Happy (Belated) St. Patricks Day...

...but that's really just an excuse to post the hilarious Guinness - Round Up Your Mates video.

via Andrew Bent

Subaru - First Car Story

Anyone who drives remembers their first car.  Now Subaru and its creative agency, Carmichael Lynch, are tapping into the emotion and memories of loving (or hating) your first car in a new integrated campaign for the new 2012 Subaru Impreza.  The hub of the campaign is FirstCarStory.com features an amazing animation/video generator that allows users to recreate the story of their first car through bespoke animation, music, text and voiceover.  The site then generates a really cool custom animated short story, which of course are sharable via users social networks.

"Everyone loved their first car, no matter how bad, beat up, or borrowed. That first car became a new chapter in life or a ticket to freedom and first car stories are often the most memorable stories we have," said Alan Bethke, director, marketing communications, Subaru of America.  "The First Car Story campaign provides a creative outlet for reliving those unique, funny, unforgettable car experiences anyone who had a first car can relate to."

It's really worth playing with the site to get a full sense of what you can do.  I love the idea of turning phrases or words that the user types in the story as a way to trigger a library of animations (ie. typing in pulled over by the cops triggers an animation in the video with sirens and handcuffs.)  Another cool aspect is the ability to tag friends in the video, since many of our stories, memories, etc. from our first car include shared experiences with friends from yesteryear.  FirstCarStory.com really takes the idea of creating bespoke and personalized content for the user a step further.  All in all, just a great branded content tool to provide utility and entertainment to the user.

This really hits home for me, since I loved my first car, a beat up old, white '79 Buick Lesabre, so I took a stab at creating my own video, which you can see below.


Here's a story mashup that Subaru created to illustrate the tool.


Supporting Articles: Creativity

Peugeot - Let Your Body Drive

To promote the idea that the new Peugeot 208 is like an extension of your body, BETC Euro RCSG developed an interactive Youtube experience/video entitled 'Let Your Body Drive.'  According to Peugeot, the new 208 'has been designed to be perfectly in tune with the driver's body: more intuitive, more sensation, more stimulation. It allows the body to express itself fully, and the new interactive film perfectly illustrates this'.

That of course, tells you nothing about what exactly 'Let Your Body Drive' is all about.  Simply put, it's a choose-your-own-adventure story using Youtube annotations.  You're put in the shoes of a naked dude who's just been caught cheating on his girlfriend and is basically wandering the streets in his birthday suit.  Choose correctly and you get back together with her.  Choose poorly and...well you get the chance to play again.

The story is well done and amusing throughout.  Respect to them for not hitting the user over the head with Peugeot 208 branding/messaging throughout the experience.  From a more technical perspective it's nice that the experience takes place within a single video.  Many choose-your-own-adventure type executions using Youtube annotations pop the user off to a separate, unlisted video at each decision point.  That's great in terms of protecting the story flow, but from what I've seen there's significant drop off/bounce when users are taken to a separate video, rather than jumping another point within the same video.

'Let Your Body Drive' is part of a larger digital & ATL campaign that's currently running.  The interactive video is also nicely integrated into the new Peugeot 208 campaign site, which houses previous interactive experiences and promotions for the 208.

Have a play around yourself by going to their Youtube channel or see below.

via my colleague Inga Spitzer

The Coca Cola Video Puzzle

At this point one would hope that every advertiser is putting their TV commercials online in a branded environment.  Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that people want to watch or in any way interact with those commercials, though a healthy dose of paid media to drive viewership and awareness certainly helps.

More importantly, how do you get them do more than just watch your ad?  In other words, how do you get them to go from a passive viewer to actually DOING something.  This work from e-dologic Israel provides a nice solution.  They developed a Facebook app that turns the spot itself a video puzzle that users need to piece together (with the opportunity to win prizes of course!).  I took a crack at it, which you can see in action below.


It's also worth checking out the case study below for some impressive results.  More than 350,000 views, but incredibly users who took part watched the ad 23 times on average!

