Luxury fashion label Burberry has announced that it is teaming up with online giant Google to offer customers a technology platform to send personalised messages, or “kisses”, to loved ones around the world.

Allowing users to capture and send their “kiss” using “personalised and beautifully-rendered content”, the kiss recognition technology is hosted on a dedicated platform Kisses.Burberry.com which allows Google Chrome and mobile users to share their message.

Customers can use a desktop camera or direct lip contact on a touch screen device to send their “kiss”, while users can choose a Burberry Beauty lip colour to personalise their kiss before sending it alongside a personalised animation charting its move across the globe.

To read the full article, please visit Retail Gazette .

Consumer relations firm Frank PR is aiding brewing industry leaders to combat negative perceptions regarding beer consumption in the UK with a new campaign called ‘Let There Be Beer’.

The initiative launches on 29 June and has the backing of the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) and Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).

Beer, lagers, ales, bitters, pilsners and stouts will be celebrated through national TV ad campaigns, broadcast partnerships, celebrity associations and a social media content programme.

Andrew Bloch, group managing director and founder of Frank PR, said: “Being for the entire beer category rather than anyone type or brand, ‘Let There Be Beer’ poses an exciting opportunity for us as we aim to bring the nation back to beer, benefiting the beer category as a whole.

For more of this story, please visit The Drum.

Southern Comfort has released the second installment of its Whatever’s Comfortable advert, titled Shampoo. Following the award-winning “Beach,” which featured a majestic man owning his self comfortableness as he casually walks down the beach, Shampoo once again offers a retro look at another moustached man getting his hair washed in a salon whilst enjoying a glass of Southern Comfort.

“We want to champion consumers to ‘be their awesome selves’ and that attitude comes out through this work,” said Mark Bacon, SVP, Managing Director, Southern Comfort. “We’re comfortable being Southern Comfort and we want our consumers to embody that same attitude about themselves.”

For more of this story, please visit Drink Brands

Peroni has created an advert that celebrates its Italian heritage and tells the story of Carlo Peroni, the grandson of the drinks founder Birra Peroni, and how he managed to create the now famous Italian lager brand.

The advert is shot in a cinema style and features a collection of images that celebrate the best of Italian culture including fashion and design and the stylish nature of Italians.

Not surprisingly, the advert is called ‘Storie di Stile’ (Stories of Style)

Key elements of the film include the evolution of the Peroni brand alongside the modernisation of Italy, which lay a foundation to tell the story of the inspiration behind Peroni’s iconic blue band and red logo, two colours that feature prominently in the film.

Speaking about the Storie di Stile advert, Director of Marketing for Peroni Nastro Azzurro at Miller Brands, Richard Ingram, said: “Storie di Stile celebrates Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s strong authentic heritage and aims to reinforce its position as a premium Italian style brand.”

For more on this story, please visit The Drinks’ Brands…

For more information on this story, please visit The Drinks Brands…

As you know, Fast Web Media has been nominated for four awards at this year’s The Digitals awards presented by NMA and Econsultancy.

Recently The Digitals held an interview with Fast Web Media’s CEO Mike Flynn to find out more about our PPC tool weatherFIT as it’s up for three out of the four awards.

One of the interview questions was: “How do you build digital excellence within your company?” to which Mike replied:

“Recruit passionate, excellent digital people!”

And when asked “How should companies be defining and measuring digital excellence?” Mike replied:

“Measurement is a key part of performance marketing and essential to showing our clients how they are performing. FWM uses custom ‘BIGprofile’ dashboard technology built by our in-house developers to accurately track online performance for our clients, and our clients’ competitors. Results should always be measured in terms of traffic, sales and custom goals for each brand or campaign”

To read the whole interview, please visit The Digitals Yearbook

Find out how weatherFIT can help you boost your online sales by controlling the weather and do feel free to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

‘The Big Night’ Subaru interactive campaign

‘The Big Night’ created by Japanese agency ADK and Great Guns Interactive, follows a young family man’s eventful journey in his new Subaru Forester towards the hotel where the ‘big night’ of the title is to take place.There are 98,304 potential variations of the film and 40 different endings which the brand claims means viewers could play the film continuously for 1.68 years and never see the same film twice. The most interesting part of the campaign is the player’s engagement into the creating the story; each individual has a chance to make the narrative their own. For example, Subaru connects Facebook into the experience so that not only will a user’s profile photo appear in the film but there is also a chance that, given the wrong combination of choices, the user’s entire Facebook photo stream might be played to a room full of characters at the film’s finale.

Facebook modifications in ads

The social network will reduce the number of ad units from 27 to fewer than half that over the next six months, after realising many of them accomplish the same goals. Standalone products that have already been lined up for the axe include ‘sponsored stories’, ‘questions’ and ‘offers’. The new ads with social content layered on top will be launched in Autumn. The move comes after research from Nielsen, comScore and Datalogix showed social context improves return on investment.

Mother’s Day consumer spending up to three times higher than Father’s Day

Rakuten released a global shopping trends infographic which shows that shoppers spend an average of 35 per cent more on their mums than dads. In the UK, 30 million cards are sent on Mother’s Day compared to seven million on Father’s Day, while 46 per cent of Brits will send a Facebook or text message instead of a card on Mother’s Day. This is particularly important to note for retail businesses in the future when planning their spring and summer campaigns. One of the ways could be optimising online shopping and engaging customers through onsite sections.