The Clocks Project
I came across this fabulous outdoor ad campaign in the latest issue of Creative Review. It’s been created by BETC Euro RSCG Paris for Solidarite Sida Afrique (Aids Africa Solidarity Fund).
Every 12 hours, the 321 clock mechanisms (all 963 hands) align to form the following phrase: “Every 12 hours in Africa, over 2,000 people die of Aids because they have no access to care. Every minute counts. www.solidarite-sida.org.” For the rest of the time, passers-by are simply intrigued by the abstract pattern these moving hands create.
The aim of this unique project is to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by Aids sufferers in Africa, where approximately 1.6 million people die a year. Read a bit more about this project on The Inspiration Room Daily blog…
Skinny Blonde gets brave
Australia’s boutique beer market is booming, sales of the big brand stalwarts are slowing, and new advertising/marketing tactics are being tried by everyone. Enter Sydney-based Brothers Ink with Skinny Blonde and it’s pack of six attractive (you guessed it) skinny blondes.
Now raunchiness is nothing new to alcohol marketers who have used it successfully over the years, but the idea of a beer label featuring a skinny blonde that slowly strips as the beer gets drunk is pretty neat. Check out the website as well which attempts to mimic the bottle tricks.
It’s winter now, just wait till summer!
Blast from the BBC
BBC has launched an amazing digital and real-life experiential event called Blast which was conceived and built by Fallon London.
The project was developed in 2002 to encourage 13 to 19 year olds to develop their skills in art, dance, film, music, writing and games. Since then, it’s had many guises, with the latest being a truly amazing virtual-control meets real-life interaction experiment.
Visitors to the site can write stories that print out within the Blast Studio, paint the walls, add to a constantly evolving sculpture and control a huge light installation.
Fallon has said that the studio experiment will contribute to TV commercials and invited artists will also be encouraged to participate with the wider internet audience.
Check out the video below to see it being setup or visit their Flickr photostream for some great visuals.
I am uniQue by Foxtel
Lowe Sydney have recently launched a lovely new campaign for Foxtel called I am uniQue. The premise is pretty simple, create a 3D portrait of yourself that incorporates text, video and images from social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Logging-in is easy if you’ve got a Facebook account (using Connect) and the navigation for viewing the portraits once they’re uploaded is pretty neat.
One nice aspect to the campaign is that these portraits can be enhanced by others with them adding greater detail than the original creator may have given. Having not done this, I wonder what kind of moderation levels there are in place.
As each update is made, the users Wall on their Facebook page is also updated keeping people on on the platform up to date with how their 3D profile is progressing.
Australia’s Next Big Thing
Just saw this new Bigpond campaign by BWM titled “Australia’s Next big Thing“.
A clever concept sees us following the father and son team around Australia as they search for Australia’s favourite “Big Things” - think the Big Pineapple in Nambour or the Big Prawn in Ballina.
Try jumping online and creating one of your own or just checking out some of the ridiculous propositions from others. This is my version below… The Big Bacon!
Virgin - right music wrongs
So, the campaign is over, Vanilla Ice is innocent and Virgin wins another round of applause for clever ideas.
Drog5 Sydney, created the Virgin Mobile ‘Right Music Wrongs‘ campaign which was originally launched on YouTube. A video of Vanilla Ice apologising for his singing, baggy pants and bad hair appeared, with a followup site encouraging users to vote for not just him, but the likes of Milli Vanilli, Right Said Fred and David Hasselhoff.
Here’s the video:
I really liked this idea - Vanilla Ice plays his part beautifully (make sure you watch the video’s), the execution was great and the seeding seemed to work - it appeared everywhere for a while.
I do think they probably could have pushed the user interaction a little further, as simply voting for something like this is perhaps a little pedestrian.
Uzbeki training camp?
I came across this great little viral piece by Lowe Sydney on mUmBRELLA yesterday which promotes the Socceroos World Cup qualifier with Uzbekistan next month. A series of ‘leaked’ training videos purporting to be the Uzbeki team have appeared on YouTube with a previous version already recieving 186,000 views. I love the idea of using the opposition as the bait. Check it out.
Vote Earth
It’s been around a while now but I still love this campaign for Earth Hour 2009 by Leo Burnett Sydney. Leveraging the hype of the US Presidential election, the campaign urges us to ‘Vote Earth’ by using our light switches - simple, effective and topical. There’s the usual send-to-friend, share socially and show us your support by registering functionality, but the real winner is the concept - it’s great to see big ideas in practice.
The artwork has been done by Shepard Fairey who famously created the iconic ‘Hope’, ‘Change’ and ‘Progress’ posters of Barack Obama. He’s also known for his “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign and subsequent “Obey Giant” clothing range. He recently curated an issue of Lost At E Minor and collaborated with DJ Z-Trip on the Obama mixes - amazing live.
This could be the biggest election of our lives…
A light-injected love story - L.I.F.T.
Beautifully executed campaign for Pumas new ultra lightweight footwear - 173 gram Puma L.I.F.T shoes. Great visuals telling an interesting story.
Skittles - good for the brand or good for the marketers?
A week has passed since Skittles.com relaunched and debate is still raging. Has this been a triumph for the brand - clever harnessing of social media to deliver an authentic user-generated experience, or a triumph for the team behind the idea?
There’s no denying the idea is clever - use Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia as the foundation for the Skittles site. It doesn’t just integrate their feeds or API’s, but actually has them at the core of the offering.
It’s also a brave move, throwing open the doors with an inability to moderate commentary on the brand. I guess the point of view has been taken, that any brand chatter is better than no brand chatter.
At one point the “#skittles” tag was being so inundated with inappropriate material (abusive messages, porn links etc) that the company had to redirect traffic to its Facebook page.
A large part of the Twitter commentary taking place at present, is not from the supposedly ‘youth-oriented’ market discussing cherry vs orange flavour, but rather marketers discussing the value of the campaign.
So, did it work? The answer is probably. If getting your brand talked about is deemed working, then great. It certainly won’t work for all brands and caution should be shown.
Who did it really work for then? It has to be the marketers behind the idea. They’re the real winners here - a first for the idea and a case study for other brands to ponder.