]

Poxa, mas esse é bem bacana. A Lastminute.com site que vende Ingressos, passagens, e eticetêra, organizou uma perfomarce em um Aeroporto com 14 atores e 7 cameras escondidas... O que parecia uma faxineira biruta, que começou a cantar do nada. Virou um musical sobre uma maquina de salgadinhos. Genial.
As pessoas reagiram das mais diversas maneiras... Varias caras e bocas.

Ainda tinham varios paines e faixas espalhados pelo Aeroporot que diziam: "When was the last time went to the theatre?" Traduzindo:"Qual foi a ultima vez que você foi ao teatro?"

Assista:

Fonte: Brainstorm #9

I have found really useful articles on SMR (Social Media Releases), as well as helps me keep in step with the creativity of the others. (For the former, see Brian Solis' Definitive Guide to Social Media.) http://www.briansolis.com/2008/02/definitive-guide-to-social-media.html

Regarding the latter, I would have never come across an amazing video made by LastMinute.com.

While it is an excellent example of a viral video, it is a genius example as well of using a publicity stunt as a launching-off point for a viral campaign. They were able to show the audience that it wants to be entertained and enjoys comedic musical theater. In 6 hours, the video has garnered over 2000 hits (from 3000 to 5000).

The only problem that I have with the campaign, is that only 1 blog wrote about it -- one from Brazil, and that is the single largest link to the video -- at time of writing - only 158.

While ingenious -- it has the opportunity to be huge, but it is not being marketed well enough. Yet.

I had another advertisement that caused me to smirk. While it is a print ad, I feel that it hits home to its target audience. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is attempting to show people that the Church is of the people. At first glance, it utilizes humor to convey the morals and openness of its membership, and I think that it is done in a very honest way. But when I looked at it again and I read the copy again, I realized that in a weird twist, the t-shirt (in the eyes of the church) is not funny, the ad educates about the way that they actually think.

Honesty and education in advertising, who would have thought?

I would love to know people's favourite literal brand names.

La compañía aérea de bajo coste rechazará a partir de ahora todas las compras que efectúen algunos de los principales mayoristas turísticos por internet con sus tarjetas de crédito, según avanzó el jefe de prensa de Ryanair, Peter Sherrard.

Además del bloqueo de Lastminute.com, Ryanair no venderá tampoco billetes a las agencias de viajes virtuales Global Holidays, Flights Direct y Ebookers, a las que acusó de "timar a los pasajeros y doblar de forma rutinaria el precio de los vuelos".

"Los pasajeros deberían evitar esta clase de touroperadores porque cobran aumentos desorbitados y engañan a los pasajeros", advirtió Sherrard.

Asimismo, Ryanair sostiene que estas agencias de viajes proporcionan términos y condiciones "incorrectos", no avisan a los pasajeros de los cambios de horarios de los vuelos, les niegan la posibilidad de facturar las maletas vía internet y no ofrecen la opción de comprar los billetes con embarque prioritario.

Según la aerolínea irlandesa, el trayecto Dublín-Londres para el próximo 24 de marzo cuesta 22,59 euros más si el cliente lo reserva en Lastminute.com en vez de comprarlo directamente a Ryanair, lo que supone un incremento del precio del 100 por ciento, que se eleva a un 133 por ciento en el caso de Global Holiday para el vuelo Londres-Dublín del 20 de marzo.

Fuente: 20 minutos

When these gaps appear technology usually steps in, and the next big thing for Web marketers is on-site behavioural targeting. In fact, many market leaders have deployed on-site behavioural targeting already including banks that want to increase application rates, such as Lloyds TSB and HSBC, news sites aiming to keep readers returning, or leisure retailers like Lastminute.com hoping to promote the perfect holiday to each visitor.

Behavioural targeting combines individual Web site visitor’s observed click-stream behaviour with modelling techniques to decide what content is likely to be most effective for them. Hundreds of variables are analysed for predictive value, ranging from all historical behaviour to the time of day of the current visit, the referring site, search engine keywords, and the frequency and recency of previous visits.

This content is then served in a premium position on the site in order to achieve a commercial objective; such as increasing revenue, conversion, or engagement. On-site behavioural targeting works in real-time to watch and respond to the customer whilst they are on your site and can help create a 360 degree view which can be fed back into other online and offline activities to enable consistent, high-performance marketing.

