Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

As part of Tropicanaʼs “Brighter Mornings” campaign and coinciding with their new ‚Awake to Alive’ TV commercial in the UK, a giant “sun” was installed in the London cityscape at Trafalgar Square. What a great way to light up Londonʼs grey winter mornings and to let Londoners wake up from their slumber to truly brighter mornings!

Check out the making of video to to see how Greyworld went about making this fantastic public art installation. Providing some impressive stats, the Trafalgar “sun” produces the equivalent light of 60,000 lightbulbs, weighs over 2,500kgs, is 30,000 times bigger than a football and took 6 months to create.

Definitely a bright idea!

Find out more on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TropicanaJuices

Here’s the Cultural Fuel Trend Report for December! There’s been some great, notably festive, inspirations, as well as interesting trends and insights that emerged in the final month of 2011. Enjoy!

With 2011 drawing to a close, Google has released a compelling video of the year’s most searched for topics. Termed ‘Zeitgeist’, which translates to ‘Spirit of the Times’, it captures and celebrates the millions of search queries from all over the world in 2011. It really provides a fascinating and powerful picture of what moved the world this year, captured through the lens of the search engine.

Reviewing these defining highs and lows that all happened in the span of a single year, in less than 3 minutes, is in itself quite powerful and overwhelming. Not only does it lead us to reflect on these significant events and moments, but it also makes us acutely aware of the huge role that the internet and social media continues to play in circulating breaking news, fueling both discussions and actions, as well as trending topics all across the globe.

In search of the obligatory Christmas inspiration, this great interactive installation from Heineken in Singapore caught my attention.

Heineken have built what might just be the world’s most social Christmas tree! It’s a festive landmark lit up by the most powerful thing we know: our friendships. 48 LCD screens standing tall at 11 metres at Clarke Quay Central fountain are designed to broadcast your personal holiday greetings submitted via social media platforms.

Using the facebook application, you can send friends and loved ones a festive greeting by tagging them on your personal and customizable digital tree and then see your message come alive visually on the real life Christmas tree sculpture from the 17-26th December.

Social Media has never been more festive, Happy Holidays everyone!

With Christmas just around the corner, it seems like the perfect time for eBay to experiment a little by opening up a pop-up store in London’s bustling & quirky Dean Street in Soho.

For 5 days in December, shoppers could purchase over 200 exclusive ‚Buy it Now’ items using their smartphones to scan attached QR codes, pay for them online and then get the items delivered straight to their door.

This really is an interesting experiment that aims to recreate and simulate the online retail process in an actual physical shopping experience. The concept is great in its novelty and serves to blur the line between on and offline retail, opening up exciting options of how the two could be integrated more seamlessly in the future.

The Cultural Fuel Trend Report for November is now out. Have fun exploring the latest inspirations, trends and insights that caught our attention this past month!

Let’s be honest, we’ve all known that feeling of being completely lost in a mall, at an airport, or any large retail space. The frantic search for the ‚You are here’ directory could however soon be a thing of the past, with the latest version of Google Maps (6.0) now heading indoors! Its ‚My Location’ feature, with detailed floor plans and the familiar ‚blue dot’ icon helps you see where you are, what floor you’re on for example, and where you might want to go indoors.

This video provides a great example of how this useful app could come to life during your next Ikea trip!

This great video infographic highlights and summarizes some useful up to date social media facts & figures from 2011, covering various platforms, including Google+. Looks like there could be some pretty insightful stats at hand!

Came across this fantastic experiental campaign by ASICS, highlighting their recent sponsorship of the ING New York City Marathon.

At a NYC subway station, a huge video screen (60 feet) wall installation challenged subway users to race against and outrun a video of the renowned American marathoner Ryan Hall, who has an outstanding 4:46 mile pace that he can hold for 26.2 miles!

It’s a great example of bringing the racing spirit to life beyond the actual marathon day and encouraging a high level of physical involvement and participation with the brand.

eBay have taken a pretty big step into the social shopping scene with their iPad update that features a brand new app. It synchronizes up in actual time to any TV program in the US that may be currently running on screen and allows you to browse relevant eBay search results related to the show. This looks like a pretty neat app and could be huge push on impulse purchases, straight from the comfort of your couch!