Following its pogo-powered wellies, Orange has concluded its sponsorship of Glastonbury with an attempt to create the most tagged photograph ever taken.

The photo of the crowd at the Pyramid Stage was taken at half-time during the England/Slovenia World Cup match, and is a massive 1.3 gigapixels in size. Created by Poke London, GlastoTag is made up of 36 separate snaps stitched together to create a panorama.

So far, Orange has amassed almost 8,000 tags – but with almost 70,000 faces in the picture, there’s still a lot of scope to play. With the ability to link tags to Facebook, the network provider has shown once again that it understands the power of social media.

It’s a lovely example of a brand tapping into the lasting goodwill generated by an event – and if you were there for the game, why not drop by the site and tag yourself? We will be…

The Orange Power Wellies, which were developed by renewable energy experts Got Wind, convert heat from the feet into an electrical current.

Twelve hours of fancy footwork can generate enough energy to power a mobile phone for one hour.

Great for all festival goers this year.

Brands wishing to create a multi-channel experience for consumers need look no further than cartoon band Gorillaz for inspiration. Fans who bought the experience edition of their long awaited third album Plastic Beach are treated to dazzling original artwork, an original DVD documentary and access to exclusive online content which includes a video game as well as, of course, 16 new tracks.

In terms of creating a multi-channel experience with which to connect with fans they are light years ahead of their competitive set. Helped by the download generation, all too often music is reduced to a commodity for which any money at all is sometimes seen as too much. “Where is the love?” you might well ask.

Concept albums are, mercifully some might say, largely a relic of the 1970s. Cadbury TV ads are normally as close as prog rock artists get to the world of marketing these days. However, like all fads, occasionally they tend to grow tired of resting in the great trend bank in the sky and come back to haunt us. With its engaging story and world of make believe, Plastic Beach is (whisper it quietly) a sort of modern concept album.

The comparisons between band and brand management do not stop here; how many times has a band jumped the shark and produced a brand extension too far? The rock and roll hall of fame is replete with examples of Spinal Tap levels of excess. Perhaps all that really makes up Sugababes is their ‘brand’ with all three founding members now gone on to better things. But with Gorillaz’s cartoon band 360 degree assault on the senses, I can’t help feeling that they succeed at what so many brands pay millions to do and fail.

As with brands, we experience only a limited portion of the band’s total entity, the tip of the iceberg, from which to create perceptions of a world that lies beneath the surface and which create a position in consumers’ minds. And maybe this is where brands may take particular heed of what Gorillaz have done with Plastic Beach. The consistency of the experience across all channels of Plastic Beach leaves me in no doubt of what Gorillaz are all about and what makes them different, which for brands means increased engagement, loyalty and eventually frequency of purchase. Unfortunately because so many other people also want to connect with the full 360 degree Plastic Beach experience, I’m unlikely to find out how on brand the live performance is.

Spotify announced success yesterday in launching their first application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.

For those who don’t know, Spotify is a service allowing its users to stream any song ever recorded over the internet and play them on an easy to use platform. Users can create and save their own playlists – all you need is an internet connection. The service operates on three levels:

Basic, which allows users to stream music for free with an advertising break every seven minutes.

Daily, allowing users to pay a £0.99 fee for a day of uninterrupted music.

Premium, a cost of £9.99 per month for completely uninterrupted streaming of any song you fancy at any time.

Obviously this kind of service provides the likes of Apple with direct competition for its own music purchase platform iTunes. So why is it then that Apple have seemingly put their bottom line at risk in such an avoidable way?

One answer is that they probably haven’t. The decision from Apple to only allow Spotify to create an application accessible by its Premium users will undoubtedly work against the applications popularity. This is because Spotify application users will effectively be paying £10 per month to simply rent music, in no ownable form. At least with iTunes the sense of ownership is retained by the user.

By allowing Spotify to create such an application on their own terms Apple have avoided coming across as a monopolising industry giant, thus not damaging the brands reputation. Remember, not long ago Apple themselves were the challenger brand revolting against the PC – so they clearly know the rules to this game very well! By giving with one hand and taking away with the other Apple have protected both brand credibility and their bottom line, an often difficult task.