Size often dictates what a company can and can’t do with their advertising: Larger companies can use their larger budgets to make a big splash if needed, and smaller companies can get away with scrappier methods that larger companies can’t even consider. One example of the small and scrappy side of advertising is the recent trend among iPhone game developers of collaboration, in which they will swap character cameos as a way of cross-promoting each game to the other game’s audience.

Examples include:

• Minigore’s John Gore swings through the worlds of Sway.
  
• Enviro-Bear 2010’s Enviro-Bear and Lizzy from Sway will make cameos in the upcoming release of Minigore.
  
• Harbor Master features a special episode called Pocket God Attacks! which features the characters from Pocket God.
  
• Pocket God added a new episode to their game called Bait Master, which pays homage to Harbor Master.
  
• The Creeps features characters from both Doodle Jump and Pocket God.
  
• Doodle Jump features a secret easter egg character from Pocket God.
  
• And the list goes on…

In addition to iPhone developers, indie PC developers are also getting in on the action, as demonstrated by Cliff Harris from Gratuitous Space Battles featuring rabbit shaped spaceships that take their design cues from Jeff Rosen’s game Overgrowth.

What makes this trend so interesting is that with traditional advertising, companies avoid promoting their competitors at all costs. In the indie space however, developers see other developers as more friend than foe, and are willing to help each other do what it takes to get their name out there. Perhaps it’s the fact that iPhone game pricing means consumers don’t need to pick one game or another, as they can just buy both, or perhaps it’s the fact that indie shops are often just one or two man armies, and so they see each other as a support system, but either way, there’s a different type of relationship between indie developers that you don’t see in most spaces.

When talking about his collaboration with Jeff Rosen, Cliff Harris said:

The thing I find really interesting though, is the way in which our companies can do stuff like this, where we promote each others games, even stick content from one game in another, with the minimum of fuss. When I suggested we stick a rabbit ship in GSB to see how it could work, I didn’t need to get my lawyer to talk to Wolfire’s lawyer. I didn’t need a strategic planning meeting with the head of corporate strategy, or have to justify to shareholders why we should help out what they would see as our competitors…

This is what I like about the Indie attitude. Indie devs often share tips on game coding, getting decent contract work done, promoting websites and running forums, even the financial side of the best payment providers and who knows a decent accountant etc.

Can you imagine the head of EA giving the head of Activision tips on how to save on their bandwidth bill?

This is the indie attitude, and the indie advantage. We tend to take it for granted, because at the end of the day, me and Jeff are two guys who love games and love making games. Somewhere along the line, the mainstream industry forgot that.

Since the Minigore/Enviro-Bear collaboration was what sparked the idea for this post in the first place, I decided to reach out to the developers with a few questions and see if they’d respond. Not one to disappoint, Kimmo from Mountain Sheep replied to my questions with some great insight into the world of the indie developer:

• As an indie developer, what challenges do you face with advertising your game?
  The biggest challenge is to stand out among all the noise. You need to come up with something clever and eye-catching every time since you don’t have the budget to just push it through. It makes you pick your shots. Which is great, because it forces you to be creative.
• How did you come up with the idea of adding characters from other games into your own?
  Timo (the artist behind Minigore) took a bunch of different characters and gave them the Minigore-treatment – just for fun. It turned out the style worked really well and we asked ourselves: what would be the wackiest thing you could do with the upcoming co-op update… we had just recently played Enviro-Bear and it was almost immediately obvious we just wanted to get the darn bear into the game. Timo got a hold of Justin Smith and he loved the idea. We felt so good about the whole thing that we wanted others in, too, and got some great names. Lizzy from Sway is going to make an appearance and we also have others we haven’t even revealed yet.
• Do you think it’s easier as an indie developer to do collaborations like this?
  The great thing about being an indie is you get to do whatever you personally think is right. It’s definitely a lot easier for indies to collaborate like this. It takes a lot of negotiation and paperwork to get two large companies to collaborate, but with smaller teams you can get the ok even on the same day!
• Are collaborations just a fun way to work with other developers, or do you think they help cross-promote both games?
  They are both. It makes the whole process of developing so much more fun by offering a deviation from the daily routine. In the App Store the visibility on the device itself is crucial and that’s where cross-promotion and collaborations can really help. On-device cross-promotion is in fact how some of the larger companies with lots of games in the store are able to get their games to climb the charts. Indies on the other hand usually don’t have that many games, so collaborations like this can be huge for them.
• What game would you love to see John Gore play a role in?
  Now that Disney has bought Marvel, John Gore absolutely needs to get involved in the mash-up and get his ass handed to him by the Iron Duck or Gooferine.