Supporting Articles:  Simply Zesty | Digital Buzz Blog

BGH Air Conditioners - Dads In Briefs

I adore this spot for BGH Air Conditioners from Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, but it also gives me cringeworthy flashbacks to my own childhood experiences.

So how do you sell air conditioners in a humorous way in the middle of Argentinian summer?  Appeal to the visual violation that results from a non-air conditioned house with a middle aged Dad...hence the horror that many of us have surely experienced 'Dad's In Briefs.'

via No10 Buzzilla's Blog

TED - Ads Worth Spreading Winners

Back in October I wrote about the 2nd annual TED Ads Worth Spreading competition.  According to TED founder, Chris Anderson "TED’s mission is ‘ideas worth spreading.’ The dream behind this initiative is to find companies that want to communicate ideas to their consumers in the same way that TED wants to communicate with its audience. What makes ideas powerful is that they have a life of their own; an idea can reset someone’s worldview and even begin a domino effect as they pass it on to friends."

This year's Ads Worth Spreading winners have been announced.  So what makes an Ad Worth Spreading?  Well it's worth watching the original TED talk from Chris Anderson, but in short the jury "sought out ads that were driven by ideas...at TED, we’ve seen the power of imagination and innovation. We want to reward companies that have invested in longer-form, beautifully crafted campaigns that value human attention and intelligence, and take the time to tell a thought-provoking story.”


Some of the winners have been featured on this blog in the past, some of them you've probably seen floating around the web, but some of them (at least to me) were new revelations.  The one thing they have in common is that they're all worth watching and sharing.  I highly recommend you take 30 minutes of your day and go watch them over on the TED Ads Worth Spreading Youtube channel.  I've also compiled them into a handy Youtube playlist, so you can sit back, relax and watch them all in one go with the minimum of fuss.



For those of you short on time or just want to know the winners, I've copied this except from the Youtube blog post announcing the winners:
       
Chipotle: Back to the Start; Company: Chipotle; Agency: Creative Artists Agency
As he regrets the mass production and artificial methods of his industrial animal factory, a determined farmer opts to return to sustainable farming methods for the future and betterment of society.

Citizen Engagement: The Return of Ben Ali; Brand: Engagement Citoyen; Agency: Memac Ogilvy Tunisia
Although former Dictator of Tunisia President Ben Ali was ousted amidst the chaos of the Tunisian Revolution, many quickly lost interest in politics. In order to galvanize the Tunisian people out of hibernation, La Goulette shocked residents by warning the return of tyranny. 88% turned up for the October 23rd vote.

NTT Docomo Mobile Phone: Xylophone; Brand: NTT Docomo, Inc.; Agency: Drill Inc.
Organic and imaginative, NTT Docomo captures the essence of their new mobile phone to redefine nature and technology.
                                                                                       
Microsoft/Xbox: Kinect Effect; Brand: Microsoft / Xbox; Agency: Twofifteenmccann
Pushing the realm of imagination and technology, the Kinect takes a leap into the future of education, gaming and interaction

Sharpie: Start with Sharpie; Brand: Sharpie; Agency: Draftfbc - Chicago  
Cheeming Boey, builds a career around drawing on cups with Sharpies. His inspirational story is one of creativity and drive, challenging those who tried to taint his dream.

Mazda: Defy Convention; Brand: Mazda; Agency: Team Cosmos/JWT Germany/Team Mazda Europe     This moving advertisement shows how their heritage helps Mazda to see things differently and overcome adversity.

L'Oreal Paris: Aimee Mullins; Brand: L'Oreal Paris; Agency: R/GA and McCann Erickson
L’Oreal’s new beauty ambassador knows a lot about challenging notions of perceived beauty and achievement, as the wearer of double prosthetic legs.

Rethink Breast Cancer: Your Man Reminder; Brand: Rethink Breast Cancer; Agency: john st.
A tongue-in-cheek assertion that women are more likely to watch a video if it features a ‘hot guy’ underpins the serious message of this video.

