Intel The Escape

Intel The Escape Youtube Game
Intel has created some great digital experiences lately as part of their shift in messaging away from specs & performance figures and towards are more emotional message of how Intel technology enables a digital life.  Recall their Youtube Visual Life contest or the recent Museum Of Me site that they developed.  It all started with the short film 'The Chase'  launched back in January.  Extending on that original concept, Intel has launched a Youtube gadget intended for the Asian market called 'The Escape," an immersive, entertaining thriller which allows the Youtube audience to take part in the adventure.

"The Escape" integrates YouTube, interactivity and social networking into a single seamless experience for the first time. Inspired by Intel's earlier film, "The Chase," "The Escape" breaks through YouTube's third wall and makes the audience the hero, remotely piloting drones and brawling with assailants to assist the film's femme fatale in her mission.

This is definitely one of the most sophisticated & interactive games that I've seen on Youtube.  The game also utilizes Facebook Connect giving users the option to add pictures of their friends in certain scenes and earn achievement badges to post to their Facebook profiles. It also contains hidden clues for viewers to unlock additional content as they play.

Supporting Articles: Wall Street Journal | Brand Channel | ClickZ | Campaign Brief Asia

BONUS: Rich Media Ads Of The Week - HTML5 Challenge Winners

Back in March, Doubleclick launched a competition challenging creative agencies and freelancers in the UK, France, Germany and Italy to design a HTML5 masthead which showcases their company or agency's skill.  The winners in each market won a free trip to Cannes as well as a free masthead featuring the winning entry.

The winners were announced awhile back and they're pretty cool executions, in particular the UK and the French winners stood out to me:

UK - Lean, Mean Fighting Machine developed a masthead that uses search (both text & voice) within the masthead unit to then pull Youtube videos based on that query.

France - biborg | alpha layer (the same agency that developed the 360 degree Assassins Creed campaign) created a stunning & delightful masthead that integrates your location as well as Google Maps to create an interactive balloon flight experience.  

BONUS: TwitTV

TwitTV is a web-TV channel that's programmed by what's trending on twitter.  Here's how it works...you select a region (eg. a channel on the dial) and it finds the top trending topics for that region.  TwitTV then pulls Youtube videos based off those trending topics, giving you a constant stream of videos.  It's a great mashup of both the Twitter & Youtube APIs and gives you a video zeitgeist of what's happening on Twitter as expressed through Youtube.


Supporting Articles:  FWA Site Of The Day | Propaganda3

Yiatube - Athenos Hummus

YiaTube
Back in March Athenos Hummus started running it's first-ever TV campaign for the brand. The series of hilarious spots feature a traditional greek grandmother (YiaYia) who disapproves of everything except for Athenos Hummus.  Athenos has taken it a step further with YiaTube, a custom gadget that features the TV spots, but also allows users to customize YiaYia's disapproval by creating their own video.  Users can either generate a subtitled video of their own featuring YiaYia (you can see the one I created while stuck in an airport after BA cancelled my flight last Friday) or they can download animated GIFs with subtitles (think Meme generator but with a Greek Grandma).  


Overall just a fantastic way of taking great TV commercials extending the life of the campaign by bringing it into the digital space.  Athenos is giving users the tools to create a sense of ownership by enabling them to create personalized, spreadable content that ties back to the brand presence. 


Supporting Articles: Brand Channel | 


Note: for some reason this doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of media mentions around the web yet.

Perrier - Le Club

Le Club Perrier Youtube Channel
'The more people that watch, the hotter the party.'  That's the idea behind the new Le Club Perrier campaign.  Its new YouTube channel features a video of a club scene, accompanied by a thermometer/view meter accompanying the video player.  The more that people watch the video, the more scenes will get unlocked and the hotter/steamier the video will become.  In total there are six levels/videos to unlock before the entire video is complete.  Though it's only be going for a few days, it's already been viewed 2+ million times and has unlocked the first three videos. 

It's a great mechanism to encourage viewers to both share the video and to encourage repeat views/visits as users will come back to see if the channel has progressed to the next level.  In addition to prominent sharing features, the custom gadget also includes a free download of the music track featured in the video.  
The campaign, developed by Ogilvy Paris, will "include a 360-degree integrated effort, including TV/digital media buy, point-of-sale materials and mobile. “Le Club Perrier” will be rolled out around the world in the US, Canada, Belgium and France and will run through the end of the summer."


