed Project Imagin8ion finished in summer, but it wasn’t the end for the project itself—on December 16, the production team unveiled a result of result work, which can be viewed on the dedicated page (the film will be available to watch until December 19, 9 am EST, so it’s the last day you can view it).
It’s easier (and much more pleasurable) to do good to the world when you do that together with a celebrity. Mozilla Firefox is calling all Americans who want to support a social cause and get some memorabilia from their favourite actor or singer to partake in a new initiative entitled Mozilla Firefox Challenge to raise funds for social causes.
On the heels of Frito-Lay’s campaign focused on the sources of its products, McDonald’s is going to launch a new promotion in the USA, revolving around the company’s meat and vegetable suppliers, to showcase real people, who help make the fast food chain’s offerings organic. The new push, which includes TV, print and digital, additional paid and earned media, is slated for January 2, and, as AdAge reports, it will be “running sporadically” through the end of 2012.
Christmas season is the time when most people not only exchange gifts and send greetings, but also drink and say cheers. For some of us the second goes above the first, and here the problems begin. To address this, global brands, both alcohol and beverage ones, launch campaigns to promote moderate drinking. Recently, the soft-drink giant Coca-Cola rolled out the new round of its ‘Designated Driver’ initiative, and HEINEKEN started its new promotion of responsible alcohol consumption by launching a new extension of the ‘Open Your World’ global campaign of its flagship beer, Heineken. Under the new theme ‘Sunrise belongs to moderate drinkers’ unveiled this Christmas season, the brand is spreading the message of moderate drinking primarily on the web, via a range of platforms, including Heineken’s YouTube channel, Facebook fan page, Heineken.com and broadcast.
On the heels of the announcement of Facebook and HEINEKEN’s tie up, the flagship beer of the company revealed two festive applications on its fan page in the biggest social media platform (though, the major deal starts on January 1, 2012). The apps, ‘BeerFriender’ and ‘The Heineken Social Christmas Tree’ help people celebrate the winter holiday in a true social way like never before.
This Christmas Saatchi & Saatchi is giving an alternative kind of gift, which harnesses the creativity within the Network. We have invited musicians and bands working at Saatchi & Saatchi offices around the world, to create original songs for a Holiday album, as our offering to clients and friends globally. In keeping with the Saatchi & Saatchi philosophy of creating not copying culture, we are tapping into the abundance of talent within the Network, that exists outside of our day jobs.