When sensors make cars feel (Vivid Light Festival)

At the Vivid Sydney, Festival of Light, Music and Ideas, the team of Soap Creative made cars feel. The installation was implemented into some cars with sensors and projections from inside the car to their windows in order to illustrate some artificial intelligence that made cars come to life, showing feelings as well as motivating people passing by to do something like hug them, and then responding. The campaign was supported by the hashtag #CarsThatFeel by Toyota. The whole idea reaching more than one million Australians who came to the Sydney Harbour to watch the interactive art show.

PS: I just wondered how cool the self-driving Google cars would have reacted on their first ride.

What do you think of the creative idea?

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The Social Media Guard by Coca-Cola

Just in case you spend too much time in social media or network, we found the right thing to keep you away from tweeting, writing status updates or just chatting on one of the messengers that are still “alive” after Facebook nicked WhatsApp. And this is also for those people that forget the world around them by staring into their smartphone where-ever they go.

Obviously, you might need a bit more space around you, your kids might wonder a bit what happened with you, or your cat might challenge the remote control then (as it is also worthwhile for TV addicted).

Just as they say in the video… “The Social Media Guard takes the “social” out of media and puts it back into your life.” What an invention from Coca-Cola and Memac Ogilvy…

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The WestJet Santa Surprise (Video)

The team of WestJet made a Christmas afford to bring some Toronto passengers a personalized gift at their destination. With an interesting technology approach, they made some wishes becomes reality…like miracles really do happen. I have to admit that the campaign massively reminded me of the former KLM Surprise campaign but still the marketing budget is wisely spend when you can make people share their happiness around Xmas. Do you like it?

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British Airways: LookUp Billboards With Flight Detection

The latest British Airways #LookUp billboards at Piccadilly Circus are claiming to be interactive and tell those passing by which BA flight plane number it is that is flying over our heads. The advertising creative gets triggered when a plane flying over the ClearChannel digital outdoor sites through the Heathrow flight path. It then tells people passing by real-time data of the plane’s destination and flight number. The funny thing: It also provides a weather feed that reads the cloud height to make sure people see the plane before the advert gets shown to them. Just imagine what you could also do with that idea in terms of promotions: Provide weather information on the take off destination, add some nice hotel advert or a restaurant recommendation with it, and so on. Cool campaign, right?

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From Content Marketing to Story Advertising?!

Managers around me get confused about the trend content marketing. What exactly is, and where does it start? A promoted tweet? A long branded status update? An advertorial? Promoted or sponsored content? A commercial that does story-telling? I have decided to discuss this a bit when I came across a great commercial yesterday as Pepsi turns the tables these days again.

But let’s start with another commercial that AUDI launched at Super Bowl this year called “Prom”. Watch it first, so you know what we are talking about. Cool commercial. Nice story. Well thought. No doubt…

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Many digital experts defined this in posts or in their presentations at marketing events as content marketing. Somehow, they might have been right as it is telling a story with a beginning, a turning point and an end. And it is not just a well-produced commercial highlighting a product. It is not focused not on pure selling or promoting it.

Former commercials from Volkswagen “Star Wars”, Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” or Blendtec’s ongoing series of product tests on Youtube already went towards the content marketing direction. In their line of mention, they were evolving from a traditional commercial into some form of viral advertising series. These clearly differed from the AUDI commercial as their story-telling was neither epic, nor f(r)iction.

Now, Pepsi comes up with some really clever advertising approach in my eyes. And the question I would like to raise is: Is this content marketing or story advertising?

Most of us have seen the movie “Blues Brothers”. In that film, Elwood must reunite the old band and go on another “Mission from God”. Based on that plot, the Pepsi MAX commercial series gets their food.

After introducing Uncle Drew in the first commercial, the second series starts with a conversation between Uncle Drew and basket ball legend Bill Russell (well played by Morgan Freeman) who sends him on a mission “Get out there and get your team together again!” He shall teach the young boys how to “get buckets” – the claim of the series.

