 |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
 elcome to AdCritic.com's new interactive
section, which will be devoted to showcasing the best creative
in the rapidly evolving world of online advertising. Check
here often for the latest internet campaigns — including
promotional websites, rich media executions, viral efforts and
more.
 Comments
and submissions are welcome. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Showing: 1 - 15
|
NEC, DoubleYou
Win Cyber Grand Prix Honors [6.23.04]
 |
 |
.gif) |
| NEC's "Ecotonoha
Project" |
|
| Today
at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, the Cyber
jury awarded two Grand Prix awards to a Japanese web site and
a Spanish online campaign that jurors said were vastly
different in stylistic and technical terms but similarly
focused on strong ideas. Japan's NEC captured its Grand Prix
with a site for the NEC "Ecotonoha Project" website, designed
by Yugo Nakamura, which was also named Best of Show at the One
Show Interactive awards earlier this year.
DoubleYou/Barcelona, meanwhile, won for its San Silvestre
Vallecane integrated interactive campaign for Nike, in which
the bear from Madrid's celebrated statue of a bear and a
Madroño tree escapes and becomes motivation for a runner. "We
were trying to come up with two winners that were different
but represented the best of what we think is happening in our
field," said jury chair, R/GA CEO and chief creative officer,
Robert Greenberg.
U.S. work was prominent among the 102 Gold, Silver and
Bronze awards, with American work capturing a total of 22
Lions, including eight Golds. Among the Gold-winning efforts
were Crispin Porter + Bogusky's wildly popular "Subservient
Chicken" site, which many had pegged for the top honor this
year. The site also claimed a Bronze Lion. Crispin was also
recognized for its work on Virgin Atlantic Airways, which was
awarded a Gold prize for online advertising. Goodby
Silverstein & Partners won Gold for its comically simple
series of "Rejected Ad" online spots for Budweiser. Goodby
also won Gold for the online ad "Bouquet" for HP and a Silver
award for a campaign for Discover Card. San Francisco's
Venables Bell & Partners won Gold for its Napster campaign
as well as a single Gold for the "It's Coming Back" execution
for Napster. Greenberg's R/GA was cited for two Gold Lions --
for the Nike Lab Holiday 03 and Nike ID sites. The shop also
won two Bronze Lions in the website category -- for Nike Lab
Spring 04 and Nike Lab Comic Book -- and a bronze for the
"Lebron/Vince Carter" internet campaign.
Judges emphasized the
differences between the two Grand Prix choices but said both
of them stood out for primacy of the idea. The NEC site
supports the tech company's Ecotonoha environmental
initiative, through which NEC plants trees on Australia's
Kangaroo Island. Visitors to the site may add leaves, in the
form of comments, to a virtual tree, and NEC plants a tree for
every 100 leaves added. Juror Sasha Kurtz of Dotglu noted that
while the NEC site was "explosive in its use of technology,'
the Nike site was "technologically small," but equally
effective. The Nike campaign features banner ads and a website that employ basic Flash
animation and a race between man and bear to convey a
compelling idea about running. DoubleYou's Nike effort was
"exciting, visually and emotionally," said juror Kevin Flatt
of Fallon. "It rewarded on numerous levels. You can put it
against any campaign out there -- TV, online, print,
whatever." The winning NEC site represented "beautiful visual
implementation but also the building of a community," said
Greenberg, and the Nike San Silvestre site, had an effective
simplicity and an emotionality that he said had been missing
from the category up to a only a few years ago. -Teressa
Iezzi 
R/GA's Greenberg Talks about Chairing
Cannes' Cyber Jury [6.21.04]
 |
| Greenberg
| The International Advertising
Festival in Cannes started recognizing interactive work with
the launch of the Cyber Lions in 1998, which this year's Cyber
jury president -- R/GA CEO/Chairman/CCO Robert Greenberg --
says was probably a good time to start. "It's interesting to
look back and understand that the (interactive) industry is
probably only ten years old," he says, citing 1995 as its
effective starting point. "No matter how one measures it, it's
not a very old one." In its early days, Greenberg says, "the
interactive business was treated not just as a stepchild but
as the last five minutes of a probably over-length
presentation, as what they call presentation candy. So going
back to '98, forgetting about the better, more relevant and
measurable work that was starting to appear, I think that
within the advertising business, it was still thought of as a
third-rate category. But in the last couple of years it has
assumed a higher profile and greater importance to clients and
agencies. I think that everyone from the top down -- clients
and agencies -- takes it very seriously now, so the category
is gaining a lot of momentum and relevance." In fact, Cyber
entries were up nearly 25 percent this year.
