To celebrate more than 65 years of engineering accomplishments and innovation, Honda has released this delightful film, 'Hands.' As W+K London (the agency responsible for the film) writes: We have simply called the film 'Hands' as a testament to the tinkering nature of the Honda R+D engineers whose curious spirit (or hands) has made Honda the largest engineering company in the world.'
The film is a delight to watch and simply features a pair of hands magically transforming Honda products from one into another, taking the viewer from the earliest Honda products to the present day.
It's captivating enough to want to watch it again. Additionally, Honda (and their digital agency, Collective) have launched an interactive version of the film. The interactive version of the film, called The Engineer's Cut, allows 'viewers to interact via seemingly hand-written notes and doodles. Once clicked, the notes reveal the tales of engineers and innovation that have gone into the various Honda products.'
See the screenshot below and have a play around yourself by heading over to Honda Hands. My only criticism is that there could be a stronger link between the flat film and the interactive version. Clearly car enthusiasts or people who were delighted by the film would be interested in the interactive version, so an embedded link in the video sending users to the interactive version could help drive even more users to the deeper version.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Toyota teamed up with the with Food Bank For New York City to assist those families still affected by the storm. In addition to providing financial support, they also brought expertise in terms of operational efficiency and engineering. They recently released a video documenting their efforts, called 'Meals Per Hour.' For example, Toyota brought in experts around the 'The Toyota Production System (TPS),' which is based on the principle that 'the summation of many, many small, cheap improvements can have a big impact.' They dramatically increased the efficiency of the local food bank by implementing the TPS system to help distribute meals. As one of the Toyota employees says: 'These basic principles of the Toyota Production System apply to any kind of process — it doesn’t have to be manufacturing.'
While the video is an inspiring piece of content, it might not have had a great deal of viewership without an additional twist. Upon the release of the video, Toyota pledged to provide one meal for every view of the video (up to one million views). This is a great example of marketing for a good cause. Additionally, it's a great way to both drive viewership of the video and further anchor Toyota's commitment to CSR initiatives in the mind of the viewers. Check out the video below or head on over to Meals Per Hour to find out more about the project.
AdWeek has some stats around the media generated by the project.
As a new parent, it's been fascinating to see/experience just how much myself and my wife use the Internet for all things baby. Recent research also shows that new and expectant Moms spend 35% more time online than the general population. Obviously this represents a real opportunity for brands to insert themselves into the Moments That Matter for new parents. As a result, I've been looking at ways, (both good and bad) that brands are providing utility to an inherently time poor audience of new parents. One of my favorite examples comes from JWT Brazil for the brand Bepantol. They created the Babá Bepantol Baby app which turns two iOS devices into a baby monitor. From a utility perspective it can potentially eliminate the need to buy a baby monitor, or provide an ad-hoc baby monitor for situations where the family is away from home. The app allows parents to talk to their children, provide ambient light around the baby, play lullabies, etc. It's a great idea and particularly relevant when you look at the same research around smartphone usages for new Moms: 'The smartphone quickly becomes the mother's significant other: 36% of women purchase a smartphone as a result of becoming a mum, while 59% of mothers called it their do-everything device.'
Check out the case study video below.
Off the back of the tremendous success of the Real Beauty Sketches, Dove has released the latest ad in their quest to reduce the self-esteem issues that women face. The latest film, Camera Shy, was created by Ogilvy & Mather London asks the question; When did you stop thinking you were beautiful? The film, which won Gold at Cannes, shows shows footage of women of all ages desperately trying to hide from the camera, before ending with shots of pre-schoolers confidently parading and performing for the camera. It ends with the line 'Be Your Beautiful Self.'
The film is growing in popularity, with nearly 17 million views to date, though that is a far cry from the nearly 150 million views that the Real Beauty Sketches video racked up. I find the insight behind this video more compelling than Dove Real Beauty Sketches insight 'You are more beautiful than you think.' Scientifically speaking that statement may actually be false. This article from Scientific American sums it up quite nicely 'The evidence from psychological research suggests instead that we tend to think of our appearance in ways that are more flattering than are warranted. This seems to be part of a broader human tendency to see ourselves through rose colored glasses. Most of us think that we are better than we actually are — not just physically, but in every way.'
The article goes on to describe a series of studies in which 'researchers took pictures of study participants and, using a computerized procedure, produced more attractive and less attractive versions of those pictures. Participants were told that they would be presented with a series of images including their original picture and images modified from that picture. They were then asked to identify the unmodified picture. They tended to select an attractively enhanced one.'
Regardless they're both wonderful pieces of work that hopefully serve to help women to feel better about their self-image.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
