A few thoughts, musings, ramblings and other things from MediaCom people...

Lynx's Invisible Ad

Lynx launched it’s very first female fragrance in Australia this month, and in order to promote it they wanted to create a campaign that was like the product itself, both disrupted and innovative! To do this, they created digital LCD screens fixed into the windows of a house in Sydney that appeared as blank white light to anyone walking by. As part of the stunt, passerby's were given polarised glasses that unlocked content on the screens that could not be seen with the naked eye, making the windows come to life. Digital visuals were seen with the glasses of couples making out and a random dog swimming in a room full of water. As the content could only be seen through the special glasses, this became the world’s first invisible ad (to the naked eye).

 

Lynx – or Axe in other countries - is known for their innovation both in terms of messaging (which can be somewhat controversial) and also in their campaign executions. We saw this in last week’s comms update with their exit strategy. This is another great example of their work where they are demanding attention through their shock and awe strategy as well as utilising new formats and technology - making a world first right here in our local Sydney.

Angela. 

World's First Twitter Ad

To launch Smart Car’s Twitter account in Argentina, @smartArg, BBDO Argentina created the first Twitter ad.  They created 456 still animated frames out of 140 characters or less in each Tweet.  Twitter users visiting the page can view the animation by using J and K keys which scrolls through the thread giving a flip-book style ad to the user.  The animation follows the smart car through a tunnel, past trees, houses, buses, trucks and eventually shows the product’s proof point: fitting into a tiny car space just big enough for a smart car.  

 

This very ‘smart’ execution is so simple but has managed to get across the brand’s messaging in a new and creative way and even can claim the title of a ‘world first’.  They have taken one of the largest social channels that doesn’t cater to traditional advertising and have managed to showcase the product in animation depicting how it can park in tiny places other cars can't.  The piece is fun and engaging for users but most importantly fits into the brand essence by showing that smart advertising can even fit into the tiny confines of twitter! 

Try it yourself using J and K keys to drive: http://twitter.com/#!/smartArg

Angela.

 

QR codes put to good use

Underrated and often misused, QR codes are always seen as a bit of a joke by both our and industry digital experts.

Therefore I love it when someone uses them right. Well almost.

On 13 April 2012, the spanish rail service teamed up with book publisher Random House to place posters on the exterior of the central carriages of ten services traveling between Vallès Oriental and Baix Llobregat. Each poster encourages commuters to join the ‘reading train’ and once inside, interior posters provide riders with a selection of 40 book titles from which the first chapter can be downloaded via their respective QR codes.

As well as seeking to improve the literacy of residents using the train service, the scheme also serves to publicize works of literature, while readers are also entertained during their commute.

A good idea. However, just imagine that they linked this to iBooks or Amazon to allow passengers to download or order, and it would have been truly brilliant.

Source: Springwise.com

Torrent Your Blood!

The Russian state organisation of Blood Transfusion Service wanted to reach people and encourage them to donate in a new way.  They wanted a digital project that would touch people and change behaviour.  Similarities were identified between the behaviour of donors and of torrent users.  With torrent users there is a seeder, or one who is sharing, as well as a leech, the one who is receiving.  In the same way with donating blood there is a donor and a recipient.  They therefore created a campaign that targeted Torrent users in order to replicate this behaviour in blood.  A short film was created and available to download through torrent for free.  Once downloaded and before watching the film, that person gets a message saying that he is a torrent donor and he can replicate this behaviour in real life and become a blood donor.  The film was promoted with a trailer, online ads, a promo site and supported in social media.

 

Although the results of this campaign aren’t great, I wanted to highlight it because it is an example of where a client is being brave and innovative in finding a new channel to communicate in.  The technology isn’t innovative as torrents are widely used, however using this as a comms channel has never been done before and the Blood Service is thinking of new ways to reach consumers.  It is also interesting the link they made between torrent users and blood donors, and it is an interesting approach to highlight this to consumers in order to get them to replicate their behaviour and donate.

Angela.