As jury president, Greenberg says he's keeping an eye out
for work that advances the industry and exploits interactive's
particular characteristics. "I think there are viral aspects,
there are cultural aspects, and there are community aspects to
cyber that are all very important to look for, and then
there's technology -- is it pushing the technology in a new
way?" He is looking especially to automotive and retail
commerce as categories ripe for innovation. "I think that
automotive is interesting, I think that they have found that
the interactive aspect of the purchase path for a car has
become so important that there is a huge amount of competition
going on online for better sites. In retail commerce,
technically speaking it's become very complex because of the
back-end integration and the purchase path and the upsell and
the tie-in to real data -- it's going to be an interesting
one." He's also looking to viral and mobile advertising and,
particularly, films made for the Internet, like Nike's 'Art of Speed' site, which R/GA had a hand
in designing. "It fits into the model I've been talking about
for a long time, which is '2 minutes x 120 minutes wide,'
which just means there will be more films and games and demos
-- activities that will be experiential. I think there may be
a category down the line that will just be 'Best Experience.'
That's where it's leading to -- where you can create something
where your particularly segmented audience would spend a lot
of time with your brand in an experiential way." As for this
year's Cyber Grand Prix, Greenberg says he is anticipating
"serious discussion among the judges to try to figure out what
a Grand Prix winner is."
"I think it has to be more than it has been, generally
speaking, in the past," he says. "It has to have something
very innovative about it -- it has to be creatively really
strong. Also I think, even without having metrics to guide
you, you have to look at what you feel the success of it might
have been." Greenberg also points to the recently established
Titanium Award as another area of interest. "I'm not aware of
anything that is as groundbreaking as BMW Films was the last
time I was a judge," he says, referring to 2002, when he sat
on the Cyber jury that awarded a Grand Prix to the
hard-to-classify BMW campaign. "But I hope that there might be
something like that."
The winners of this year's Cyber Lions will be announced on
Wednesday in Cannes. -Teressa Iezzi
Tequila/L.A. Pushes the Superstitial for
PS2's Syphon Filter [6.14.04]
 |
.gif) |
|
| PS2 meets Mission
Impossible |
| In a
new online campaign for the PS2 title Syphon Filter,
Tequila/L.A. -- the marketing services division of
TBWA/Chiat/Day -- uses Unicast's superstitial format to
deliver a personal message to gamers. While the 2MB format's
most obvious application is delivering :30 spots online,
Tequila ACDs Steven Amato and Shervin Samari took it in
another direction by creating a Mission
Impossible-style interactive message introducing gamers to
the plot and features of the PlayStation 2 game.
"When Unicast came to us, they were really tring to get
agencies to put their commercials online," Samari explains.
"But Steven and I have the philosophy that there's no use in
putting your TV commercials online. This was a way of using
video, but not just slapping the 30-second spot online -- and
really making it interactive."
Like the game's broadcast spots, the superstitial is presented as a
rogue signal relaying vital intelligence to the user,
including a summary of the game's back-story and a preview of
its weaponry. Original footage, including some of a command
center operative whi briefs the user on the mission, was shot
by Tool's Erich Joiner, who also directed the TV campaign. "We
immediately saw the potential of what we could do when we
found out that 2MB formats were now available to us," says
Tequila's Amato. "It's definitely pushing the boundaries of
what the superstitial is."
