Delta - Your Bag's Journey

Ever wonder what happens to your bag after it gets checked in at the airport?  Delta recently released a video that shows what happens to a checked bag once it goes behind those black rubber flaps.  They put together a piece of luggage with six built in cameras that then traveled on a flight from Atlanta to New York City.  Obviously this bag got special treatment (there's no baggage handler rifling through the luggage to nick your electronics or chucking it haphazardly onto the baggage cart), but overall a very cool behind the scenes look at what a bag goes through to get from point A to point B.

The video (which has racked up about a million views in two weeks) is also an effective way to promote the new Delta mobile app that allows flyers track their checked baggage.

Supporting Articles: PSFK | Devour | USA Today

Heineken - #MYSUNRISE

Heineken has been going nuts lately with a bunch of attention grabbing campaigns in the run up to Christmas.  They recently kicked off a responsible drinking campaign centered around the idea that 'Sunrise belongs to moderate drinkers.'  The goal is to make responsible drinking aspirational as expressed in the the hero content of the campaign (see above video).  The main character rocks out during an all night party, but in a responsible manner.  Outlasting all his drunken friends, he ends his night by going home sharing a sunrise with star DJ Audrey Napoleon.

Developed by AKQA, the campaign was launched across four cities (London, Ho Chi Minh, Rio de Janiero and San Francisco) through a teaser campaign.  Sofas featuring the hashtag #mysunrise were strategically placed in locations that offered the best sunrise view.  Consumers were encouraged to post photos of their best sunrise moments, tagging them #mysunrise and then submitting them to the Heineken Facebook page.  The sunrise images are showcased there and mapped according to the  photo location.  Additionally each week the best sunrise images are retweeted by Heineken to their followers.

Most responsible <fill in the blank> campaigns focus on the negative consequences of too much <fill in the blank>, so it's nice to see Heineken turn this on it's head by making responsible drinking an aspirational endeavor.  That said, good luck with that during the holidays...

via my colleague Yandis Ying

Supporting Articles: Marketing | Brand Channel

Hyundai Holidays

Over the past year Hyundai has been active in using musicians, particularly on Youtube, as the linchpin for several of their campaigns.  Last holiday season they enlisted Youtube indie-rock stars Pomplamoose in a series of holiday TV spots.  In November they launched their RE:GENERATION music project to promote the new 3-door coupe, the Veloster.  The project is a unique documentary film that follows five modern DJs who, through the use of technology, are changing the way the world creates and experiences music. The end result of the project was five new electronic music tracks influenced by genres across the musical spectrum.

As part of this season’s Hyundai Holidays campaign they’ve tweaked their previous activity in a way that’s appealing to both the TV and Youtube audience.  Hyundai (and their in-house agency Innocean) have enlisted the creators behind two of our favorite pieces of user generated content from 2011.  Remember the touching father-daughter cover of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - “Home”?  What about the awesome Whole Food Parking Lot song from Fog & Smog? (note: if you haven’t seen either of those, stop reading right now and check out them out.).  Hyundai has enlisted the creators of both viral hits as part of a series of holiday spots (see above or here).  While using Youtube stars as the subject of TV spots is nothing new, they’re also giving users a forum to showcase their talents or express their wishes for the holidays.  The end of each commercial features a call to action encouraging users to upload a video to the Hyundai Youtube channel where they feature top submissions as well as the umbrella for all of Hyundai’s activity across Youtube, Facebook & Twitter.

Supporting Articles: AllThingsD | AgencySpy

Geneva Labs - Christmas Carol Torture

Great idea from Akestam Holst for Geneva Labs sound systems.  Users must suffer through audio hell to get to audio heaven.  The idea is that you have to endure listening to Jingle Bells as long as possible to qualify for a discount on a Geneva Sound System, the top 3 most tortured victims will get the discount.  Kind a combination of the Whopper Lust campaign from CP+B and the Peugeot Take The Car Challenge from Volt. back


Check it out yourself...http://www.xmascaroltorture.com/


Supporting Articles: Creativity | Adverblog 

Eristoff Vodka - The Wolves Of London

Eristoff Vodka just wrapped up a nice guerilla marketing campaign for their UK launch.  The campaign developed by Us London and pd3 has been ongoing since early November.  It kicked off with 'the arrival of a mysterious circus from Georgia coincides with videos surfacing online that appear to show wolves at large around the capital. Meanwhile, a battered Dakov Circus van is seen and heard on the streets of London, strange growls and howls emanating from inside. But all was not quite as it seems…'

The guys at Popsop described it better than I can in the following except (see full article here):


In the first week of November, a website for the fictional circus (www.DakovCircus.com) appeared, promoting it’s ‘Circus Freak Out’ event in East London, as did listings in Time Out and London blogs.  But an announcement on the site alluded to the ‘Wolves of Vale’ act being postponed due to “unforeseen circumstances.”