 

Red Tomato Pizza's Fridge Magnet

Red Tomato Pizza in Dubai has created a fridge magnet that by just one push of the button delivers your favorite pizza to your door step.  This was offered as VIP treatment to their loyal customers for ultra-simplistic ordering of their favorite pizza choice.  How it works is you set up your favorite pizza preference online when the magnet is received.  The magnet then sits on your fridge connected to the internet through Bluetooth.  When the button is pushed, the magnet automatically orders your pre-determined pizza, sends a confirmation text to your phone and your pizza is soon delivered.  Your pizza type can be changed anytime online.  

 

Pizza companies seem to always be outdoing each other in trying to make their ordering process seamless.  For instance Dominos coming out with their ordering phone app and their fancy online ordering system.  Red Tomato Pizza however takes simple to a whole new level by offering delivery with just the touch of a button.  This execution is absolutely brilliant!  It is simple and offers value to their customers. Not to mention most likely increasing their order volume by catering to the impulse eaters.  Imagine the increased pizza consumption if you had a little handy button like this sitting on your fridge!  They’ve also created an entertaining promo video for the device, both used as a great way to create buzz and get their name international recognition.  This is just starting to hit the trade press internationally so there are no results in terms of uptake as of yet.  It will be interesting to see if it is adopted or re-purposed by any other bigger pizza companies in the future.

Angela.

 

AdTech 2012 Keynote - Collaboration In A Digital World

Christopher Erb delivered the first keynote for AdTech 2012. He gave us some insights on how EA and the gaming industry are doing. Well, the gaming industry has seen incredible growth, not surprising given the fact that from 200 million gamers on EA products (across PlayStation, Xbox and PC games) in 2001, their consumers grew to 1.5 billion, using a wider range of platforms (playing on consoles, mobile, social platforms and even in browser). Christopher Erb mentioned that EA forecasts to gaming industry to be worth $115 billion US by 2015. For the largest electronic entertainment company (EA), this is a pretty good omen. To harness this important growth and stay on top of their game, EA’s mission statement is to “create connected experiences that ignite the emotion of sports”. Their focus was on delivering a connected and global experience across each platform, whilst providing a tailored experience for each screen. In “connected”, you can read “online”, “across all electronic devices” but also “social”.

So how was this translated into the company’s games and advertising strategy?

EA has designed its offer to suit a global marketplace and make their games available to play at any time on any device from your TV to your mobile, including your computer, your portable console and your tablet. They are very focused on providing a “never off” and social gaming experience to their consumers. This is because they believe, like a lot of people in the advertising industry, that giving consumers all the opportunities possible to play and share anything about their product is the key to their continued growth. It is hard to disagree with that. You’ll tell me “a little less conversation, a little more action”, and you would be right to. Here are a few examples of the advertising and product development lead by EA in 2011:

SSX & Red Bull

Working on the launch of the latest edition of SSX, EA and Red Bull partnered as Red Bull was launching at the same time a snowboarding movie entitled “The Art Of Flight”. Embedding the other brand’s content on their (both very dynamic) social media platforms, the brands were able to create interesting interactions between the game and the movie. The in-game content was impressive, with gamers allowed to embody the movie’s characters and play on the slopes featured on the movie before its theatrical release.

FIFA 10 and Coca-Cola

During the development of the FIFA 10 World Cup, the developers had an idea for an ambitious and unique feature: What if you were able to kick the winning goal for your team, relive that moment that changed everything? Or even maybe change the course of history yourself? They wanted to make the real world cup games available to play just hours after they finished… And as a free service! EA Games made this possible (financially) by offering Coca-Cola sponsorship of the feature. The Coca-Cola Zero Story of the Finals was born.

Madden NFL 11 & Doritos 

EA Sports was able to create a few games within Madden NFL 11 in 3D, an offer that could be quite exciting for gamers. This special feature was not advertised and hidden within the game. Months after the release, the company announced that bags of Doritos products would be sporting a code that will enable game owners to download the Doritos 3D mode (with the classic pair of red/cyan 3D glasses included in the bag). The gamers discovered a new and different feature of the game!

To give users the best experience possible whilst keeping within costs and avoid the price of their games to sky rocket, EA Sports has taken a collaborative and sponsorship route. An interesting strategy that has its obvious advantages: When you want to allow your consumers to play anytime and everywhere, whilst keeping cost down or giving away content for free, collaboration and sponsorship is definitly a great solution .

