Forget Cats, Chickens Are The New Heroes Of The Internet - Mercedes, LG & Foster Farms

Conventional wisdom says that the Internet is dominated by cat videos (if you haven't seen the hilarious video from agency john st. on 'catvertising' then stop what you're doing and watch it here).  However, the past month has seen the unlikely emergence of chickens playing a starring role in several campaigns.

The first example comes from Mercedes.  The 'Magic Body Control' commercial was created by Jung Von Matt to demonstrate the stability and comfort of the intelligent drive system.  How ironic that  they use a $5 chicken to demonstrate the capabilities of a $50,000 car.  Check it out below:


Similarly, LG and their agency SuperHeroes are using chickens to show off the new optical stabilization features of the LG G2 phone.


Last but not least, Foster Farms are combining chicken puppets and classic 1980s songs to demonstrate the 'amazing' chicken that Foster Farms brings to the table.

Other Things I Like But Don't Have Time To Write Up - Steinlager, VW, MTN

Steinlager - Be The Artist, Not The Canvas
I love this ad from Steinlager to promote responsible drinking.  Rather than tap into the typical cliches around responsible drinking, it appeals the juvenile, yet common occurrence that can happen when young men get too hammered.


VW - Take On Me
I'm blown away that Take On Me hasn't been used in an Ad before.  VW remakes the classic song to promote their no-charge scheduled maintenance on every new VW.

MTN - The Everywhere Library
Another great example of a brand doing good, in this case the Telco MTN brings books to students across Africa via SMS.


Posted by: Reuben Halper


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

Valentine's Day - Nivea, Sky, & Ikea

In honor of the most Hallmark of holidays, I thought it'd be nice to show few examples of Valentine's Day executions that stood out in my mind.

Nivea - A Date To Remember
Nivea is promoting their new Stress Protect deodorant range which 'provides proven protection under stress, so whatever happens, you can stay cool and confident.'  Developed by Agency Republic, A Date To Remember is billed as the first date that the user controls.  The interactive YouTube experience allows the user to choose how the date (awkwardly) unfolds while showing the stress level that the 'ordinary' girl is experiencing.  Check out the trailer below and have a play around with the experience on the Nivea UK YouTube channel.



Sky Germany
This ad from Sky in Germany reminds football fanatics the potential risks of forgetting Valentine's day, More importantly, it just goes to show that everything is better in slo-mo.


IKEA - Australia
A love this Valentine's day print ad from IKEA in Australia.  See below.  No further explanation needed.

amusing Valentine's Day offer—a free crib for babies born nine months from today.

Telstra New Year's Eve App

We had a session at the Google Creative Sandbox in Cannes last June with James Hilton of AKQA.  Among other things, we discussed the potential of mobile and product design in general.  He said something that really stuck with me; unless an experience is useful, usable or delightful then it's just contributing to the digital landfill.  Unfortunately many brands seem to ignore that advice and pump out ill-conceived mobile apps or experiences that meet none of the aforementioned criteria.  That's why I love this app developed by Australian Telco, Telstra for New Year's eve in Sydney.  The app has a host of features to enhance and amplify the experience of fireworks goers in Sydney.  As the good folks over at Contagious explain:

Throughout the night, four Telstra Colour Moments will automatically sync phone screens with the lighting on Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the fireworks displays around the bay. The screens will light up, becoming a visual extension of the show. 

Message the Bridge, another function on the app, enables users to write and submit their very own New Year's message - with 1500 of these being displayed on the pylons of the bridge over the course of the night. A dedicated Facebook app lets people without a smartphone send messages to the bridge. 

Telstra has also included features to help the public get the most from the evening: the maps function, for example, details the best vantage points from which to see the fireworks, and includes information on reaching each one; and Midnight Messages enables users (on any network) to pre-load 50 SMS messages which Telstra will then send out to their loved ones, free of charge, at midnight. 

Telstra also streamed the fireworks on their YouTube channel for those folks who couldn't attend in person.