First Commercial

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Second Commercial

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The third commercial just recently came out and takes this form of story advertising to another level. Uncle Drew visits an underground jazz club in downtown Chicago to convince his old point guard “Lights” to re-live their glory days on the court. Although his wife disagrees, he gets his friend to go out again. What happens thereafter? Just watch it…

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Obviously, players and spectators at the basketball courts in all three versions were told that they would be filmed for a “basketball documentary”. However, they enjoyed some special show of basketball magic by Kyrie Irving.

Spot On!
Story advertising could become a new form of content marketing. Pepsi MAX doesn’t even play a supporting actor in these films. It is a series around a brand, but the brand is not the star. It is there but just doing what it’s meant to do: Max taste – sugar-free. Pure enjoyment. By creating a series of commercials with main characters coming back, a real plot around a team reunion, and some really extraordinary testimonials doing what they can do best, consumers feel like being somewhere between the movies and the sports stadium. Illusions made real. They will be waiting for the next part to come out, and hope they become part of it. It’s branded content but not in a traditional way. It is like “24” or “Mad Men”, just in the commercials. It creates excitement for the next version, engages the audience to talk about basket ball (the sports that Pepsi MAX spends their marketing bucks “buckets” on), and will become viral. This is a new dimension. This is what I would call: Story Advertising.

PS: Maybe they could have left it open until the last version when the team is together again, how Pepsi did this human transition. But that is my view, how about yours…?

MINI: Engaging fans with digital billboard campaign

No, I am NOT normal! I am not a normal MINI fan. I am a brand advocate of MINI. And maybe that is the reason why I like and share this campaign from my favorite brand.

With their campaigns MINI in the UK celebrates the NOT NORMAL relationship of their friends, fans and followers. A relationship which reflects a deep connection to their cars. Not MINI conquered many, many digital billboards with professional spotters. Target: Engaging MINI fans while they are driving. Special cameras were set up and placed to reward MINI drivers. Isn’t this a cool idea from MINI?!

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How the viral video web world is emerging (Infographic)

Audio-video content and video content networks are on the rise. Not one company in the FMCG industry that did not try to start their own initiative around their brand or product in the last two years. From the hype of Social Media another hype was creaping up that many have not yet fully understood but think it might change the world of the advertising industry in the future: viral videos.

The advertising business hopes to make money through Youtube channels and the Google AdSense business. Google invested 100 Mio. US Dollars in the launch of new and original TV content for their Youtube platform, plus they built production studios in London, Los Angeles and Tokyo which might build up Google’s audio-video channel to become one of the main challengers for TV.

Next to the increase of vimeo traffic, more and more video advertising companies arise that produce content, media houses create content hubs as well as PR agencies. Obviously, social advertising companies like Unruly, hallimash or ebuzzing are doing their best to get bloggers implementing and writing about viral ads that their brand customers create. And in the end, the Social Star Awards will make all marketers happy when their virals have made it to become a “viral star”.

The following infographic by the Masters in Marketing Degrees offers some statistics on how the viral web video industry has emerged in the last few years.

The Economics of Going Viral

Cool Ambient Campaign – New York: Recalling 1993

This is a fantastic ambient campaign from the New Museum in NYC. It simply hijacked 5.000 pay phones all over New York City. Each of the phones is recalling a piece of history from 1993 when NYC was changing massively from a cultural and urban stand point. If you are in NYC, simply call 1-855-FOR-1993 from any NYC pay phone and just listen to what happened in 1993.

PS: Some more background of the campaign by Droga5 can be found here.

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TV Real-Time Translation: Closed Captioning and Google Translate

Although this translation vision still seems (and the hardware framework also looks) like early stages, it defines a translation reality that could become the future of Connected TVs. Easy Way Subtitles provides translation subtitles in any language for all people watching Brazilian TV through Closed Captioning technology combined with Google Translate via mobile devices. I cannot see this taking too long to become a real service via connected screens.

How about you…?

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Superbowl 2013 – 10 Funniest Commercials

YOu may not be the overall American Football fan. but as marketers, I would recommend taking the eight minutes and watch the commercials that make kind of the most noise on the web in terms of sharing. I am glad somebody, maybe CodByNight put them all together in one clip, and I did not have to search for all of them on YouTube.

Let us know which one you liked most…

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