Many companies understand how much they are willing to pay to attract a customer, but few appreciate the leaky buckets that their websites represent for new and repeat visitors. On-site behavioural targeting ensures that spend is maximised. It can deliver incremental traffic to key landing pages at a rate that is five times less expensive than paid search with twice the conversion rate.

The also works both ways, visitors will benefit from a more personal experience on your site delivering improved engagement, longer site visit times and repeat visits. This is especially true of customers familiar with personalisation such as that offered by Amazon. ‘Personalisation 1.0’ - based on resource-intensive rules development and coding - has raised the expectations of customers. Now they are less patient and sprint, rather than surf, the Web, so content needs to be on target to catch their interest. Your ability to understand their needs and to present the best messaging and content in front of each one at the right time impacts everything you sell, and everything that you fail to sell.

Consumer behaviour is complicated and with search engines, comparison sites and user-generated reviews to consider, it’s likely they’ll leave and return later. Would‐be buyers typically return two to five times before they purchase and may arrive via Google or an advert. On-Site Behavioral Targeting recognises every visitor as they return, remembers everything about their previous visits, and can use that to deliver even more relevant and targeted content increasing their likelihood to purchase.

It’s almost as if the consumer is just picking up where they were on their last visit. Your site will appear to serve their needs like a great sales person delivering a consistently good experience that shortens the sales cycle and increases conversion rates and average order values.

The way Internet technology works inherently means that every interaction is now part of a recordable conversation. Knowledge about your customers is the most important competitive advantage you have. On‐site behavioural targeting helps you leverage the knowledge about a customer both on the site and across other channels of the organisation.

Since more customer interactions are happening online - with every click delivering valuable insight - it is essential that businesses start to harness this insight and use it as a bridge between the on‐site experience and other customer channels. By integrating profiles of site visitor behaviour with CRM systems that track other channels, truly consistent multi-channel customer views become practical.

Your online and offline marketing efforts can be optimised to deliver dramatically increased sales through your site and with between 20- and 240% improvement in site performance, results which speak for themselves. Lastminute.com wanted to increase sales of its products including flights, hotel rooms, holidays, restaurant reservations, tickets and gifts. However, this variety of offers meant the retailer did not know which offer should be most prominent on the homepage.

If a customer was looking for concert tickets, for example, would they give up after a few clicks if all the content related to travel offers? The deployment of on-site behavioural targeting ensured that Lastminute.com featured relevant content for each individual visitor resulting in an increase of sales by over 200% on the targeted areas of the site.

Written by Neil Morgan, a man obsessed by numbers

Fast forward to March '08, and in the midst of a potentially detrimental recession, the same 'experts' at companies such as Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are trumpeting the successes of these absurdly overvalued outfits, as if the streets in downtown Silicon Valley were paved in 24-carat gold. But what many don't realise about these upgrade/downgrade announcements of the biggest megafinancials is that their opinions are worthless. At best their managed funds simply fail to obtain the performance of the S&P 500 or DJIA, but at worst they just promote stocks of major companies they advise or securities some of their wealthiest clients have holdings in. They also have a vested interest in frequently upgrading and downgrading particular stocks, they get commission through their broking businesses. The key American commercial financial institutions are notorious for putting their desire to make a quick buck ahead of protecting the best interests of small shareholders. In fact, the main reason why nearly all publications fail to question their erratic behaviour is because their upgrades and downgrades are a staple of finance editors and newspaper columns can't be filled without some sort of interview with a senior trader at some obscure research company. If the press questioned and criticized as it is both entitled and obliged to, some of these companies would inspire the same confidence as Northern Rock.

Of course, it isn't the Amazons and Ebays of this world who are completely to blame for their share prices being too high, these matters are almost entirely out of control of the directors who control these firms, unless they would be engaging in an Enron-style scandal. The fact that these companies have ridiculously high PE's (many are as high as 60 - a sure sign of an impending crash) has probably gotten more to do with sloppy analysts and murky venture capitalists than creative accounting or even real growth opportunities.