Unfortunately, I don’t think collaboration is a technique that will work for many industries, as the willingness to enter into a reciprocal relationship is a lot easier for indie shops that don’t have a team of lawyers scrutinizing each and every word in a contract. For those that can make it work though, it’s a great way to not only get the word out about your product, but to build a support system of peers for yourself along the way.

The Good:

• Collaboration benefits both parties.
• Advertising without ads avoids banner blindness.
• Helps smaller companies build a support system.

The Bad:

• Difficult for larger companies to manage.
• Runs the risk of lopsided agreements that benefit one company more than the other.

The Future:

• Small companies help themselves by helping one another, benefiting the industry as a whole and giving extra value to consumers along the way.

Amnesty International’s bus stop ad is a great example of how interactivity and eyeball-aware ads can be used to engage viewers and add another level of meaning to the overall message. The ad is for a campaign that aims to bring awareness to the problem of domestic violence, and uses a small camera to detect faces. When no one is looking, the screen shows a man abusing his wife. When the camera detects a face, the ad waits a few seconds for the message to sink in, and then the couple stops fighting and does their best to look normal. It’s a subtle message, but definitely drives home their tagline, “It Happens When Nobody Is Watching.”

It’s easy to see why an ad like this would be effective. Usually, when a viewer looks at an ad, they may only see the message for a few moments before looking away. However, with an interactive ad that responds to the viewer’s gaze, they’re more likely to look longer to see what will happen. Thus, views last longer, and the message has more time to sink in. (It’s important to note that video ads for the sake of movement is not what we’re talking about here. The movement needs to be a part of the message to really be effective at enhancing the overall ad.)

Taking the concept a step further, imagine an ad that ‘talks’ to the viewer. Since the technology gives ads self-awareness, a donut shop could create an ad that says good morning to anyone that walks by, or a clothing store could create an ad that compliments (or mocks!) outfits in the crowd. The technology would also allow advertisers to incorporate a video that starts only when someone is looking, rather than playing over and over again on a constant loop.

In addition to enhancing the message, an outdoor ad that’s aware of when people are looking at it ushers in a whole new level of measurement, as view numbers no longer need to be rough estimations of foot traffic and awareness. Instead, each ad can be bought and sold based on accurate view numbers and actual engagement, giving advertisers proof that they’re getting what they’re paying for, and allowing media companies to price their high profile ad placements with the premium they deserve.

Like any new ad format, eyeball-aware ads are in their creative infancy, and I would expect to see many more uses emerge as advertisers start to understand and explore the technology, but as an effective and engaging means of enhancing a message, this is definitely one format to keep an eye on.

The Good:

• Uses eyeball-awareness to enhance the message and engage the viewer.
• Allows for advanced measurement techniques that take into account actual engagement.

The Bad:

• Expensive technology makes ads difficult to scale.

The Future:

• Ads that are viewer-aware allow advertisers to create more interactive messages and engage the viewer in new and unique ways, while better matching cost to value.

Sharpie’s new Uncapped Gallery is a great example of how a company can embrace the social web, encourage word of mouth and show off what its products can do in the hands of actual customers.

The gallery is set up like a Sharpie lifestream, and pulls in content from the Sharpie Showcase, the Sharpie Blog, Flickr, YouTube and the web. Each item is color coded to indicate where it came from, and clicks out to the original version so that users can interact and explore. Once a user clicks on an item and leaves the Uncapped Gallery to view the original, a navigation bar pops up so that they can return with a single click, or continue on if they find something interesting. Lastly, a share button attached to each item allows users to easily share the item with others in their own networks across a number of different channels.

What the Uncapped Gallery does is allow Sharpie to go out and find cool things that people are doing with their products and highlight them in a very public way. This serves to both thank the people that are showing off what they can do with Sharpie products, and to encourage others to create things with Sharpie products so that they too might be highlighted on the site. The effect is similar to what you’d see with a contest or giveaway, where word of mouth is exponentially increased, but there is no need to incentivize the conversation monetarily, and the word of mouth is much easier to sustain over a long period of time vs. a quick-hit contest or giveaway. In essence, Sharpie is able to take what users are doing naturally, namely, share the work they create with Sharpie markers, and increase the frequency by showing users that they are paying attention to, and appreciate the work that is being shared.

