Aussie Tim Tam biscuits slam into Canada

by Adam McDowell

Aussie expatriates rejoice: No need to smuggle Tim Tams in your luggage anymore, as the chocolate treats from Down Under have arrived on Canadian shores. Now it’s time to spread your disgusting delicious biscuit-slurping habits in a new country.

Tim Tams, according to the press release, consist of “two layers of chocolate malted biscuit separated by light cream filling and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate.” They come in three flavours: Original, Chewy Caramel and Classic Dark Chocolate. Australians evidently consume said cookies employing a technique known as the Tim Tam Slam, the company’s description of which reads like an advanced course in dunking.

Based on YouTube evidence, there is indeed an established order of things. Natalie Imbruglia once showed ever-entertaining Irish-British talk show host Graham Norton how to do it. Here’s how to eat a Tim Tam like a platinum-selling recording artist:

1. Prepare a warm drink (e.g. tea, coffee or hot chocolate; tea seems to be traditional)
2. Nibble off the corners of the biscuit
3. Use your Tim Tam as a straw, sucking the drink through it (“This is the part where it gets orgasmic,” says Imbruglia)
4. Just when you start to taste the drink, flip the cookie around and slam it into your mouth (quickly — Natalie Imbruglia warns us that the Tim Tam will be melting by this time)
5. Repeat as above

Whether or not you consider buying a package of Tim Tams and trying this for yourself at home, one thing’s for certain: Dipping chocolate cookies in tea will taste much better than dunking them in Vegemite.

Noise Turns up the Heat at Nokia With Sauna Talk

Vancouver, BC; November 4, 2008 – Noise Digital announced today the launch of Sauna Talk, a global B2B campaign for Nokia. The campaign was created to connect with game developers and raise industry awareness and understanding of N-Gage, Nokia’s global gaming software platform.

“Ultimately we needed to find a way to communicate with the game developer community to discuss a wide range of topics, some of which can be quite technical,” says Mark Nishiguchi, Managing Partner, Noise Digital. “We felt that we could use humour to both engage and inform our target audience. The result was Sauna Talk.”

Sauna Talk is a cheeky, multi-faceted campaign that plays off Nokia’s Finnish heritage. It spoofs a tech talk show and features light, yet informative and specific topics with humorous elements that generally make fun of the ‘not so technical’ host: Arnold Faber.

The campaign includes a microsite and video interview segments designed to leverage social networks, fan pages and content-sharing platforms such as Ovi and Facebook to help spread awareness of the brand and N-Gage platform. The campaign is housed online at www.insider.n-gage.com/saunatalk/.

The campaign also features the “Sauna Talk Trivia Challenge”, a contest which is hosted on gamasutra.com, a key industry web site. Through the contest, entrants can win Sauna Talk merchandise by answering skill-testing questions about the platform. The contest is a way for Nokia to further inform its target audience.

“This campaign has given us a platform to communicate in a new way with our audience,” says Nick Malaperiman, Head of Global Publisher and Industry Marketing. “One of its best features is its flexibility - over time it will allow us to discuss a broad range of topics.”

The campaign was previewed in August in Leipzig, Germany at the GCDC (GC Developers Conference) where pilot videos played throughout the N-Gage booth and conference hall. The videos starred actual Nokia employees and discussed topics such as: community gaming, the N-Gage platform and the Nokia Research partners.

“We were overwhelmed by the initial response to the campaign,” continues Nishiguchi. “We created a lot of industry chatter and people really responded to the tongue-in-cheek interview format. They also appreciated that we were using actual Nokia employees.”

Sauna Talk is the latest campaign that has arisen from Noise’s long-standing relationship Nokia. Noise has been responsible for game branding, interactive strategy, international title marketing, design and development, and other unique global projects for N-Gage since 2002.