Pushing the Ad industry to invest in Passion and Ideas

In the new advertising and marketing economy, it’s a shame to let all that talent and creativity to be directed solely by the client.  In this panel, we’ll hear three agencies discuss how they’re generating their own IP, and with it, new revenue sources, operating models, and a portfolio of innovative work to expand their expertise and client offerings.  The video's below are from a panel discussion at Creativity and Technology Conference (CaT) in NYC featuring Ed Brojerdi, Chief CD, Kirshenbaum, Bond, Senecal + Partners, Michael Lebowitz, Founder and CEO, Big Spaceship, and Chris Vance, Managing Director, ZAG NY, BBH Labs.  Note: The discussion is moderated by Ad Age’s Kunur Patel. 

The 'Atavist' (and the future of original nonfiction and narrative journalism)

Atavist is a term meaning “the reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence”.  In this case, we’re talking about journalism longer than typical magazine articles but shorter than books.  The Atavist website therefore publishes original nonfiction and narrative journalism that are longer than typical magazine articles but shorter than books.  Articles are written by experienced reporters and authors and optimized digitally for multiple platforms.  Each story is layered and embedded with supplementary video, audiobooks, information and a host of other features.  

Evan Ratliff is the Editor and Co-founder of “The Atavist” website.  His presentation (attached in two video's below) discusses the impetus for starting the “The Atavist” and the current long-form writing platform. An award-winning journalist and contributing editor at Wired, Evan's writing appears in The New Yorker, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic, and many other notables - as well as co-authoring “Safe: the Race to Protect Ourselves in a newly dangerous world.”  

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♔ SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [GB_V32.0]

Delta Air Lines is letting fans check in and share their flight information with friends by using their new Facebook application- OSM 

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners were tasked with de-dramatizing the somewhat embarrassing, if not plain awkward, moment when "rubber protection" needs to be discussed - Video 

Cadillac is teaming up with Time Warner and CNN to introduce "Business Unusual" -- a social media campaign centered around documentary-style web video’s that feature stories from successful entrepreneurs- Gear Diary  

David Droga (of Droga5 acclaim) was challenged by Esquire to come up with a campaign that would compel consumers to pay for something they would normally get free. Droga approached UNICEF with the Unicef Tap Project - More   

GE, FedEx, and Softlayer all used creative B2B marketing promotions at SXSW that included social media components to get the word out to fans not present at the event - Social Media B2B 

Coke and the biggest experiment in rock history has Maroon 5 opening up their studio for a 24h live streaming event on Facebook to crowdsource, concept, write, record and produce a new song in just 24 hours. Check out the website or video. 

British Airways latest promotion let’s you ask questions (via SMS) to find out more details about an island - if you guess the location, you could win a 7-night stay on the Caribbean island - Video 

NCAA's new NCAA Vault streams every moment of the past decade's March Madness basketball tournaments. Viewers can freeze a specific play from any game and share the links with friends on Facebook and Twitter- Marketwire 

Do you ever pitch iPad or iPhone Apps to Clients? If so and you need a presentation prototype -check out Rethink Communications helpful (free) Realizer App

Every Friday this spring, The Home Depot is offering their fans Black Friday-type deals on their Facebook page in addition to the in-store sales events- The Home Depot 

Mitchum's 'The Hardest Working _____ in America' Campaign engaged consumers in a genuine conversation and gave them a compelling reason to interact with the brand (especially up against the likes of Old Spice) - More 

Planters' Mr. Peanut is hosting his own "Ultimate NCAA Bracket Challenge" on Facebook where fans can exchange comments with the brand's iconic character- Facebook 

Old Navy is featuring the two top artists on their Facebook page from their BreakoutBand competition that let fans re-record and remix the retailer's latest commercial jingles- BreakoutBand 

Nearfield.org built a rod containing 80 LEDs with a device that measures WiFi signal strength -and with the long exposure photos captured the mapped signal strength- More

The Power of Transmedia Storytelling - telling stories across multiple platforms and formats – Article and Video  

Coca-Cola, Unilever, The Hershey Company, and AT&T are all using social media during March Madness to keep customers engaged- USA TODAY 

  

Great advertising should really be fun, engaging and reinforce a value-proposition indirectly (without the consumer being acutely aware). Tribal DDB London nails it with this VW website - True Life Costs Website 

As a part of their new consumer engagement campaign, Keds is launching a road tour shoe design contest and encouraging fans to tweet about their participation using the hashtag #KedsHDYD- DMNews 

Kellogg’s shares how they locked down their global social listening strategy- Vimeo 

YouTube's 2010 Top Ten: The Year in Review - Goodbuzz 

Nokia & Seeper combined a high-powered projection installation with dynamic face tracking, custom optical flow and a completely custom and crazy thing called arrow chess - bringing people right into the projection - Video 