Turing the site into a user generated content portal has also allowed Sharpie to transform their brand from a product brand into a lifestyle brand. Rather than focus on the features of the pens or the differences between each pen type, Sharpie can instead embrace the culture that their brand has created, and use that culture to advertise their products by inspiring people to make creative things and to be a part of the larger Sharpie community. As a user, you can look at the Uncapped Gallery and see all the things that people are able to do with Sharpie products and know that there are an endless number of possibilities that Sharpie markers will allow you to explore. You can also reach out to users that are doing things that you think are interesting and communicate directly with them, turning the site into a source of fantastic user reviews. The result is that Sharpie isn’t selling pens, but rather, what those pens will allow you to do.

The Good:

• Leverages the social web to increase word of mouth and highlight product uses.
• Creates a community around the brand.
• High return for a low investment.

The Bad:

• Needs constant maintenance to stay fresh.

The Future:

• Companies use the social web to highlight what actual customers are doing with their products, allowing them to turn reviews, demos and a large part of the advertising over to the community.

Sharpie Uncapped

Q: What do Google Apps and Virgin America have in common?

A: Clouds.

Usually, bringing together two major companies for a single campaign is at best a challenge, and at worst impossible, because the companies are either too closely related to one another and so they compete, or they’re not related enough, and so they don’t add anything to the overall value of a larger campaign. For The Day In The Cloud Challenge however, Google and Virgin found a commonality in the ‘clouds’ (you can use Google Apps and their cloud services while flying through the clouds on a Virgin America flight) and they used that commonality to create a rather compelling campaign.

Before we dive into the game though, let’s look at the players:

Cloud Computing is a hot topic lately, and though most of us probably use cloud based services on a daily basis without giving it a second thought, cloud computing is still not something that many people understand or pay attention to. According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is “a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet”. Hmm… Since that description does little to actually explain the concept, let’s just stick with Google’s description: “Cloud computing is a new way of using your computer that lets you store, access and share your information through the web, instead of on your hard drive.” Much better.

Google is a company that makes most of its revenue by serving ads to consumers. Since Google’s revenues are directly related to the number of ads it can serve, it’s constantly looking for more places to put more ads so that it can make more revenue. As a result, Google has become a major proponent of ‘cloud’ services, and has developed an entire suite of applications that all live in the cloud. By creating these cloud services, Google is moving people into an environment where they are viewing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Google’s pages each day to do common tasks like emailing and blog reading, and as a result, Google can guarantee that they’ll have access to tons of eyeballs, and more importantly, more places to put more ads in front of those eyeballs.

Virgin America is an airline that prides itself on service, style, entertainment, relaxation and astonishingly reasonable fares. One of the main features of their ‘living room in the sky’ is the fact that they have WiFi across their entire fleet, free in-flight entertainment, and many of the amenities that their competitors have chosen to forgo in search of lost revenue.

Now that we understand the players, let’s look at the game:

Since cloud computing is still a relatively new idea, and many people are still unaware of the fact that they are already using cloud computing for things like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader and Picasa, Google teamed up with Virgin American for an event called ‘A Day In The Clouds’. The goal of that event was to get people to experience some of Google’s most popular services while taking part in a massive online scavenger hunt/trivia game by using Google applications either on the ground or ideally, in the ‘clouds’ aboard one of Virgin’s WiFi equipped planes. The contest consisted of nine rounds of trivia and games, followed by a ‘creative round’ that would be used in case of a tie. Each round featured questions that could be answered using one or more of Google’s apps, and winners received an HP netbook, 1 terabyte of Google Account storage, and a year of free flying through Virgin America complete with complimentary WiFi.

The campaign itself was a textbook example of a well-executed contest, but there are a few things that stood out and made The Day In The Cloud Challenge especially interesting:

