At some point over the weekend, Ogilvy’s Twitter feed, which has been growing steadily over the past year, passed the 30,000 followers mark. We now believe – unless someone knows different – that we have more followers than anyone else in the industry.

@ogilvy, which aggregates comments, tweets and blogs from Ogilvy employees, is, as of today, followed by 30,216 people; in addition @ogilvy follows almost 13,000 other people.

To follow or join in, visit: http://twitter.com/ogilvy – it’s an invaluable source of news and comment from around the marcomms globe!

Apple have sold over 3 million iPads since the launch in April yet this is possibly the only one being used in such a unique way as this:

David Kassan is an artist who has turned his iPad into a blank canvas. Using a $5.00 app called ‘brush’ he creates these quite stunning portraits. Click on the image above to watch a 5 minute time-lapse video of David actually ‘painting’ his masterpiece.

With the World Cup days away, it seems the Dutch Football Association has cottoned on to a great way to help their nation celebrate when the ball hits the back of the net.

And they haven’t stopped at just putting Robin van Persie on their t-shirts. Click on the image above to see Wesley Sneijder and Klass-Jan Huntelaar celebrating too!

Thanks to James Thorley for spotting this.

This coming Wednesday (19th May) sees the launch of the new Digital Lab at the Ogilvy West offices in Westbourne Terrace in Paddington, London.

The Lab, a collaboration between all the Ogilvy companies based there (OgilvyAction, Ogilvy HealthWorld, Dialogue 141 and Coley Porter Bell, will showcase the latest in digital hardware to staff and clients, allowing them to get hands-on experience, and to develop, test and deploy innovative content for state-of-the-art platforms.

The Lab was inspired by the original Ogilvy Digital Lab at Canary Wharf, and has been coordinated by Ogilvy Healthworld and Ogilvy Action staff based at Westbourne Terrace. The technology has been provided by our Digital Lab Partners and includes:

– augmented reality demos (CrossPlatform)
– a 360° TV (Yershon Media Solutions)
– a gaming pod (EA Video Games)
– a wireless mobile chargebox (Scramblr)
– a Holobox (activ-8 3D)
– interactive iPhone gaming (Velti)
– Amplifi wifi content delivery technology (The Bright Place)
– a touch table (Touch It)
– QR code clothing (QRazyStuff)
– point-and-find technology (Nokia)
– an interactive floor projection (EyeClick).

Digital Lab Partners will be on hand at the launch to explain their technology, give demos, and answer any questions. The Lab underlines Ogilvy’s commitment to developing strong relationships with suppliers in order to help deliver cutting-edge projects for clients.

The launch takes place between 5.30pm and 8.30pm on Wednesday 19 May, and all WPP employees are welcome. For more details or to arrange a client tour, email the Digital Lab, or contact Andrew Lamb, Andrea Hackett or Amy Johnson (Ogilvy Healthworld), or Adam Burrows (Ogilvy Action).

To find out more about the Digital Labs, visit the excellent blog here.

IBM is constantly on the look-out for ways to make the world smarter – and this interactive billboard is right on brief.

Using a colour-coded camera (directed at people walking by) and several rows of LED lights, IBM have built a board which can change its appearance, depending on who is standing in front of it. So, as seen above, a red t-shirt makes for a red display!

Click on the image above to watch the video and find out more.

Ogilvy is teaming up with Coca-Cola to host a contest to find the best branded content ideas at the 2010 MIPTV Festical in Cannes.

O&M France and Coca-Cola will co-host a MIPTV Content 360 competition, “Engaging with teens through branded content for Coca-Cola.”

The contest calls for ideas that will help Coca-Cola brands engage with teens relevantly through branded content of all types, from TV shows, to web movie series, mobile apps, or “advergames”.

A record 189 entries were submitted to the Ogilvy/Coca-Cola Content 360 competition. Of those, three finalists have been selected to present their ideas at MIPTV. The finalists are: Labmedia (Milan) – “Contagious Happiness”; Atlantic Studios (California) – “Bring Happiness to Life”; and, Scorpion TV (London) – “The Win Win Show.”

The winning finalist will be awarded an €10,000 development contract to co-develop their winning idea further with Ogilvy for Coca-Cola during the festival, which takes place between 12th and 16th of April.

Benoit de Fleurian, Managing Director, Ogilvy & Mather France, says: “Coca-Cola and the O&M France team have been amazed by the diversity of the submitted ideas – from entertainment programs for the TV screen and online, to games, events and mobile communities – they truly demonstrate the creativity of the industry and their understanding of the digital revolution we’re facing.  We are very excited to move forward with the three selected finalists, all of whom have proposed fresh angles on Coke’s “Open Happiness” global platform that will inspire people to spend more quality time with the Coke brand.”

For the fourth consecutive year, Ogilvy & Mather is also a major sponsor/partner of the festival.

For more on MIPTV 2010, go here

We’re thrilled to announce yet another addition to our Ogilvy Digital Labs in London. Audience Entertainment recently came in to talk to us and their offering is so unique we just had to have it in our Canary Wharf lab.

By linking a motion capture camera and a screen (of any size!) with patented software, Audience Entertainment is able to provide 2D, 3D and augmented reality gaming for huge crowds of people. The picture above shows 20,000 people playing a giant game of brick-breaker at the Lyon Festival of Lights, just by moving their hands! Click on the picture to watch the video.

To find out more and watch other videos go to www.audienceentertainment.com

On January 21st Ogilvy Digital Labs opened the doors to 10 Cabot Square for a Branded Utility Day – the fifth such day the Lab has presented since opening for business 18 months ago.

The day of talks, discussions and exhibitions focused on the apps, widgets, services and content that makes consumers want to spend more time with a brand.

On the day we had speakers from Wired magazine (David Rowan), Contagious (Jess Greenwood), IBM (Alan Flack), Ogilvy London (Rory Sutherland and Brian Jensen) and Singapore (Mark Seegar) and Lastminute.com Labs (Marjo Balabanovic) – we also had over 80 clients and journalists attend the talks and engage with the range of exhibitors assembled in the Bar area here at Canary Wharf.

Feedback from the event has been extremely positive and many people have asked to see the speakers’ presentations. Always happy to oblige, we’ve uploaded the  presentations along with a video recap of the day (the latter also available here – click on the YouTube link above to view the five-minute film) to the Ogilvy Labs Branded Utility microsite; also not wanting exclude those who were unable to attend, all are available for download to share with others. You can also find biographies of the speakers, as well as links to the sites of the exhibitors, who include Yahoo!, Spotify, Velti, Wirewax, Blinkx and Shazam.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled for news of the next Digital Lab Day!

We have a new arrival in our Digital Labs! The Amscreen, pictured above, is both an LED and digital screen that can display content delivered through wireless 3G technology.

Our very own Joe Morgan explains that “this means the display information can be dispersed from a central hub to any machine in the required network.” You can read more about Amscreen by going to their website, or if you’re visiting our Canary Wharf offices, just ask to see this latest addition in our Digital Labs.

OgilvyOne has created a banner with a difference for client Yahoo!. Go to www.imdb.com and you can create your very own film trailer soundtrack on the “Your Film Your Way” banner!

Enjoy coming up with some truly bizarre film trailers, all narrated by the voiceover guy! Currently, our favourite is ‘Sexy Creepy Monkey King 2: Santa’s Revenge’!