Which brings us back to the whole point of this article - Google Inc. Google was founded in September 1998. Since then, mostly fuelled by ostensible corporate speak and bizarre predictions ('don't be evil', 'we're going to operate a space transport elevator by 2099', etc.), Google has gone from strength to strength, though mostly because of the hype propagated by naive young journalists writing for the popular press, forgetting Fleet Street's stiff standards of integrity and critical questioning which must be adhered to. The primary concern for Google's management must be, therefore, that a better company could emerge from the thousands of vying competitors and take its crown in search or advertising. (Apparently, there are quite a few already)

When Google floated on the NASDAQ in 2004, shares were a little under $80 apiece, and even then they were said to represent poor value. But since then, even the most respectable institutions have been posting price targets as high as $900. Even after the credit-crunch-crisis emerged, tech were flagged as a 'hot buy' on the front pages of finance sites, and the 'smart money' found a home in the internet giants. However, market analysts tend to be quite fickle in their recommendations, and when the ensuing carnage emerged in the form of a massive plummet in prices during the past month or so, the small investor really understood how little Wall Street cared about him or her.

Since their peaks around three to six months ago, some technology stocks have had their prices slashed by as much as 10%. So called 'experts' charged that these companies have become much more solid since the last bubble due to better revenues, but this only serves to acknowledge that another bubble is inevitable, just not as dramatic as the last one.  Whatever happened to the $900 Google?

So, what are your opinions on investing in techs? Please feel free to comment in the box below.

