Visitors of heavyweight advertising site Adland have voted ‘Take the Lead’ the Best Remix of 2006.

DMC provided the strategic planning for the project for New Line Cinema, and sourced the talent behind the remix, Addictive TV.

The campaign went down a storm, not just with the Press but most importantly with everyday people - the movie reached number three in the US box office on its opening weekend, and now the remix is the people’s choice for 2006!

You can see Adland’s full list of the best ads of 2006 here.

Many companies avoid hearing what customers are saying because they do not want to hear complaints.

Todd Tweedy, CEO of our US-based partner Boldmouth, was interviewed by the New York Times and argues that some advertisers just aren’t ready to be more customer-facing: What We Talk About When We Talk About Brands

Our 14th Virgin Mobile project is an online viral and buzz marketing campaign to premiere Virgin Mobile’s latest coup - a new TV ad starring glamorous Pamela Anderson (aka “Pammy”) promoting Virgin Mobile’s new Mobile TV service on the innovative Lobster 700TV handset.

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DMC Australia’s MD Piers Hogarth-Scott was interviewed by Julian Lee in today’s SMH about how many viral campaigns today are missing their mark, and why advertisers need to lift their game in terms of measurement and metrics

So what if the clip has been seen by millions of people? How many influencers saw the clip and are advocating it to their peers? What impact is word of mouth having on sales? What level of sales uplift is attributed to this ad? What’s been said about the brand good and bad and how do we engage these people in a two-way dialogue?

Read the full article here.

Forget so-called viral advertising, the future of selling products is Participation Marketing whereby companies attempt to persuade us to participate in the life of their brands.

DMC’s MD Justin Kirby was interviewed earlier this week by Tim Marlow on the BBC World Service about new models of marketing as part of their new trends and ideas programme Culture Shock

DMC’s MD Justin Kirby was interviewed by Mark Sweney in today’s MediaGuardian about the changing viral marketing landscape and how Viral ads miss their mark:

…Kirby argues that “old school” viral marketing techniques are giving way to opportunities presented by social networking websites, such as MySpace. He cites the example of the branded X-Men page within MySpace to promote the third instalment of the film. Viral marketing in the broader sense of the word includes word-of-mouth and the X-Men site boasts a community of 3 million members.

Contagious magazine talks to DMC’s MD Justin Kirby about The Evolution of Viral:

‘Branded viral ‘advertainment’ has had its day. We need to progress more towards integrated strategies, only using viral films as a small part of a wider strategy. A viral should be part of a campaign - not a campaign in itself’.

adland carried out brief interview with DMC UK’s MD about DMC’s JV with Boldmouth:

“The JV was in part demand driven particularly from the US, where clients are wanting to join the dots and go beyond the simple viral distribution of branded content by integrating these activities as part of their word of mouth marketing initiatives rather than use them as stand alone tactical executions.” said Justin Kirby President and CEO of DMC London.

We’ve signed a video syndication joint venture with BoldMouth, a US leader in word-of-mouth marketing research, strategy and campaign implementation.

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After a few years of trying to filter through all the junk that’s floating around the net to show you the best of the viral bunch, there’s now way too much junk being churned out en masse. So we decided to get a little more analytical over at viralmeister.com about what’s floating around and why, but we’ll still try and mention stuff that tickles our fancy from time to time.