Before, we knew YouTube in the following format - press play, sit back and watch a video. That was until a few campaigns have decided to take it one step further and give it that extra dimension. One such example is the Skittle's Campaign:
A very simple but yet humourous way of engaging the end user and in my case it made me want to share it with some friends, a success in my book for the campaign. Granted, this is very basic and doesn't really do much to the video, but it involves you in the story and makes you a part of the product. There are other examples where you can use your number pad to go to certain parts of a video, click on hot spots to control the end result of the video by redirecting you to another video. This is all good and I have seen some very good examples out there.
However, claiming the fame to the world's first interactive YouTube driving video does not make this next example anymore exciting as watching water drip from a tap. In this case, you can you use your number pad (1-9) to control the car in whatever way you want...
Judging by the comments made - I suspect this video will go viral (if it's lucky) for all the wrong reasons. So the moral of story? Make it a bit more interesting than the world's first interactive YouTube driving video or don't do it at all.
But that’s my lot for the year because Halloween is about as scary as a PG-rated ‘horror’ film starring a grown up Haley-Joel Osment.
Actually, that would be pretty scary. Not only does he see dead people, he’s been eating them.
But Halloween is shit. The same, crappy costumes wheel their way onto the shelves every year and it’s down to the creative types to improvise a Zombie Bin Laden, a ghoulish Gaddafi, or maybe even a skeletal Steve Jobs.
A George Osborne mask would shit me up more though. Reality is much scarier than the rent-a-ghosts of Halloween. I even found bits of The Greatest Movie Ever Sold scary - scary because it contains real life scenes from the world of advertising.
The latest film from Morgan Spurlock rakes the muck on marketing. You’ll remember he ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month, got fat and turned the colour of a Quarter Pounder. Now he’s approaching advertisers to fund his movie entirely through product placement. Become the beast to expose the beast.
I’m not one to scrutinise commercial ethics. I work in advertising, I’ve made my pact with the devil and I’ll sell guns to kids if I have to. So what could scary about a guy pitching a few ideas to make his picture?
Watch this clip
The handlebar mustache and the Bride of Frankenstein client are genuinely frightening but if you’ve worked in a creative department, it would have been how all the creative routes got blown out for a bog-standard competitor ad that would have spooked you.
You don’t need to see the film to know what ad he ends up making. You’ve seen it a million times. The graphs, stats, condescending tone of voice; it all blends into noise that we have no other choice but to ignore. Whatever you think of the concepts, if the client's laughter was genuine then isn't there a good chance other people will do the same? Instead, they ask for something no one will react to.
Feels like adverts have become a bit like the Halloween masks on the shelf in Tesco. We’ve seen them before and they don’t quite do the trick. What's everyone so afraid of?
I don't know if you saw this post the other day about a pebble, but it's my birthday today, and I got this present in the post.
"Hi Dave
Sorry it's taken so long to send the pebble back to you, I mislaid it on return from my holiday. Please find enclosed a second stone from my beach at home in Silecroft in Cumbria also.
Yours Faithfull
Paul"
Not only has Paul sent the original pebble back, but he's sent a sample of a local Cumbrian pebble. It's more speckley and more red/green than the more Grey pebble from Devon btw.
Uncharted is a big budget “shooter” console game, and they’re doing a peculiar promo with Subway...
Go into Subway, get a code with your drink, use the code to get the new multiplayer feature a month early -complete with Subway branded custom game items and actions. See the TV ad.
Picture Subway employees with automatic rifles who taunt you by making the hand gesture for a Foot Long Sub right after they take you out.
Way back in May, when we all still had hopes for the summer ahead, we entered Double Click’s HTML5 YouTube Masthead competition.
WE WON!
Now the sunshine is finally here, our winning masthead is live on YouTube for 24 hours.
Our winning idea is a Thought Visualiser that allows you to see your random thoughts come to life. And this all happens within the boundaries of a YouTube masthead and is built in that spangly new(ish) HTML5.