Regards,

~~~~Shane Halloran.

  According to online tour operator lastminute.com, the company is already starting to get bookings for the summer period and reservations are likely to increase in the six weeks leading up to the main summer departure dates.

John Bevan, Managing Director of lastminute.com UK, noted that Greece in particular is looking likely to perform well this summer. "We are expecting Greece to do very well this summer as prices are particularly competitive" he commented.

The Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises has predicted that arrivals in the country will reach 19.4 million by the year 2010.

First tip: it's the day of the show, you want to get cheap tickets, and what do you do? Well, the TKTS booth in Leicester square is a great place to check (especially for shows at Sadlers' Wells, if you can somehow manage to get back up there once you've made it to Leicester Square - a bit of a trick). That said, prices here tend to run around 30 for most shows, and it turns out that's too expensive for me. Even our first day we discovered ...

Second tip: buy directly from the box office of the theater, where you can get tickets for even less than the TKTS booth (though not for main floor tickets). Unfortunately, running around from one theater to the next can be pretty time consuming, so you'll want to use websites to save time. If you do this, note that it can be hard to tell if you've actually Googled the correct site for the theater in question. Be sure to pay attention to the content of the website: any websites you see that have lots of ads for other shows at other theaters on the side of the page are likely to be from ticket touts. There are a whole series of theaters that belong to two theater chains and are very difficult to buy tickets for directly if you're trying to Google your way there. These chains (the Delfont Mackintosh and the Ambassadors group) together comprise the Gielgud, the Noel Coward, the Novello, the Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, the Queen's Theatre, Wyndham's Theatre, the Comedy Theatre, the Donmar, Warehouse Theatre, Duke of York's Theatre, Fortune Theatre, the Phoenix Theatre, Piccadilly Theatre, Playhouse Theatre, Savoy Theatre, and Trafalgar Studios. I've put the link for the groups behind those names; if you buy directly, you'll be guaranteed a straight price and the lowest booking fees. (Need I mention - never buy from Ticketmaster unless you love paying extra for everything.)

Third tip: save yourself a pile by sitting further from the stage. This is my number one way of saving money: buy from theater's box office or website and get tickets IN THE BALCONY. For Americans, floor seats are called "stalls" in England; balcony seats (sometimes in a "grand tier" or a "second tier") will almost always cost less than stall seats. TKTS will sometimes have these seats for sale, but not always. For the Royal Opera House and the London Coliseum, these seats are real money savers - sometimes more than eighty pounds less than stalls seats! Usually you'll still have clear sitelines. My only word of advice: the top balcony in the Palace Theatre, where Spamalot is playing, is WRETCHED. Pay more or miss half the show - cheap tickets to Spamalot are a poor value. Um, also, the side stalls anywhere in the Royal Opera House are always a crapshoot, with anywhere from half to two thirds of the stage hidden. (Fortunately their website has a little feature to show you exactly the view from where you're sitting, so you can at least be warned, and if you're looking at paying 6 quid for the Bolshoi, you'd better expect to not be getting much.)

Fourth tip: Lastminute.com. While they irritate me a lot at times, these guys can really save you a bundle, although you'll save the most if you book a month or more in advance. Sometimes they don't really offer deals at all, especially, say, for Hairspray: for that play, you'll likely save more closer in if you book through SeeTickets. I don't use general ticket consolidators, but LastMinute can be really great and will usually equal the price of day shows at TKTS, only without the hassle of having to go to the booth in person and then truck back to the theater.

Fifth tip: buy in advance for popular shows. Missed Othello at the Donmar? Sad about getting shut out of King Lear? Hot shows go fast and you had better pay attention to when the tickets go on sale so you can be first in line. I bought my Lear tickets four months in advance and could have sold them for four times what I paid for them. Sometimes my friends think I'm bizarre for planning so far in advance, but I'm the one who went to see Masque of the Red Death and they're the ones wishing they could get tickets even for, oh, say, APRIL. Buying in advance will give you more price flexibility than buying the day of and will give you the freedom of not paying some horrible marked up price from a tout - even though you're paying retail, it's still only retail and not any more.

Sixth tip: right, so you are now desperate to see a show and it's sold out. Suck it up and go to the box office, get your butt in line, and wait for returns. Americans would never think of doing this, but in London, well, there are people like me who buy tickets four months in advance ... and get colds so dire they can't get out of bed. Those forty pound apiece tickets? I'd actually like to get my money back for them, so I call the ticket and tell them to resell them for me. My loss, your gain. Maybe. Be aware you may only have the choice of a fifty or sixty pound seat when you're doing this, and bring the cash to pay for it. Also have backup plans as there may be more people in line than there are returns available. And if you see a great review for a show early in the run, buy tickets right away; a small venue like the Soho Theatre can easily sell out within hours of a good review in The Metro.

Seventh tip: get a large group together and get a bulk discount. I know, for example, at the Old Vic, that a group booking can get you something like a 50% savings on tickets. I don't have nine friends that can do the same thing at the same time, but you might.

Eighth tip: standing "seats." This works for the Royal Opera House and the Donmar, which both hold out seats for standing for sale the day of show. though I'm not sure where else. I personally have done standing once or twice and won't be doing it again; a three hour opera will really take your taste for this kind of theatrical experience.

