The Swedish tourism board has taken an interesting risk in handing their official Twitter account @Sweden over to the tax paying public. It seems that the Swedish Institute figured the very best champions of all things Swede are the people themselves. Following this logic, the rational conclusion was that having regular Joes (the swedish equivalent of Joe? Sven?) tweet about their daily lives would raise awareness about how cool Sweden is as a tourist destination.It’s a bold move, with a different person every week connected by nothing but their nationality and their desire to be the voice of the nation. When it comes to transparency and letting go of the reins, Social Media has always scared those who want to control the perception of a brand, or, in this case, a country. But what happens when the voice of a nation casually informs his audience about his masturbation schedule?

We’re wondering whether it’s an earnest attempt to legitimise the country’s Twitter presence, a cunning effort to get the inside, authentic street view of the best of the country or just a PR stunt.

Time will tell. The project lives at Curators of Sweden, and says very little about their plans. According to Digital Trends we can expect to hear from “a teacher, a priest, an editorial writer, a coffee-drinking trucker lesbian and an ad agency founder who owns his own farm. There’s no end date set for the experiment and will likely continue for at least the next two months.”

It’s a cool and novel use of the platform and worth keeping an eye on.

At Gorilla, we’re all about innovation and creativity. Here’s an awesome video with a few of the most innovative minds right now, one being the co-founder of Twitter. It takes a look at their aims and where they get their ideas from. And there’s a mini pool table. Yes, you read that right. There is no innovation without action.

The Innovators from SPARKHOUSE on Vimeo.

We’ve had a couple of interns from Vega in the office for a month and they’ve been kept very busy. We tried to get them involved with as many aspects of the day to day as possible, and also tried to throw them in the deep end whenever we could.One of the challenges we set them (and our permanent resident intern Kath) was a Facebook advertising task: create an ad campaign for Gorilla’s page. Each intern was given a budget of R250 and told that the campaign at the and of a week with the highest CTR would be crowned the winner, and could shift whatever tasks on their plate they weren’t too keen on to their fellow interns.

It was an interesting experience watching their approach to advert construction; where they placed emphasis and the strategy behind each advert. The results are below, with the Magical Henchman Steve Ilbury dominating Gareth and Kath by quite a comfortable margin.

Our Vega interns are done with us now, hopefully they had a cool experience and if anyone out there is looking to do an internship our Designer and Brand Voices have become quite accustomed to minions…

Every once and a while, there’s an advert that really stands out … and this advert is one of those! Not only is it something cool to watch, but also shows us how we perceive people… it was fascinating to see the infamous Zombie Boy, aka Rick Genest, ink free. Watch it and weep.

The Halloween Jam, presented by DC Shoes Africa, took place this weekend at the legendary Gumtrails in Cape Town. DC held a photo comp on Twitter using the #Halloweenjam hashtag and the best photo won some DC product. And the winner was…. Nicolas George, aka the Mighty Pickle, who sent in a ton of great shots, including this one.

There are more shots from the weekend on the FB page. Keep up to date with everything DC by joining the DC Hub to find out the latest in product, team and event news.

Thanks to everyone who got involved by sending in their pics and re-tweeting the entries. All in all the event was a success with a huge crowd turning up despite some threatening weather and a massive party to finish things off. Nothing like combining riding injuries with drinking injuries to really make your Sunday heavy-duty. Look out for more footage coming soon.