Nice little video from The Viral Factory to support the Samsung Jet, funny idea which really demonstrate a key benefit of the phone, its camera speed. I like it when there’s such a clear link as it’s not always found when creating this distributed content.
Archive for July, 2009
I’ve long been a fan of Doritos and their continued innovation in the online marketing space. From Crash the Superbowl, to design an XBox game and a lot more too. Their latest (in the UK) is an interactive film/game called iD3.
Doritos iD3 (screenshot from site)
The Plot
Set in the near future, it’s all about identify theft. You’ve been ‘recruited’ as a mole for the Serious Fraud Squad and have to try and get access to the boss. It’s in 3 chapters being released over the next few weeks, so you have to wait and remember to come back for the next episode.
The Interaction and Gameplay
It’s all shot in the first person, so you are the hero in this story. You get to upload your image which appears in various places, id cards etc throughout the story. There’s a further level of connection if you decide to use Facebook as your login, where it will pull information from your profile and insert into the narrative. I;ve tried this before with Prototype Experience (blog post and it added little given my paucity of information).
However, I was underwhelmed by the gameplay. There are a number of points where you have to make a choice to drive the plot, go one way or the other, but most of the time I’m just watching a film. Maybe I just chose the ones that had the straightest path through the story, but I did not feel I added a lot. I wasn’t doing anything, just watching with the occasional click. I though there was no personal involvement. I’m hoping this will get better and they’ll be asking more of me. They’ve had to balance accessibility and ease of play and it looks like they’ve chosen the easiest route – no puzzles, little thinking required, just sit back and watch.
To play the game, you have to have bought a bag of Doritos and enter the code from the bag. There’s obviously peril involved, as you are given 6 lives per Dorito code; to get more lives you have to buy more snacks. That’s the better deal than the ones where you have to enter a code from every single time you enter; at least you get the chance to survive throughout and win a variety of prizes.
The Competition
It’s complicated. The main contest seems to need you to guess the name of a mystery flavour, an option that is provided right up front, so it appears to be a wild guess with no clues. If you do, you get the chance to win £20k. Everyone who does enter gets added into a separate draw. Then there are prizes awarded whilst playing the game, which are just awarded randomly. Doritos have partnered with O2 for some of these prizes. There’s a final contest for those who complete the 3 episodes, where a draw picks someone who then gets to pick a mystery envelope form a range containing various amounts of money.
The Branding and Production
Absolutely superb. The site is high quality, the story line is good, the filming looks excellent. The Doritos brand is embedded throughout the story, from subtle touches of having bags of the crisps being eaten by characters. The bags – and the competition – are a key plot story so it’s completely integrated. I’m slightly surprised that they allowed the brand to be so integral in a story about illegal activities (based on some recent experience) but feel that’s the only way to get it into the story without it feeling shoe-horned in, so well done that brand manager.
The Pitch
An lovely email (from someone I know) which has obviously gone through the marketing review given some of the slightly over the top hyperbole presented. The best touch though is that the team involved has obviously thought about digital outreach from the start. I’m provided with a PR code to play the game; on entering I’m told I’m not eligible for prizes. It’s been coded in from the start, which is impressive.
Summary
A high-production value movie, with interesting touches and a strongly integrated brand. overall, I liking it a lot.
Deep Focus, definitely one of the more interesting agencies around, bring us their latest web tool Mad Men Yourself. Nothing groundbreaking, it’s a ‘create your avatar’ app, with lots of options to choose from to create an image of the 60′s.
Mad Men Yourself selector (screenshot from site)
The whole thing is nicely done, with plenty of choices and some lovely touches throughout. One of my favourites is the use of the slide carousel to choose your scene, associated with one of my favourites scenes from the first series. There are a few niggles, with some of the choices being too small to see properly although the biggest one for me was about lack of payoff at the end – where do I go to see more about the series. It’s there, but not called out. (the new one starts 16th Aug in the US)
Madmen scene selector (screenshot from site)
At the end of the process, you get the option to download 3 versions, one for your twitter or other small avatars, one perfectly sized for your phone and the other for the computer. I’m expecting to spot a few of them around the web over the next few days.
Madmen Yourself (download from app)
One thing you can usually be sure of is that a standard billboard won’t break. But the digital ones, all sorts of things can go wrong. Here. someone has left the control panel open and it gets displayed on screen.
Whose brand does this impact? The display people or the ones that are on rotation on the screen.
Juliette Lewis amd Orange Films (used with permission)
Orange are back, with their latest Orange Film Cinema ad for Fngrz of Fury. The ad was shot by Fallon, the digital stuff was put together by Poke.
On the site you have:
- the trailer for the film Fngrz of Fury, all about the texting, Kung-Fu fighters
- The cinema ad featuring Juliette Lewis, who’s lsightly surprised at some of the change the Orange Film team have made
- Wallpapers and downloads.
- A competition, to send in your own Film names for Orange, with the winner getting a night out at a film premiere.
- An spoof interview with a film critic
- A fun game where you pit your finger skills against various monsters. (embedded below)
I like all of this; I’ve been a fan of these movies for a while and happy to see another one, even if the film title is so, so bad. It’s still better than anything else I can come up with. The game is fun and the graphic style a welcome change from the more usual cartoony, off the shell things I see. I’m enjoying the game play (I can actually do this one!), even if it’s pitting keyboard typing against big monster finger texting – can you get on the leaderboard?
The only brand video on the list isn’t exactly a video for a brand, but is definitely about a brand. The band Sons of Maxwell travelled by United Airlines last year, who proceeded to load their guitars without due care and attention. So they broke them. Complaining didn’t get them anywhere, so they turned to what they know best, writing a song – United Breaks Guitars – producing a video and getting massive hits on YouTube with all the accompanying press. United would have been better just apologising and preforming good customer service in the first place. They have only just now offered compensation. The full story on Dave Carroll’s site.
Police, the fashion house rather than the force or the band, are looking for “a new face for the next international advertising campaign 2010!” You can submit your entry to the Be Younique contest up until Aug 30th and every 2 weeks, a new set of finalists will be chosen, with the winner being chosen from the 60 finalists in early September. The first stages use user voting to determine the winners, the winner is chosen by a panel.
The Viral Factory have produced a video are helping to promote this contest,; it’s definitely a unique video, mildly amusing 
I’m guessing mainly men were involved in the creative process, as it definitely seems to be focused on a particular male challenge. The video was produced by 1861United,Italy.
It’s shown on the front of the site as well. However, I really wish they wouldn’t do this – calling something viral when it’s not really racked up the views (around 4k at the moment) is a little flase advertising.
Be Younique
Work is completely taking over my ability to blog at the moment, so sorry for the lack of stuff. The things to write about is piling up, so expect a deluge soon. But the videos are pretty quick to review.
First up is the Evian Babies, a well deserved hit but full of very scary dancing babies. I’m trying to work out how it was done. (It’s far more entertaining than the myriad of Michael Jackson videos that are up there.
Then we have a film of a car driving around London. Not any old car, but a Citroen GT, which was designed for a video game and drew stares as it (slowly) meandered the streets.
It must be a car week. This is fun, from Seat