Eyeblaster’s Best Digital Ad Campaigns of 2008

Last Wednesday after ad:tech, Eyeblaster recognized six agencies for the best digital ad campaigns of 2008.

Here they are:

o North America People’s Choice — HP TouchSmart by Goodby Silverstein & Partners

o International People’s Choice — Springfield by OnTwice Interactive (Spain)

o North America Judge’s Choice — San Diego Zoo by M&C Saatchi LA

o International Judge’s Choice — Non-stop Fernando by Lean Mean Fighting Machine (UK)

o North America Cross Channel Effectiveness Award — The CW Network, by OMD LA

o International Cross Channel Effectiveness Award — Nike Football, by AKQA (London)

*A repost of an adrants post.

Pepsi reached out to online influencers

Today Pepsi launched a Digital PR campaign that exemplifies a large portion of the Digital PR industry. Yes, we often create and publish online platforms and content but usually we are spending our time getting our message to the current online influencers.

“Pepsi, reached out to 25 ‘digital and social media influencers’ with three separately-shipped packages. The first contained five cans representing logo design from 1898 to 1950. The second contained five cans representing logo design from 1962 to 1998. The third contained (yes, you guessed it) the newly launched can design – six of them full of actual Pepsi.

Accompanying the final shipment was a DVD highlights of the company’s 110 year history including the debut of the new logo and packaging across all product lines. You can watch the video here.” – Quoted from adrants.

PS

Pepsi, I love the new look.

Literal Transparency

Digital PR has long been applauded for its ability to create transparency. Well, at Lisa P Maxwell it’s no longer just a buzz word. With their new site they decided to turn the concept literal.

Quoted from their “WTF” page, “We frequently hear (like, from every client we’ve ever worked with) that we’re much more transparent in our business practices than most agencies. That feels good, so we’re running with it.”

And run with it they did. Log on to their web site and you will find your screen full of live webcam shops of their agency members busy at work. Want to know what they are working on? Just ask them! At any given time a good third of their team is available for live IM.

I instant messaged Nate, one of their senior copywriters, and asked him how he is able to get anything done? His reply, “I chat with my left hand while I work with my right.” Thanks for chatting Nate. (and yes, Nathans do rock)

Doritos’ Fifth Consumer Generated Ad

Doritos is doing it yet again. A user generated ad campaign.

For the fifth time Doritos is inviting users to make a TV commercial. The winning one will be aired during the Super Bowl. And if it receives the Super Bowl’s top spot by USA TODAY’s Ad Meter then the maker will win $1,000,000.

The site provides contestants with a number of files to aid int the making of their commercials: animated logos, music, footage of the product and sounds effects.

Click image to see site.

US AD Council: Its time to learn Web 2.0

Slightly unusually this post does not highlight the use of the online tools rather how a campaign failed to utilize them.

GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) paired up with the AD Council to launch the “Think B4 You Speak” campaign. The campaign’s ultimate goal was “to reduce and prevent the use of homophobic language in an effort to create a more positive environment for LGBT teens.”

With the assistance of three Hollywood celebrities the campaign created three witty TV ads.

The site thinkb4youspeak.com was created to give the campaign a digital presence. It was well designed and offers useful text content for not only teens, but educators and parents.

I really liked the ads, so after watching I wanted to pass them on to friends. However, the site provided no applications to directly email, or share them on my FaceBook. Realizing that building such tools into a website can be tricky I logged on to YouTube. I was sure they had at least created a YouTube account so that the videos could be spread online virally. To my surprise the campaign had not utilized YouTube.

I poked around a little and found that the famous YouTube Producer Chris Crocker had produced a clip addressing the misuse of the term “gay” back in July of ’07. The clip had since received over 1,745,000 views! From a digital PR perspective this is a huge opportunity. The theme of the campaign had already been the focus of online dialogue. Chris’s clip was by far the most viewed but it wasn’t the only one posted. His clip had received over 50 video responses and an impressive 52,040 text responses.

The ThinkB4YouTalk site invites viewers to submit their own videos. If carefully planned and implemented it would have been interesting to see how much online participation could have been created if the producers of this campaign had sought to create dialogue with the thousands online who had already shown interest in the issue.

One last area: It is projected that FaceBook will soon have more subscribers in the US than MySpace. For any campaign targeting generation Y, FaceBook is one of the most effective tools available. I would have strongly recommended the creation of a widget that allowed the campaign to not only go viral but to create a sense of online community between those who are willing to commit to the change in their vernacular.

Click to see site and the TV ads.

Mini, your game isn’t fun : (

A few weeks ago my little sister FaceBooked me a link to the online game, “Parking Perfection.”

The game was created and hosted by the French car company, Peugeot. I sheepishly admit I was addicted to it for a good seven minutes.

I recently came across an online game made by Mini. Similar to Peugeot’s, the goal was to navigate around obstacles and preceded to the next level.

But after 90 seconds I was frustrated and clicked on. Why? It was simply too complicated. The site was much more sophisticated, designed with characters and flash video. Each time I died I was forced to again watch the video clip that began the level.