Ninth tip (another one for sold out shows): be persistent. Hit the website again and again in the days before the show, and call the theater about every hour day of show and ask if they've had returns yet. I get shows this way for every show I want to see. Day of show, the Royal Opera House releases about sixty five seats when the box office opens, and you can buy them online (some of them for six quid, a damn fine deal for one of the world's best ballet companies); the Donmar holds, I believe, ten seats for day of show sales but you can only get them in person. The National also holds a few seats for day of show at ten pounds each, also only available in person. This is how we got to see Coram Boy, and, I tell you, it was worth being a little late for work.

Tenth tip: see a show early. Previews are a budget conscious theater-goers friend, and often times it's the first two weeks of a long run the theater will be working hardest to fill seats (and selling them on LastMinute). The Lyric Hammersmith (really not that far from the center!) sells tickets for the preview week at nine quid each for every show in the house - if they hadn't, I would have never managed to see Alan Cumming in The Bacchae.

Eleventh tip: the Travellex 10 pound series at the National Theatre. There is really no better theater deal in town. Find out what is going to be on in the series, and just book your damned tickets as soon as they go on sale. If you ultimately can't use them - I mean, you're out TEN POUNDS. Just buy them. Buy them now. (Did I mention how great Major Barbara is? Well, so I heard from The West End Whingers, and, well, even if they're wrong, it was ONLY TEN POUNDS. But I bought tickets anyway just based on their review, because they are usually spot on with the good stuff.)

Twelfth tip: become a friend of the theater. This is often not useful for out of towners, but my membership at Sadlers' Wells has saved me piles (two free tickets plus a discount - in addition to their usual "buy two or more shows and save" discount), and my membership at The Donmar was the only way I could have ever made it into Othello. You'll also get special deals in the mail (or email) that aren't available to the general public, plus it's a good way to support the arts. If you're a Londoner, I recommend you do this and put your theater loving heart where your wallet is. After all, you've saved all this money - don't you want to give it back to the people who do so much to make your free time a pleasure?

Thirteenth tip: try going any night but Friday and Saturday. I'm sorry, that's when EVERYONE wants to see a show and is willing to pay for the privilege. Make plans for Monday through Thursday - more shows come up on TKTS, better prices are available through LastMinute, more people go, "God, I just can't manage going out and going back to work tomorrow!" and return their tickets, and some theaters just flat out do differential pricing. I spend Fridays and Saturdays at the movies or hanging out with my friends and cram my shows in on weeknights; it's not as glamorous as going out to the theater on a Friday, but then again if I'm forking out for eight shows a month, I can't afford to see them only on weekends. And, truth be told, after seeing two shows already, I'm in need of a slightly quieter evening!

A final tip: for a show that's going to run a long time, be patient. A lot of shows will run in London for a year or more, and just because you couldn't afford to go for your birthday doesn't mean you can't get tickets four months later at TKTS or LastMinute. I've seen it for Spamalot and it will happen for Hairspray: after time, ticket prices will become more flexible, though this may occur around the time the original fabulous cast members head back to Hollywood/New York/their vacation home in the Riviera. TKTS provides a pretty good barometer on a daily basis of how well a show is selling, so use it as your guide as to whether or not you'll be able to find price flexibility. If you haven't seen it on the board for two weeks (and they're actually selling it there), you will have to wait if you want to get it for less. (FYI, if you want to see Billy Elliot, just give up and buy balcony seats - that sucker never goes on sale. Over a month of watching it only came up ONCE on TKTS. I don't personally recommend the show, but if you're hot to go, just buck up and fork over the dough - and remember, balcony seats will run you £35, and since it's what the market will bear ... you'll have to pay the piper ... or try getting a group rate instead.)

It’s apparent that this is a massive subject which I’m sure I will return to again and again, so for now let’s just consider the categories of brands

Traditional and existing brands – these generally take digital <into their standard marketing activities, though there are many brand awareness surveys indicating that a combination of online and offline promotion has far greater impact then the sum of the two activities.  Simple factors also have impact on existing brands – for example, consider B&Q and AT&T – where ampersands are not available in URLs. No wonder we have diy.com.

But many brands are now exploiting social internet, as strong brands generate discourse and conversation - for better or for worse. Everyone wants to talk about well-known names and if the brands are smart they can tap into this valuable resource to inform their marketing decisions.

Web-only brands

The internet has sponsored many brands that would not have existed previously – Amazon, lastminute.com, Google, Facebook etc.  For all of these, the web is their only shop window.  Such brands are usually very adept at on-line marketing but the really smart marketers exploit traditional marketing equally well.

One of the dangers with an online brand is that the owners are so focussed on the digital environment they neglect the offline arena. Just as offline brands need to exist in a digital world as well, online brands may also have opportunities to develop and extend into the offline world as well. Owners must take care to consider these opportunities in their brand development and not create something which presents real difficulties to work with offline.

New Brands

Perhaps the most exciting area is the creation of new brands. It is here taht the greatest impact is seen - any aware marketer must consider online opportunities as part of the brand development programme.  Equally important though are the opportunities digital media presents for the brand development process itself. Research, testing, market intelligence, surveys and brand comparisons can all be executed quickly and inexpensively online - even launches can be effected with massive impact for new brands.

We touched on Web 2.0 earlier, but for new brands the conversations that can be stimulated and the feedback marketers can get is hugely valuable. The only discipline that needs to be applied is in relinquishing a measure of control to engage with the audiences - something many companies find extremely difficult.

