Being a band, there was a time when you needed MTV for broadcasting your music videos, because MTV was the place where everybody went to see videos. But a couple of years ago, a lot of bands started a new trend that consisted on creating "interactive" pieces, knowing that when you have fans they'll follow you every place you are, MTV or... your own website.

Filippa K has launched a very nice website to present its Fall09 collection. The navigation begins in a rather cold way, with a tag cloud which asks the visitors from what they get inspiration from. Once the choice is made the experience becomes more interesting and most of all (and fortunately) warmer.

Each shot of the collection is presented with an hotspot that, when clicked, activates a further level of exploration, either a video piece or a text that provides further information on the product, the style or the fabric.

Famous Brussels just created The Profiler, a Facebook based campaign for Belgacom. You can browse through papervision style visuals, typical for you or your friends since they are based on profile keywords. Love the idea and execution, but the results are not that exciting.

This morning, when I opened Valerie's email at first I thought... ehm, what the hell is she sending me... even if I'm a woman, I don't want to go online to learn more about "those days"... But then I put on my professional "mask", I gave the website a look, and I changed my mind.

Arc Worldwide Singapore did an excellent job in handling a taboo topic such as the menstrual cycle. And they did well because they thought differently. Instead of thinking about the product they were asked to promote, they thought about the consumers and about what really matters to them.

This version of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" is one of the weirdest (yet funny) things i've seen ever: trying to get some buzz for J2O (a fruit drink) and under the "it's better to mix things up" tagline, you can get free tickets for a mixed up gig performed by Calvin Harris and Michelle Williams (from Destiny's child)

(by Shine Communications)

I'm not a big fan of MTV (also known as the tv channel where you could find music videos once) in the latest times. but this initiative called EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) seems pretty interesting, using reknowned bands to deliver the messages acting more as social agents than musicians themselves. Last year it was Radiohead's "All i need" to raise awareness against human trafficking. This year is about The Killers and their "Goodnight, Travel Well" (against sex trafficking), well done:

Is this a weird ad for V Australia or just a funny twitter account. Only 1 following who is talking about his flight but it's the 50,000 (updated now 225,350) followers that has me stumped!

Viral marketing has new face. Now it's all about playing "with" your friends, and by "with" I mean "using" your friends to win something. The latest example comes from Northern Europe where the airline SAS has launched an online competition that takes advantage of Facebook Connect to give away flight tickets to a series of destinations around the world.

The mechanism is pretty simple. You select your departure airport (only Scandinavia unfortunately), you spin the globe to find out your destination and then the system connects to your Facebook profile to randomly pick a friend you will travel with. But the game isn't over yet: in order to actually win the tickets you have to write a nice motivation on why you and friend should travel together.

Panasonic isn't the kind of brand I usually like. I mean I find it rather old and not so cool, but this time they managed to surprise me with a nice digital project, probably a bit nostalgic (like the brand itself) but still pretty inspiring. The History of Sharing the Passion is a video website which takes us through twenty years of Olympic Games sponsored by Panasonic.

Starting from Calgary back in 1988 you can re-live some of the moments of the opening cerimonies experiencing at the same time the Panasonic technology that made the broadcast possible back at the time.

Remember it's #interactivemonday? It's time to tweet and share the best piece of digital creativity you've seen lately (and tag it #interactivemonday). Here I'm posting a couple of links out of the ones shared today.

We start from the cool interactive car configurator launched by Volkswagen for the new Polo. As ifonlyblog says, this is definitely a nice new spin to car configurators.

American Apparel has launched "Le Sac Dress". A drape dress with long, versatile straps you can wear in twelve different ways.

Yep, it sounds a bit complicated, but don't worry, it comes with twelve videos posted on Youtube that teach you how to wear it.

Video instructions, a smart simple way to enhance the online commerce experience, especially for those goods which generates doubts in potential buyers.

In Japan, Sony has recently launched an amusing project to drive attention around the upcoming release of the new PS3. How does you face look like while you play videogames? Have you got the best "game face"? You can start comparing yourself to a bunch of Japanese videogame players by visiting www.playface.jp or watching the commercials below.

I really like this simple and kind of viral idea by British carrier TalkTalk to promote its reduced phone rates. Other carriers make you pay more and therefore "pick" money out of your pockets. TalkTalk make you pay less for phone calls, and so if you switch to TalkTalk they will put the money back in your pockets... Simple, uh?

Watch the video just launched in the UK, where former pickpockets are hired by TalkTalk to put the money back into the pockets of Londoners. As I said: simple, educational (it's impressive to see the "artists" of pick/putpocketing in action) and pretty viral idea.