Kudos to Peugeot for understanding that we want to play a game, not watch pointless flash clips; for understanding that we don’t want to watch the loading bar crawl from 1% to 99%.

Peugeot’s game was simple, easy to play and fun. Its for that reason that weeks later Lindsey and her friends are comparing their times and scores.

Note to Mini: Yes, your site was impressively designed and looked “cool,” but I spent more time waiting and watching then playing. Keep it simple, and maybe next time your game will be worth passing on to my friends.

PS

Don’t feel too bad. Your in good company. Many digital campaigns make these same mistakes.

Left: Mini, Right: Peugeot

Rant & Rave at Adobe, they are listening

When a site is made for the single purpose of letting people rant and rave about your company you should probably pay attention. Fortunately, when the site DearAdobe.com was launched within 48 hours, Adobe had contacted the sites creators to open a dialogue.

The site allows you to “submit your gripes” about either a specific adobe program or about the programs as a whole. Then one by one each flashes on the screen.

e.g. “Could you make Adobe Reader start up slower? I’d like to have enough time to go get a sandwich before I read a one page document.”

The viewer can then click one of four options: Agree, Disagree, Inaccurate or Next gripe.

But the conversation is not one sided. John Nack an Adobe Principal Product Manager blogs for his company. A few weeks ago he wrote: “Although much of this stuff is hard to hear (in part because some of it echoes what’s said privately at Adobe), the site is a valuable exercise…  We’re listening, and in response to a request from Adobe VP Dave Story, site creator Erik Frick quickly created a Top 25 List, thanks, Erik).”

His blog post then goes on to share some thoughts on some recent complaints.

Click image to see DearAdobe.com

Saab’s Personality Test: Turbo Gene

With their new interactive web campaign, Saab takes you through a series of questions to identify your “turbo gene.”

But instead of the usual text multiple choice personality tests, each question prompts you to pick the image of the things that best represent you: A famous person in history, a glove, a periodical, etc.

At the conclusion of the questions the items you have picked are grouped on the screen before you and a small summary titled, “THIS IS YOU.” Next you are introduced to the Saab car model that matches your turbo gene.

I will admit I am a sucker for personality tests. Myer Brigs quantifies me as an ENFP, the Color Code says I am a Blue-Red, and now according to Saab I am a “Saab 9-3 Sport Sedan Aero Biopower.”

Because I invested a few minutes into the test, and felt like the summary accurately portrayed me, I now feel personally connected with the 9-3 Sport Sedan.  Proof that the campaign connects with its audience, (well at least all ENFP’s in the world).

Heck, maybe I will use my Saab bio for my online dating profile:

You are creative, somewhat philosophical, with lots of different interests. You love design, beautiful things and quality and follow current affairs. And, if possible you’ll go to the zoo. You’re single. When driving: a mix of hills and flat roads, in light showers, enjoying the mild temperature.

Click image to take your Saab Turbo Gene Test

LiveBar: every web page a social network

Now ANY web page can become a Social Network. LiveWord, leader in social media marketing, announced today the availability LiveBar.

“LiveBar can be deployed across a brand’s site literally in minutes and instantly appears as an action bar at the bottom of the web page. As a user clicks on the bar, a translucent overlay rises over the primary web page, enabling discussions, commenting and other social network applications. Users don’t have to leave the content page in order to participate in the community. LiveBar knows what page it is on, thus providing conversations that are relevant to the context of that page.” (www.liveworld.com)

“‘LiveBar totally changes the social network marketing opportunity,’ said Rich LaFauci, U.S. Managing Director of Technology, Digitas. ‘This allows brands to deploy a social network on a current site with virtually no lead time, bypassing the costly and time consuming efforts of designing and integrating a community site. In many cases this could make the difference between activating a social marketing campaign or skipping it completely.’” (www.liveworld.com)

Click image for more information about LiveBar

A Green wiki & Social Platform

Although my professors often cracked jokes about wikis like Wikipedia, they were usually my starting research tool when I started a new project.

(For those not yet aware: A wiki is defined as, “a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.” courtesy of Wikipedia)

Two years ago I became vegetarian, and much more green conscious. But as I environmental advocate I have often been disappointed in the lack of organization and availability of eco information on the web.

Wikia’s announcement of its newest online wiki community was, for me, welcomed news. Launched this month,Green Wikia, was designed to become a hub of environmental data, discussions, and networking.

In the sites own words: “Green Wikia strives to become a trusted central place to share our growing and evolving body of knowledge about environmental topics and issues with people who want to inform themselves and live in a more sustainable way.”

If its presence on the web become large enough the site could become another creator of accountability. Companies are becoming very aware of the need to watch what is published about them on Wikipedia and other wikis. Green Wikia could become another virtual watchdog, helping sift out the genuine green campaigns from the greenwashers.(you can look up the term greenwashing on Wikipedia.org!)

Click image to see Green Wikia