1. Twitter – On every page of the DITC microsite, there was a box that displayed the latest tweet from @DayInTheCloud, an account that was set up specifically for the campaign. From that box, users were able to follow the account, message the account directly, or see the history of DITC tweets. Each tweet that @DayInTheCloud sent out included the #DayInTheCloud tag, and users were encouraged to use that tag as well so that everyone could easily follow along with the conversations that were occurring about the campaign. Users were also able to tweet out their score after finishing the challenge, and each one of those tweets was tagged with #DayInTheCloud to help increase social sharing of the campaign. Lastly, the Twitter account was used both for conversation and for broadcasting, as they answered questions, provided updates, gave hints and linked out to other blogs that were covering the event. This allowed the Twitter account to be interactive, which makes users much more likely to follow the account in exchange for the interesting information and conversation.
2. Social Media – Every DITC page included a ‘Spread the word’ box that allowed users to share the campaign with friends through various social media channels with just the click of a button. These buttons were formatted so that they would automatically populate the message field with a pre-designed message, and this allowed users to help spread the campaign through channels like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and MySpace; greatly increasing the pre-event buzz without a lot of extra effort.
3. Micro-Community – Using Google’s Friend Connect feature, DITC formed its own community where players could exchange ‘spirited pre-game banter’ with other players and meet everyone else that was participating. Engagement with the community wasn’t outstanding, but for those that used the feature, I’m guessing that it greatly added to their overall experience.
4. Video – Using a combination of YouTube and Blogger Video, DITC was able to promote the competition beforehand and show participants both during and after the competition on the DITC blog. Since video (and especially HD video) is a highly effective but under-utilized way of getting a message across, it was nice to see it play such a prominent role in this campaign.

It’s tough to bring two messages from two very different companies together for a single campaign, but when it works well, the combined efforts can produce something that’s greater than the sum of the parts. Getting people to try out an entire suite of apps is a also tough proposition, and especially when those apps are built on a platform that few understand, but if you can manage to do what Google and Virgin have done and find a way to incentivize that trial and make it fun and interesting as well, you’ll have a successful campaign on your hand in no time.

The Good:

• Brought together two major companies for a single campaign in a relevant way.
• Made the competition fun and accessible for all skill levels.
• Used available tools to help promote the campaign and get users involved.

The Bad:

• Could have used additional paid promotion.
• Some questions required a high level of technical expertise.

The Future:

• Major brands work together to push a single message, leveraging their awareness through social media to engage consumers in fun and interesting ways.

Day In The Cloud

One of my advertising rules of thumb is this: Content that works well online is not the same as content that works well on television.

To see why, let’s look at Carl’s Jr.’s latest ad campaign for their Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger.

First, their television commercial:

Next, one of the videos created for their online campaign:

See the difference?

While their heavily produced, perfectly scripted, hero-shot filled 30-second commercial managed to acquire more than a quarter million views in under a week, less than 200 people rated the video during that time, and less than 500 commented on it, indicating that a very low percentage of those quarter million viewers were actually engaged by the video. (Plus, their previous videos have around a thousand views or less, so I’m guessing most of the Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger’s quarter million views were bought and paid for though an ad buy.) By contrast, the second video, created by one of YouTube’s top users named NigaHiga, acquired more than a million views in under a week, nearly 20,000 ratings, and more than 16,000 commentst, indicating a HUGE amount of engagement.

So what did Carl’s Jr. do right?

1. Create original content – Instead of trying to push existing assets online with banner ads and video buys, a smart company will reach out to prominent users and elicit their help with creating original content that will appeal to that user’s existing fanbase. The resulting videos might not have the highest production quality, or may stray from the strict brand guidelines from time to time, but they will be done in a style that the online community has come to expect, and will be an open and honest interpretation of the product by the creator, rather than the company speaking through a hired personality.
2. Involve the viewer – If online content is good, viewers will often want to emulate the campaign with creative of their own, so smart companies will encourage that response and find ways of compensating users that go above and beyond to engage with the brand by creating videos of their own. In this case, each sponsored video ended with a call out by the star to the viewers to encourage them to make their own ‘How do you eat yours?’ video. As a result, while most pure UGC campaigns require a huge prize or some other promise of fame and fortune to get a response, this campaign is fueled by viewers’ desire to relate to the personality behind the video, and the compensation is the fact that the star might actually see the video response. A UGC video response campaign also doesn’t have to cost a lot when using YouTube, since the site’s built-in video response feature and viral sharing tools mean the backend is already in place for a campaign with little to no effort required from the sponsor company.
3. Use the tools – YouTube provides built-in tools for creating and spreading a message, and smart companies will make sure any online video campaign uses them to the fullest. For one, each video should be embeddable. It sounds obvious, but there is still the occasional video that gets put online by a company that can’t be embedded into other sites, and it’s just a waste of potential free media. Second, smart companies will establish a way for viewers to integrate their own content quickly and easily into the overall campaign. Whether it’s posting video responses to campaign videos or tagging their own videos with a specific keyword, giving users the ability to contribute will do a lot to increase the viral spread of a campaign idea. Lastly, tools like the ‘Favorites’ area of a brand’s channel and Flash video viewers allow a company to separate videos into unique campaigns and make it easy to do a lot with a little.
4. Start from the top – If the budget is big enough, there’s a lot of value in going after the biggest online stars you can find and afford. In this case, Carl’s Jr. got a few of the top 10 most subscribed to YouTube stars to create a video, and the results speak for themselves: After less than a week, each video had an average of 250,000 views, with some receiving more than a million. It might be tempting to save a few bucks by going after the up and coming stars, but there’s a reason certain content producers have so many subscribers, and that’s usually because they consistently make quality videos that others want to watch.
5. Give creative freedom – Too often, companies get online stars involved in their campaigns and then limit what they can say and do, or try too hard to keep them on brand. The main problem with this is that viewers can usually tell when a message is heavily controlled, and views, pass-along and overall engagement will decrease dramatically as a result. Second, the popular YouTube users are popular for a reason, and they will know what their fans want and what works best, so why try to reinvent the wheel? By giving the content creators more creative control, the videos will be more original and more unique, the views will be higher, and the costs associated with trying to control the message will be much, much lower.

