THE JAR

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

Spoof-vertising

I love parody ads. I think it’s hilarious when a sketch show rips into an ad campaign. It usually means there’s enough substance for people to grab onto, or people are willing to push the message to an extreme level where a brand can’t ethically go on its own.

I wonder if brands embrace or fear being made fun of. Like all things it depends on the context. I took a couple of minutes out of my day to do my very own ad spoof. Essentially it’s the same message as the current campaign…

Ryan

Digital and the real world

I sometimes wonder if a digital campaign that’s really amazing and cool will be remembered next week. I think this campaign for 5 gum by Tribal DDB in South Africa overcomes that challenge. 5 gum are all about the senses and this little piece of interaction gets you to create your own 3D light show that is projected onto a building online. 

But wait! After you create your masterpiece set to a banging electro track, you’re given information that you can view your light show in the real world, projected onto a building in either Johberg or Cape Town. What a creative way to involve the consumer but to also extend the legs of a campaign, taking something online and blowing it up (literally, like as in projecting it onto a building… o.k. that was super corny writing!). There are other promotions and sharing possibilities built in to further round out the concept.

And what exactly has a 3D light show got to do with chewing gum? Nothing. But what does this do for the 5 gum brand? Reinforce its brand positioning of being an immersive, sensory and intense experience. The competitions are over, but it’s still fun to have a go…

Ryan

http://www.5gum.co.za/

Inspirational international students

One of the highlights of attending the D&AD awards was getting to meet and mingle with other students. There were students from every continent and countries including South Africa, Singapore and Italy. Just goes to show that advertising even at a student level is global. It was inspirational to listen to students talk about their work and to see what the trends were for work that had been nominated. I was thinking that everything was going to be digital and highly involved for consumers with check-ins and the like. Although there was plenty of this stuff around, it was good to know that idea is still king and that brand communication exists in so many forms.
 
Here are some of the highlights.
 

 
 
This ambient work by Thomas Ilum and Zoe Sys Vogelius of Miami Ad School in Hamburg, was awarded in book in the category of ‘What else do you do’. I think it’s amazing and creatively gets straight to the point. What better way to demonstrate a brands single minded proposition than to use the truck as the media in its environment.
 
The brief for this next integrated campaign was to celebrate the inherent democracy of McDonalds. The winning work is by Anna Gladwin and Becky Fuller from the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom.

Again these students used the product as the campaign, communicating that a bun or tomato sauce sachet which have multiple names is essentially the same thing no matter where you consume it. Very clever and simple and would definitely connect with people globally.
 
This next brief was one of the most challenging and must have been so difficult that D&AD judges didn’t actually award anyone with a first place. The brief: Aviva have committed to get 500,000 children, from around the world, off the streets and back into education. Students were asked to create a campaign that will increase awareness of this promise by Aviva.

This print is taken from a larger campaign by five students from the Accademia di Commincazione in Italy. I think its a solid twist on something that is familiar. Its a good start at getting peoples attention. Without a first place winner its hard to know what elements of this particular campaign were needed to get it over the line and into first place.
 
This final campaign on display was one of my favourite pieces. The brief was in the category of branding. The brief was to create a brand for a major touring art gallery. The work is by Catherine Perrott form the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.

‘Temporarily Admitted’ is such a giving concept in the context of hospitals. Everyone knows that hospitals are a scary and often depressing institution. What a great use of space and environment. There are other elements to this campaign such as online and magazine to create awareness for this branding campaign, but really, you had me at temporarily admitted!
 
Here is a link to the D&AD website so you can check out all the work. It’s best if you register (100% free for students) so you can download the work beyond just thumbnails. 

http://www.dandad.org/awards/student/2011/categories

This has been another blog post about my experiences at the D&AD awards in London, there are more below if you’d like to catch up on the posts. I was able to attend through a student initiative grant through the student union RUSU. If you attend RMIT and are  involved in a project, you might be eligible for a grant. Click on the link below to get more information about RUSU.

http://www.su.rmit.edu.au/departments/student-initiative-grants

Ryan