Christopher Erb added that collaboration is not limited to the digital world as they have been developing retail stores in airport, where people can play as well as buy local teams’ paraphernalia. They have also created sports bars in some of the Carnival Cruise Lines boats, giving passengers an occasion to watch sport as if they were in their local pubs as well as play EA games.

EA Sports strategy is rather simple: focus on collaboration and partner with signature brands to increase brand awareness outside the category. They are slowly turning into a lifestyle brand, a similar strategy adopted by sports brands like Adidas and Nike. With the ever increasing population of gamers and the number of platforms they can be reached on, this is definitely a smart move. From that strategy, Christopher Erb shared three key learnings that lead the EA brand where it is today: Value is crucial, content is king and collaborations are powerful.

It was good to see a brand strategy designed specifically for this brand. We are in a situation today where brands have a tendency to jump on the bandwagon for social or mobile. EA took a step back and realised that some things can be harnessed in a bigger overall plan: EA Sport’s was to bank on collaboration to create value and great content for their consumer. The rest came naturally.

An overall interesting keynote however, and it seems like a consistent critic about AdTech keynotes,there was nothing really thought provoking or ground breaking about Chris Erb's talk.I did find a few of these examples to be rather inspiring and will hopefully help some consider more advanced collaborations with other brands to bring better value and content to their consumers.

Marine

A Note on Christopher Erb:

As VP of Brand Marketing for EA SPORTS, Christopher Erb is responsible for driving strategy and marketing for the EA SPORTS brand. Christopher oversees a cross-functional team that focuses on consumer marketing, licensing, and brand partnerships. In addition, his team is responsible for partnership activation across franchises within the EA SPORTS label including Madden NFL, FIFA, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, NHL, NBA, NCAA, SSX and Fight Night.

He shared a few stats that could be of interest:

Note: This is American data.

- Gamers spend 55% more time watching entertainment than the average population.

- 90% of video games have a stronger opening day than movies

- 60% of people played video games in the last six months (comparatively 53% went to the movie)

- FIFA 12 sold 11 million copies globally; it was the biggest launch in the history of sport video games.

- Madden NFL 12 sold 90 million copies worldwide

- In 2011: 3,023,047,635 games were played for a total of over 140 billion minutes of gaming time.

- 53% of people played daily, 40% played weekly and 89% played more than 20 hours a week.

- The average EA Games’ user is 27 years old (vs. 31 years old industry average).

AdTech 2012 Keynote - Why We Tell Stories

I was looking forward to Frank Rose’s keynote, I heard very positive reviews about his book and the fact that he was a contributing editor to Wired made it even more appealing. The theme of his keynote was “Why We Tell Stories?” and he was to give us some insights on storytelling. I am going to put it out there: reviewing my notes, I felt like it was an interesting keynote, the problem was his lack of stage presence and the fact that he was quite an average public speaker… This could have been fine, except if you are going to talk about storytelling! It was a rather disappointing experience.

Rose went through the history of storytelling, from defining clearly the concept of content (anything that contains information, really) to the loss of control that content producers experienced over time. A while ago, the entire broadcasting industry had to fuel a very simple equation: Input=Content, Output=Behaviour. Advertising was also A lot easier: you explain what a product is for and what its USP is, and people will buy it and use it in this very particular way. It was a mechanical process. We all saw the same story. There were a few critics, mostly by San Francisco techies or in movies like The Stepford Wives, nothing very worrying. The change came with technology.

To me, this was a interesting thought, it was pretty obvious and I cannot believe I wasn't more conscious about it. We, consumers, took control over content the moment we had a remote control in our hands or bought a VCR. We could avoid certain pieces of content, advertising included. We took control. The aftermath of that was impressive, and we started to see  amazing advertising creations appear. Ads like CP+B’s Subservient Chicken for example. From consumers taking control, content evolved to a position of co-creation.

Another important thing is that losing control and resorting to co-creation was, according to Frank Rose, also a way for advertisers to harness the emotional part of storytelling experienced by consumers. Surprisingly enough, this was engrained in all of us, because to understand content and stories, we have to “feel them” ourselves. Now that is an interesting discovery! It came about thanks to an experiment on monkey’s brains. During a break, a scientist ate an ice cream and the nodes on the monkey’s brain (which were left on by chance), showed that the monkey was accessing the part of his brain responsible for eating and food. He was recreating the event… To understand it.