As far as online video campaigns go, the Carl’s Jr. Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger campaign was a complete success. They got a number of top users to create content, that content has generated a high amount of engagement, and viewer response has been very positive overall. Sure, it’s not the flashiest campaign, and it’s definitely not the most expensive, but when the results can speak for themselves, who can doubt the power of a well-run online video campaign?

The Good:

• Uses existing cewebrities to tap into existing communities and create content that is specifically targeted to the online audience.
• Engages the viewer and encourages participation.
• Uses existing YouTube tools to their fullest, which extends the campaign while keeping costs down.
• Offers an online only coupon to try out the product, giving viewers an exclusive offer and connecting the campaign to actual sales.

The Bad:

• Some of the videos are a bit on the quirky side, and may catch unaware viewers and those that aren’t used to web content by surprise.

The Future:

• Brands use existing online personalities to give their campaigns life and guarantee initial success.

YouTube – Carl’s Jr.

Tire ads aren’t known for being fun or sexy, and usually rely on safety stats and a general feeling of ‘that tire won’t explode while I’m driving’ to motivate you to buy. It doesn’t have to be that way however, and Dunlop’s recent campaign is just one example of what’s possible. In their spot, they take an unconventional approach to tire advertising, and highlight the fact that, while tires aren’t typically sexy, the cars that use them sure can be.

In the ad, a stunt driver named Steve Truglia in a Dunlop equipped Toyota Yaris navigates up, over and through a 40 foot loop-the-loop, setting a new world record for the largest loop ever performed by a four wheeled vehicle, and proving that Dunlop tires can easily handle the stresses of a 6-G maneuver along the way. While the video itself is impressive, it’s what they did to hype the video and build buzz around the campaign that got my attention.

For starters, Dunlop used the often cliché but generally effective countdown timer to tease the event, both creating a sense of anticipation, and giving viewers a firm date and time to come back and see the stunt. That way, anyone that was intrigued by the teaser videos and wanted to see more would know when to check back, and Dunlop could prevent the frustration that comes with seeing 80% of a concept, and then missing out on the final (and more interesting) 20%. Plus, as long as the teaser videos were good, the timer guaranteed that the main video would receive a bunch of additional views when it first debuted, ensuring that the start would go off with a bang, and that pass-along would occur from the very beginning, which is important when you want a video to go viral.

Though social media support was limited, Dunlop did open a DunlopLoop Twitter Account specifically for the campaign, and posted regular updates to that account in addition to their main site. At this point, a Twitter account is almost a mandatory inclusion for any interactive/online ad campaign, but it was good to see that it wasn’t neglected in this case, and was executed well. The account posted updates and replied to any reactions, and while the response wasn’t great, it was good bang-for-the-buck, and showed that Dunlop cared about influential viewers who are willing to share the video (and their opinion) with others.

To add to the credibility of the event, and to tie the campaign to a group of target-specific celebrities, Dunlop also teamed up with the British automotive show Fifth Gear to create the concept. By doing this, they were able to use the personalities from the show to build buzz and tap into a pre-existing audience for a guaranteed number of viewers that would watch the video regardless of additional support. Too often, endorsements and partnerships end once the cameras start rolling, but when everyone and everything has its own on-line fan club, it’s important for companies to realize that they need to tap into those communities and make the cross-promotion a part of the deal.

