Intel/Toshiba - The Power Inside

Last year I wrote about The Beauty Inside a campaign from Intel & Toshiba which went on to win both an Emmy as well as three Grand Prix's in Cannes (including Branded Content) this year.  Pereira & O'Dell are back with 'The Power Inside,' which is the third iteration of the social/interactive film series.  As in previous years, the film is directed and stars various Hollywood heavyweights.  The first episode launched August 15th with new episodes released weekly for the next month and a half.  The key aspect is the participatory nature of the film which allows viewers to be featured in the episodes through various mechanisms such as uploading photos of videos of themselves.

This year's iteration takes a more comedic approach (as opposed to the emotional and earnest 'The Beauty Inside' and the original horror-based 'Inside.').  The premise is that an alien race of extraterrestrial moustaches and unibrows are attempting to take over the upper lips and eyes of people around the world. The main character is Neil, who together with his friends and the help of technology discovers his inner strength to defeat the moustache and unibrow invaders called Uricks.  It's very much in the tone of Zombieland or Shaun Of The Dead.  Ridiculous? Yes, but also very well written, shot and produced.

In an interesting twist, AdWeek reports that Intel & Toshiba are selling product placement within the films to additional advertisers: 'Spotify, Skype, Fossil watches and Skullcandy headphones are all paying for placements with merchandise rather than cash. The merchandise will be given to winners in weekly contests tied to the series and as giveaways when U.S. consumers buy a Toshiba laptop computer promoted by the series.' 

I've never heard of such a thing being done before (at least in terms of branded content) but it's a clever way for a brand to leverage the previous success in order to offset the costs of the current campaign.  Check out the trailer and episodes in the playlist below.

Posted by: Reuben Halper

A Few Other Things I Like But Don't Have Time To Write Up

Coca-Cola Small World Machines
Another wonderful execution under the Coca-Cola 'Open Happiness' umbrella, this time bringing together people in Pakistan & India.  The number of activations around Coca-Cola vending machines around 'Open Happiness' is seemingly endless.


A Boy & His Atom - The World's Smallest Movie
This is incredible. IBM created the world's smallest stop motion film.  As they describe 'The ability to move single atoms — the smallest particles of any element in the universe — is crucial to IBM's research in the field of atomic memory. But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules (two atoms stacked on top of each other), all in pursuit of making a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million times. A movie made with atoms.'


Getty Images - 85 Seconds
Last year, AlmapBBDO created a beautiful film from various stock photography to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the Getty Images library.  Now, AlmapBBDO has done the same thing to show off the depth of their video archive.  85 seconds tells the love story of a couple who meet as children, separate after college and reunite later in life.

Holland - The Original Cool
This amazing video was developed by the Mustache Agency for The Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Amsterdam Marketing and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.  The Original Cool is part of a larger advertising campaign aimed at the North American travel market.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Norton - Top Result

Norton, the provider of internet security tools has launched a great new initiative, Top Result.  Developed by Naked Communications in Stockholm the campaign allows users control the first impression they make when people search for them online.  The idea builds off the insight that first impressions no longer happen in person and that often people do some digital sleuthing before meeting someone in person.  Top Result allows people to protect their reputation by securing their own search results and hopefully ensure that their result shows up first when a search is done for their name.  Unlike reputation management sites which attempt to influence the actual organic search results when searching for your name, Norton results simply buys AdWords for each user & foots the bill for those paid search ads.  You simply go to the Norton Top Search website and enter their name and then basically create a standard Google AdWords Ad.  You can then choose a link such as your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn page and then see a preview of how the search result will appear.  In order to make sure that nobody is hijacking another person's identity, you're required to verify your identity via Facebook.

It really is a brilliant idea and one that solves a legitimate concern from users about the lack of control of their online identity.  As Contagious points out: 'Norton's Top Results campaign is a perfect example of a trend Contagious coined - Marketing as Service Design - with the brand aligning its core values of security, trust and protection with a simple but effective digital tool. The brand has matched an unmet need with its core brand values, and is executing that in a way that uses the existing technology in a smart way. Using Google's ad spaces is a cheap, elegant solution that taps existing media and infrastructure and puts them to great use rather than trying to build its own website.'

Additional Articles: Contagious | Mashable

Intel & Toshiba - The Beauty Inside

Last year Intel & Toshiba brought us 'The Inside Experience,' a social film project that was billed as the first of it's kind.  While I wasn't personally a huge fan of The Inside Experience as it played out, respect to all involved for pushing the boundaries and blurring the lines between web series, short film and social media campaign.  It's an interesting and rapidly developing area, so I'm glad to see that Intel & Toshiba are back to present 'The Beauty Inside.'  Created and developed by  Pereira & O’Dell, B-Reel and director Drake Doremus, 'The Beauty Inside' is a film about Alex (Topher Grace), a guy who wakes up looking like a different person each day.  Interesting storyline, but what's innovative is how the film uses that premise as a way to include and facilitate audience participation.  As the folks over at B-Reel describe 'it is Hollywood’s first film that gives the audience a chance to play the lead role. Alex can be a young, beautiful redheaded women one day while an overweight man late into his 40s tomorrow. He chronicles his ever-changing appearance as webcam diaries on his Toshiba Ultrabook. While fun and intriguing at first, Alex quickly realizes his limitations as he falls for Leah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).' 

