As Jake McKee commented on my previous post, there are some excellent niche communities which, over the years, have created such an active community of members that the brand they’ve advocated has had to stand up and do something about it.

In the case of Lego, they embraced the online community activity on the Internet and created a ‘Lego Ambassador Program’ back in February 2005. This, I presume was entirely down to Jake, who at the time was a Lego employee (Jake, please correct me if any of this is incorrect…).

Initially the individuals who were nominated for the Lego Ambassador Program not only had no tangible benefits, but were also a merry band of only 15. Now, with the nominations for the 08/09 Ambassadors having been announced only a few days ago, there are not only very tangible benefits but also a much larger group of Ambassadors.

Brothers-Brick is one of the major contributing communities and blogs which have generated Ambassadors. Over the last 3yrs their blog has grown to one of thousands of subscribers, all of whom have an interest and a passion in Lego from an adult perspective and now they’re embracing Facebook.

It’s fantastic to see how Lego’s confidence and belief in their customers and fans has led to a really excellent Ambassador program which is not only aspiring to the Lego enthusiasts in the community, but offers an opportunity for Ambassadors to shape the future of their favourite bricks and be first to be asked opinions on new up and coming ranges from Lego themselves.

Lego’s 50th anniversary celebration video, released to the community:

1. Trust
2. Identity
3. Openness
4. Innovation
5. Simplicity

Each piece of work should strive to touch each of these 5 principles.

Today, Super Tuesday will bring to an end to what started in February 2006. And it’s astonishing to me what difference digital has made to the experience.

Back then micro-blogging was barely a whisper. Twitter launched at SWMX in March of that year and John Edwards was the first to use it followed in quick succession by the other candidates.

At the time, I was very impressed with Barack’s choice of Brightcove to virally spread his ‘message’ and a little dumbstruck by Hilary’s choice of high quality Quicktime interviews (focusing primarily on news broadcasters and not bloggers picking up her sound bites). One truely seemed to understand the difference between digital and broadcast media whilst the other was pretending at the time that it didn’t matter. How times have changed.

All candidates not only twitter, but Google has teamed with Twitter to provide a Twitter/ Google mashup for Super Tuesday.

The very nature of how the candidates have been monitored has had to change.

Politics has moved on from sound-bites and newspaper spin. Discussion and debate online has fueled the need for openness, transparency and a new dialogue between the next president of the US and its people.

I wish them all a great deal of luck…and I hope brands have been paying attention

Nicknamed ‘The Duck’, the translation of his surname and place of birth, Pato is regarded as one of the most exciting young prospects in world football in recent years.

Pato, signed from Internacional di Porto Alegre for 14.5 million Euros (equivalent to $21.5 million today) after the under-20 World Cup, is the most highly regarded player to come out of Brazil since Kaka, his Milan teammate. But because of his age, he had to wait until January to be eligible to play for the senior team.

This is what he is: Cool, calm, collected, communicative, endearing. This is what he is not: Over-hyped. Most of the hype is coming from his fans themselves, including a few photo montages on YouTube by love-sick self-dubbed Patomaniacas.

Read more.

I was struck by the similarities to our own Lewis Hamilton.

I was going to add to Brand Noise’s conversation, but it involved logging in and alot of hassles, so I’m tracking back to them.

‘Lost’ carved out a huge following last year with it’s online biscuit trail of rumour and intrigue, and it’s going for it again with Fly Oceanic Air.

It started with billboards spotted in Knoxville, Tennessee. The billboards advertised a URL, www.flyoceanicair.com.

On visiting the website, you are sucked into an adventure involving multiple websites, video diaries, photos with text hidden among the pixels, clue hunts, and strategy games. You can even call a toll-free phone number and get progress updates about the search for missing Oceanic Flight 815. Interesting characters and mysteries keep web players engaged and new content is posted at seemingly random intervals, forcing frequent check-ins to see if there’s anything new.

Last week Enitech Technology popped up as well…

1. Enitech Research’s blog began posting in June last year, with links off to other bogs starting in October. Content on it started coming thick and fast at the beginning of the month.
2. Despite that, even as early as October there are blog posts which link out to other fake blogs which go into minute details concerning the physics behind the research companies.
3. 4 days ago a video was posted onto YouTube by an Enitech employee, in it she mentions that they’ve created something that enables them to see something like 1193 into the future.
4. The FOX promotional website to Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (http://www.takebackthefuture.com/) has a countdown clock matching the same number of days.
5. In the video she mentions that one of her previous jobs was at Cyberdyne (which any Terminator fan will remember as the California tech outfit that reverse-engineered the technology to build Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger).
6. There’s a Facebook group for Former Cyberdyne Systems Employees.
7. Enitech’s blog post today integrates comments & suggestions left by visitors on previous posts.

ARGs are a perfect fit for sponsors looking to fund immersive, cutting-edge brand experiences and for people who love a good story — not to mention the feeling of contributing to it — There’s a whole genre of interactive experience here that we’re only just seeing the start of…