Febelfin - See How Easily Freaks Can Take Over Your Life

Last year, Febelfin, the Belgium federation of the financial sector launched a film that purported to shwo an amazing mind reader revealing the secrets of various members of the public.  The film, created by Duval Guillaume, garnered millions of views and was a great piece of content to highlight the fact that many people's entire life can be found online while also urging people to be vigilant with their data online.

Now Duval Guillaume and Febelfin have gone a step further to highlight the dangers around identify theft.  In the latest film they actually steal the identity of a random person.  Rather than just steal his online identity, they go on to impersonate him in real life.  It's both creepy and fascinating. Again, these videos serve as a great tool to generate awareness of the dangers that come with being lax in our digital lives.  Perhaps most importantly, they communicate the danger in a way that's much more compelling than the typical messaging around identity theft and online security precautions.  Check it out below.

Posted by: Reuben Halper

Little Caesar's Case Study - Barton F. Graf 9000

Newsjacking and real-time response seems to be the tactic du jour in digital marketing these days.  With that in mind, Barton F. Graf 9000 released this hilarious case study showing how Little Caesars took over the social media landscape and enlisted all of America to celebrate their new deep, deep dish pizza.  Good stuff.


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Yediot Newspaper - History Where It Happened

I love this outdoor advertising campaign for Yediot Newspaper in Israel.  For most of modern history, Newspapers have been the authoritative source for documenting major events as they happen.  Yediot Newspapers (and their agency, Saatchi Israel) brought this ideas to life by showing people history where it happened.  Front pages from prominent days in history were placed in bus shelter ads in close proximity to where the events actually occurred.  For example, the front page from the day of Yitzak Rabin's assassination was displayed in a bus shelter where he was shot.  All of the bus shelter ads taken together, documented the majority of the key events in the history of Israel.  It's a lovely way to give real-world context to historical events.  It'd be interesting to explore additional digital components that could be added to an idea like this to make it even richer.  Check out the case study below.




hat tip: Adverblog


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Other Things I Like But Don't Have Time To Write Up - Old Spice, Tap King, Samsung & Heineken

Old Spice - Architect
I love the recent work for Old Spice from W+K that brings back 80s type jingles.  Check out the latest video, 'Architect.'


Tap King - Lionel Richie Beer Fridge
Lionel Richie + Beer makes for a winning ad.


Samsung - All Eyes On The S4
A great stunt to demonstrate a killer feature of the Samsung S4, namely that it knows when you're looking at the screen.


Heineken - Departure Roulette
In order to promote the new Heineken 'Dropped' episodic adventure series on YouTube, Heineken challenged travelers in JFK to drop their travel plans and play departure roulette where Heineken would send them to a random destination.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Volkswagen On YouTube

Over the past month or two, Volkswagen and their Brazilian agency, AlmapBBDO have embraced YouTube in a big way.  It seems as though the agency was tasked with finding new and innovative ways to use YouTube in order to communicate various features of the new Volkswagen automobiles.  First up is a Chrome extension that's being used to demonstrate the Volkswagen start/stop engine technology that automatically turns the engine off to save energy and starts it again when the car is about to move.  The Chrome extension automatically pauses YouTube video if the user looks away from the screen and resumes playing as soon as the user looks back.  Check it out below.


Next up is a nice use of the ability to hover over the video timeline in YouTube to preview what's coming later in the video.  AlmapBBDO used this YouTube feature as a way to demonstrate how the VW side assist technology works to warn drivers of any danger approaching that they may not be able to see.



And finally, AlmapBBDO wanted to demonstrate the smooth shifting Tiptronic transmission technology using YouTube TrueView, or skippable ads.  They created a five second ad that appears to automatically skip the ad for you, thus tying back to the smooth shifting functionality of the VW.



All in all it shows how a client/agency can use the various features and existing functionality of YouTube in clever ways that demonstrate various product benefits.  Hats off to AlmapBBDO and Volkswagen.

P.S.  It seems that it's not just AlmapBBDO that's using YouTube in new and resourceful ways, DDB Espana also created the 'fastest ad in YouTube' that's so fast you can't even skip it.  Not quite sure how that links back to functionality of the new VW though...


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Useful Google+ Hangout Apps - Toyota Social Car Configurator & Storytime

As Google+ matures G+ Hangout apps are continuing to be used in ways that allow people to collaborate in new and interesting ways.  We've seen a slate of interesting new Google+ Hangout apps launch over the past few months, but I wanted to highlight a couple of useful Hangout app executions.

