Digital Marketeer

Air New Zealand launched the “Nothing to hide” campaign, the concept is: We don´t hide any secret fares, charges all our services and prices are a transparent airline.

Under this concept they made a series of online video with body painted employees that volunteered to appear on this videos, and the action has gone wide viral

• Uploaded: June 22, 2009
• Views: 127,782

The first video was released May 6, 2009 and in almost two months got 1,949,328 views

So Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is out, and we saw some great interactive initiatives like the viral strategy that they rolled out a few weeks back which I wrote about last week. (Check it here), there’s also a web site only with transformers widgets, an application that let you robotize yourself (not the best one), a site where you can make Transformers call your friend and the official movie site.

But the best part of the Digital Marketing strategy is the microsite “We Are Autobots”, where you can really transform yourself into Optimus Prime with you webcam and even record your voice and to speak like him.

The Augmented Reality execution it’s the best I have seen, with a complete immersion the site puts an “Optimus Prime Mask” in your face without the “old fashion” print code that projects the 3D figures like we are used to see in augmented reality. Then you can record your voice and make it sound like a robot with a great really sound effect not just the old one that some toys used to have, this is the official “Optimus Prime Voice”.

The facial recognition software is so powerful that it recognizes print faces LOL, early today I was with my COO exploring the site and it occurred to him try to make the software detect a printed face we have an Electronic Arts calendar that has a Harry Potter photograph, so we put it in front of the web cam and it was recognized! Here is a screen capture!

So far everything it’s amazing but I have no idea why they stopped here, I mean what about a few more transformers to use or at least one more? But Ok I think we can live only with Optimus Mask.

The part I cannot conceive is how social media integration is missing, they could used the video to record video messages and send them to your friends, or if video was too complicated at least a picture of your face transformed in optimums prime and post it to facebook, just with this tools the whole microsite would been a perfect 10.

The microsite was develop by The PPC Group a Marketing Agency that specializes in movie campaigns, great Augmented Reality and Concept guys, but what happen with social media integration this days social network recommendation can’t be missing from any online marketing project.

Here is the site Enjoy

For me there is no doubt that Barack Obama was 2008 Best Brand, his campaign just awarded with the Titanium Grand Prix and Integrated Grand Prix in Cannes Lions 2009.

These categories are defined by Cannes as:

• “Introduced in 2005, the Titanium Lion celebrates breakthrough ideas. It awards work that is provocative and points to a new direction, work that “causes the industry to stop in its tracks and reconsider the way forward”. The Integrated Lion was introduced in 2007 and rewards state-of-the-art integrated campaign entries.”

I have discus this case with many clients and colleagues, about how in such short time they built a Obama’s brand from zero, created and amazing concept and message “Yes We Can”, and how his team use the different social media channels to reach millions of users that generated a huge amount of content, raised millions of dollars. A complete movement was created around Obama, a movement that still has a powerful energy that keeps it going forward, all this in one of the most complicated times in US history.

My favorite social media case of study is this one, SocialMedia8 released this presentation early this year, there is a lot of incredible information so in case you haven’t seen it yet you should really take 10 minutes and watch it you won’t regret it…

Case Study: The Barack Obama Strategy

Marketing and advertising have taken a new way, a way where the main media is no longer the main channel and axis of a strategy, now is the people are the one who are driving the “new social media” they have the power, that’s why new strategies must focus on them!

The latest campaign of Coke Zero is called “The Impossible made Possible” and it centers on young male target in everyday situations where the impossible outcomes are possible. Check this TV ad where the guy is about to get busted by the parents of his girlfriend..

Like you see a SWAT team comes out of nowhere and rescue out “Hero”, so far i like the spot I think it goes perfectly to capture the attention of the young target they are talking to. The campaign comes from the Danish Ad agency Grey København who also made last year campaign “Life as it should be” with similar concepts and communication.

The best part of the campaign is the digital actions; Coke Zero with North Kingdom created an amazing web site that extends the TV Ad with fully interactive big production advergames.

The websites starts just where the TV Ad ends like you saw our “Hero” was taking away in a helicopter to a training center where he has one more mission take 3 girls on dates and keep the all happy and entertain.

The website has incredible 3D graphics and animations giving the user a fully interactive experience, the game play its OK I think they could achieve more original ways to play each music date. Natasha’s date has a great an original game play, Christina’s and Sandy’s are like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, a popular and familiar interaction maybe that’s why they chose it, but I would liked see some new.

You can enter the site explore and play it here

Some numbers up to June 26, 2009

• Uploaded on: June 22, 2009
• Views: 500,571
• Ratings: 259
• Favorited: 262
• Text Comments: 201
• Honors for this video: 33
• Sites linking to this video: 5

As you can see this isn’t the most engaging video or a new one, this is a re-launch of the same video from Etoro, which was released almost a year ago, back on July 14, 2008 and only got 177,090 views. You can see the original and all the stats here.

All this only tell us the importance of a solid viral strategy behind online videos, content is not the King…

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