Social Media Week 2013 (SMW13), sponsored by Nokia for the third year, runs this week through Friday, with more than 500 events in 10 cities worldwide including debuts in Copenhagen and Lagos, a return to Milan and participation in seven other veteran cities.

“Social Media Week’s global theme to ‘explore openness in a connected and collaborative world’ is fully aligned with Nokia’s mission of connecting people through innovative products and services and encouraging the open sharing of knowledge to learn what others are thinking and doing,” said Craig Hepburn, Global Director of Digital & Social Media at Nokia. 

In the past, Nokia has powered secret rooms and silent dance parties, conducted social experiments like Can Man Survive on Social Media Alone, forged bridges between social media and sports with NokiaxBurton and tackled fashion with SMW Fashion Days.Continue reading...

Remember Google's Agile Creativity Pitch to agencies? It's now amping up its own digital creativity to attract ad agencies to come and play in its Creative Sandbox, an "open platform to surface and celebrate" inspiring new campaigns and digital creative.

The name is no doubt familiar to digital types, as Creative Sandbox was the banner under which Google hosted events, dating back to San Francisco, Chicago in 2008, and more recently popping up as events to inspire creatives in Cannes, New York, London and Shanghai.

Now the party is moving online with the launch of a virtual gallery to share and showcase new creative work .Continue reading...

Tropicana UK's new TV commercial, "Awake to Alive," shows how the world wakes up to a brighter morning with Tropicana. The PepsiCo-owned brand, the top-selling juice in the UK, is also giving away 1,000 litre cartons of Tropicana on its Facebook page — and used the ad as the inspiration for an eye-opening event: an artificial sunrise in London's Trafalgar Square on January 23rd. Watch below.Continue reading...

With 1.3 billion residents, China is the place every marketer hopes to conquer. Even if a product can get a percentage of that market, they are golden.

Last week we noted how Chinese surfing brands were taking market share from their neighboring action sports brands in Australia. Now, Western brands are chilled to hang ten in China. The mainland isn’t exactly known as a surfing hotbed (yet), but that isn’t stopping the International Surfing Association from trying to rope in some dollars from China.

This past weekend marked the start of the four-day China Cup sponsored by the ISA and Womei Media along with Quiksilver, according to the festival’s website. The idea of the Hainan Wanning Riyue Bay International Surfing Festival, which features back-to-back surf contests, a  food festival, and live music, is to “blend surfing with elements of Chinese culture,” according to the site.Continue reading...

You want to go check out some serious water polo at the Olympic Games this summer in London but don’t feel like ponying up a boatload of cash to make it happen? Well, you just might have the opportunity.

United Continental Holdings has announced that it will let its loyalty-program members use their points to bid on events and experiences, such as tickets to attend the London 2012 Games, entry to concerts, and other hot tickets, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The new auction site, Mileage Plus Headliners, sets minimum bids for experiences, with a ski trip to California’s Mammoth Mountain that includes a private guide starts at 27,000 miles while four tickets to see the Chicago Orchestra starts at just 5,000 miles. Other experiences to bid on include “an opportunity to train like a pilot in United's flight simulator in Denver” and the possibility of being one of the first travelers on the Boeing Dreamliner when United gets delivery of that plane.Continue reading...

Sure, you’ve been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and watched floats glide by and walked the thronged streets afterward with a Hurricane in your hand and your beads around your neck and stopped in to hear “St. James Infirmary” from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band yet again.

While you may have seen a lot of things in N'awlins, you probably haven’t seen a Mardi Gras parade that has you looking down toward the ground instead of up at the incredible work floating by.

For the last three years, a so-called micro-krewe called 'tit Rex (short for 'Petit Rex,' it's pronounced "tea rex" and a pun on the dinosaur name) has put on a lovely walking parade of gorgeous floats made from shoeboxes that beautifully mimic the full-size ones you’ve seen elsewhere in the city.

The floats' designers and artists walk proudly by their creations to be sure they stay on course and don’t get destroyed.

The humble 'tit Rex Krewe has a problem, though. The Rex Organization, one of the city’s biggest Mardi Gras krewes, has all the rights to the word “Rex” in association with the event — and they're not flattered at having a mini-me using their name.

According to The Times-Picayune, Rex wants the walking krewe to ditch its name pronto, before the next Mardi Gras rolls around.Continue reading...

Adidas launched its new global campaign with a 3D projection at its kick-off party in France, where it virtually smashed the Palais du Pharo at Marseilles in front of an audience of 1,000 people. Among the performers: the French DJ duo Justice, featured in the celeb-studded campaign. Watch a longer version below.Continue reading...

Now settled into the former Deitch gallery space in New York's Soho district, Levi's second pop-up workshop officially opened on Thursday night.

The inaugural photography exhibition, up through Oct. 17, is curated by NYC's go-to hipster photog Tim Barber of tinyvices.com fame, who was featured in Scion's Los Angeles exhibition with Vice magazine last fall.

Levi's temporary photo studio is open to the public through Dec. 15, with a program including streaming and in-person events, classes, vintage equipment rental or photo-related goods for sale, and a variety of projects such as a visitors' yearbook.

Joshua Katz, Levi's head of collaborations, partnerships and creative concepts, tells Cool Hunting that "the reason a lot of brands don't do this is because it's hard, it's tiring."Continue reading...