Supporting Articles: Brand Channel | The Next Web | PopSop

Nike Chosen

Nike Chosen

Here’s the latest global campaign from Nike and it’s pretty sweet.  It represents Nike's biggest foray into the action sports arena.  Nike’s 'Chosen', brings together footage from skating, surfing, BMXing and snowboarding in a beautiful 90 second spot.  The video fits within the ubiquitous 'Just Do It' theme and showcases extreme sports footage shot at night over two years in seven locations, Hawaii, Florida, New York, Los Angeles, Whistler, Aspen and Bali.  Viewers are then invited to take part in a the Chosen contest...

'After the viewer is left inspired by the footage below they can then get involved in the contest on Facebook and at www.nike.com/chosen, inviting skaters, surfers, BMX riders, snowboarders and skiers to submit a video of their own. The winners, selected by fans, athletes and Nike, will have the chance to travel with the Nike team while enjoying exclusive Nike products and experiences.'

What's interesting about this campaign (developed by 72andsunny) is that it follows a similar playbook to the one that VW established with 'The Force' commercial.  In this case, Nike posted the spot to Youtube & Facebook 3 days before the TV spot debuted during the NBA finals.  Nike has posted an extended version of the Chosen film and will also post a 20-30 minute behind the scenes video sometime in the near future.  It's also important to note that the contest is being run exclusively on Facebook and Facebook is really the hub of the campaign activity, with special fan pages setup for each of the athletes featured in the spot and the contest will in part be determined by Facebook fans and who they think should win.  


Supporting Articles: NY Times | The Inspiration Room | PopSop | Creativity | TheNextWeb

Canon Project Imagin8tion

Canon Project Imagin8tion
Canon has teamed up with the director Ron Howard as part of a new user generated contest designed to inspire a Hollywood short film.  Project Imagin8ion, encourages photographers to submit digital snapshots that fall into one or more of eight different movie theme categories. Howard will help pick the best and turn them into a user-generated/inspired short film.  The winning photos will be selected after June 14 and the film will be shot with a Canon DSLR, eventually premiering this fall in New York at a red-carpet event.  Script development will not begin until all eight photos are chosen, which is a novel approach not unlike Life In A Day.

The campaign (developed by Grey New York) and accompanying Youtube gadget is a nice example of how user generated content (in this case photos rather than just video) can serve as creative inspiration.  The custom gadget integrates various social feeds and allows users to upload photos from their computer or connect with Facebook or Flickr.  The Youtube community also is given the opportunity to vote for the photos that they like, which which will help to inform Howard's selections.  


Supporting Articles: LA Times | Inspiration Room | Creativity

BONUS: Viral Hit Of The Week

T-Mobile Angry Birds Live

We've all heard the incredible usage numbers behind Angry Birds, ie. collectively users play 125 years of Angry Birds every single day.  T-Mobile has taken it a step further and developed a smartphone controlled live action gameplay of Angry Birds.  Check out the video which has gathered millions of views in just a few short days.

Intel - Museum Of Me

Intel Museum Of Me
Intel has been doing some great stuff lately as part of their efforts to shift their messaging away from processor speeds, tech specs and instead focus on how Intel technology enables our digital lives. Museum of me follows on the heels of The Chase film and the Visual Life Youtube contest that recently wrapped up.  Museum of Me turns your social life and Facebook presence into a museum showcase:

'If you haven’t stumbled upon Intel’s Museum of Me yet, you really need to give it a go. A showcase of everything that’s brilliant and creepy about the social Web, it hooks into your Facebook account to build a museum… of you.  Within seconds of authorising your account, you’ll be taken on a video tour of the museum, which has rooms dedicated to your life, your friends, places you’ve been, things you’ve liked and even a huge screen displaying words from your status updates.

Supporting Articles: NY Times | Adverblog | Brand Channel

Kaiser Chiefs - Create Your Own Album

Kaiser Chiefs 
The Kaiser Chiefs (in conjunction with W+K London) have created a really cool DIY music concept for the release of their new album, 'The Future Is Medieval.'  The idea is that users can create their own bespoke version of the new Kaiser Chiefs album and then promote/sell their personalized version.  Fans listen to all the tracks, then choose 10 tracks for their personal album, design the album artwork and finally sell it.  For each version of 'their' album sold the fan keeps £1.  Really cool concept that you could see living on Youtube at some point in the future (policy issues not withstanding).  Check out the blog post from W+K London for more info.


Supporting Articles: Adverblog | Campaign Live | Variety