Deutsch, Mitsubishi Continue "See What
Happens" Campaign [6.7.04]
Last
week, Deutsch/L.A. debuted the second installment in its
integrated "See What Happens" campaign for Mitsubishi. Like
the first installment, which aired during the Super Bowl and
prompted viewers to visit www.SeeWhatHappens.com to see the
end of the spot, "Chasm" ends in a cliffhanger -- in this
case, literally. In the commercial, directed by Bob
Industries' Jason Smith, we see the Mitsubishi Galant GTS
going head to head with the Honda Accord EX in a game of
chicken, as both cars race to the edge of an unfinished bridge
to the manic Devo track "Uncontrollable Urge." Again, viewers
are driven to the campaign's web component to see what happens
to the Accord.
"The idea is to get the commercials to get people to the
information [on the website]," says Deutsch/L.A. ACD Vinny
Picardi. "You can see the finish of the spot, but more
importantly you can find out everything you could possibly
want to know about the Galant. The website is chock-full of
information for anyone who would want to buy a Mitsubishi."
Since launching during the Super Bowl in early February, the
site -- which features other test footage and specs -- has
logged 4 million unique visitors, a high number of which have
been qualified buyers, according to Picardi. "It was
unprecedented in our experience and in the industry's
experience as well," he says. As for the design of the site,
Josh Rose -- creative director at iDeutsch/L.A. -- says the
objective was "to get out of the way of the concept."
"We know that over 80 percent of people who want to buy a
car go online, and we just want to help them get to the dealer
as soon as possible," he says. "This has been a true
collaboration between the client and the agency, as well as a
true integration of media within the agency. I think there are
very few places that can think like that."
Behind MINI 's "Men of Metal"
[5.28.04]
If
you wanted to tell a fanciful story of renegade robots roaming
around Oxford, England, how would you convince people that the
story might be true? By making it show up in internet
searches, of course, which is exactly what Crispin Porter +
Bogusky did as a run up to the release of an advertising
insert for MINI called "Men of Metal," which claims to be an
excerpt from a book detailing various such robot sightings.
Months before "Men of Metal" appeared in magazines like
Rolling Stone and Esquire, CP+B was building the
groundwork for the moment when a reader might turn to the
internet to check out the story. The agency launched five
sites that seem to corroborate -- and take readers deeper into
-- the mysterious sightings. The main site details the research of Colin
Mayhew, a rogue MINI engineer (portrayed by the father of CP+B
producer Rupert Samuel) who is trying to build a robot out of
a MINI Cooper. The four other sites backup other parts of "Men
of Metal" by providing links to the book's publisher, its
author, a personal page apparently set up by Mayhew, and a
seemingly independent page set up to track robot sightings. In
building this elaborate fiction, CP+B collaborated with
interactive company Beam, L.A. production and effects house
ZOIC Studios -- which created the robot design and produced
the demonstration footage that appears on the main site -- and
robotics expert Ronny Kubat, who wrote the technical copy
describing the MINI-turned-robot.
"With the MINI in general, we're driven to think in so many
different ways," says CP+B art director Dave Swartz. "People
are on their computers all the time and the viral thing is so
powerful now. It just spreads so fast if you have something
sticky."
The MINI effort spread very fast, even beating "Men of
Metal" to print. After getting just 400 hits in the first
week, the site was mentioned on the popular website
Slashdot.com, and the hoax took off. According to Swartz, even
the appearance of the insert itself hasn't slowed it down, and
Mayhew's faux website still receives emails from curious
readers. "The people who write to Colin really relate to the
fact that he's this lone guy," Swartz says, speculating on
what makes the campaign compelling. "Everybody wants to
believe that something like this can exist."
HP in the City [5.26.04]
Goodby, Silverstein &
Partners recently demonstrated its online prowess with an
armful of Pencils at the One Show Interactive awards, but
here's a more recent example -- an online companion to a
Hewlett-Packard enterprise spot that shows buildings growing
and changing around the modern businessman.
Similarly, the cityscape in this rich media banner --
created by The Barbarian Group in Boston -- morphs around the
cursor, punctuated by an eruption of HP's signature
arrows.
MINI's Wild Ride [5.19.04]
 |
|
|
| MINI: Obliterate this
website. |
| Although this execution has
all the attitude of Crispin Porter + Bogusky's U.S. work for
MINI, this truly interactive effort comes courtesy of London
agency WCRS.
