THE JAR

Telstra bit my finger

Unless you live under a rock (or perhaps some really remote place) you’d know by now that Telstra have re-branded. It’s by far one of the biggest image overhauls as Telstra sheds its old corporate cocoon by giving birth to a pastel rainbow. Times they sure are a changin’ and Telstra have definitely done the right thing to make people reconsider the brand as an option.
 
The re-brand coincides with the introduction of the 4G network, positioning itself as having the fastest download time for your devices. I’ve been loving some of the copy based posters such as this little number (that someone thankfully had put on another blog). You really ‘get me’ Telstra, even if your viral reference is pretty old!

 

 
If you have The Age app on i-pad you’ll be getting sick of this i-Ad sliding over.

However, again Telstra are positioning themselves as a leader in customer care in the ‘always on’ telecommunications and online world. It seems to be working for them. I had a bit of a look through the facebook feed and there’s the usual mixed bag of venting but also some pretty positive responses. Also, the product suggestions don’t seem forced at all, or am I just desensitized to them?

Night of the Yellovator

When The Jar team were invited to an event last night by some random named Smasher Dan, we were given no more info than a cryptic Youtube clip of some moustached guy- in-a-shell-suit dropping phones off a building. I-phone vs Android? - I was convinced that an official brand war had finally been declared between I-phone and Android and I was going to this event to pick a side.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIFY-ymr0eE

Turns out we were at the launch of Yellovator for Yellow Pages. Yellovator is a mobile driven digital campaign that demonstrates the proposition that ‘Yellow pages is now on more devices than ever’. Clemenger BBDO have come up with an interactive game which uses your mobile phone as a controller. The game puts you on top of a building dropping phones to people below who need problems solved (that explains moustache guy). My favourite by far is the woman who needs her poodle clipped!

This might be a push to get a younger demographic to engage with the Yellow Pages brand and to think about using the Yellow Pages app instead of just Google searches. The game is a great entry point and you can play it online using your phone as the controller (it’s all over Nine Msn and Yahoo). I can’t think of another campaign in Australia that has used a phone like this. The campaign message ‘on more devices than ever’ is made all the more relevant by the use of the ‘mobile device’ as the controller.
 
For added coolness you can play this game on a couple of billboards around Melbourne until September 19th. We tried to hunt them down after the event to be the first to use it. We later found out their locations are Flinders Street Station, Southern Cross Station and South Yarra Station (there’s a link to a map with exact locations on the yellowvator.com website). I’m curious to see them in action.

Here’s a recap/casestudy (click the link below this picture) of the event last night where, yet again, I manage to prove that a) I can’t dance b) I am not gangsta and c) I’ll do pretty much anything for a freebie!. If life were the yellovator game and someone was dropping a phone down to me - I wonder what they would think my ‘problem’ is?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9NcJNoumrA

Transmedia what now?

Fox 8 have been heavily pushing SLIDE, their new (Skins inspired) teen series pretty hard. What’s been interesting to me is the use of transmedia story telling. Sounds jargony. Fox 8 have been using webisodes, an interactive graphic novel, trailers and blogs to create ‘the world of SLIDE’. The hope, of course, is to immerse teenagers in the lives of the characters with the expected outcome being some degree of social media buzz.

 Before the show had even started, a SLIDE forum was set up. The target audience were also encouraged to get to know the SLIDE 5 by moving through a series of previews and games. Before bits, after bits, behind the scenes and making of bits are all freely available. ‘Bits’ clearly suit mobile device consumption making this a clever strategy. The free app hosts all of the video content but also connects kids to i-tunes so that they can purchase the music played on the show (or the rather ‘the music the characters listen too’).

 The characters, it seems, are adept in social media. Each character has a twitter account and when I wrote this, Eva’s most recent tweet was twenty minutes earlier and directed to Scarlett (another Slide character). The tweet references a plot development and having not viewed the show makes no sense to me. One character even has a fashion tumblr blog and blogs as her character, Scarlett. This is risky business – will the audience accept this as authentic.

Ok, so this isn’t transmedia storytelling at all, this is transmedia marketing. Each of these extras are a push to get you to watch the key text . There are multiple entry points to the show and there are also some nice story extensions provided by graphic novels and these tweets. Yet, you wouldn’t really consume these without having come into contact with the show. I’m actually really excited by this 360 degree (sorry, more jargon) entertainment experience and can’t wait to see if audiences get ‘involved’ or ‘participate’.

That was just some of the SLIDE ‘transmedia marketing’, or shall we just call it advertising?!

Ryan

AWARD winning…

A bit of a belated congrats to one of our very own Junior Ad Review contributors for coming second, or as I prefer to say “1st runner up” at Award School last Thursday night.

Judging by this snap from the night I’d say that our Roh was the real winner…

Read the article on Campaign Brief and follow the success and controversy from the night…

http://www.campaignbrief.com/2011/08/award-school-celebrates-melbou-1.html#more