Friday 17 December 2010

The Gap’s Project Reindeer (by AKQA)


The perfect mix of creativity and emerging technology - The Gap’s Project Reindeer (by AKQA) equips 8 live reindeer with GPS, that participate in challenges over five days that users can vote on.  


Watch the PastureCam (updated every five minutes), Meet the Herd, or tweet a deal to win.

Whichever animal wins will trigger a unique in-store deal for the consumer. For example, Emma the reindeer won the "shortest distance contest" today, giving consumers 40% off their entire purchase if they say Emma40 at the register.

As the site says - 8 Reindeer / 8 Deals / 5 Days. Track the movements of our GPS-enabled reindeer as they decide our stylish in-store deals. Tweet to boost your favorite and check back daily to see which deal wins!  We think its great work.  Fun. On brand and the perfect mix of creativity and emerging technology.  What do you think? 


Thursday 16 December 2010

"The Next Level" – Nike Football's Branded Utility

While Nike had been gaining traction in soccer for years, it had been losing traction with advanced players, who tended to gravitate toward rivals such as Adidas as they moved into more-serious competition. The 2008 European Championships presented just the opportunity to change this perception.  Note:  This campaign is a few years old now, but would work as well today as the day it was launched.  Great ideas are great ideas.  Period.

What resulted was the kind of campaign (by 72andSunny) that proved that it doesn't take a big footprint to do great work that delivers results.  Moreover, this is also exactly what we mean when we talk about branded content and utility - brands creating something that is participatory and useful/valuable to their customers.

The centerpiece of the program was a striking, fast-paced two-minute film directed by Guy Richie, which shows one athlete's first-person view of taking his game to a higher and higher level (first person POV complete with pre-match vomiting and requests for autographs).

Taking the self improvement theme further, an online "boot camp" based on Nike's site provided video-based advanced training and skills regiments. The short film by Guy Ritchie featured superstars such as Cesc Fabregas, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo showing off dazzling skills, but positioned in the context of all the training it takes to get to the next level.

RESULTS
The effort drove 50 million unique visitors to Nike's site in six months, a total that doesn't include external websites such as YouTube, where one posting of Ritchie's film has drawn more than 4.2 million views. Print and outdoor executions focused on specific elite skills, and challenged readers as to whether they had them while also prominently referring them to the Nikefootball.com website.

Wednesday 15 December 2010

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [DEC10-GB_V20.0]


Both Coca-Cola and General Mills are leveraging already-trending hashtags in their promoted tweets to create better brand awareness on Twitter - ClickZ

Billboard (Magazine) is launching the "Social 50," a weekly chart that ranks artists' popularity based on social networking activity - Impact Lab

Duncan Hines is building branded content - releasing a new YouTube video each week as a part of their holiday mini web series promoting its new ‘Amazing Glazes’ line - MarketingDaily

Joining the ranks of Gatorade and other big brands, DELL is opening its new Social Media Listening Command Center in order to keep track of its thousands of daily internet mentions - Statesman Business Blog

McDonald's is keeping its multicultural fan base engaged by communicating with them in their preferred dialogue and social networking sites - Iconoculture

Automakers Mercedes-Benz and Audi are both launching separate social media contests for their fans to prove their loyalty - USA Today

Levi's discusses how they are turning online shoppers into Facebook friends and brand ambassadors - SmartBlog

Members of InterContinental Hotels Group's Priority Club ‘Rewards’ online community earn points by checking in at nearly all of IHG's 4,500 hotels worldwide - eMarketer

Scholastic share how they used social media to transform Scholastic Clubs customers into brand ambassadors - Vimeo