Pearle:::Steamy room

BRAND OWNER:Pearle 

CATEGORY:Pharmaceuticals/ Healthcare 

REGION:Belgium 

DATE:May 2009 - Dec 2008 

Contact lenses are often seen as the more aesthetically pleasing alternative to glasses, but they are not always seen as being more practical. 

Optician brand Pearle was keen to emphasise the benefits of wearing contact lenses to those who are attached to their spectacles and encourage trial of their daily and monthly lenses.

Pearle created a web-based game at thesteamyroom.be which illustrated the merits of wearing contact lenses. But rather than looking at the comfort of wearing contacts, Pearle took a more humorous angle. Players get to select whether they want to check out semi-clad men or semi-clad women and then enter the respective changing room with a first-person viewpoint through a pair of rimmed glasses. As soon as you enter the room and start to see tantalising glimpses of flesh, the glasses begin to fog up and they require frantic polishing with the mouse curser to clear the view. The message reads: “there are moments when it’s better to wear contacts”. The site has a viral element encouraging users to share the game and also offers free trials of the contact lenses.

Guinness::: Passport to Greatness

Leverage Guinness' sponsorship of Hong Kong Rugby Sevens by producing Passport to Greatness', 

A mobile widget to assist 20k overseas visit.

Disneyland :::A platform for children's dreams

BRAND OWNER:Disney
CATEGORY:Sport/Leisure
REGION:France
DATE:Apr 2007 - Jul 2007

Disney is famed for creating magical experiences for children, and wanted to do something special to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Disneyland in Paris in 2007. The 15th Anniversary Celebration was a year-long event held at the holiday resort.
Disney wanted to drive children to go to the amusement park and celebrate the landmark date. Disneyland wanted to create a platform where children could express their dreams and so commissioned a huge billboard featuring several Disney characters along with 2 LED screens; a long one across the top and a smaller, shield-shaped one in the centre.

The long screen at the top carried the message ‘dream like you have never dreamed before’ and the shield-shaped one carried the number 15.
A message to the side of the billboard read: “You too can send use your dreams via disneylandparis.com”. Visitors to www.disneylandparis.com could upload their photo along with a one-sentence dream.
Then the children’s dreams along with their faces were posted to the billboard. The child’s face would appear in the central shield and their dream would be posted to the long screen at the top of the billboard.

Heineken:::Design-your-own bottle

BRAND OWNER:Heineken International
CATEGORY: Drinks (alcoholic)
REGION:Netherlands
DATE: Apr 2009 - Dec 2008


Heineken wanted to extend its strategy of positioning the brand as one that helps socializing. It wanted to offer something unique to consumers that would turn the humble bottle of beer into a special occasion gift.
Heineken has created a site that allows people to design their own Heineken bottle. Visitors to http://www.jouwheineken.nl/ can choose from either the Quick Route or the Designers Route. The quick route offers a selection of bottle themes ranging from smiley faces to rainbows, to bicycles. Users can then also place their personal text on the bottle, adapting the font style, colour and size. They can then order their 6 pack to be delivered anywhere in the Netherlands. The designer route allows the more creative user to start from scratch, choosing a background, symbols and place multiple text boxes.

Users can then save their design and order it or even select someone else’s designer bottle and order that - all for € 15,95. The bottles are ready for giving as gifts within 5 working days. Users can also download their bottle design to their desktop, share it on social networking site Hyves or via email.

Mercedes enters the land of Narnia

BRAND OWNER:Mercedes-Benz
CATEGORY:Automotive
REGION:EMEA
DATE:Jul 2008 - May 2008

To celebrate a partnership between Mercedes and Disney’s movie series The Chronicles of Narnia, the auto brand sought a magical online experience that bridged the two brands and harnessed the pester power of children which can greatly influence parent car purchasing decisions. A limited edition of the Mercedes Viano designed to coincide with the release of the Narnia film featured independent screens, infrared headphones with game console connection, an iPod and multimedia reader.
Together they came up with an online communication platform at www.mercedes-benz.com/narnia.
The website was a 3D world willed with adventure and inspired by the second film in the series based on the CS Lewis novels, Prince Caspian.
The interactive website is a complex 3-D globe on which the user experiences their online adventure while travelling with the Mercedes Viano model of car. The car was positioned as a modern steed; the very best place for heroes. After an archery game, the user meets their new travelling companion in the deep, dark forest: the Viano. Users can also share the site with friends by entering their email, challenge the Narnians to an ear waving contest, upload a picture of themselves to be morphed into a mythical creature or watch a trailer of the film.
This was supported by an online banner campaign to support the launch of the website and drive traffic to it, featuring the headline ‘Beware! Enter at your own peril!’.
The site received over 100,000 visits, with an average dwell time of more than 5 minutes. The game also allowed for data capture of thousands of addresses.