This explained how we create meaning and understand stories: We simulate it in our brains. This is a key concept to understand how to engage consumers in the stories we tell. The story, its meaning and its impact is not only made by content creators but also by their consumers. Rose illustrated this with the example of the Lost TV series. This is why Lost was so popular, the way the story unravelled and how it left the viewer thinking and guessing for answers, unable to recreate the full story to give it meaning was one of the most engaging way to tell stories ever created.

The lesson given by Frank Rose’s keynote was simple enough: We need to leave room for the audience, in everything we do, to be part of the story.I thought there was a few interesting examples that made us look back on story telling and understand the cultural impact of some discoveries. However, we did not really learn anything new. "Storytelling" seems like a popular concept, and I think we have pretty much understood the mechanics of it. It does not mean we consistently tell good stories, but I think we may have had enough of it as a keynote subject.

Marine

A Note on Frank Rose:

Frank Rose is an authority on the future of media. In his new book, The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories, he argues that we are seeing the emergence of a new form of narrative that's native to the Internet in the same way the novel is native to print. Understanding this new narrative is critical to anyone in marketing, advertising, entertainment, or journalism. Frank gained his perspective as a contributing editor at Wired and a contributing writer at Fortune before that. His earlier books include West of Eden, about the mid-‘80s power struggle that saw Steve Jobs ousted from Apple, and The Agency, a multi-generational saga of loyalty and betrayal in Hollywood.

International Flight Mouth - By Oral B

Japan is a world leader in most consumer electronics, however electric toothbrushes have very little penetration in this country. Oral B wanted to communicate that plaque builds up between your teeth where you can’t see it and they wanted to get this message across in an impactful way. They strategically chose Tokyo International airport for the environment, as after a long haul flight people are most likely feeling that their mouth needs a good clean. They used the luggage conveyer belt as media transforming it into a giant row of teeth. In straight lines the teeth seemed clean, but in curves, hidden plaque was exposed in between the teeth.

This is a great ambient execution because it is simple, creative and straight to the point.  Not only is the execution very clever, but the environment is perfect.  They are communicating to people at a time where their mouths are feeling dirty and when people would be the most impacted by images of plaque hiding between their teeth.  I can’t say that the QR codes sitting in the plaque is a good idea.  Mostly because I can’t see people chasing the luggage belt trying to get a scan, but also that the QR code is only visible for a short amount of time in the curve of the belt – everything else is great.

Ange. 

Peugeot Panama Creates Pinterest Puzzle

In Panama, Peugeot is running a competition taking full advantage of the new social platform Pinterest and it’s growing number of followers. On the company’s Pinterest page, they have posted various mosaic puzzles depicting different car models. Each mosaic has different pieces to the puzzle missing. In order to play, people can search for the missing car pieces on the Peugeot Panama Facebook page or company website, find the images and pin them on their own boards. Once they share these images with Peugeot and complete the puzzle, they can win all sorts of various prizes. Not only do the displays show the pictures of each model, but it also tells the stories of each of the products, highlighting key offerings.

WHY THIS IS INTERSTING

While most of us, both consumers and advertisers alike, are still trying to figure out what exactly Pinterest is, some companies like Peugeot Panama are creatively using this new popular social platform to communicate their product offering. Pinterest is a place for people to share and discover new things as well as get inspiration from others. What a desired space to be in for any company with a product offering! Peugeot has been quite clever in this space where they created an activation where in order to play, you must search and share images, which is exactly what people on Pinterest are already doing! In playing, people are not only learning about the various model features, but sharing this information with their social networks. It’s great to see a company jump on board with the ‘next hottest thing’ like Peugeot has done here. What’s better is to see them execute in a clever way that is in the user’s ‘Pinterest’ (sorry.. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity) and in line to how people are already behaving in that space.

Ange.

Invisible environmentally friendly cars?

Not sure how environmentally friendly any car can ever be but this is a cool campaign idea

 

Kate