Orbitz Bleeping Clean Videos

Orbit has created a series of filthy videos for users to clean up.  Each of the filthy videos on Youtube contains an external annotation that drives users to the Orbit gum Facebook page where users can clean them up with their own words.  It's like a video version of Mad Libs:

The Facebook application allows users to create their own customized videos based on three scenes — “Hot Tub,” “Party Crasher,” and “Cousin” — theoretically cleaning up language by bleeping out words. Orbit Bleeping Clean Videos uses a humorous computer text-to-speech feature, and users can choose from a large database of words, allowing for several story combinations and themes.

You can see a few examples of the cleaned up videos on the Orbitz Youtube Channel

Supporting Articles: MediaBistro

NAB - The Honesty Experiments

Hot on the heels of the recent Honest Cities Experiment from Honest Tea (courtesy of Nicola Young, worth checking out more here), comes a set of Honesty Experiments from Australian bank NAB:

Australian bank NAB recently launched conducted a series of 'honesty experiments', and published the results on YouTube. NAB explain the rationale for the experiments on its website: 'At NAB, we believe that Australians are an honest lot and that they deserve honest credit cards to match. So just how honest are Australians?'. A series of outdoor experiments were secretly filmed, then uploaded to YouTube.


The first experiment tested whether Australians would do the right thing if given too much change. NAB set up a coffee stand in Melbourne, and the barista deliberately gave them $5 too much change in each transaction. Everyone gave the money back. When the barista was deliberately rude to customers, 91% still returned the extra change.


For the second, the bank left wallets filled with cash on the streets of Sydney. Incredibly, 88% were returned. For the final experiment, NAB asked someone to deliberately drop $20 on a busy Melbourne street - 95% of people went out of the way to return the money.


The campaign was created by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, who previously launched a hugely successful public Break Up campaign for NAB, which won the PR Grand Prix award at the Cannes Lions festival.

I love how this campaign took it one step further by introducing more barriers to entry/reasons not to be honest such as the obnoxious barista, the guy with headphones, more money in the wallet, etc.  There's also a nice use of external annotations to then drive people to the NAB site to find out more.


Supporting Articles: Contagious Magazine | Adverblog

The blink-182 Film Festival You Didn't Know You Entered

The blink-182 Film Festival You Didn't Know You Entered
After almost 8 years on hiatus, Blink182 has launched a new single (I was pretty happy with 8 Blink182-free years, but that's just me).  The video for the new single 'Up All Night' took a cool approach to crowd-sourcing.  From the band:


AT&T and blink-182 went through thousands of your videos and watched them, reviewed them, and entered them into The blink-182 Film Festival You Didn't Know You Entered.  
...
To launch our first single in eight years, AT&T helped us search YouTube for every instance of fans using our music without our permission. And then we rewarded them for it. This film is made out of clips from all those videos. Thanks for being a fan.

So essentially Blink 182 is pirating the fans that originally pirated them, making them the stars of the new music video.  The music may suck, but it's a cool idea.  Additionally the video contains annotations throughout that allow users to view the original videos.  This is all part of a partnership with AT&T around the launch of the new HTC phones with one-button Facebook sharing/connectivity.

Supporting Articles:  Campaign | CBS News | AdWeek

Old Spice - Mano a Mano In El Bano

Old Spice - Mano A Mano In El Bano

Note: This post has been copied from the Youtube Trends Blog which did a good piece on the stats behind the latest campaign.  See here

Old Spice launched a new viral, comedic campaign last week starring their most popular viral spokesperson, Isaiah Mustafa. The premise was that Mustafa -- aka Old Spice Guy -- was getting challenged for his title by famed model Fabio in something called "Mano a Mano En El Baño."

The series kicked off with this video from Fabio and response from Old Spice guy:




The Fabio challenge video, which has over 3 million views, was the most-watched of the series and was one of the week's most-viewed.


Over the course of the story, Old Spice posted over 100 videos from the two combatants channels: OldSpice and newoldspiceguyfabio. These videos, many of which were responses to tweets and other posts, were seen a total of roughly 22 million times.


At its peak, the Old Spice battle drew 5 million views combined on Wednesday.  Here is the final video of the series:

Last July, when the original "Questions" campaign ran, Old Spice drew around 82 million views.


There's also an interesting article in AdAge on the sales impact of the campaign (courtesy of Daniel Andrade)

Nokia Gulp - The World's Largest Stop Motion Animation

Ever since the launch of the Nokia N8, the product messaging has been focused around the amazing imaging system of the Nokia N8.  Rather than focus on tech specs (12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics) they've been constantly eating their own dogfood by finding creative ways to showcase the power of the N8.   First they shot a 8 minute short film (The Commuter) starring Hollywood actors using only the Nokia N8.  They followed that up with the world's shortest stop motion animation film, Dot.  Hot on the heels of those successes, they've now shot the world's largest stop motion animation, entitled Gulp.  Gulp is a short film created by Sumo Science at Aardman (in conjunction with W+K), depicting a fisherman going about his daily catch. Shot on location at Pendine Beach in South Wales, every frame of this stop-motion animation was shot using a Nokia N8.  The film has broken a world record for the 'largest stop-motion animation set', with the largest scene stretching over 11,000 square feet.

