The WHO designates 31st May as No Tobacco Day in an effort to reduce the 5 million tobacco related deaths every year. Â Â 
No Tobacco Day
THE POWER OF REAL-TIME CREATIVITY
Welcome to Urgent Genius, a collection of found and created content from around the globe. If it's trending we're on to it. At iris we've been tracking the trend of real-time creativity and Newsjacking since 2010. We call it Urgent Genius.
Every day our Editors trawl the planet for the best examples out there.
And we're constantly creating new work of our own. The content that we have discovered or have conceived on this site demonstrate the principles of an Urgent Genius mindset.
Urgent – Do it swiftly. Genius – create powerful social ideas. If you've created or stumbled across any Urgent Genius work then send it to us at
urgentgenius@gmail.com
Show More
The Editors
 |
Grant is the Regional Creative Director,
APAC for iris Worldwide. He co-created Urgent Genius in 2010 with Jon Burkhart and spoke at SXSW interactive 2011 and 2012 on the subject. He set up urgentgenius.com and co-authored the Urgent Genius Book with Jon. Grant is responsible for iris’ creative output across India, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia. He blogs for Campaign Asia and contributes to industry titles such as Contagious, Marketing and Campaign Brief. He has work published in the books Guerrilla Advertising and Advertising is Dead, Long Live Advertising.
More |
 |
Jon is a Social Media Creative Consultan
t and Innovation Director. He coined the term "Urgent Genius" and co-created the social media HQ of the same name in 2010 with Grant Hunter. The pair also spoke at SXSW interactive 2011 and 2012 on the subject. He is now co-authoring the Urgent Genius book with Grant. He helps global clients like Sony Ericsson, Philips and adidas create shareable content and find ways to have a voice in the hot-topic conversations going on right now online. His work has featured on and offline in places like The Guardian, The Telegraph, Campaign and Rolling Stone. He also works with BBC Comedy as a social TV consultant. He tweets at @albinoriotman usually while commuting to work on his Kickped, the world’s fastest adults-only push-scooter.
More |
 |
Sean Reynolds is the Global Creative Dir
ector of iris. As one of the founding partners from 1999, Sean has been responsible for the iris creative vision, it’s creative model and build of all the iris creative departments across the globe. Sean has been based in New York since 2007, where he has built another three creative offices in the region. In his role as Global CD he has also developed the creative product in other regions such as India, China, Singapore, Australia and Latin America. Sean studied at Central St. Martins, graduating in 1995 and has won a wide range of global awards across all disciplines. Sean’s opinion is regularly sought and he has talked at numerous events and seminars within the industry and he also sits on a number of adjudication panels for creative awards.
More |
 |
Esty is Head of Planning at iris Worldwi
de NY, working on clients such as NOS, Coty, and a host of brands under Reckitt Benkiser. Prior to joining iris, Esty was VP, Associate Planning Director at BBDO for leading global clients, including Mars, P&G and Johnson & Johnson. Through her insightful understanding of audience attitudes and behaviors, Esty led the integrated strategic development for numerous iconic brands including M&M's, Milky Way, Venus, J&J Baby, Campbell's Soup, and Autism Speaks. When she's not at work you can find her mentoring aspiring planners as well as capturing moments with her camera all over NYC. You can chat more with her and see what peaks her interests @Esty501on Twitter.
More |
FIND OUT MORE >
Top 5 of 2011
2011 has been a pivotal year where we’ve seen more and more real-time techniques being deployed across the globe. Brands and individuals have Newsjacked topical stories with varying degrees of success. There were many examples to choose from but here are the five that we think are genius.
1. Bacterial billboard for Contagion – Canada
The bacterial billboard announced the release of the new Steven Soderbergh film Contagion on the 28th August. Lowe Roche in Toronto created it with the help of a couple of microbiologists. Â Two giant Petri dishes were painted with live bacteria and they multiplied over three hours to spell out the name of the film. As a living billboard that played out in real-time we think it was truly Urgent Genius.
Update:Â Lowe Roche worked with Curb Media to realise the project : http://www.curbmedia.com/case-studies-warner.asp
2. Scoopshot app – Finland
Scoopshot monetises crowd-sourced newsworthy imagery, it was created in Finland in February 2011. It links photographers to the media and allows the public to put a price on their images. Put simply, it turns anyone into a mobile news photographer. By downloading the app you can upload any shots you think are newsworthy. You then set the price and the media have 48 hours to buy the image. If they buy an exclusive you get 10 times the price. This is a fascinating platform that uses technology to deliver crowd-sourced news imagery in real-time.
3. Steve Jobs tribute graphic – Hong Kong
The loss of Apple’s leader sent shockwaves across the net and it resulted in numerous tributes in a matter of minutes. The most iconic has to be the graphic of Job’s profile as the bite out of the famous Apple logo. It was designed by Jonathan Mak, a 19 year old Hong Kong Polytechnic student, back in August when Jobs originally resigned.  The graphic lay unnoticed until the announcement of Job’s passing away on 5th October. Mak received over 180,000 messages via his Twitter account in response to the illustration. He stated that any money he made from the image would be donated to cancer charities. It’s a brilliant demonstration of how an idea can, inadvertently, catch the trending wave.
4. @BronxZoo’sCobra Twitter feed – U.S.A.
On the 26th March 2011 the Bronx Zoo, NYC had a bit of a situation. Their Egyptian Cobra went missing. The Egyptian Cobra’s venom is so deadly that apparently it can kill a full-grown elephant in three hours. The New York media whipped up a bit of a frenzy. Reassurance came from an unexpected source as Twitter (@bronxzooscobra) gave the snake a voice. The reality of the situation was that the snake would be hiding scared out it’s tiny mind. The feed brought the snake and her adventures to life with a healthy dose of wit. The media changed its tune as they picked up on the positivity from people across New York who couldn’t get enough of the Cobra. The snake is now the second most followed animal on Twitter.
5. Heineken Star Player app – UK
In April AKQA created Heineken’s Star Player App. It played to viewers’ willingness to go dual-screen even at the most dramatic parts of a match. Designed to run throughout match times during the UEFA Champion’s League, the app turned solitary watching (apparently 72% of viewers watch alone and at home) into a social and competitive experience. Given time limits and a fixed number of bets, viewers/players could predict what might happen in the next thirty seconds, compare the results with others’ guesses around the world.
5 + 1. Heineken Super Social Tree – Singapore
And we may be biased on this one but it is Christmas, so a big shout out to the iris Singapore team. Our Super Social Xmas Tree has generated lots of chatter across the blogosphere over the last week. The 48 screened socially powered Xmas tree for Heineken went live this week down at Clarke Quay. The tree will be decorated with various people’s images and festive messages via the social tree Facebook app. The 11 metre high installation was conceived by iris in collaboration with local artist Edwin Cheong and Make Studios.
|
|
|
10.0 
0.0 
0 
