On the heels of the success of our popular Twitter client, HootSuite, Invoke is excited to announce our newest offering, Vidrollr, a video conversation tool.

Vidrollr is an online conversation space which provides highly desirable and unprecedented opportunities for both companies and advertisers.

Embed a Vidrollr box on any website, or on a multitude of sites, and invite consumers into a conversation; new content will appear on all your Vidrollr boxes, feeding conversation across the web. Because it doesn’t require an investment in new technology, Vidrollr is virtually risk-free and is a perfect complement to existing marketing and social media efforts.

Why Vidrollr is attractive:

* Companies love the revenue possibilites of a fully functional interactive unit that stimulates content creation.
* Advertisers love the increased exposure and engagement with their desired demographic.
* Consumers love the ability to instantly interact face-to-face with others, including celebrities, sports heroes, producers of their favorite shows and more–all you need is an account and a web camera.

Vidrollr recently released its first conversation space with partners MSNBC and Starbucks. To participate in the conversation, sign up and tell Willie and the Morning Joe team why you volunteer.

Vidrollr is poised to revolutionize the way companies and consumers interact online. We can’t wait.

Follow Vidrollr on Twitter for updates.

* This blog post is part of Invoke’s participation in the 2008 Vancouver Blogathon for Charity

From time to time, a company comes out with a brilliant product: clean, sleek, easy to use, and down right sexy. However, something even more rare and interesting than this is the halo brand – a brand that can do no wrong and spits out brilliant products. One worth mentioning is Apple.

Apple has proved themselves with their strong product success rate and high rate of user satisfaction. As with the case with the iPhone, just the mention of Apple creating a mobile phone created organic buzz, spin-off fan sites, and skyrocketing demand for a product that was just in the idea stage. Ultimately, few were disappointed with the final product. But the rarity lies in the amount of trust consumers vest in Apple. Everything they touch turns to cool. If Apple started selling re-bar, you would see trend setters carry around the various Apple colours like a patriot waving his flag.

Microsoft, oh Microsoft, is in a very different, and far less attractive boat. Take the Zune for example. Zune, their attempt at an iPod killer, does have superior technical specifications; but it just lacks. Brown as a core colour? Brown??

A cow in a pretty red dress is still a cow. The parent brand, plagued by “blah” publicity of their product launches and a growing increase in the love-to-hate attitude, falls flat by trying too hard to appear cool. You can’t create cool. Especially if the vision of cool is brown.

* This blog post is part of Invoke’s participation in the 2008 Vancouver Blogathon for Charity

Our office is located in the Railtown neighbourhood of Vancouver.? It is a great up and coming neighbourhood and we have an eclectic group of clothing designers, tech, interior design, and architecture companies that make this neighbourhood what it is.? One thing that this neighbourhood really lacks though, are places to eat at lunch.? Needless to say, when we heard that a new restaurant was opening on the corner of Gore and Alexander, we were ecstatic.

We waited patiently for months as we saw the place slowly come together.? When they were almost done, a couple of us popped our heads in and had a quick chat with the owners.? This is when we learned the unfortunate name of this new restaurant.

Now before I go any further, I have to comment on the restaurant.? They are awesome.? The food is great, the service is awesome, and the open atmosphere is ideal for the setting.? They have really incredibly reasonable prices for the quality and caliber of food we receive.? Each lunch, the place is packed – they have at least 2 lunch rushes each day – and there are always at least a few patrons waiting to get their lunch to take back to the office.

The actual name of the restaurant is 2 Chefs and a Table, but the connotation of 2 Chefs 1 Table is too close to not make the connection.? When we found out the name of the restaurant, we couldn’t help but laugh and realize that they have no idea what images the name of their restaurant evokes in our slightly warped minds – if you do not know what I am referencing here, consider yourself lucky.? Now I do realize that it is probably a small subset of their patrons that will make this connection, as only people who spend far too much time online will know the reference. But, given the neighbourhood in which they are located, I’m sure there are a fair number of us.

We really do like them and they have worked so hard to bring a great new establishment to the neighbourhood.? It is people like them that will make this a great neighbourhood to work and live in over the coming years. And for this reason, we just cannot bring ourselves to tell these guys what their name reminds us of.

But that really brings me to the point of my post.? Before you move ahead with branding for your company, do a little research.? I’m sure that a cursory search at Google for their name would have brought up what I am referencing.? With that knowledge, I am sure that they would have reconsidered the name of their establishment.

To follow-up to Jenn’s post on the branding issues of global warming i just came across an excellent example of branding turned on its head. OK, more like its side.

The Register reports on FHD‘s proposed new brand for the UK Office of Government Commerce and its received some interesting feedback. Seen right-side up the logo looks fine:

But the government agency also had this to say: “It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters ‘OGC’ – and is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on government spend!” A firm grip indeed

It didn’t take very long for this to happen, but someone has created one of the funniest animated gif’s that I’ve seen in a while, check it out here (warning, it’s kinda NSFW).

View The Register’s full post here courtesy of a close friend and killer designer