I totally *love* this visual style. They’re all pretty rad but this one’s my favorite. See the rest here.

Next Thursday I’ll be speaking on a panel called “Location, Location, Location” at Ad Age’s Creativity and Technology conference.

The details of the panel are as follows:

6:20 Panel: Location, Location, Location

Location-based services will undoubtedly be a bigger part of your personal life and the brand creativity world in the coming days. Find out how this space is evolving, for users and for brands, how user experience will progress, how it’ll all be monetized, and the new ways that local businesses and big brands will be involved. And what about your privacy? If you play along, do you forfeit it? Find out where it’s at from two of the biggest players in the LBS game, each of whom take a different approach to location.

 

Moderator: Kunur Patel, Advertising Age

 

Panelists:

Alex Rainert, Head of Product, Foursquare

Dave Wang, VP, Business Development, Booyah

Tina Unterlaender, Account Director, AKQA Mobile

Should be really fun. I’m also looking forward to checking out some of the other panels and speakers that day. Check out the full agenda – some really great stuff in there. Hope to see you there!

ps: I believe you can still register here.

While I’m not a huge fan of this particular Android phone, the way they’ve approached this ad resonated with me. I think it does an excellent job supporting the gestalt of their You campaign. Showing’s the phone’s view of you is a really simple way of showing how a mobile device fits intimately into all the different aspects of your life and (presumably) that HTC gets that. The only downside is that whether or not the phone’s UI actually reflects that thoughtfulness is something you’re left to find out on your own.

Really smart stuff on the differences between tangible and intangible value and the often untapped benefits of the latter.

Thanks to @mtbrady for the tip.

Volkswagen’s new viral video campaign, The Fun Theory caught my eye this week.

“The Fun Theory” is a series of experiments, captured on video, to find out if making the world more fun can improve people’s behavior.

Among the experiments: does turning a set of subway stairs into a real-life piano encourage people to use them (answer: yes, 66% more). Another experiment asks whether making a trash can sound like a 50ft-deep well will make people pick up their trash. An upcoming experiment, meanwhile, will turn a bottle recycling center into an arcade game.

Seeing it immediately got the ITP grad + Experience Designer in me all excited. Viral video + ad campaign blather aside, these videos can stand alone as great studies in how injecting a little playfulness can not only create a profound, memorable experience but it can also change human behavior. Pretty powerful stuff. I highly recommend you go watch them all.

(via Gizmodo – Robot Parkour Ad by Nike – Nike ad parkour)

Toscaninis (an ice cream shop in Boston) has a nice real-time visualization of what people are saying about their place on Twitter.

(via @dens on Flickr)

For a service who’s value might not be immediately clear to many, this particular FIOS commercial goes beyond the usual monetary value + HD channels-focused differentiation and highlights the user experience.

It does an excellent job of showing people what about the FIOS interface (and service) is interesting by showing you (the ad viewer) exactly what future you (the user) would see on their TV if you had FIOS. The ad also made me (yet again) go check to see if FIOS is available in Park Slope yet (it isn’t). Well done, Verizon. Go here to check for yourself.

Until Verizon gets an official copy up online somewhere, here’s a capture I grabbed with my digicam. Sorry for the crappy sound:

Disclaimer: It would be a real shame if this turned out to be an approximation/demo of what the interface is. If that’s the case, then the joke’s on me.