In Germany Deutsche Bahn (German railway company) some time ago has released a beautiful educational video that explains the benefits of an environmentally conscious behaviour. Or course the video suggests that travelling by train produces less CO2 than travelling by car or by plane.

The interesting aspect of the project is the fact that DB encourages word of mouth with an ecological trick: for every view of the video, they will donate 10 cents to the “Bergwald Project,” which will use the money to plant new trees throughout Germany. A very nice idea, at first sight not very well executed since the video player has no immediate option to be embedded or shared with other people. Youtube where are you?

The agency behind the video is Peppermill Berlin.

via [LSD]

Students and IKEA fans in general, will love this interactive website that offers a dorm room planner. Space Maker is (another) smart idea by the Swedish furniture brand that allows students (but not only) to understand how to exploit at best the small space they have.

A room planner isn't something new, Ikea did it already, even with the Oval Office when Obama won the elections last year, but I always like posting about their interactive projects because they are smart and simple, exactly as you expect from Ikea as a brand.

Here is another one about to launch in Australia called :30 Seconds.

And all the vox pops of the characters are here.

Looks like it's time for movies about advertising. After "Art & Copy" now here it comes "Lemonade" movie, a film about some advertising people losing their jobs in this global recession and how they've redirected their lives.

As for the trailer, they all look happier than when in advertising...

Clothing shop Daffy's released a new website (by Freedom and Partners) a couple of weeks ago.

This video has been circulating the whole week, aparently the new MSI X-Slim Series laptop is so thin that...

Maybe gross or maybe dumb, but shows really well the main attribute of that product in an undoubtely viral way :) (imho)

"Mach es machbar" is the name of the website done to advertise Microsoft project management tools in Germany ("Mach es machbar" means "make it feasible"). And as to prove it elbkind released this video in which Bruno Kammerl, an austrian engineer, builds and tests which is claimed the biggest waterslide in the world, stunning.

I laughed out loud when these suicidal fruits smashed against the floor to finish their jump in one of the levels of this "advergame" called "High dive" done for Vimto. It could probably be better art directed but i liked that is funny and makes you play with that blending concept behind the "seriously mixed up fruit" motto.

(developed at Matmi)

Developed by Kanoti for NHS Brighton and Hove, Fighting fit for business is a little website that shows through gorgeous characters and animations the do's and dont's for having a healthy life even when you spend lot of time at work.

On September 21st Louis Vuitton will publish a book on Art and Creation. It will cover fashion, art an architecture (and it is already in my shopping cart). Given the kind of readers this book wants to appeal, what is better than a promotional animated book trailer animated by a young artist?

The video by Camille Scherrer is beautiful, sweet and simple I would say. But what I really like is the fact that they thought about the best way to get the word out in the creative community. Use the video, talk their same language, the visual language their are used to. Think about something that is easy to share, tweet, embed. I love smart marketers, especially when you realize they haven't done anything special nor new, they thought before acting.

Following on from the recent success of its 4320LA.com twitter campaign, V Australia, via agency Droga5, Sydney is now throwing down the challenge to America for three of their countrymen or women to fly down-under and experience the best Sydney has to offer, while sending a 'tweet' every single minute of the 4320 minutes they are in Australia.

The unique social media challenge, promoted in conjunction with Twitter and KIIS FM in LA, will be one of the first of its kind in the US to harness the potential of social media and Twitter in particular to deliver entertainment and interaction with the aim to promote Australia as the ideal and affordable short break destination for Americans.

Guess what ... Some other racing games ! But this time you don't drive usual cars.
In the Red Bull one, you drive a soap box.

This site is pretty nice and the 3D environment is very well produced. The visuals and the all atmosphere really remind me of Little Big Planet ones. You can build your own soap box, your own track, customize your avatar, and compete against others. The game is to promote the soap box races that Red Bull is running across Europe.

What's better than a scottish to tell the story of an scottish whiskey, 6 and a half minutes of Robert Carlyle and the story of Johnnie Walker, brilliant (by BBH London)

When something is as desirable as muscle cars (for many people) it's a good move on the side of the brand building a community around that thing that everybody wants, and that's exactly what Firstborn has done for the new version of Ford Mustang, the 2010 one.

Presenting a very powerful car-configuration tool, you can customize a template Ford Mustang the way you want or even customizing collaborating in real time with some people, in the end it's about "experiencing" the car and also sharing it to the gallery (almost 2k submissions in a week) or, the main purpose for sport cars fans, downloading the image to use it as a wallpaper.

The site also contains some other features, as Mustang stories, a store locator or getting what is being talked about the car outside, in a new example of that way of building things we talked a while ago, conforming the place to go to know everything you want about the Mustang world.

