Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Guitar Hero - Metallica

Last November, I posted a note talking about a viral for Guitar Hero made by Droga5. It was called "Bike Hero". At the same time we also had a buzz around Heidi Klum's ad for the same game:


The series of ads continued for a while featuring several star athletes and singers until last week, when we discovered this ad for the new Guitar Hero Metallica:


Guitar Hero is not a game anymore. It has become part of popular culture in several countries and the communication around it reflects this statement very well: everybody is playing it. The guys in the ad are College basketball coaches, well known in the US. The other guys, well I hope you know them, it would be worrying.


Monday, March 30, 2009

Honda - Let it Shine

This new ad for the Honda Prius is quite similar to Viral Factory's Sheep viral. This time, instead of sheep, we see cars arranged in a grid that use their headlights as pixels to create an animated sequence. The agency is Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. I personally prefer the Sheep viral.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Extreme Led Sheep Art - Samsung

Another great viral from the London based Viral Factory, a continuation of their work for Samsung. The video has been out for more than a week already but people doesn't seem to stop talking about it. I have met the guys a few times, particularly during my stay in London. When you see their office and have the chance to talk to them it is easy to understand how they get these crazy ideas. Despite their very serious 360 approach and strategic thinking, the team is very fun to be around and this is reflected in their projects.



Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Coke and Facebook

How Two Coke Fans Brought the Brand to Facebook Fame

Soda Has Most Popular Page After President, in Collaboration Between Creators and Marketer

Pop quiz: Who has the most popular page on Facebook? Barack Obama. Who's second? Coca-Cola. Yes, sugared water runs second only to the leader of the free world. Who was it again that said people don't want to be friends with brands?

Coca-Cola still remains perplexed over why, of the 253 pages on Facebook devoted to the beverage, Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski's page is the only one that has amassed millions of 'fans.'
Coca-Cola still remains perplexed over why, of the 253 pages on Facebook devoted to the beverage, Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski's page is the only one that has amassed millions of 'fans.'

The Coke page, which totals 3.3 million "fans," wasn't even created by Coca-Cola, but by a pair of Los Angelenos who just love Coke.

In late August 2008, aspiring actor Dusty Sorg was hunting for a Coca-Cola fan page he could join on Facebook. He didn't find one that seemed legitimate so he hunted down a high-resolution digital image of a Coke can, uploaded it to Facebook and made a page.

Popularity a mystery
And the page grew. And grew. There are 253 pages on Facebook devoted to Coca-Cola, but for some reason, Mr. Sorg's page -- which he runs with his friend Michael Jedrzejewski, a writer -- took off. The guys weren't sure why theirs ended up with millions of fans -- Facebook fan pages, at least last year, were relatively static, and the guys said they had been pretty inactive on it as they got busy during the winter holidays.

And most people can't actually do that much with branded page -- unless a brand is putting dollars behind it. Which Coke didn't.

Coca-Cola still remains perplexed over why Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski's page took off.

"We've discussed a dozen hypotheses about why it took off," said Michael Donnelly, director of worldwide interactive marketing at Coca-Cola Co. One theory the company keeps coming back to, he said, was the quality of the photo -- a crisp, high-resolution image of a Coke can covered with a thin layer of condensation. "For us as marketers, luckily it was exactly right -- the can we had in the marketplace. ... It grabs you." He said another theory is that Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski had very active, expressive "social graphs," i.e., their network of Facebook friends. But "we can't measure that," he said.

Facebook Page Statistics -- Top Pages

Name # of Fans Daily Growth Rate Weekly Growth Rate
1 Barack Obama 5,881,499 0.10% 1.45%
2 Coca-Cola 3,287,101 0.19% 2.93%
3 Nutells 3,052,502 0.18% 2.98%
4 Pizza 3,005,922 0.20% 3.52%
5 Cristiano Ronaldo 2,730,570 0.23% 3.93%
6 kinder surprise 2,581,651 0.18% 3.13%
7 Facebook 2,492,881 0.27% 4.22%
8 Windows Live Messenger 2,469,402 0.13% 2.75%
9 Sid 2,409,639 0.17% 3.25%
10 Boo 2,343,221 0.20% 3.95%

Problems with the page
As the page picked up fans, it also racked up spam and obscene comments -- issues that can plague many large pages on the social network. In November, Facebook decided to start enforcing a policy that says anyone creating a branded Facebook "page" must be authorized by or associated with the brand. Independent Facebook users could still create homages to brands, but they must live as a "group" or fan club.

"The problem was they had created a page, not a group," said Mr. Donnelly. Facebook made the decision to either close the page or let Coca-Cola take it over. Coca-Cola instead proposed an alternative: Let the creators keep the page but share it with a few of Coca-Cola's senior interactive folks.