Social Media’s Inconvenient Truth  - Understanding what consumers truly value on social media platforms is a critical first step toward building any Social strategy - More 

IFC's ‘Portlandia’ visits (and spoofs) Wieden + Kennedy HQ – Video 

Brands as Social ‘Movements’ – the MINI ‘Space’ Story 

Uniqlo’s Lucky Counter Campaign - The More Tweets, The Lower The Price- More 

Cadbury Creme Egg "Splat the egg" interactive outdoor game makes waiting for a bus much less boring – Outdoor

W+K and Nokia Create Virtual Paint You Can Splatter and Throw - More

NIKE (W+K) launch a new multi-sport brand campaign around the theme "Boom” - celebrating the big hits - More

DIESEL SNEAKERS global campaign features an ass-themed beat box game and a catalog of the collection - More

Fits.Me's Shape-Shifting Robot Lets You Try On Clothes remotely -More

Creative Facebook ‘Places’ Marketing Campaigns – Part 1 and Part 2

Stealthiest recruitment campaign yet? The rockstar’s at Jung von Matt ambush Facebook ‘Places’ - More

Qualcomm’s ‘Catch the Dragon’ Augmented Reality (AR) Experiential Mobile Promo at the Mobile World Congress - Video

Creative’s looking for some cool ideas using RFID-reading USB peripherals? More

♔ YouTube 2010 | The Year in Review

YouTube dovetails in into the zeitgeist of the collective content generation and represents a great opportunity to reach consumers who are searching for information about your brand and related topics. 

It’s an extremely powerful direct marketing tool, provided that it is integrated with the website and considered an integral part of your marketing mix.  The platform extends viewers the widest reach of video content, indexes content extremely well with Search Engines (especially as YouTube’s owned by Google), and thereby ensures content to be as viral as possible.  Moreover, YouTube allows for content to be easily be tagged and tied to trending topics, builds community, allows a feedback mechanism, detailed analytics, unparalleled copyright protection, and a dedicated cross-platform 24x7 channel.

Today, YouTube even extends brands an opportunity for a new revenue stream.  Your brand can share in the revenue generated when people watch your video content.  You can even rent pay-per-view streaming videos directly to viewers allowing for very specific content to be bundled and repackaged.  

Video Content

Not surprisingly, YouTube’s most viewed content in 2010 is as viral as it is topical. YouTube’s trending topics are much like those found on Twitter or broader tools like Google Trends (see Dashboard).  The YouTube Trends feature is still not as prominent as it should be but expect to see it more tightly integrated in YouTube’s design in the not too distant future. 


It’s true.  We’re a fickle bunch.  It’s hard sometimes to figure out why things that have no appeal to us, have such incredible appeal to others.  Such is the mystery of life and the double Rainbow.  While there’s no one secret to getting millions of views, YouTube’s platform does at least extend the opportunity to connect media to people in real time. This modern newsreel becomes both the thread of what is happening, and a reminder of what happened.  With that in mind, here follows the most viewed content of 2010 - first in a YouTube Highlight Reel then individually.  Please note that the numbers as indicated are based upon today versus Dec.31^st, 2010.

2010 YOUTUBE HIGHLIGHT REEL

TOP TEN - NUMBER 1 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 2 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 3 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 4 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 5 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 6 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 7 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 8 MOST VIEWED

TOP TEN - NUMBER 9 MOST VIEWED *KEEP IN MIND THE NUMBER OF VIEWS IS FROM TODAY VERSUS DEC.31ST, 2010.

TOP TEN - NUMBER 10 MOST VIEWED

♔ LOGORAMA [Full Version]

Logorama is a 16-minute animated film written and directed by H5/ François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain, and produced by Autour de Minuit. The film depicts events in a stylized Los Angeles, and is told entirely through the use of more than 2,500 contemporary and historical logos and mascots. 

The film won the Prix Kodak at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.


Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

♔ SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [GB_V31.0]

Corning's "A Day Made of Glass" video has become the most-watched corporate video of all time with over 8 million views on YouTube. When we imagined the future of digital displays, we were expecting holograms (or at least stuff we wouldn't bang into).  Just sayin’ - MediaPost 

Hot Wheels Secret Race Battle (by Muse Amsterdam) showcases groundbreaking 3D projection technology at Customs House in Sydney, Australia - Video 

MillerCoors' discuss how they teamed up with Bicardi to film a flash-mob in Vegas for their new YouTube promotion. - PROMO Magazine 

MIT Media Lab's Junkyard Jumbotron project, which allows laptops or phones in close proximity to be ganged together to form a large display - Video 

SXSWi - Pepsi's Shiv Singh on Geo-Social – The head of digital talks about Foursquare,  geo-social initiatives, and finding synergies between multiple platforms -Video 

