Digital Stuffing

The Media Lions were announced today; a Grand Prix was taken by Photochains, an Australian campaign from Leo Burnett, Sydney for the Eos camera from Canon.

The Work

Photochains is simple, it’s all about the inspiration. Start with one image and get inspiration from it to create the next. They started on TV and then moved online, encouraging people to upload the next image in the creative chain or start their own. Over 20k photos were uploaded, as they encouraged people to encourage their friends to load the next image, to join the chain. The site showcased the increasing number of chains and the campaign moved back offline, demonstrating what had been created.

I love this, it’s all about the social object – an image – and how it fits in with your community and the wider network. By adding your photo, 2 objects are created, the image and the new interpretation of the chain. The connection with others activates the human need to share and create. It’s the same motivation behind previous campaigns such as the Google email video, or the longest football passing chain video, but the constraints of those efforts, passing an object across media are removed, it’s all about the inspiration and creation for something new

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.

Looking at You Tube this morning I saw You Tube now has a trending terms widget. Not sure how new this is but I’ve not seen any comments about it. It’s interesting, Google adding a real-time search element to the site. You’ve long been able to see what people are watching ‘right now’ but this is an extra dimension – what people are searching for, an indication of the external drivers to the videos.

I’ll have to admit I’m not entirely convinced yet. This morning’s snapshot is not necessarily the most interesting. However, I would expect to see a bunch of trending search terms based on TV shows (especially the reality ones), celebrity deaths and sports events, all of then time-relevant areas, where mention in mass broadcast channels drive people to look for things.

You Tube Trending Terms

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

I’ve finally caught up with the Prototype Experience, a promo for a new console game that has been exciting so many marketers on the blogs. It looks like a great game, one I’ll end up buying (and as usual playing really, really, badly) so it worked for me as a enticement to purchase.

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)

With all the posts I write about Samsung I think it’s time I got to play with one of their gadgets! But the different bits of the company keep producing great stuff for online marketing.

Here’s another one from the phone division for their new I8910 HD phone, a camera trick. I’ll have to admit, if I hadn’t been in a discussion with someone recently about something very similar it would have taken me time to guess what the trick was. What do you think it is?

They’re going to release a ‘making of’ video in a few weeks, explaining it. Meantime, join in the conjecture about how they did this.

April Fool videos top the video rankings last week – along with a lot of Lady Gaga. In comparison to all that ‘fun’, here’s a strong video starring Keira Knightly, directed by Joe Wright, for the charity Women’s Aid. It’s not a fun ad at all.

Next up, here’s a very silly Spanish(?) video for Doritos

Weirdly, the highest ranking video last week was for DHL, although considering it only has 3635 views, something tells me there’s a little wonkiness in the algorithm. I put it last in the last as it is pretty boring!

I’m getting mildly excited about the new Watchmen film, enough so that I’m contemplating buying the book to see what all the fuss is about, why everyone praises it. Which is a pretty interesting choice for me as I never find graphic novels that interesting as an input device. As befits a genre movie, they have a lot of online activity going on, much of it over at The New Frontiersman, a great source of images, films and text in the alternate world of the Watchmen. Many of the assets are available on other channels as well, such as YouTube, the New Frontiersman photostream at Flickr, the Twitter account and the Friendfeed account.

So you won’t miss anything, they’ve also got this cool embed TV player, that will bring you the latest from the ‘verse.

Another lovely little piece of content is the ‘widget’, which brings you the more ‘official’ stuff instead the extended reality content

What do I think

You couldn’t do a film like this without all of the extra stuff, given the target audience. However, I think what has been done is very good and is garnering a lot of online excitement as the quality is excellent. It’s not an add on as so many are, but fundamental to the story. As Adam from Rubber Republic says in his email to me:

…this really shows how online platforms shouldn’t merely promote a film but actually be a crucial of part of the narrative, extending and respecting the graphic novel’s rich backstory, offering the online audience added layers, access to the source materials and dimensions there are in the original ‘Watchmen’ masterpiece.

Exactly what should be done with this type of the campaign, something that is so often forgotten or just ignored. The web should not just be used to push the content that will end up on the screen but to add to it and be a piece of entertainment/storytelling in its own right.

Watch the above ad, then go take a look at the Computer Tan site. Have you done, have you seen the brilliant products they’re offering and did you take up their free offer? I so want the mobile version.

I hope you weren’t taken in, that you know that the whole product is a complete hoax? It’s actually part of a campaign from SKCin, the Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity.

Their aim is to raise the profile of skin cancer in the country, a disease that kills 5 people in the UK everyday. They’re looking to attract the attention of people who wouldn’t necessarily seek out information, moving away from the straight information driven sites to something a little more fun. The risk of skin cancer can be reduced by following sensible tanning guidelines, so it hits the right spot.

I like this, the video and site are both well done, hitting that slightly cheesy infomercial spot right in the centre. They’ve got online banners and a more traditional PR campaign as well. The reach out has been done well, evidenced by the number of sites where the video is appearing. It’s all been done for free by Rubber Republic and other agencies – a great set of ideas.

Breathing Places is a BBC programme ( I assume aimed at children) that focuses on wildlife and the environment and what you can do to understand them and help them. As part of the Christmas drive it’s produced this very surreal, creepy video. I say creepy, because that’s how i find it. I was spending too much time on the weird mouths than the actual message of the video. But I’m guessing not everyone thinks that as it’s doing a pretty good view rate on YouTube.