Faux-UGC Videos were then seeded across sharing sites and social networks, purporting to show sightings of wolves across South and East London, with supporting Twitter activity to drive interest and excitement.


In the last phase of the campaign a Dakov-branded van, complete with bespoke sound installation, was taken around high-footfall areas of South and East London after dark, complete with eerie howls, growls and bangs emanating from within. ‘Dakov Circus Freakout’ posters appeared in the same areas, and online activity made connections between the ‘Wolf’ videos and the Dakov Circus van and site.
....
The goal was to create some mystery and intrigue, a moment of ‘maybe…just maybe’. Eristoff’s target audience of 18-24 urbanites are media savvy and quick to spot marketing tricks. Some called it, some didn’t…and a few people (but only a few) spotted that Dakov is an anagram of Vodka.

Supporting Articles: PSFK | The Inspiration Room

Turtle Beach - Mission Iraq

Fiveight are the distributors of Turtle Beach gaming headsets.  They wanted to "show a tough, discerning market that Turtle Beach gaming headsets don’t just make the gaming experience sound real – it feels real."  So how are they going about doing this?  They've chosen a hardcore FPS gamer, Phil (handle: StatiC) from New Zealand and are bringing him into a real war zone...Iraq.  "Gamers play in virtual warzones every day and night, and they want the immersive feeling of combat, so we thought we’d take that experience one step further" says Fiveight’s Ben Ward.

Developed by Droga5, Mission Iraq is a five part mini series that will follow Phil's journey and experiences in Iraq.  Definitely a new take on an immersive experience, but not without controversy.  Regardless it'll be interesting to see how his adventure plays out.

Supporting Articles: Adverblog | National Business Review

BONUS: YouTube Challenge - I Gave My Kids a Terrible Present

This isn't advertising related, but it just cracked me up.  Jimmy Kimmel asked the parents of America to play a holiday trick on their children (he did something similar for Halloween)...tell their kids they could open one present a few weeks early.  The catch was the present had to be terrible.  Kimmel then asked parents to upload the videos to Youtube, which he then compiled into a show segment.  Check it out below.

via my colleague Eric Skunke

IKEA - Catch The Swedish Light

Traditionally summer is a relatively slow time of year for IKEA (at least in Belgium).  So Forsman & Bodenfors created a genius campaign for IKEA to introduce the Swedish mid-summer to the Belgian consumer and show off the latest summer offers from IKEA.

The resulting campaign 'Catch the Swedish Light,' consisted of 48 Youtube videos featuring IKEA products with light dancing around them and a rolling seven digit code in the upper right hand corner of each video.  The challenge for users was to find the one exact frame in each video where the light catches the product perfectly.  On that frame the code in the upper right hand corner of the videos changed to yellow.  The first user to find the correct code for each video then went to the campaign site, entered the code and won that specific product.  A very clever use of video for this competition and it proved extremely effective as IKEA's summer sales in Belgium reached an all-time high for summer sales.  See if you can spot the code in the video below or check out the case study above.



Supporting Articles: PSFK | Creativity Online | Digital Buzz Blog

Old Spice - Manta Claus

He's back.  After taking a post-Fabio battle break, Isaiah Mustafa is back for the new Old Space 'Manta Claus' campaign developed by Wieden + Kennedy.  This time he's promising to give all 7 billion people of the world a holiday gift...one at a time.

Old Spice is going back to the well and the successful real-time response format they established in 'The man your man could smell like' campaign.'  This time Old Spice Guy is recording video responses to specific users (as well as cities and continents) and will be creating a series of gifting videos over the next five days.  See below for the campaign intro...



Stay tuned to the Old Spice Youtube channel for daily updates and uploads.  See below for the Day One Progress Report...

Norton Stuff Theater

Here's a nice piece of branded content from Norton Securities, the maker of various utilities and antivirus software.  Their overall messaging has been around 'Protect Your Stuff With Norton,' demonstrating how Norton protects your valuable content and data.  According to Leo Burnett ECD Jon Wyville, Stuff Theater is an effort to 'put your social-media stuff on a pedestal and treat it with the importance it deserves, even if it’s as mundane as a Facebook update.'  While it's not the most concrete tie in, I love the idea (developed by Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide).  So what was it exactly? A live, unscripted, unrehearsed 24-hour performance on November 30th in which sixty actors brought to life over 1,000 Facebook posts on the Norton Facebook page.  Facebook users could submit their post to be performed over the 24-hour period that Stuff Theater was live.

They're currently pulling together the best of video, but the teaser videos are hilarious (see below).  It's somewhat reminiscent of the CP+B created Kraft Mac & Cheese TV (where tweets were turned into TV spots within 24 hours), though more ambitious in some ways (a 24 hour live performance) and less ambitious in other ways (turning around a TV spot within 24 hours).

And of course it would be been fantastic to see this as a livestream on Youtube as well.

Supporting Articles: New York Times | Brand Channel