Coca-Cola - Personal Road

Back in 2011 Coca-Cola launched the incredible 'Share A Coke' campaign in Australia.  The campaign saw Coca-Cola print 150 of the country’s most popular names on labels of Coke bottles for the first time in the brand’s history.  The idea was to give people a reason to connect with friends through a Coke and by every measure was a huge success.  Since then Coca-Cola has been rolling out the campaign across the world, recently launching Israel where Coke & Gefen Team took the idea of personalization a step further.  They transformed the a series of prominent billboards into interactive displays.  Consumers were asked to download the Coca-Cola smartphone app and enter their name.  The app would then transmit and display their name on the billboard whenever they were in range (using geo-fence technology).  The app would then notify the user when their name was being displayed.

I would normally write this off as a gimmick with too many barriers to entry to get traction amongst users, but one shouldn't underestimate the narcissistic nature of today's smartphone user and their desire to see their name up in lights.  The app ranked #1 in Israel's app store and was downloaded over 100k times.  It's a cool idea and a wonderful execution, but also somewhat creepy.  Is this the first step on the road to the dystopian personalized advertising as imagined in Minority Report?  Check out the case study video below.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Yediot Newspaper - History Where It Happened

I love this outdoor advertising campaign for Yediot Newspaper in Israel.  For most of modern history, Newspapers have been the authoritative source for documenting major events as they happen.  Yediot Newspapers (and their agency, Saatchi Israel) brought this ideas to life by showing people history where it happened.  Front pages from prominent days in history were placed in bus shelter ads in close proximity to where the events actually occurred.  For example, the front page from the day of Yitzak Rabin's assassination was displayed in a bus shelter where he was shot.  All of the bus shelter ads taken together, documented the majority of the key events in the history of Israel.  It's a lovely way to give real-world context to historical events.  It'd be interesting to explore additional digital components that could be added to an idea like this to make it even richer.  Check out the case study below.




hat tip: Adverblog


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Two Compelling PSAs - OCD & Alzheimers

Here are a couple of recent PSA's that have really impressed me.  No, I'm not talking about KONY.

The first PSA is from the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation.  Developed by McCann Digital Israel, it compels you to repeatedly watch the video to get the message.  It's a nice way to demonstrate what people afflicted with obsessive compulsive disorder must go through on a day to day basis to complete even simple tasks.


The second PSA is from The Alzheimer Society of British Columbia.  Created by Rethink Canada in support of Brain Awareness Week (who knew such a thing even existed).  In this beautiful spot, we're taken through a lifetime of memories seen through the lens of neural imaging.  The spot urges the audience to protect memories and support Alzheimer's research.  Watch it below, and then watch it again. Seriously.


Supporting Articles:  AdFreak | AgencySpy

The Coca Cola Video Puzzle

At this point one would hope that every advertiser is putting their TV commercials online in a branded environment.  Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that people want to watch or in any way interact with those commercials, though a healthy dose of paid media to drive viewership and awareness certainly helps.

More importantly, how do you get them do more than just watch your ad?  In other words, how do you get them to go from a passive viewer to actually DOING something.  This work from e-dologic Israel provides a nice solution.  They developed a Facebook app that turns the spot itself a video puzzle that users need to piece together (with the opportunity to win prizes of course!).  I took a crack at it, which you can see in action below.


It's also worth checking out the case study below for some impressive results.  More than 350,000 views, but incredibly users who took part watched the ad 23 times on average!

Supporting Articles:  Simply Zesty | Digital Buzz Blog