WHAT IS IT? Teams from all around the world including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, China, USA and the UK will have 48 hours to make content related to a trending topic that's popular in their country or around the globe. At the end of the 48 hours, you'll have 7 days to share your infographic, film, website, YouTube mashup, game or photo-blog with the world. The team with the most likes/retweets/views wins. What's in it for you? Global recognition. Plus, the best stuff will be featured in a talk given by iris Worldwide's Grant Hunter and Jon Burkhart at South By Southwest Interactive in March. The most shared work will also be included in a book to be published in Autumn 2011.

THE BRIEF We will give you one global trending topic on the 18th February 2011. We want all of you to respond to this one universal trending topic. Secondary topics are those that are trending in your country between 7pm Friday 18th February 2011 and 7pm Sunday 20th February 2011. You will need to submit a screen grab, picture or link to verify the story.

THE RESULTS: 150 teams from across the globe signed up. Less than half finished the race to create as much topical content as possible between 7pm on Friday and 7pm on Sunday. London competitors included Fallon, Albion, Profero, iris. Global participants included BDDO and iris in Singapore, Ogilvy and iris in Sydney, Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town, Miami Ad School and two cartoonists from The New Yorker. As a guide for the participants and the jury of 30 judges from agencies around the world, we set the following brief: Is it Urgent? How quickly did you get it out there? Is it Genius? How strong is the idea? Is it entertaining or useful? First trending topic: A Radiohead video featuring Thom Yorke dancing was ripe for parody on Friday night. Our iris placement team produced “Thom Whips his Hair” re-dubbing a popular song and editing Thom’s moves to it. This was the quickest response. It topped lists at Dailyfill.com, Urlesque.com and PasteMagazine.com. Even Perez Hilton said he liked it more than the early favourite Single Ladies re-mix. At the time of writing, “Hair” has over 100K views. Another team opted for a less urgent choice that fit safely in the “is it real?” viral category. They chose to “interview” Thom’s choreographer. This video has sparked a dialogue online among bloggers as to whether it’s real. It’s also the only Urgent Genius response to be named as a favourite in Rolling Stone magazine.

Another trending topic produced the runaway success of the competition with more than 110,000 views in the first week. To promote the trailer for the zombie game Dead Island, British rapper Dan Bull created “Shaun of the Dead Island,” a mashup of video game and film footage. The game's publisher praised it on its official blog, an amazing endorsement. Director Edgar Wright blogged about it, and Simon Pegg tweeted “it’s the greatest trailer ever.” Bull’s effort has garnered loads of press and blog coverage. See next page.

WHAT’S THE TAKEAWAY FOR AGENCIES? Urgent Genius has demonstrated the need for hybrid thinkers that are multi-skilled. People who do as well as think. From programming to editing to directing, today's creatives need wider and deeper skills. They need to adopt a new mindset. Hybrid thinkers have a motto: Do it now. Ask forgiveness later. It’s easier than asking permission. The agency of today, and fit for the future, has to embrace this pro-activity. The old internal approval and production processes have to be parked, they’re too slow. There should be a new “Go until I say stop” client approval process if you want to harness the power of Real-Time marketing.

70+ mentions in press/PR (and we haven’t announced the winner yet)