After a truck pulls up alongside the underlying webpage,
users are invited to motor an animated MINI over the surface
of a parody of the MSN homepage, grinding it up with
treadmarks and broken links. At the end, the game rates your
level of destruction and refers you to MINI's U.K. website.
Honda, Sega, Adidas Honored at One
Show [5.17.04]
Honda's "Cog" spot from
Wieden + Kennedy/London collected yet another honor Friday at
the One Show, where the commercial was named Best of Show.
Dating back to last year, the commercial has won a Gold Lion
and the Best of Show honor at the Andy Awards.
Two top awards were also presented for Exceptional
Innovation in Marketing -- an honor sponsored by Yahoo! One
went to Wieden + Kennedy/New York for its "Beta-7" blog
campaign for Sega's NFL ESPN Football, which has been the most
buzzed about -- and most honored -- online campaign of the
awards season. The other went to TBWA/Japan and 180 Amsterdam
for the Adidas billboard "Vertical Football," which featured
actual soccer players -- suspended by cables -- dueling it out
high above the streets.
TBWA was the winningest network of the night with 13
Pencils, followed by BBDO and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, each
with 12 Pencils. CP+B/Miami was by far the most honored single
office of the night with 11 Pencils: 4 Golds, 4 Silvers and 3
Bronzes.
HP Lets Users Paint Like Pollock
[5.17.04]
 |
|
|
| HP: Pollock without the
mess. |
| As
its name suggests, HP's "Pollockizer" gives users a chance to
create a "Jackson Pollack masterpiece (without the associated
alcholism and untimely death)."
Created by the London office of Modem Media, the drop-down
element reveals a blank canvas, a pallet of eight colors and a
set of Illustrator-like tools for throwing paint around. Not
only can users post their exercises in digital abstract
expressionism to a virtual gallery for the world to see, the
whole thing is presented as a sort of surly challenge with the
line: "Artistic? Go on, prove it."
Goodby, Nike Shine at One Show
Interactive Awards [5.14.04]
| |
|
|
| NEC's "Ecotonoha
Project" |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Discover: Flash
effects |
|
| Goodby, Silverstein &
Partners led the pencil count Wednesday night at the One Show
Interactive awards -- the midpoint of One Show week, which
culminates tonight with the One Show awards dinner. Goodby was
awarded five pencils -- a Gold, three Silvers and a Bronze --
for banner ads and "beyond the banner" work for clients
Discover Card, Hewlett-Packard and Specialized bicycles.
The Best of Show award, however, went to technology company
NEC's in-house "Ecotonoha Project," a Zen-like interactive
website that invites users to add messages to the branches of
virtual trees, which -- in turn -- determine how many trees
NEC will plant on Australia's Kangaroo Island. The actual
tree-planting part of the project has concluded, but a demo remains online.
Nike, meanwhile, was the most honored advertiser of the
night, earning eight pencils -- three of them with work by New
York's R/GA, runner-up to Goodby in the pencil hunt -- and
recognition as the Interactive Advertiser of the Year.
BK's Subservient Chicken Explodes
[4.13.04]
 |
|
|
| You make the chicken
move. |
| At
least one marketer isn't shying away from suggestive
advertising in the wake of Nipplegate. Burger King and agency
Crispin Porter + Bogusky take "Have It Your Way" to a whole
new level in a breaking campaign for the new TenderCrisp
chicken sandwich. The effort features a character called the
Subservient Chicken, a guy in a chicken suit who aims to
please, a setup for the line "Chicken: Just the way you like
it." In two spots -- the campaign was directed by MJZ's Rocky
Morton -- we see a man lecherously thumbing through a stack of
Polaroids and instructing the submissive mascot on what to
wear and what music to play. In a third commercial, two women
trick the chicken into bending over so they can get a better
view of the character's hindquarters. And that's just the
broadcast work.