Beyond the stunt and the videos that went along with it, the campaign was kept to a minimum, but that doesn’t mean there was a shortage of ideas for how to increase the exposure and extended the campaign into additional channels. For one, they could have followed BMW’s lead with the Rampenfest campaign and created a Facebook Page to generate buzz around the stunt and increase the “Real or Fake?” debate. Secondly, they could have created an advergame to allow viewers to attempt their own stunt in a Dunlop branded car. Lastly, they could have done a ‘remix you own ad’ style campaign where viewers are given a number of camera angles and clips of the stunt and the ability to stitch them together in any way that they liked, and then the winning edit is shown on TV.

For a small video campaign however, the Dunlop Loop-the-Loop was a smart and solid idea that managed to do a lot with a little, and made tires a hot topic on a large number of blogs, which is no easy task.

The Good:

• Uses a world record to draw in viewers and create a spectacle.
• Demonstrates a very boring product in a very exciting way.
• Used a countdown timer effectively to build buzz.

The Bad:

• Campaign wasn’t extended into other social media channels.

The Future:

• Stunts allow boring brands to entertain viewers and make their products exciting while still showing features and benefits and driving sales.

Dunlop – Loop-the-Loop

Viral videos aren’t usually made, they’re chosen, but the second Gymkhana video from Ken Block and DC Shoes was born to be viral:

Since I’m guaranteeing that this one will be a hit, let’s take a look at what makes it work:

• If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It – Their original Gymkhana video, called Gymkhana Practice, was viewed more than 20 million times, including 12+ million views on Ken Block’s site, 5+ million views on YouTube, millions of views on a special Gymkhana site including downloads of the high definition version, and millions more views on copies of the video that fans uploaded into their own accounts. With success like that, why change a good thing? Thankfully, they didn’t, and instead, they took what was so amazing about the first video and just added to it, including more stunts, more speed, and more slow-motion.
• Give Viewers Options – Too many companies try to retain too much control over their video, and only let viewers watch it on a channel of their choosing. DC Shoes went in the exact opposite direction, and put the video in as many places as possible, starting with YouTube and expanding out from there. By giving viewers a choice, DC Shoes allowed them to find the video wherever they looked, and in all kinds of formats, including downloadable formats that could then be saved and shared with others using a laptop, iPhone or iPod. They also made it a point to release the video in HD whenever possible, giving viewers the full experience and showing off the intricate detail of the slow motion stunt shots. I’m always amazed by how many companies create a fantastic video and then cripple it by releasing a low quality version online, so it was good to see that this was not the case here. Finally, the video is embeddable and sharable so that any blog or website can grab it and feature it, allowing the view numbers to grow and the buzz to spread quickly despite the fact that DC can’t easily convert those viewers into sales. Like the low quality video issue, I’m always surprised and disappointed by companies that put their videos online, but then don’t allow them to be shared, since that’s what the web is all about, and a lack of sharing represents a huge missed opportunity for additional views and increased buzz. (I’m even more surprised by companies that go so far as to remove copies of their videos when they’re uploaded by fans into their own account, since these videos can only represent an opportunity for additional views, and are obviously created by fans of the work. Deleting these videos just limits the amount of free exposure that they will receive, and more than likely pisses off a major fan of the brand.) For DC Shoes, the extra views that these extra copies of the video generate will just make the buzz that much more intense, and the long tail sales will more than make up for the short term sacrifice in control.

• Do Something Unexpected – Before the first gymkhana (pronounced jim-kah-nuh) video debuted, no one had heard of the sport, including most hard core car guys, so it caught people by surprise. (In fact, they spent a few moments in the first video introducing people to the concept so that viewers would know it wasn’t just something that the DC Shoes team had invented.) That being said, when a 500+ horsepower tuner car comes tearing onto the screen in a screech of tire smoke and then proceeds to spins around for five minutes, people are going to take notice. In the second video, unexpected comes in the form of unique stunts that were done as much for their visual appeal as they were for their danger. These stunts include a donut through a series of florescent bulbs, each one breaking in succession and sending a shower of glass shards into the air, a high speed spin though a field of water balloons, a slow motion smash against a water balloon being held by a crash test dummy made famous by a TV show that Ken Block’s cohort Rob Dyrdek stars in, a donut around a paintball firing Rob Dyrdek himself to pay tribute to the donut around a Segway that drove a lot of the buzz about the first video, and finally, a spin under a semi-truck (possibly referencing the original Fast and the Furious movie) that ends in a massive slow-motion explosion.
• Know Your Audience – Even if the video doesn’t get viewed by millions of people, it will get viewed by every single automotive enthusiast with a computer and a friend, so DC Shoes is guaranteed to reach their target market with their message. Occasionally, this hyper-targeting results in the sacrifice of wider appeal in exchange for a greater appeal within the target market, but in this case, DC found a happy medium that will serve everyone equally. Plus, by understanding who they wanted to go after and what those viewers wanted to see, they were able to create something that was a must-watch for that target, and even better, a must-share as well. Fire? Check. Explosions? Check. Loud, brightly colored car? Check and Check. It’s all there, and it’s all got one goal in mind: Grab the attention of every car guy on the planet and hold that attention for five minutes.