The Toyota Collaborator Hangout app has it's origins in a prototype app that my talented colleagues on the Zoo developer team created some months back.  The prototype has since been picked up by Toyota with Saatchi & Saatchi LA + Joystiq Interactive developing it out into a beautiful and polished social car configurator.  The app brings the experience of the online car configurator into a collaborative space where users can create their own personalized Prius along with friends and family.  Furthermore, Toyota has sales people available in the Hangout to answer various questions. book a test drive, etc. Check out the demo video below.



The second Hangout app I want to highlight is from Penguin books and developed by BBH London. The idea is to bring storytime into the digital age.  As the Storytime Hangout site describes: 'Magically transform yourself into characters from your favourite tales with Storytime Hangout. Share stories with your family, no matter where they are in the world.'

As both a new father and someone with young nieces and nephews across the Atlantic, I find this incredibly compelling.  It's a case of using technology to make the world smaller and bring people closer together in a way that mirrors existing behaviour.

The app experience itself is delightful, as participants can transform themselves into their favourite characters using head tracking technology and the lines of the story appear on the screen alongside the masked faces so both adults and children can read the lines as though they were reading the book together physically.  Three Billy Goats Gruff is hopefully just the first of many Penguin books that's brought to life with G+ Storytime.  Check out the intro video below and head over to Story Time Hangout to experience it yourself.


P.S.  BBH Labs has a nice writeup about the background and process of bringing this to life.

Posted by: Reuben Halper

Useful Advertising - Lowe's & UHAC

Here are a few examples of brands providing advertising that is genuinely useful to the viewer/user.

Every few months there's a new digital marketing platform du jour that's billed as the 'next big thing' for marketers.  Oftentimes brands attempt to shoehorn their messages onto the platform in rather awkward ways.  In short, many brands and marketers forget that just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  With that in mind, it's nice to what Lowe's is doing on the latest platform du jour, Vine.  As you know Vines are restricted to 7 second clips, so Lowe's is providing convenient little tips and lifehacks through quick hit Vines.  Very nice use of the platform.  See below and head over to Digital Examples to see more examples of Lowe's Vine postings.



On a completely different note, check out the work from Draftfcb Toronto on behalf of Canadian Union Hearing Aid Center.  I won't say more as I don't want to spoil it.




Posted by: Reuben Halper

GeoGuessr

GeoGuessr is a geography game which takes you on a journey around the world and challenges your ability to recognize your surroundings.  It's a simple yet addictive
use of Google Maps & Streetview.  Here's how it works, you're dropped into a random location on Google Street View and you have to guess where in the world you are.  Pan, tilt, and zoom around your Streetview location to help you narrow down your location then plot where you think you are on the map.  You are awarded points based on how close your guess was to the actual location.

While this has nothing to do with advertising, you can imagine how hotels, airlines or other travel brands in particular could use this as a compelling way to show off various destinations that they serve as well as run a competition.  I wouldn't be surprised if we see this idea co-opted by a brand in the near future.  Check out a walk through video below or head on over to GeoGuessr to play.





Posted by: Reuben Halper

Coca-Cola - The Ahhh Effect

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Barclaycard - #BespokeBallads

UK financial provider, Barclays is getting into the offers arena and has launched a new service called Barclays Bespoke Offers for their existing account holders.  As you may have guessed their point of differentation is that the offers from both national and local merchants are bespoke for each individual.

In order to promote this new service Barclays (and their agency, Dare) have created Barclays bespoke ballads.  They've enlisted several teams of comedians and songwriters to turn people's tweet stream into songs.  Here's how it works...a user submits a tweet to #bespokeballads, the songwriters/comedians then comb through their Twitter feed and create a bespoke song based off their Twitter activity.  That video is then uploaded to the Barclays Bespoke Offers YouTube channel  Check out the intro video below.
If you want to see these in action, you can see below the #bespokeballads created for my colleague, Nathan Guerra.

As in most things, the execution is everything.  In this case, the execution is really well done.  It's another great example of providing a personalized digital artifact back to users who have taken the time to engage with the brand.  On the other hand, the personalized videos are relatively meaningless unless you know the person being serenaded, which is why it also makes sense to include influencers, celebrities or people who have a large following on Twitter.



Posted by: Reuben Halper