Prudential Day One: Linda;  Brand: Prudential; Agency: Droga5  
Linda Gutherie reveals the thought process and life changes behind retirement as she shares her first day of retirement.

Canal +: The Bear; Brand: Canal+; Agency: BETC Euro RSCG
A bear skin rug that becomes a movie director? Just watch it ;-)

Track Me

Last time I wrote about the continuing rise of personalized video response campaigns, especially around holidays or big events.  Soon after that post, Innovative Thunder, the creative team from RG/A responsible for the Cannes-winning Pay With A Tweet launched a new project called 'Track Me.'  Over the next month Innovative Thunder & the band Riot !n Paris will create songs about randomly chosen people based off their social media profiles.  Users can submit themselves for consideration on the Track Me site and new songs are posted each day.  The background for the idea is that "with all the stuff people post, tweet and put out in the Google-sphere, there is enough material to write a whole song for each of them. So we thought, why not do that?" said Leif Abraham and Christian Behrendt of Innovative Thunder.  Check out the teaser video below.

They kicked it off by creating some tracks for various celebrities to give people a sense of what to expect. Check out the one for Kate Upton below.  It's also worth checking out the tracks they've posted for the lucky people who've been selected, which are also pretty damn good.

The idea of bespoke music isn't new, but this approach and this scale is certainly ambitious.  I especially like the fact that those people selected will have something tangible in the form of a personalized track that lasts long after the experiment ends.  It'll be interesting to see if any advertisers piggyback off this idea like they did with Pay With A Tweet.


Supporting Articles: Creativity | CoCreate

BMW - 0 to Desir3 Contest

BMW is giving the public the opportunity to win a new BMW 328i as part of their new '0 to Desir3 in 5.9 Seconds' contest on Youtube.  While contests are nothing new for Youtube, I really like the hook for this one. Entrants are challenged to prove their desire as creatively as possible, but the video entries must be 5.9 seconds long (or less).  The contest is part of a larger campaign developed by KBS+P.  It's a clever way to tie in one of the main USPs of the new 328i, ie. the fact that it does 0-60 in 5.9 seconds.

Entries close on March 9th and will be whittled down to the top-30 via a panel of judges.  The winner will then be determined by a combination of public voting and panelist judging.  I've been impressed by the quality of entries so far.  Here are a couple of good ones below...

Twisted Metal: Shoot My Truck

Two days, one truck, over 100,000 bullets.  That about sums up what happened when Deutsch LA & Stink Digital teamed up to create a real-life shoot em up experience.  The stunt was to promote the relaunch of the Twisted Metal franchise on Playstation 3.   Shootmytruck.com allowed users to fire a real M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (read: big ass machine gun) over the course of two days at at a perfect replica of the hot-rod ice cream van from the main character in the game.  The gun was hooked up to a remote interface which allowed users from around the world to login via Facebook or Twitter and fire the gun, unleashing damage for a full 30 seconds.  See intro video below.


In a nice effort to increase word of mouth and earned media, players were able to jump the line, by sharing the experience with friends.  Even cooler, the truck was also equipped with various explosive laden objects, so there was a chance that your gunfire could result in big explosions.  For a grand finale, three lucky winners were given the opportunity to fire the gun for 90 seconds to finish off and literally blow up the truck.  Check out the highlight/wrap up video below.



Supporting Articles: Contagious | AdFreak

The Artistifier

Considering that The Artist cleaned up at the Oscar's last night, I thought it was topical to share this great use of the Youtube API.  The Artistifier allows you to turn any Youtube video into a black & white, silent movie a la The Artist.  Just paste in the URL of the Youtube video and then you're given the opportunity to create your own silent movie complete with old school dialogue cards.  Once you're done, it creates an 'Artistified' version of the video, removing the sound from the original clip and adding in music from the Artist and the caption/dialogue cards.  Check out this funny one that someone created using the Moneyball trailer:


via Myles Riseborough