• Set A Due Date – There was still plenty of buzz surrounding the first video when word of the second video started to spread, so when DC shoes announced a date and posted a teaser trailer for the second video onto their website, the frenzy just compounded upon itself. By giving (and also sticking to) a firm release date, DC made everyone a part of the debut, and didn’t just limit it to a few select blogs in an attempt to control the roll-out. This also meant that anyone who wanted to grow their whuffie by being the first to share it with their friends could do so, because everyone would see it at the same time, so chances are, if you shared it on the day that it debuted, then those that you were sending it to had either not yet seen it, or had just seen it and would be eager to watch it again.
• Take Calculated Risks – One interesting aspect of this video is the fact that DC Shoes took a risk and lulled through the first minute of the video with product placement and blatant selling (normally a mortal sin for any video wishing to go viral). However, since viewers of the first video knew that delayed satisfaction was all but guaranteed, DC knew that anticipation would be high, and that as long as they kept the selling section to a minimum and made it fun and interesting (which they did) that they could keep the attention of their viewers for an extra minute, and sell to them at the same time. It’s a best of both worlds scenario that rarely gets pulled off effectively, but I think that DC Shoes did a great job in this video of combining both goals.

One Final Note: Another cool thing that DC Shoes did that hasn’t really been done before was experiment with holophonic sound, allowing the viewer to feel like they were a part of the action and placing them ‘inside’ one of Ken Block’s donuts. It’s basically an extension of point three above, since the ‘Donuts Audio’ video was released as a supplement to the main gymkhana video, but by toying with the audio and encouraging users to listen to it with their headphones on, DC Shoes was able to provide some extra content for the viewers that liked the main video, and wanted to dig a little deeper into the whole concept:

The Good:

• Builds upon the success of a previous video while maintaining the proven formula.
• Was made available in a variety of formats on a variety of channels.
• Used a firm due date and teaser videos to build up a huge amount of buzz, and then delivered on that buzz.

The Bad:

• Excessive product placement will turn some viewers off.

The Future:

• Over-the-top videos almost guarantee viral video success, though companies will need to find a balance between entertaining and selling.

DC Shoes – Gymkhana Two Project

Facebook advertising is a tough nut to crack, and as a result, most of the ads I’ve seen have simply resorted to the lowest common denominator of selling easy sex, free money and cheap travel. Occasionally though, a company manages to break through the clutter with an innovative ad campaign that just seems to ‘get’ what Facebook is all about, and Volkswagen is the latest example of one of those companies, having recently released an app that taps into the data hidden within social networks in a new and interesting way.

Called Meet the Volkswagens, it was made by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (the same shop that created Whopper Sacrifice) and actually digs through your social profile information to match you with a pair of potential vehicles from the stable of available Volkswagens. As far as I can tell, the app works by looking through your profile for key bits of pre-categorized information that it can then use to put you into one of a handful of pre-determined categories, such as age, sex, number of children (if any), job (if any), hobbies, interests, and a few other things that almost everyone will have filled out.

From there, Max and Bus (the VW Bug and VW Bus personalities from the current VW commercials; a nice touch) give users their two matches, and users can then click on one of their matches to dive into one of the fourteen specific Pages that have been set up for fans of each vehicle to share photos, videos and stories with one another. The suggestions also pull quotes from fans, so presumably (and hopefully) Volkswagen is using these pages to gather media that they can then use to add some personal flair to their web and print ads, television commercials, and other social initiatives.

Other than matching you with your future VW and then allowing you to dive into a Page that has been set up for that vehicle to see what owners are saying about it, the app doesn’t do much else, so it’s really just a pretty face on a fancy recommendation engine. However, by combining a data comber with a slick interface and a wealth of available information and actual customer reviews, the Meet the Volkswagens app manages to create a rather seamless user experience that encourages you to explore the results and then pass it along to a friend so they can see what VW the magic Meet the Volkswagens app pairs them with as well.

The Good:

• Taps into existing social network data to make using a recommendation engine a fun experience.
• Automatically tailors the application to each individual user, making it more relevant to their needs.
• Uses elements from other parts of their campaign to give their current marketing efforts a universal look and feel.

