Maurice Lévy gives a super human YouTube performance

This video starts just like any of the previous end of year greeting videos from Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Lévy (he’s done one each year since 2010) .  But there is one big difference, when you skip forward (which of course everyone does) there’s a surprise. He stops his speech and starts shuffling through his notes to find the part of the speech that you want to skip to.  It’s just one of the many very human interpretations of the standard YouTube player functionality built into the 2013 greetings.

You can try out the video for yourself below :

My two favourite features are volume and quality.  Changing the volume gives you 4 different options for the speech (shouting, normal, whisper or even Bob Dylan style on mute). Changing the quality of the video results in 6 or 7 hands coming onto camera to change the quality of the décor of Maurice Lévy’s office whilst he continues his speech.

If you pause the video, he keeps himself busy with a range of activities from dusting Cannes Lions, playing Pacman, watching the laughing baby video on YouTube to even recording a new message for Publicis Groupe.

This concept is dependant on people interacting and playing with the video.  Without giving the game away, Maurice Lévy gives us a wink in the the very official corporate email to hint that it might not be as boring as it looks.

Kudos to the creative team that had the guts to pitch this idea to the boss of their boss of their boss with the insight that his videos were too long — and hats off to Maurice Lévy for taking on the challenge and not taking himself too seriously.

Agency : Digitas France

https://vimeo.com/55443057