The first is a service being trialed by PostBus (German only) in Switzerland. It's essentially an information-oriented version of the barcode-based systems that many mobile operators are implementing as part of their mobile advertising strategies. Signposts around the small town of Heiden in eastern Switzerland have been adorned with special graphics. When scanned by a phone's camera, they trigger the opening of a web page on the user's device that displays the nearest bus stop and relevant service schedule. This could be very useful to any hiker, but particularly to tourists who may not know where they are, or have awareness about local transport options. While this may sound like a very niche application, it's a mobile device- and location-centric approach that can be applied to any environment and provide information on virtually anything.

Meanwhile, Dutch start-up XS2TheWorld is following in the footsteps of Lastminute.com and coolgorilla by launching a mobile talking phrasebook service for travelers. Both services allow you to choose from a range of phrases needed by a typical tourist, from asking for directions to flirting, and have them read out in the required language. Available languages from XS2TheWorld at launch include Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Dutch, Spanish and Thai. In addition to the inclusion of Asian languages, the XS2TheWorld service differentiates itself by offering city guides to selected metropolitan areas in China, Spain, Holland, France and Argentina and Thailand. The company hopes that this will be enough to persuade users to pay £5 per copy of the application.

However, Lastminute.com recently made the coolgorilla phrasebook application free to the user. XS2TheWorld's city guides will have to be sufficiently relevant to the target audience and very up-to-date, in order to compete effectively with both the coolgorilla application and other mobile city guide providers.

Hamish M.

Lugging stacks of dusty vinyl onto the lawn might appeal to purists, but let's face it: the iDJ oozes gadgety sex appeal, and the potential in a mixing desk for two iPods is mind-boggling. Get your mates to bring theirs and you can blend entire music libraries on your lap, and still sling it all in a rucksack and run for cover if the skies open. All you need is a decent sound system.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire

Forget the seething masses of summer sun-seekers - sidestep the rush and aim for September. But if your pockets are empty and your cupboards bare, don't despair: you've got two months to lay a golden egg. 

Liquid money

If no-one else will have them, peddle your vital juices to the professionals. Donating to a blood bank may get you a steady conscience and a custard cream, but some labs pay up to £60 for 600ml: six litres later and you're off to a better place. The only flaw is that you've only got five litres in the first place.

Men, of course, can tap a less finite and somewhat stickier resource. If you're fit and under 40, three sperm deposits a week at £25 a crack will leave you thumbing the cash - until two-dozen kids come knocking for their tuition fees.

Express delivery

Sometimes only the personal touch will do, and courier firms can pay up to £15/hour to transport a package to the remote corners of the Earth, travel and accommodation thrown in. Work is sporadic by nature but one big trip could hit the jackpot - with the hard-earned cash you can fly back and see the sights you missed while playing postie.

Be an extra on the silver screen

Before computers took over, any epic battle worth its salt was packed to the gunnels with extras. Now it's easier to copy and paste an army as required. But there are still non-speaking parts out there, and if the film's got a budget to speak of you could rake in between £50 and £200 a day - maybe even see your mug on screen.

These snippets were published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire

Japan's greatest natural landmark, Mount Fuji attracts some 200,000 climbers every year, concentrated around the official season of July and August when snowfall is minimal and conditions are mild.

Camaraderie amongst hundreds of like-purposed people may counterbalance the fact that at peak times there are literally queues in some places. But purists can try tackling the 6 hour hike up the volcano at night: if you time your arrival at the summit to coincide with sunrise you're in for a spectacle.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire

Why wait 'til winter to cut through fresh powder at the top of the world? The mountains around Manali in Northern India are renowned for some of the deepest snowpacks in the Himalayas. The high altitude makes for superb re-crystallised powder, and slopes around Patalsu and Rohtang stay open well into the summer months. It's not the cheapest break you can take, but for expert skiiers with cash to thaw and then burn it's also unforgettable.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire

Yes, you read that right. Lexington. Dubbed the horse capital of the world, the city is set to host the World Equestrian Games in 2010 and counts amongst its claims to fame a thriving population of Poa Pratensis - bluegrass - that keeps the scenery picturesque and the steeds fighting fit. They also make bourbon there. I give up: you're only interested in stalking those pesky chain-rattlin' varmints, aren't you?

Rookies can start at the bottom with a $50 crash course in the various species of ghoul, their favourite haunts and the gadgets that can help you snare one. But a cool $150 gets an intensive regime that'll chisel you into a certified Advanced Hunter from scratch.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire

Rather than thumbing through a dog-eared phrasebook as you garble your way through locating la banque, wouldn't it be handy to have a little angelic linguist perched on your shoulder, whispering what to say?

Dream no longer. Tipped to become hot property in 2006, lastminute.com and Coolgorilla's Audio Phrasebooks on your iPod feature over 750 words and phrases in easily navigable categories, from telling the time to medical emergencies. Currently available in German, Greek, French and Spanish, there's no more efficient way to while away time in the departure lounge - then you can startle fellow flyers with your newfound flair.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire

To really start your break with a bang, hook up with a big group of mates and, unbelievably, it can actually work out cheaper to hire your own wings and split the cost. It's about exploiting 'empty legs' - say a fat cat flies to Milan, his jet returns to the UK then hops back over to pick him up. That's two flights' worth of über-plush seats going begging, and it may be possible to cut a deal for as little as £1000 - the flight's already paid for, so it's all extra cash for the airline.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com's Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire