THE JAR

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

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

Super cool e-commerce

When I think of ‘Japanese street wear’ I now think of UNIQLO. This is such an amazing e-commerce site. The people are real and the before and after is interesting to watch. You can just let the slide show roll past, but if you move your mouse over the individual squares, they float out. I won’t spoil any more of the engagement because you should click through and experience both the art direction and layout for yourself. I wish knew what was in those little speech bubbles!

http://www.uniqlo.com/jp/supercoolbiz/#

Click on the above link and check it out, Ryan.