The effort also features a website -- http://www.subservientchicken.com/ -- that mimics a
live webcam in which the chicken seems to obey users'
commands. The site, executed by The Barbarian Group in Boston,
has been a pretty hot meme since launching last week, at least
judging from the effort people have put in to
reverse-engineering it. This site, for example, lists all 334 of the
chicken's actions and the words that trigger them -- or did
trigger them. Burger King has stayed one step ahead of the
bloggers and rerouted all the old links to a shot of the
chicken wagging his finger into the camera.
"It's blown up multiple times beyond what I expected," says
CP+B executive creative director Alex Bogusky. "We've had
things take off before, but this was an explosion." The agency
released a beta of the site last Wednesday, and by Thursday,
it had drawn a million hits. A week later, it has more than 15
million, in part -- Bogusky speculates -- because people were
fascinated by how the live webcam effect was achieved. "I
think the fact that people were dissecting it helped it
explode," he says.
Love, Mercedes-Style [3.31.04]
 |
|
|
| Mercedes spotlights
owners and their cars. |
| For
Mercedes' new brand campaign, which broke on Monday, the
carmaker and agency Merkley + Partners asked satisfied owners
to send in snapshots of themselves with their cars, since --
as one print ad in the campaign claims -- "The most common
photograph taken is with a loved one." The result is a photo
album that spans TV, print and the web -- the latter in a
microsite called simply LoveMercedes, where you can flip through a
slideshow of 72 owners with their cars.
Meanwhile, the first two commercials in the campaign are
like video scrapbooks, both directed by MJZ's Victor Garcia.
In one, we see a slow montage of framed pictures, set to a
poignant song by relatively unknown songstress Mozella. In the
second, photos flash by to an uptempo track by DJ
Cassius.
MasterCard Broadcasts "Priceless
Experience" Online [3.24.04]
 |
|
|
| MasterCard promotes a
"Priceless Experience." |
| MasterCard already had a
nice promo for its "Priceless Experience 2004" campaign,
courtesy of McCann-Erickson/New York and Hungry Man director
Jim Jenkins.
New York interactive shop IconNicholson, meanwhile, brought
the opportunity to win an internship making a video for
Hoobastank to the web with a clutter-busting execution in
which movie slates pop out of nowhere, present the commercial
and tell users where to go to apply.
Spike's Spoof [3.22.04]
Recently, Volvo began
promoting it's new S40 model in Europe with an online mockumentary called "The Mystery of
Dalaro," in which we meet some of the 32 people in the Swedish
village of Dalaro who supposedly bought the car on the same
day at the same dealership.
But the mystery doesn't end there. The film is credited to
a Venezuelan director named Carlos Soto, who wonders on his website if he's been duped
by Volvo about the whole Dalaro mystery. The good news is that
he hasn't been -- because he doesn't exist. The campaign is,
in fact, the work of director Spike Jonze.
Travelocity's "Roaming Gnome" Phones
Home [1.5.04]
After
teasing consumers with a viral website, wild postings and a
fake news report planted in one of the Rose Bowl's commercial
breaks, Travelocity finally lets us hear from its "Roaming
Gnome" in new spots that break today from Raleigh-based agency
McKinney + Silver. The campaign -- the first since McKinney
won the account in October -- began quietly in early December
with a website, http://www.wheresmygnome.com/, seemingly posted by a
man named Bill who is trying to recover his stolen garden
gnome. The site was followed by the appearance of apparently
homemade signs, also seeking the return of the gnome. The
fanciful campaign taps into the long-running -- and apparently
global -- fad of swiping garden gnomes and taking them on the
road. Such gnome-napping was dramatized in the 2001 French
film Amelie, but has been going on for years.
McKinney + Silver executive creative director David Baldwin
says the effort is an attempt to create a personality for
Travelocity, which once dominated the online travel category,
but now faces competition from Expedia.com and Orbitz.com.
"They [Travelocity] really have been building the superior
product," says Baldwin. "But as the category has become
commoditized, no one has any emotional attachment to any of
them. We just wanted people to like Travelocity better than
the others." The two payoff spots stay true to the prank that
inspired them by showing snapshots of the vanished gnome as he
travels the world, courtesy of Travelocity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