"We threw a variable to Facebook and said we're interested, but we'd rather walk away from it than have it be perceived that we caused this action," Mr. Donnelly said.

Over the December holidays, he got in touch with Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski to explain to them that this was a Facebook-driven change, and asked if they'd want to join him in administering it.

A friendly approach
Now normally when a giant multinational company calls a consumer about something the consumer has created in that company's brand name or image, it's not a good sign. And initially Mr. Jedrzejewski said he was worried about it.

"Everyone has this vision that if something like this happens, the big company will send you off to Guantanamo," he said. "This was exactly the opposite."

Coke instead flew the guys down to Atlanta for a few days of meetings, a tour of the World of Coke museum and a visit to the company's legendary archives. It was a friendly, not heavy-handed approach, Mr. Jedrzejewski said.

"We talked openly about ideas, the future of the fan page," he said.

Coke's actions in sharing the page are indicative of not only the lessons the beverage giant has learned in the social-media space but also proof that big brands can tread gracefully in social media.

Coke's progress
The company has come a long way. Its initial reaction to a Diet Coke-Mentos viral video sensation in 2006 was that the stunt didn't fit the brand's personality -- after all, people are meant to drink Diet Coke, not use it to make geysers. Now the company appears to be more at ease with its consumers creating content on its behalf -- and it's largely eschewed a destination-centric philosophy as it has recognized that its expressive fans are everywhere.

Mr. Donnelly recounts how in the early days of the web, big marketers would define success by how much traffic came to their websites -- and they've only recently become comfortable with the fact they can deliver a message through gaming, rich video and other places across the web. The same thing happened in Second Life, when marketers busily built islands, or destinations, within the virtual world. And it's a natural tendency in social networking.

"This page is a fan page and happens to be the biggest one, but we recognize that when you do a search you see 253," he said. And when it comes to communities, they recognize they need to ask advice, counsel and permission before engaging. "We don't want to be a big brand there doing big-brand advertising."


Sunday, March 15, 2009

On Holidays!

Dear Readers,

I will be spending the next 10 days in Spain for some well needed holidays. I leave you with two nice ads from the last Superbowl. No interpretation needed here: I'll be back to the same agency. Just thought I'd show you some work-related ads, since there is a big chance you'll be at work when you read this.

See you in 10 days!


Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Vodafone - RC Office Grand Prix

Not the best viral I have seen but the fact that a lot of people is still debating over the credibility of a bluetooth controlled car means that it did its job.

There is no recognizable "WOW" effect, the one you usually find in good virals, but the subject of the video is quite appealing for a lot of people. So this means that even with a mediocre viral, if you manage to find your audience you will be successful.

I suppose the agency behind this is BBH. However, if you have more news, let me know about it.



Friday, March 6, 2009

Crisis on the web?

A very interesting article from Webkitchen. I personally haven't really noticed the effect of the crisis on Web advertising. I think the crisis is just increasing the speed of the transition towards digital advertising.

"According to the Union of Belgian Advertisers and researchers Profact [as published on Digimedia (dutch)], there is no crisis on the Internet. According to this report, 90% of all advertisers said the crisis does impact the way they work and over 80% reduced their budgets by 10 to 20%.

Where it gets interesting, is where they are spending their money. 55% of all advertisers said they will spend less money on tv, newspaper, magazine, movie theater, radio and street ads. However, 37% of them said they are investing more in Internet advertising.

On top of that, I also see a lot of interactive agencies looking to hire extra Flash designers and developers. This week alone, I saw at least 6 job openings across Europe on Twitter. I also received a couple of emails from agencies looking for people.

While talking to agencies at both FITC and FlashCamp UK last week, I found that this seems to be a common trend. Most of the people I talked to still had plenty of work but are expecting a cutback in marketing projects. Most of the people I talked to are planing on filling any gaps with research (looking into mobile development came up frequently) and diversifying their skill set.

Now, I may be completely wrong, but to me it sounds as if “the Internet” is doing ok at the moment. I’m sure there have been some cutbacks here and there already but the bigger agencies seem to be doing alright."

Feel free to give your opinion by posting a comment.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Merci la galette - St Michel



Very nice website by the French agency Australie for St Michel's galette (Typical French biscuit). The idea was to launch a competition inviting users to create a film around a St Michel-made character. The buzz around the website became quite big in France and the films are also very fun to watch (if you understand French though).

Click here for the website

and here is one of the films



Monday, March 2, 2009

BlackBerry Bullet

Direct hit to Apple's Iphone here with this ad from Guava NYC. This ad talks about the superiority of Blackberry's first touch-screen ever. However, how smart is the tag line in the end of the ad "nothing can touch it" when advertising for a touch-screen phone.






Update: Apple's answer