2009 Cannes CyberLions awarded (Mark will be posting a wrap-up for that in the next few days), now we are all waiting to know which entries will win Film category and the Grand Prix for Titanium and Integrated, which is rumoured that will be given to Obama's presidential campaign.
In the meantime, we already know for sure that one of the highlights of the Festival was the "Best job in the world" campaign developed by Cummins Nitro for the Tourism Queensland, winning three Grand Prix this year: PR, Direct and Cyber. That is the payoff of a great idea with a flawless execution.
However, it looked a bit weird to me that another campaign, released a few months before the "Best Job" one, and under the same concept/idea, has gone almost unknown.
Philips is convinced of the quality and power of it's own products, so it decide to take on any challenge for any of it's product in a new campaign called Philips Versus. Interesting twist is that the campaign is running almost fully on Twitter (@philips_vs).
Basic idea is that you tweet your (most crazy) idea about what a Philips product should take on, and the chosen idea wins the 21:9 Cinema TV and will be produced. To give some inspiration, a couple of ideas are already produced by responsible agency Tribal DDB, as you can see on the supporting campaign website.
In the Netherlands, IKEA is setting a great example of useful consumer generated content with the 'Design Your Own Life' campaign. A few months ago, they've launched Open Kitchen, a user generated showroom of kitchens with IKEA products. With over 2000 entries, it instantly became the biggest kitchen showroom in Holland. Right now they've launched the follow up Bedroom Secrets, in which you can have a look inside Dutch bedrooms. Literally, because besides the user uploaded bedrooms, a webcam stream makes it possible to watch the bedrooms of Lonne, Sven and Manette, live.
We have the power to change. We have the power to save power and make the world a greener place. It doesn't take much. Even just remembering to turn off your computer at night makes the difference. HP with the help of Arc Worldwide Singapore puts at our disposal a widget than can keep track of the energy we use as well as of the carbon emission reduced.
It's an interesting yet very ambitious project. A good idea, nicely designed but probably too complex to generate big numbers.
Here's another great example of online marketing in the entertainment sector - the twitter based Resistance2018 game. The premise is convoluted but it would seem that the "Resistance" is using Twitter to communicate, you can join the resistance and help by decrypting message which have been intercepted from Skynet.
The game instructions and all the assets surrounding the Twitter game are housed on a blog which feels very of the moment - everything is easily embeddable, shareable and searchable.
In this new campaign for Vodafone UK, Dare Digital created a little short film that only lives in Facebook so you have to go there to see and/or comment. Up to date, the video has over a thousand comments from people saying what they would do, which is remarkable (and really brave on the side of the brand) because it shifts the attention from the traditional medium for this kind of things (TV, and re-edited into a 20" format) and carries all the people to an online content.
In Spain, even though it's not as hard as advertising tobacco brands, when advertising alcohol there's always a limit that you can't push; for instance, on TV commercials you can show the product but no one can be seen drinking it. That is why many of these brands do branded entertainment instead of focusing on creating ideas about their products' USP. One of the most notable examples of this kind of advertising is Mahou, a beer brand that has been doing interesting things online for several years, first with Herraiz y Soto doing their interactive and now working with DoubleYou.
This year's campaign is called "La Wikipeli" ("The Wikimovie"), in which Jose Corbacho and Juan Cruz (two famous comedians in Spain) are preparing a new short-film whose plot, characters, scenes, and so on, are chosen by users taking polls, sending videos or commenting the whole process and deciding things on-the-fly.
Philips produces cinematic HD TV's with the 21:9 movie format. To get attention for the TV's and show all features (like Ambilight) at best, a website is launched which is definitely worth checking out. Not only for the TV experience, but als for the impressive freezed 3D movie which is shown within the TV.
It seemed kind of funny that instead of being given a website to check out for more info, i was given a term to be Googled, and finally, a few days after i found some things about that:
Sony Computer Entertainment recently released Killzone 2 on Playstation 3, and has been using quite an original way to promote this First Person Shooter videogame. Considering that Killzone scenario are more or less about repelling total invasion by enemies (Helghast forces), Sony brought this scheme online, with a dedicated webgame.
You can register on the killzonewebgame page, install a Killzone toolbar on your browser and be ready to fight ! While you are browsing the internet, you may get under attack at any time, if you decide to engage the fight, Helghast forces appear in your window. Basically, you then need to get rid of them.
When talking about advertising in South America you're sometimes exposed to hear about certain (and false) cliches: for instance, "Brazil is really good at graphic work, and only at graphic work" or "Argentina is really good doing TV work, and only doing TV work". I wasn't even interested in advertising when I saw on TV this commercial done for the new (then) Renault Clio. Years later I knew about their creators, Agulla&Baccetti, and some of their legendary (and multiawarded) campaigns, being also a seeder of new talents (with the likes of extremely succesful people in later years such as Juan Cabral or Leandro Raposo, among many many many many others) Did i say "many" enough?
Being one of the things I like the most about all of that works was the way in which emotions were expressed through images, it is often said that creativity in Argentina was dramatically fed because of the infamous Corralito situation in 2001, which almost completely froze bank accounts and forbade withdrawals from U.S. dollar-denominated accounts. The tone of TV spots, introspective until then, became more of cheerful, trying to help people to overcome the sadness they were living. As part of this anomalous situation you can even find three minutes length tv ads done by Madre for Banco Hipotecario, being the length of the ad part of the strategy as to try people believing in banking again.
Though i'm originally from Spain i've spent the last three years of my life living in Mexico, so the first time I asked Martina about writing for Adverblog she told me that it would be nice reviewing a lot of digital cases coming from Central and South America, as to have a global vision of digital advertising in Adverblog.
Not that I haven't tried but besides a few things coming from Brazil, I haven't found anybody in this region consistently generating first-class digital work (but maybe there is! if you think you or your company is doing it and you work in Central/SouthAmerica please drop me a line to dani.granatta AT gmail DOT com !)
Well, the thing is that last week I was part of the jury for the first IAB Conecta Awards organized by Mexican IAB and I went to Mexico City for the voting, kind of prejudiced about what we were about to see. But once there, and in really good company, we found a few works worth to be noticed. I specially liked this one called "Rockea duro / construye tu futuro", done by Substance for UVM, one of the universities of fastest growth here in Mexico.
Onitsuka Tiger has recently launched a campaign to celebrate its 60th Anniversary and promote its new collection ispired to the Japanese Zodiac. Amsterdam Worldwide has created a short animation movie and has refreshed thewebsite and the print campaign according to the new concept.
