Barclaycard - #BespokeBallads

UK financial provider, Barclays is getting into the offers arena and has launched a new service called Barclays Bespoke Offers for their existing account holders.  As you may have guessed their point of differentation is that the offers from both national and local merchants are bespoke for each individual.

In order to promote this new service Barclays (and their agency, Dare) have created Barclays bespoke ballads.  They've enlisted several teams of comedians and songwriters to turn people's tweet stream into songs.  Here's how it works...a user submits a tweet to #bespokeballads, the songwriters/comedians then comb through their Twitter feed and create a bespoke song based off their Twitter activity.  That video is then uploaded to the Barclays Bespoke Offers YouTube channel  Check out the intro video below.
If you want to see these in action, you can see below the #bespokeballads created for my colleague, Nathan Guerra.

As in most things, the execution is everything.  In this case, the execution is really well done.  It's another great example of providing a personalized digital artifact back to users who have taken the time to engage with the brand.  On the other hand, the personalized videos are relatively meaningless unless you know the person being serenaded, which is why it also makes sense to include influencers, celebrities or people who have a large following on Twitter.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Three - The Dancing Pony

Three is a UK-based mobile provider fighting for market share in a crowded and competitive environment.  Their most recent campaign, developed by Wieden + Kennedy London has absolutely blown up on UK television and the Interwebs.  'The Pony' is a truly delightful commercial and has been great in terms of generating awareness (though one could argue about the strength of the association with Three vs. just the Pony).

What's been interesting to me is to see how Three & W+K have extended on the TV commercial in the digital space, as well as taking the digital activity and feeding that back into TV.  If you haven't already seen it, check out 'The Pony' ad below before reading on.


In terms of driving digital activity, Three have created 'The Pony Mixer' which sends users to the Three YouTube channel where they can create their own bespoke version of the Dancing Pony, complete with various visual effects and a wealth of iconic songs to choose from.  That's a fantastic way to deepen the experience for users who are willing to go beyond just a passive view of the video.  You can check out the trailer for the Pony Mixer below.  There's also a heavy Twitter component around the hashtag #DancePonyDance, which generated 14,000 tweets within five hours of the video being uploaded and has continued to be active throughout the life of the campaign.
 

Lastly, Three have also taken the best of of the user generated videos created via The Pony Mixer along with the associated tweets and are running those as follow up TV commericals.  These include versions such as the Bollywood Pony, the Punk Pony and my personal favorite, the Hip-Hop Pony (see below)

Taken together the work from W+K London is just a fantastic example of how various channels can work together in a way that allows each component to extend and amplify the overall campaign.

Also worth noting that, the Poke have created their own hilarious version (not via the Pony Mixer) of the Dancing Pony called the Findus Pony.  For those of you outside of the UK, Findus is one of the brands/vendors caught up in the recent Horsemeat Scandal.

hat tip: Bobby Nolla & Adrian Dent


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Subaru - First Car Story

Anyone who drives remembers their first car.  Now Subaru and its creative agency, Carmichael Lynch, are tapping into the emotion and memories of loving (or hating) your first car in a new integrated campaign for the new 2012 Subaru Impreza.  The hub of the campaign is FirstCarStory.com features an amazing animation/video generator that allows users to recreate the story of their first car through bespoke animation, music, text and voiceover.  The site then generates a really cool custom animated short story, which of course are sharable via users social networks.

"Everyone loved their first car, no matter how bad, beat up, or borrowed. That first car became a new chapter in life or a ticket to freedom and first car stories are often the most memorable stories we have," said Alan Bethke, director, marketing communications, Subaru of America.  "The First Car Story campaign provides a creative outlet for reliving those unique, funny, unforgettable car experiences anyone who had a first car can relate to."

It's really worth playing with the site to get a full sense of what you can do.  I love the idea of turning phrases or words that the user types in the story as a way to trigger a library of animations (ie. typing in pulled over by the cops triggers an animation in the video with sirens and handcuffs.)  Another cool aspect is the ability to tag friends in the video, since many of our stories, memories, etc. from our first car include shared experiences with friends from yesteryear.  FirstCarStory.com really takes the idea of creating bespoke and personalized content for the user a step further.  All in all, just a great branded content tool to provide utility and entertainment to the user.

This really hits home for me, since I loved my first car, a beat up old, white '79 Buick Lesabre, so I took a stab at creating my own video, which you can see below.


Here's a story mashup that Subaru created to illustrate the tool.


Supporting Articles: Creativity