Split into six episodes, 'The Beauty Inside' is a 30-minute social film that allows users to audition to play the role of Alex.  Users can choose from a list of script outlines that are based on the upcoming episodes and audition throughout the campaign by uploading a webcam video or photo of themselves.  It's a nice way to foster audience participation in a way that fits seamlessly into the story rather than a clunky social media bolt on.  Of course there is a social mechanic as getting friends to view, like and share your audition film increases your chances of being included in the film.  Check out the trailer below as well as the first episode.  The film (as much has been posted so far) can be seen at The Beauty Inside YouTube channel.

Sol Republic - The World's First Headphones For Cats

I usually like to avoid any posts that perpetrate the idea that YouTube is just about cats or dogs on skateboards, but August 8th was World Cat Day, so I may as well celebrate that momentous occasion.

First up is a nice feature from AdWeek that showcases 9 awesome cat commercials that drive the Internet wild.

The second is a hilarious spot/campaign from headphone manufacturer Sol Republic and their agency, RoosterNY.  They paired up with Deadmau5 partner, Professor Meowington, to produce the world's first pair of headphones designed for cats.  They only made 10 pairs of these catphones, with each pair retailing for $1000.  All proceeds from the headphones will go to the ASPCA (an animal protection society).  To support this initiative, RoosterNY created this hilarious infomercial style video, check it out below.

Cats, Deadmau5, hilariy...that's pretty much a trifecta in terms of capturing the attention of the meme-loving Internet audience and will hopefully be effective in raising overall awareness of the Sol Republic brand. Not to mention the fact that they're also raising money for a good cause at the same time.


via PSFK

Doubleclick Rich Media - Media Bridging Desktop & Mobile

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I'm a bit obsessed with the media bridging opportunities where mobile is the glue that connects all other forms of media.  There's still a long way to go until it's seamless and elegant, but there's been some really nice progress, especially over the past six months.

One of my favorite examples (logrolling alert) was developed by my talented colleagues at Doubleclick (Scott Harmes - creative, Roberto Stocco - dev) in conjunction with Toaster Ltd.  The tech is called 'Channel Connect' and basically creates a communications channel between a desktop advertisement (such as a Youtube masthead) and an HTML5 mobile site.  It's not just limited to one user, so you can actually create an ad experience with multiple users competing/collaborating on the experience at the same time.  I think it has a ton of potential and look forward to seeing how agencies push these executions going forward.

Have a play with the demo here or for more details read below (full post on Doubleclick Rich Media Gallery blog):

Dubbed ‘Channel Connect’, this new Rich Media feature enables you to create more ways for users to connect with your brand.

What is it?

Channel Connect is a new DoubleClick package of Flash components and JavaScript libraries used to establish a communication channel between a desktop advertisement and an HTML5 mobile site.  The opened channel can be used to send any kind of information in either direction between a user’s mobile device and their desktop.

How can I use it?

Channel Connect turns a smartphone or tablet into a new input device, allowing users to interact with brand content more tactilely than a simple mouse.  Any Rich Media ad can be enhanced by switching mouse-interactions to gestures: turn a user’s mobile into a game controller or graphics tablet for maximum active engagement.

On a separate note you'll notice that it uses a QR code to initiate the mobile part of the experience.  That's definitely where most of the media bridging stuff falls down, so it's interesting to see Layar's announcement a few days ago that they're creating an easy way for publishers to turn standard print content into a simple augmented reality experience.  Really interesting stuff...

[GALAXY Note] Beckham plays Beethoven's Ode To Joy

OK, so it doesn't have much to do with the product, but I still felt compelled to share this version of Beethoven's Ode To Joy as played by David Beckham to promote the Samsung Galaxy Note.

Granted it's not as spontaneously delightful as the Elephant playing the Galaxy Note, but much better than the over the top fake of the previous Beckham Pepsi viral.  See below for some pure 'viral' enjoyment.

Google Maps Cube

Back in January Google released this delightful video to promote Google Maps.  It features a wooden block 3D labyrinth of a cityscape that's suspended and rotated to show off a physical representation of navigating via Google maps.  At the time it promoted a beautiful HTML5 walk through of Google Maps, but it always struck me as surprising that there was no digital execution to match.  Fast forward a couple months and now we see the release of Google Maps Cube.  It's a fun WebGL based game/Chrome Experiment that allows users to experience different map based challenges.  The experience digitally replicates the metal ball in a wooden maze-type tilt games while promoting different features and functionality of Google Maps.

Have a play around:  http://www.playmapscube.com/

via Leon Bayliss

Samsung - Elephant Plays with a Galaxy Note!

Samsung has been coming on strong in the smartphone market lately.  According to Cannacord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley, Samsung is the second place manufacturer for mobile carriers in the US behind Apple.  Of course, that's really just an excuse for me to post this delightful video that The Viral Factory created to promote the Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone/tablet.  The video features an elephant (named Peter) playing/interacting with the Galaxy Note.  What I found really interesting (besides the fact that an elephant is playing with a freaking smartphone!) is that so many viewers were skeptical about the authenticity of the video, despite the fact that the description is explicit in saying that this was 100% real, In fact, the Viral Factory posted several behind the scenes videos to demonstrate that no post-production trickery was involved.  I suppose skepticism is to be expected considering how good the execution has become for various hoax campaigns such as those produced by agencies like ThinkModo.

See below for original video and behind the scenes.

Supporting Articles: Inspiration Room | AdFreak