Gap Invites Shoppers To Name Their Price and appears to have found a better way to engage deal-hungry consumers (without forfeiting 50% of post-sale profits to the likes of Groupon) - More 

The clever pre-launch campaign for the MINI COUNTRYMAN (by Profero UK) is experiential marketing bliss. Equal parts creative, technology and buzz – Video or Info 

Lufthansa's 'MySkyStatus' Campaign (by Profero NY) lets you send precise departure, altitude, location and arrival updates automatically to your Facebook and Twitter pages (while in the air) - Video 

'Guldlådan' - (Swedish Post's) largest DM Competition.  This clever campaign by Åkestam Holst (Stockholm) sent extremely personal mail to Swedish creatives to get them engaged - Video 

Paramount Pictures’ share their decision to first launch the new SUPER 8 movie trailer on Twitter and Facebook. - TechnologyQW 

Doritos Late Night presents Professor Green - an amazing interactive 360° video experience compliments of Doritos 'Late Night' - available in 2D or 3D - Video 

To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Starbucks awarded lucky customers with $40 gift cards when they checked-in on Foursquare and unlocked a Tribute Badge. - OSM 

Sony Ericsson is turning the Miami Open into the first ever interactive Foursquare sporting event by letting fans who check-in and become the Mayor of a specific court toss the coin before each match. BrandRepublic

Honda is launching "Made in Britian" -- a social media campaign that encourages fans to share their crafting skills with others on Facebook for a chance to win a large grant. - Marketing Magazine 

The Lexus Dark Ride - CT200h Launch was the FWA’s People's Choice Award winner for 2010 (by Stink Digital) and features an awesome, immersive and interactive experience where you have to get the car to LA in one piece - Website 

A world first, Volkswagen (Norway) lets you "test-drive" a car on the road (in the print ad) by hovering your iPhone over it - Video 

With every Facebook Places check-in at select airport terminals, JetBlue Airways is giving fans special offers, TruBlue points, and exclusive badges. - Facebook 

Imagine getting your NHL Team's fans to monitor social media channels (for free)? The NHL's New Jersey Devils do just that using Twitter, Facebook And Blogs- More 

Saab is letting their Facebook fans create and star in their very own Saab web banners. - Scribbal 

Saving 'Papa Piñata's' Marriage Campaign (by Åkestam Holst (Stockholm) for Swedish Post) shows there's much more to post then letters. Like saving marriages - Video 

Nissan's Cube Augmented Reality (AR) Brochure (by Total Immersion) wows at the L.A. Auto Show - Video 

American Express is debuting a new interactive tool at SXSW that links customers' American Express cards to their Foursquare accounts to receive deals and offers from over 50 participating vendors. - MyBankTracker 

SocialMedia.org shares recommendations on how to stay safe and ethical in social media. - Vimeo 

Gran Turismo 5 clever Web Banner is the first web-banner ever to employ Google Street view into creative - Video 

The Lynx Angels impressive Augmented Reality (AR) Experience lets people at the airport interact directly with the Lynx angels via a digital video billboard – Video 

An index of the world’s most social brands by (London based) Social agency Headstream SOCIAL BRANDS 100 REPORT 

Diesel "Island" Campaign’s microsite showcases the island’s history, the national anthem, island street view, and an island community by lodging new laws, and voting out things you don’t want. To become a resident, simply log-in with Facebook - Website 

How do you demonstrate the value of a product innovation to those who don't own the product? Here's an impressive example by Jung von Matt Stockholm/Elbe for Mercedes - that lets drivers literally see through walls. - Video 

Here's some interesting statistics on our unholy obsession with Facebook - like the fact that 57% of us talk to people more online than we do in real life. What do you think? - Stats 

Nike Football's 'Team Edition' for iPad extends (free) training app gives Coaches the Drills, Video’s, Tips, and Benchmark Analysis tools to improve every aspect of their team’s game – APP 

Lipton Ice Tea's Positive Projects (Sydney) aims to spread a bit of green positivity into Australia's urban spaces. More info  or Video 

‘Stefan the Swopper’ Campaign (Swedish Post) -An utterly ridiculous Swedish campaign by Åkestam Holst- until you look at the numbers and ROI - Video 

A few years old now but the "How Hetero are You?" Campaign (for Swedish Pride) won a Webby Award and became the world's most shared link on Twitter- Video 

The Sleepless at 'Playground' Campaign tested just how long four hikers could stay awake? They even added incentives and biometrics and tracked them online - Video 

Google’s 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web – likely old-hat for many of you, however, it may be a great piece to share with selected clients - eBook 

Doritos (Canada) released an unnamed flavor and invited fans to guess the identity, and create their own advertisement for the new Doritos variant – More