The Bad:

• The results fit people into a limited number of categories based on a non-universal set of data, so the app runs the risk of offending someone by mis-categorizing them.
• The application was not promoted in their television commercials or print ads to increase exposure.

The Future:

• Applications allow companies to learn a little bit about their customers before an interaction so that they can customize the user experience for each individual.

Meet the Volkswagens

Nintendo destroyed YouTube to help sell Wario Land: Shake It, but now Honda is proving that you don’t need to destroy a video portal to impress viewers with out of the box thinking. (For comparison, Crank: High Voltage pretty much took the Wario Land: Shake It model and copied it to a T. They did switch to Break.com for their video, though I’m guessing it was for no other reason than the placement could be bought for less.)

Honda’s Insight ad, called Let It Shine, takes the Vimeo window and turns each element into a part of the show. The original concept for the commercial was an animated film made entirely of car headlights, and Wieden+Kennedy put together a rather impressive behind the scenes video to show what went into making it all work:

On Vimeo however, when you press play, the entire site dims and then fades to black, as each word in the title is illuminated in sequence. From there, the video begins, but instead of being constrained to the dimensions of a traditional Vimeo video, the background aligns with what’s being shown in the video, and certain parts of the animation continue on outside of the video area, extending the idea across the entire screen.

One of the most obvious examples of this cross-window magic is the profile image, which becomes a mini movie of the Eco Assist logo turning into the sun, which in turn brightens up the site to match the sun rising in the ad, and then shoots a lens flare across the site to put a final exclamation point on the experience before changing the background to a stark red logo on white background splash screen, and then finally returning everything back to normal. Combine that with a catchy and whimsical tune that everyone knows from his or her childhood, and the ad takes on a memorable quality that’s hard to replicate with any other medium.

The Good:

• Unexpected actions inside of a familiar video portal cut through our mental ad filters and encourage user-to-user pass-along.
• With a little bit of coding and production work, Honda was able to give their television commercial a second life online without having to create content that was exclusively and specifically designed for the online audience.

The Bad:

• Custom coding limits the experience to one video portal, and can’t be embedded for external viewing on other sites.

The Future:

• Companies look to not only show their ads online, but also to integrate their ads into the online world in new and unique ways so that it feels less like and ad and more like an experience.

Vimeo – Let It Shine

Rarely is a billboard the best place to do a product demo, but for Makita, a blank wall proved to be the perfect way to show off what their drills can do.

Since you can call your products consistent, reliable, long lasting and accurate till you’re blue in the face and still not convince people, a demonstration of those characteristics is often the best way to make your point, which is why Makita created a self-portrait of one of their drills using 20,081 holes, all drilled with a Makita drill. The tagline was simply ‘Makita Precision’, and the work is meant to speak for itself. Taking a closer look, you’ll notice that all of the tones were created by merely spacing each hole appropriately, and that if just a few were off, the whole board would have been ruined.

According to Makita, the drills themselves are ergonomically designed to fit perfectly into any hand, rotate at an optimal speed to minimize vibration, and have a ’shock buffer’ system that ensures the perfect pressure of the drill bit on any surface, but all of that can be learned from the tool isle display at the local home improvement store. For a billboard like this, the goal isn’t to try and sell the tool, but rather to give people a reason to go to the tool store in the first place, and secondly, to take a closer look at the Makita drills once they get there.

In addition to the foot traffic that got to experience the Makita billboard firsthand, this campaign managed to do what many campaigns strive for lately: It got the interest and attention of bloggers. Through the use of a well put together one sheet and a few high quality photos, many of the internet’s top blogs wrote about the billboard, giving Makita infinitely more value (and an infinitely wider audience) than they would have received from foot traffic alone.

It would have been nice to see them take the idea a step further and create something like a widget that turns any picture into a drill drawing, or a game where you have to drill out a certain number of holes in a limited amount of time to recreate pieces of art, but in this case, the idea was unique enough and the existing collateral was good enough that plenty of blogs picked up the story and ran with it, even though they were essentially putting out carbon copies of the same images and story.

The Good:

• A simple but effective idea resonated well with a wide audience.
• Unique creative got the attention of a variety of blogs and exponentially increased the engagement with the ad.

The Bad:

• Labor intensive idea can’t be duplicated easily for large deployment across many markets.

The Future:

• Ads become their own product demo, allowing consumers to get a feel for what the product can do before even knowing exactly what the product is.