Overall the Telstra App is just a great example of a mobile application that meets all of the criteria.  It's useful (best vantage points via maps, rules about what you can and can't bring to the fireworks, etc.), usable (nice UX in the app, but also the ability to pre-load SMS messages to send at midnight) and delightful (become part of the larger experience via the Telstra Colour Moments, Message The Bridge).  Check out the demo video below.

hat tip: Contagious

Nokia - Open Song Project

Nokia is promoting the new Lumia 920 and the power of the phone's Pureview camera system.  As part of the campaign, Nokia's advertising agency Naked Communications recently launched The Open Song Project.  It is a collaboration between Nokia and Danish Rock Orchestra Spleen United that allows users to interact with the band's song 'Hibernation' to create a bespoke music video.  The hook is that each user can create their own individual version of the video from the sixteen different sequences that appear in the song.

All the videos have been shot with the new Lumia 920 without filters or edits.  Whether or not the link back to the phone is particularly strong, the interactive nature of the project is really exciting.  The band isn't launching the song as a standard music video, instead putting it out there for people to create their own versions.  Users can save and share the version of the video that they create, meaning that there is no 'official' music video, only fan creations from the component parts.  It's sort of like a easily accessible version of Kutiman or a less collaborative version of Jam With Chrome.

Check out the video below or head over to The Open Song Project site to create your own version (note: too bad it's done in flash or else it'd make a hell of a Chrome Experiment.)

Two Nice Uses Of UGC From Brands - AT&T and EE

EE is the name the recently launched 4G brand from the owner of Orange and T-Mobile.  They & their agency, Poke, have leveraged the huge UK viral hit Fenton (JESUS CHRIST IN RICHMOND PARK) as part of their comms around the speed of their 4G network.  They've taken the original video and 'Remastered it' in epic form.  Users can switch between the original video and the “Fenton 4GEE Remaster” on the EE YouTube channel.  The premise is that everything on YouTube looks amazing on the EE 4G network.  The video will also be featured in the EE retail stores and feature heavily across all of the 4GEE digital activity.  Whether the remastered version actually demonstrates the speed of their network is up to you to decide, but it's a clever way to leverage the success of the UK phenomenon that was Fenton.


AT&T (another telecom company in the US) is also using UGC to promote their 4G network.  In this case, AT&T (and their agency, BBDO NY) took a piece of user generated content that had been making the rounds on YouTube called 'Hello' and used it as the premise for their latest TV commercial.    In the original video was from a high school football scrimmage and showed a player doing a flip over a defender.  As the video description says:

'Hello" demonstrates an amazing moment being shared across the country on the nation's largest 4G network, AT&T. It starts as an amazing football play seen by a few people. But once posted, it becomes a moment the entire country can enjoy, and something that builds to an introduction our hero will never forget.'
Personally I find this a much more believable use of UGC in a branded context as it naturally reflects the way that people view, share and discover new content while also positioning AT&T in the middle as the facilitator/service provider through their 4G network.

AT&T - Rethink Possible (24h Turnaround Commercials)

This blog has featured many campaigns that use the idea of real-time response of the sort pioneered by Old Spice, but recently picked up and expanded by the brands such as Kraft and o2.  In a fascinating twist, AT&T and their agency, BBDO NY, have created a series of real-time-ish TV spots as part of their 'Rethink Possible' campaign.  The TV commercials integrate actual Olympic results into a series of spots turning them around in less just 24 hours.  See the first spot below, which features swimmer Ryan Lochte.

Fast Company has a fascinating article on how BBDO NY went about doing this.  I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but in short:

Three sports were selected as the campaign’s focus--swimming, gymnastics, and track and field. BBDO then created six versions of the commercial in advance, two for each sport alternately featuring a male or female athlete, with hundreds of different endings to account for a predicted range of winning times. AT&T worked with longtime broadcasting partner NBC to arrange for access to the footage within unusually quick turnaround times so that they could create a campaign that would stand out from the hailstorm of sponsored messages. Once one of the athletes pegged as likely to win is competing, a team from BBDO sits in London and waits. If the athlete performs well, it’s go time. A winning result means that footage has to be selected, sent to London-based post house Absolute for integration, the pre-canned shot with the winning time has to be selected and edited together. It’s then sent to NBC and the USOC for approvals and on air within 24 hours of the win. It’s a cycle AT&T is able to repeat up to five times for five winning athletes.

Very cool and plays perfectly into the idea of 'Rethink Possible.'  As the BBDO ECD Greg Kahn explains:

We had the idea of someone who gets inspired to keep practicing after seeing a record being broken. But in playing around with that idea, we thought it would be really cool if the way that the story is told is also a kind of how did they do that.  The blue sky idea was wouldn’t it be awesome if the record he sees being broken was the one you just saw on TV?” 

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