Another cool thing about the video, the Facebook and Twitter sharing are carved into the sand and embedded into the animation using external annotations.  They've also updated their Youtube channel with a new custom gadget to prominently feature the film as well as a behind the scenes/making of video.

Supporting Articles: Adverblog | Fast Company | AgencySpy

OK Go - All Is Not Lost Chrome Experiment

OK Go is back with a new interactive HTML5 video/Chrome Experiment developed in conjunction with Google and dance troupe/choreographers Pilobolus.  The band best known for their amazingly creative (and inevitably viral) music videos such as This Too Shall Pass, White Knuckles & Here It Goes Again recently released All Is Not Lost.  The experience is in the same vein as the award winning Arcade Fire Chrome Experiment, The Wilderness Downtown.  Users can personalize the experience in which different shots are rendered in different browser windows that move, re-size and re-align throughout the piece. With HTML5’s canvas technology, these videos are drawn in perfect timing with the music.  The band and Pilobolus dancers are filmed through a clear floor, making increasingly complex shapes and eventually words—and messages you can write yourself.

You can see a nice behind-the-scenes video here.

Supporting Articles: Google Blog | The Creators Project | Metro

BONUS: Living Social Taxi

Rather than just wrap the skin of a London Black Cab in logos, Living Social has created an experiential campaign that treats unsuspecting customers to a Living Social experience.  Passengers in this cab were given the choice to go to their original destination or roll the dice via a Living Social touchscreen in the taxi.  Those who rolled the dice got to experience an example Living Social deal, all of which were filmed of course.  Check out the video above.

Supporting Articles: Inspiration Room | Creativity Online

New Old Spice Guy Fabio

New Old Spice Guy Fabio
The Old Spice guy is back...but this time it's Fabio rather than Isaiah Mustafa.  Old Spice has been uploading a series of new spots starring Fabio and his long locks.  As always, the spots are amusing and offbeat, but do Fabio has pretty big shoes to fill.  They're even playing off of that in several of the spots, with Fabio talking about how he's the best Old Spice guy ever.  Reaction thus far on Twitter, Youtube, & Facebook has been pretty negative, but those people are kind of missing the point.

A couple interesting things...in the past whenever Old Spice has run new campaigns they've used the same Youtube brand channel (youtube.com/oldspice), but for this campaign they're using a new brand channel.  That makes me think that this is just a temporary measure while the real Old Spice guy is off in Hollywood shooting movies.  Other outlets have speculated that 'the whole thing was likely an elaborate joke to incite instant negative reaction on social media and on YouTube resoundingly against Fabio. In that case, the whole exercise was a resounding success.'  P&G has confirmed that Isaiah Mustafa will be coming back at some point in the future.


UPDATE:  As hypothesized, Fabio's involvement is part of a larger stunt involving Isaiah Mustafa who has challenged Fabio to a duel Mano a Mano in el Bano @ Noon EST July 26th.


Supporting Articles: Brand Channel | Washington Post | Daily Mail

Craftsman SCREW*D

Craftsman Screw*d
What is Screw*D? Maybe a better question is: Who is Screw*D?

This summer, Craftsman is taking one tool-clueless person, and through a series of intense, even high-risk tool and surivival challenges, put them through the ringer. The goal: Turn them into the ultimate handyman.Those chosen will be pushed to their limits over the course of 10 weeks  gain new tools skills for this online reality show.  Right now the contest is in the finalist stage, but with 5 finalists having been culled from over 300 submissions.  For 10 weeks beginning in mid-August, the winner, who will be relocated to an apartment in Chicago, will be filmed receiving boot-camp-style carpentry training from experts. Then, as Y&R describes it, the contestant "take part in extreme survival tests in the middle of nowhere."

Ryan Ostrom, divisional vice president for digital marketing for the Craftsman, Kenmore and Diehard brands at Sears, said the subject would be led blindfolded into those situations and would be extricated only through meeting some construction challenge. Mr. Ostrom would give no further details, except to say the situations would be “uncommon to the everyday tool experience.”
Those challenges will be broadcast live online. The brand’s Facebook followers will be encouraged to offer tips and suggestions in a live-chat format.  The participant can win up to $50,000 if he or she successfully performs a few tasks and those DIYers who help out a great deal can also win Craftsman products.  As you can see from the trailer video, Craftsman is having fun with this contest and it seems like a great way to attract new consumers while also engaging with the existing audience of DIY enthusiasts.

Supporting Articles: New York Times | Brand Channel | TubeFilter

HUGO Just Different

HUGO - Just Different
P&G owns several prestige fragrance brands such as HUGO BOSS & Gucci.  As part of their foray into the digital space (spurred on in part by competition from L'Oreal & last year's Christmas Corridor), they've launched a fantastic interactive Youtube custom gadget for HUGO - Just Different that uses headtracking to control the experience.  The tagline of the campaign is Just Different and film pushes the idea of seeing things differently via new angles and perspectives. This interactive film requires you to tilt your head left or right, thanks to realtime head-tracking technology, allowing you to control the experience with your own movement.

They're driving traffic to the channel via mastheads in at least seven markets.  This is just the beginning in terms of P&G's investment in Youtube, so expect to see more multi-market campaigns across Europe.  I believe the decision whether to activate in each individual market is up to the country brand mananger so I'll try to give you a heads up if there's an opportunity for multiple mastheads in your markets for future campaigns.

Supporting Articles: Digital Buzz Blog | Ubergizmo