Whether you like biking or not, you have to check this beautiful website called Ride Oregon (and done by Substance) Built for Travel Oregon agency with the intention on becoming the center of cycling in Oregon (US) and the best place in the country to ride a bike, it also works as a fantastic resource to do some tourism and visiting the whole state.

In this new era of applications, Dunkin' Donuts released a really cool one called "Dunkin' Run". Probably you know how complicated is ordering coffe for a group of people in an organized way. Using this app, you can become a "runner" while they fill what they want and then get yours and your friend's goods from the general Dunkin' Donuts menu, you can see a little video explaining how it works.

What appears interesting to me (besides the obvious use) is the way in which the application spreads, not only by using or because someone recommended, but also by ordering something when a friend of yours is the runner and asks you if you want him to pick some coffee for you.

I'm always amazed of the quality and consistency of brazilian Almap BBDO's work. Their latest one is this interactive film to advertise the new Volkswagen EOS.

The story is about "a car, a destination and some other little things in the middle of the road for you to solve", making this woman the star of the film while her car it's followed by some birds creepier than Hitchcock's.

Told in an interesting way that shows every benefit from the car itself, it makes me think in how they're going to submit this into festivals. Is it a microsite, an online branded content or an online video? While discussing about it they also released a little blog where you can see how the whole video was done.

(thx Sergio!)

A couple of interesting examples of user generated content that really touched me last week. The first one, probably you've seen this before, one of the best wedding entrances ever:

The funny thing about that is that the sales of the song, Chris Brown's "Forever" have skyrocketed since then (thx Fer!)

At first sight you would say it is just another racing game. Make sure not to skip the intro, and you will change your mind. Honda Formula E is an advergame launched in Japan to teach people how to drive with an eco-friendly attitude.

In the game you don't have to use the steering-wheel, but just the brake and accelerator to find the ideal speed to drive in the city, saving gasoline, and therefore saving the planet.

(via v.falcon)

I love some banners when they are not intended to drive traffic to any place but being a message/experience by themselves, i guess clickthrough and some other metrics for efectiveness become relative at this point. A month ago I saw this extraordinary banner at Bannerblog. Needless to explain how well executed is that "once you pop you can't stop" motto and also a great demonstration on how important having a great copywriter helps writing ads (click on the image to see it)

Crispin Porter + Boguksy's 38 summer interns distill the humbling, often humiliating experience down to a tidy four minutes in this rap video.

via AdFreak.

I've never been involved in a brief for an erotic shop, must be exciting, this ad for Sara's secret made me laugh a lot:

I think the agency is Dieste (thx Manuela!)

From China, a website that in Italian I would call very "tamarro" (almost impossible to translate this in English - maybe it's "yobbe", any suggestion from an Italian who isn't on holiday yet, will be very appreciated!). It's for the Chevrolet Cruze and it definitely features a "macho" approach to communication which I found quite surprising for the Asian market.

On top of discovering the car model and it racing competitions, you can also "virtually pimp" your Chevrolet. The customization engine is quite rich, and you can create horrible car to share with your mates. Yes, because pimping is all about sharing, so after you are done with your masterpiece you can then save it as wallpaper for your computer, mobile phone or MSN avatar.

Another post about augmented reality: the benchmark in terms of quality of execution and concept still remains AKQA's Priority Email, but this Wrigley's website is worth having a look, as it introduces additional elements of interactivity.

Basically the 5 Mixer allows you to scratch like a DJ 5 QR codes symbols in front of your webcam in order to create your club music mix. As explained by Augmented Times, there are three markers representing gum flavors, each linked to a certain track, and one master marker to rule them all. The markers' distance from the master marker and their relative angles determine the volume and effects for each track.

In the US Best Buy has just launched Best Buy in 3D, an augmented reality application that allows users to see in 3D the products advertised on the retailer weekly publication.

I don't have a webcam (as you can see from the brilliant message below) so I cannot test it and appreciate its features. However I find augmented reality shopping very cool for an ecommerce website, where you have to do your best to make people "feel" and "touch" the product. If there is not e-commerce module attached, and the consumers in the end has to visit a store to purchase the good, then I'm not so sure an AR application real value is worth the effort (both for the retailer and for the consumer).

It's Sunday, it's hot, it's perfect time to explore something a bit crazy, like the Beop Beam Central website. The Beop is a Japanese band with quite an original look and approach to communication to their fans. Everything is in English, so no worries relax & enjoy.

Just keep clicking on the content you see in the background to explore all the section. Usually such a navigation system will make me go crazy, but here the mood is right to accept to be forced to do as they want.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives