Replay

Gatorade found not as many 30+ people were exercising and therefore not buying the product. So they looked for a way to re-ignite the athletic spark by replaying a high school match that ended in a draw. They used the website to tell the stories, produced portable exercise content and used Facebook to allow you to find your old team mates from school. It even encouraged more replay matches to be organised. (Won PR and Promo/Activation)

Orcon and Iggy Pop.

Iggy Pop is not just the face of Swiftcover Insurance. In New Zealand, he’s involved in Orcon Broadband. The premise was to record a version of his song Passenger, using Skype over the broadband. Using ads across Facebook, outdoors and display they called for musicians to upload audition tapes to a special Facebook app. The 9 players chosen then recorded the song, which got used for TV and more. (Won Direct)

On the recruitment market, there’s a lot of movement for social media people, specialists in the area. But I think the first set of winners demonstrate that we are moving beyond the specialist into having people (ie social media) far more integrated into the work than ever before. There’s always a need for expert knowledge, but not as a separate element. As the website was often seen as an afterthought, so was social media. That is now moving to be part of the whole, integrated from the start.

As part of the campaign, Microsoft are running 3 days of events in London (on 26, 27 and 28 May at Golden Square, Canary Wharf and Broadgate), where you can go outside and do something more interesting instead. At least, that’s what I think the message is, with all the time the new tools in Hotmail give you, you get chance to try something different

The World of New Busy events will host a chill out and viewing area, Hotmail showcase, Health Farm where guests can learn Morris dancing, hula hooping and iconic dance moves, and Frivolity Fields where people can learn knitting, hand massage, throat singing and have a nap in the sleep pod. There will also be a unique photo opportunity in front of the green screen.

Apparently it’s a ‘quirky experiential campaign’ running across the summer, promoting the new version that launches later this year. They’ve got the obligatory Facebook page and Twitter feed, although something tells me the people running the profiles are not quite comfortable with the language yet, as a contest on Facebook to win a skydive asks you to ‘logon’ to their Twitter account (sure, give me the password then!) and then the tweet tells you to go to Facebook. I think they need to do a little bit more sorting out still

Overall, I think there’s some good bits here, they’ll get the city people coming and taking a look at what they are offering and hopefully they’ll remember Hotmail. But it feels not quite there yet.

Knitting with The New Busy (image provided by 3-monkeys Microsoft agency)

The Pitch

I got an email asking me if I wanted an email about it; polite, but far too easy to ignore usually, I prefer just getting the stuff and then deciding what to do with it. I then got an email with an attached .docx (again, another barrier, not everyone can open these) which was a duplicate of the text in the email (so why bother with the attachment). A few hours later, I then got the same email, non-personalised which had obviously been sent out to a large list. As with the campaign social media, I think the pitch is not quite there yet.

Update: A big marketing push started on Wednesday, with Hotmail taking over the Metro to advertise the events

Here’s a video of a guy who hired dancers (either 50, or 50 couples, depending on your source) to help him propose in Washington Park (via Gothamist)

But he’s not the first. Here’s one from earlier in the week, in Chicago. (via Chicago Convergence)

Any more out there? Of course, the cynic in me is now wondering which brand is behind these

Make something fun, make a game of it and more people will do it. No surprises there then. What is a surprise is that this video and The Fun Theory (the site is in Swedish) is done by Volkswagen

Definitely non-typical car marketing, but I love it. The sense of whimsey surrounding the activities is great; a brand that shows it can have fun is one I’m far more likely to interact with

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.

But I was sold on the gameplay description and the trailers, not the actual experiential elements. They’re a little less successful in my case, but I’ve seen they are definitely catching the eye of many.

The experience is a variation on uploading your photos and appearing as part of the trailer/video. The difference here is that you don”t choose which photos to upload but that it grabs them from Facebook. To take part, you have to link your Facebook profile to the game page, using Facebook Connect, a variation on OAuth where you don’t have to give out your password to anyone.

Prototype Login (screenshot from site)

It then runs a trailer for the game, pulling your photos in from the service and interspersing them throughout the action. they also include all your details, the personal information. As I only have 1 image on Facebook, I thought they wouldn’t have much luck but what it does it goes and trawls your connection and brings in their photos as well. You can’t share the video or embed it anywhere as far as I can see, so I think they’re mainly avoiding the copyright and privacy issues that this ‘borrowing’ of images and use of personal details entails, but I was surprised that the system would do this.

After watching the personalised trailer, you get to answer some questions to win a game copy and an XBox360 and then you’re then asked to spread the word, using your choice of network – Facebook or Twitter. This seems to be a requirement of the competition entry, but as I can’t see any terms and conditions, I’m not sure

Prototype Spreadability (screenshot from site)

This is the second campaign I’ve seen this week that has built in the ability to autopost to your status stream, so it’s looking like it’s this quarter’s hot trend. It’s a savvy call to action, although if too many in your network do it, I can see it not quite having the desired impact. Making it compulsary is problematic; the experience should be good enough to get people to want to share it, not making them do it because you don’t trust your stuff is good enough for sharing.

Elsewhere on the site, you can get a story overivew, see some trailers and get some great artworks to download. Most importantly, you can pre-order, but only from specific retailers (Smartoys which is French, fnac, Game Mania, both Belgium.Dutch). So despite being able to see the site in English and it being big in English blogs, you can’t actually by in the UK. The site has been done in Belgium by Sponge and 1MD, so it looks like it is for that market only, although there’s no indication until you’re deep into that it does not apply to you, but again, no T&Cs so I’m not sure if I can enter or not.

Prototype Scene (screenshot from site)

• First of all, you need to sign up
• Then, pick your team. You have a choice of 10 drivers across 5 different cities. You need to pick 2 for your team.
• When the race starts, Vodafone track the taxi drivers – using the GPS in their HTC Magic phones. The miles are totalled up. The idea is to complete the race distance in the shortest time. The race distance is that of the target F1 Grand Prix, it was the British one last week, next it’s the German one. Over 5 races, you score points for distance and time, so the person with the highest points wins a trip to the Italian Grand Prix (there’s lots of other prizes too)
• Keep an eye on your drivers. You get lots of statistics about them, so if your driver is not travelling enough, you can swap them around to improve your mileage.
• Come back again and again!

Vodafone Taxi Grand Prix (screenshot from site)

This is a pretty nigty idea. A contest connected with the real world and real people. You get brief bios of the drivers, who are also twittering, so you see what they are getting up to, so over time, you’ll get to know the drivers and what they are like. The mechanic is simple and the interaction allowed keeps you coming back

It says about the singalong event in Traflagar Square “lacks something of the spontaneous feel of its predecessor, probably because of the organised nature of the event”.

Personally, I think something of the opposite. The dance video was highly organised, highly choreographed. They knew exactly what the the performers would do, it was just the spectators who were an unknown. In this, part from the idea, everything was an unknown. You could predict what could happen, but you had no idea the numbers, or whether they would join in. Imagine if it had been a damp squid and about 3 people had turned up.

From the spectator point of view, it was far more spontaneous, a real flash mob, a surprise event. I’m guessing many people felt far closer to the brand than with the dance.

I do agree that from an outside, see it on the telly or the digital billboard it does not work as well, it is not as exciting, but it was far more in the moment than the dance.

I like this, it’s far more authentic than the dance ones, where they’ve hired a bunch of professionals to turn up and do the dance. This really was a flash mob, called together through teaser videos, some judicious seeding and word of mouth. Apparently 13,500 people turned up to sing-a-long. As demonstrated by the many videos on YouTube and images around, many of them had cameras and phones. I;ve seen a lot of buzz about this, so I think it worked for them, at least from a brand awareness side. Given the current company situation, I think they need it!

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.