First of all, I have to say that the site of Best Buy ads in UK papers is slightly disconcerting; having lived in the States and used Best Buy a lot – all my US electronics were bought there – suddenly seeing them logo here makes me want to go back.
To promote themselves in the new market and as a tie-in with the World Cup, Best Buy are running a pretty cool contest to win everything in their ‘man-cave’. Although focused on the male football fan, the prizes on offer would be great for anyone, including 2 Samsung TVs, a HTC Desire phone, a netbook and plenty of beer and pizza. All you have to do to enter is add a comment to the video, saying what else you think needs to go into the room. Simple contest, great, great prize.
A year ago, Olympus and their agency DSG Dialog Solutions GmbH got into trouble for ‘borrowing’ the idea of a video they produced to celebrate 50 years of the PEN camera. It’s a gorgeous stop-motion film, showing a man’s journey through life using still photos.
They were called out for being heavily influenced by Taijin Takeuchi and his video Wolf and Pig. The connection was eventually acknowledged and it seems to have had a happy ending as Taijin has directed a new video for the agency and Olympus, this time taking the idea BIG and to the streets.
As a story, I think the first video has the edge, but I am quite taken with the idea that all the billboard ad models have secret lives, it makes me smile.
This is the new Sony Ad for their 3dTV, the obligatory football ad. I’d love to know if it actually works if the ad works in 3D if you have the glassesm meanwhile it just gives me a headache. There’s going to be up to 25 matches from the World Cup broadcast in 3d this year and Sony are going to be busy providing venues for you to watch the games, according to their Facebook page. They’re definitely going for the early adopters…the glasses themselves cost £99
As far as I can see, there’s no other digital marketing around the product, just the TV ad and mentions on the Facebook page, plus content promotion on the main site, although with a distinct lack of prices. Looks like they’ll be available just in time for the football though.
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.
There’s only one video in the rankings this week It’s all a bit quiet amongst the Eurovision, SNL and Enimem stuff. I bring you the making of the Samsung HD8910. Glad to see I got it right.
Miss Geeky points out the T-Mobile are planning something new, following their Liverpool St Dance Flash mob.
They’ve got the Facebook Group and the YouTube channel promoting their next event. Cue dramatic music and a call to action – be at Traflagar Square in London 30th April at 6pm to see what they have in mind.
Update: there’s seems to be some desire to flashmob the flashmob. I’ve suggested taking signs for other networks, others like Chris are suggesting something more
Update2: It happened and looking around it seemed to have been fun. T-Mobile brought along the singer Pink, performed karaoke with the crowd and the big screens . So the new T-Mobile advert with Pink, Trafalgar Square and ‘you’ will be shown on Saturday at 9.
The only ranked product video last week was one of the new Windows PC computers. They challenge people (well, actors) to go out and buy something on a budget, pushng back at Apple with their high prices. I think this is the third in the series, in previous ones they have been challenging Macs directly, with the buyer looking at them and declaring them too expensive. Here, it’s just about the features.
I received an email from Samsung the other day. Apparently, having bought a TV from them is enough for them to think I like football as well, so they’ve sent me some news about their site Samsung Football and a competition to play at Stamford Bridge against ‘football legends’.
Samsung Football (image from email)
Let’s see what’s wrong with this.
The only contact I recall having with Samsung is when I registered by new TV. Although I ticked the ‘send me news’ box, the sending of a a football based email suggests to me their segmentation is not brilliant. (I could be wrong about this; I;ve written about Samsung a few times before so I may have given them my email for a different sign up)
The email asks me to ‘click here to enter’. I do and get taken to the generic welcome page for their fan section ‘The Terraces’, with an autoplay video. Where’s the competition? If you want me to click through, take me where I think I’m going.
Click on the most obvious video and I get a 30second promo (I guess by some footballer) talking about uploading images. But where?
Eventually work out that at the bottom of the page is a series of images and a form to submit my own. But the calls to action, the call to upload images, the sell about the prize, the reasons why I may want to do this are all missing. I landed on this page and had no idea what I was supposed to do. Putting the briefest of messages in a video puts a barrier up. Maybe I have no sound, nor the time to watch it. Having the call to action in text is always a better option than video alone.
Don;t get me wrong, I think this is a good competition and prize for someone who loves football and Chelsea, but I just think it’s missing a lot in the consumer journey from email to site that would not take too much to fix the next time.
There’s a few product videos last week. Highest ranking was this from adidas, with David Beckham and Kevin Garnett playing footbasketball
TurboTax has Tay Zonday, of Chocolate Rain fame, pimping out the brand’s Super Status competition as well as his latest song
Nordstrom, a new name to me for online videos, have this one about boyfriend jeans. This video is not your usual type to be highly viewed, so I’m guessing there was an ad buy to promote it.
The Blackberry Bullet is the hero of this ad, taking on Apple, or rather an apple. This is a repost, not from the original brand
Samsung have gone big with the cute animals with this video for the S8300 Ultratouch phone. I think my favourites are the bunny workout and the chick dancefloor. Oh, and the evil hdgehog. This is the one product video around – so enjoy!
