Ridley Scott (director of blockbusters ‘Alien’,’ Robin Hood ‘etc) and YouTube are working together to create an amazing experimental movie. On the 24th of July, people from across the globe are going to film an account of their day, and post the video on YouTube.

Ridley Scott will select the most interesting videos and will edit them together in order to make a movie about different people’s lives on this date.

This film will be a time capsule for the future and tell people how we used to live in 2010, with the unfortunate exception of few countries banned by the US (Cuba, Iran, South Korea…).

So if you have a video recorder you should go on YouTube and look for Life in a Day!

A few months ago Google tried to predict the result of the Eurovision Song Contest by studying the number of searches on each contestant. The weird thing was that Google was right, correctly guessing the winner of the Eurovision contest before everyone else.

There is definitely a relation between the number of searches and the results of a vote (at least where entertainment is concerned). We can also use YouTube to see how many users saw contestants on video, although it is harder to geo targeted the result.

This technique is not alwyas… accurate, do you remember Susan Boyle (Britains Got Talent) was by far on top of YouTube viewings as well as the number of searches but at the end did not win.

Now lets see if Google/YouTube can give us the winner of the X factor 2009.

Based on Google insight (UK search only), the winner will be……….. Danyl Johnson, followed by Jamie Archer.

Searches X factor Winner

If we look at YouTube top watched videos we have once again Danyl Johnson but this time followed by Stacey Soloman.  

X factor Winner - Youtube

So based on the above, the next X – Factor winner is Danyl Johnson! Let see in few months if I am right…

Last tuesday the Vatican launched its new website Pope2you.net for the 43rd World Communications Day. This new website offers the user a bunch of Social media applications such as iPhone and Facebook applications, video and blog.

Pope2You Website

The idea from the Catholic Church is to reach young people and change the image of the Church. Pope2You is more a portal for the different online applications.

Unfortunately the Facebook application wasn’t found by Facebook when I tried it… not a very good sign.

WikiCath (probably Wikipedia Catholic? ) is more or less a blog (or at least this is what I understand of it). In the business world it would be the company blog. It is a good idea and makes it easier to follow the news from the Vatican.

WikiCath

The iPhone application is a nice application which allows you to receive news, pictures and video from the Pope (Vatican). There is not much to say about it, except that this application does the job!

iphone Pope2You

And finally the YouTube Channel which is pretty well customised with links to the different Vatican websites. Once again nothing new here but nothing is missing as well.

Youtube Pope2You

This new campaign updates the Vatican’s online presence. At the end of the day the Vatican was not trying to be original or revolutionise the web but they have done a lot better job at it than most of the companies online…

Anyway, all these applications definitely facilitate communications with the Catholic Church and this is a pretty good idea for the 43rd World Communications Day

This is the fourth time that Google has organised the Doodle Google. Doodle is a Google logo drawing competition. It is reserved for K12 students (5 to 18 year old kids) across the US .

Doodle - Google

This years topic is ‘What I Wish for the World’. Google invites all users to vote for their favourite logo based on the state finalists and regional winners. The winner will have his logo online on the 21st of May 2009 and the child’s school will receive $25,000 to go towards improvement of IT facilities.

Doodle - Vote

Doodle is a great online campaign (very similar to the one organised by YouTube, weird they are the same company!!!). It provides aid to schools….whilst promoting the brand awareness to the youth of America.

Once again it is a cheap and efficient online marketing campaign organised by the Google Group. Maybe next time Google will organise a world wild contest…

YouTube, the video website, has organised a contest for the Cannes Lions 2009. The Cannes Lions festival is a global event for those working in advertising world. The festival will be held in Cannes from the 21st to the 28th of June. During the Cannes Lions celebration a numbers of Lions Awards are attributing to the best press campaigns, TV ads, online campaigns etc…

48 Hour Ad Contest - Youtube

During this event YouTube is holding an advertising contest. The winning advertisement will be premiered at the Cannes Lions festival 2009 and will be shown on YouTube.

The advertisement should be about a charity project but the twist is that nobody knows the exact brief. YouTube plans to reveal the brief only 48 hours before the candidates need to post the video (the 15th of May) and between 17th May and 21st June. The entry will need to be promoted online in order to increase the number of viewers. The video with the most views selected by the YouTube judges will win the contest.

YouTube have organised a banner campaign, videos and a micro site for this event. Over 2500 people have subscribed to the contest so far and the channel has been viewed by 110,000 people.

Excellent idea from YouTube, it is very cost effective, creative and for a good cause. It is a top online marketing campaign considering the budget invested.

Everybody knows about the controversial statement by Carrie Prejean (Miss California) who answered a question about gay marriage during the election of Miss USA. A radical reaction in the USA was provoked by the un-politically correct answer.

The judge, Perez Hilton, who asked the question during the election has since started a campaign against Miss Prejean via his blog.

Since the election the number of searches has blown up and there are more people who are looking for Miss California or Carrie Prejean than for Miss USA.

Miss California - Google Trends

It is interesting to see what Carrie Prejean or the Miss California Organisation did or neglected to do in order to manage the crisis.

Miss California Organisation posted an official statement on its official website. It is of course a typical reaction, but many other companies forget to do so.

Miss California Official Statement

YouTube was the war ground between the two parties and it seems that Miss California has posted more content and has exposed more people to her point of view. The videos regarding this event have been the most watched videos of the week.

Youtube Miss California

On Facebook a number of support groups for Carrie Prejean have been created with a large number of followers. Less groups against her have been formed.

Carrie Prejean Facebook Group

On Wikipedia, the controversy section is more or less objective. I guess nobody tried to influence the result of Wikipedia.

Carrie Prejean Wikipedia

On Twitter there is not so much of the Carrie Prejean propaganda as her page (or maybe a fake one) doesn’t work anymore. The page of Perez Hilton has a few comments about the event.

Carrie Prejean Twitter

At the end of the day, I am not sure how much did Carrie Prejean, Miss California organisation, or her fanbase did to mitigate the crisis. However, the winner of the online battle seems to be Carrie Prejean who made herself available to more people than Perez Hilton and his supporters.

In order to promote the show Yellowstone, BBC Two uses its Youtube channel.

They have posted the extraordinary video of the incredible fox who dives in the snow!

Great success, the video is one of the top favourites on Youtube this week (Most Discussed This Month). Very good, when you know that Susan Boyle and other Britain have talent videos are taking possession of Youtube UK.

Fox Snow Dive - Youtube

It is not new for the BBC to post a video but it is one of the first times the have had such a successful video on Youtube.

But like most of the time with people who don’t know the fine details of SEO, the video is far from optimised. For example, the link on the video links to the BBC home page and not on the specific page about Yellowstone. A good video not so well exploited.

Yellowstone BBC 2

We also can note that the page for the Yellowstone is not optimised…at least the video is doing well on the Google results page.

Google result page - Yellowstone