Microsoft::: Exec Tweets

BRAND OWNER:Microsoft Corporation
CATEGORY:Computers/Software
REGION:Global
DATE:Apr 2009 - Dec 2008
MEDIA OWNER:Twitter

Microsoft wanted to target those in the realms of micro-blogging, but specifically those business executives using Twitter as a way to position the brand as well suited to create business value through better collaboration.

Finding all of the business people on Twitter can be quite difficult, but Microsoft decided to sponsor a service that would address this problem.
The solution was ExecTweets, a programme which saw Microsoft sponsoring a page that collects Tweets from various executives. It opened up a business model for Twitter, which had until then not really found its commercial feet.

The service enables people to track what is on the minds of business executives including Bob Jeffrey at JWT, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Virgin’s Richard Branson. Microsoft paid to set up the page in return for getting Twitter approval and for promoting the site on Twitter itself.

The channel offers the capacity to find influencers by topic, view their conversation and engage with them, all within a single environment. You can also recommend new execs to follow, vote for interesting tweets and users, search through a tag cloud and follow @exectweets on Twitter.
Federated Media plans to launch similar programmes on Twitter with other clients.

Peugeot::: Nude |308 CC

In a cheeky bit of naked ambition, French automaker Peugeot inundated London's morning commuters today with a pool of 308 'nude' actors who appeared to only be wearing scarves. What was the reason for the au natural display? Why, to celebrate the arrival of the company's latest topless model, the 308 Coupe Cabriolet.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the flesh flash mob was actually outfitted in form-fitting body-colored suits, thus preventing the local authorities getting rude with the nudes.

Website : http://www.nudeinascarf.com/

Twitter:http://twitter.com/nudeinascarf/

Orange:::Chabal needs your help

BRAND OWNER:France Telecom
CATEGORY:Telecoms/ Mobile
REGION:France
DATE:Nov 2008 - Dec 2007

Orange wanted to increase the number of customers watching football matches on their mobile phone on Orange TV with the launch of Orange Ligue 1, a service that made the main French football championships available on mobile.
Orange selected French iconic rugby player Sebastien Chabal to star in an interactive campaign. Visitors to a site, http://www.chabal-le-duel.com/, could sign up their friends or themselves, entering in their name, address and mobile number. The webuser then receives a phone call on his mobile when he is looking at a video of Chabal preparing to kick a football into goal. The voice at the end of the phone is Chabal himself, asking them where to kick the football. They can pick one of several locations on the goal to aim for and must press a corresponding mobile phone key to instruct Chabal to shoot. When he shoots he gets a goal and then Chabal lifts his shirt to reveal the name of the webs user written on his under shirt, saying “This goal is dedicated for X”. At the end, the person is asked whether they are a customer or not and can then apply for the offer from Orange.
In 10 days, with no advertising, Orange had 1 million unique visitors on the web site.

OVK :::Let it ring

BRAND OWNER:OVK
CATEGORY:Charities
REGION:Belgium
DATE:Apr 2009 - Dec 2008

Most people know that using your mobile phone while driving can cause accidents, and a large number of accidents could be avoided if people didn’t answer their mobile phones while driving. A charity for parents of child road victims, OVK, wanted to hammer home the dangers of speaking on your phone while driving in a surprising way.
OVK created a website letitring.be where people could enter their friend’s mobile number and email address. The friend would then receive an email containing a link to a Belgium’s largest video portal Garage TV video and a message saying “check out this crazy car crash I found on the web (be sure to put your sound up loud)”. When the friend clicks on the link, the Garage TV video opens in his browser.

The friend thinks they are about to see a user-generated car crash movie on a video website. The video shows a driver’s view of a car journey, with the camera looking through the windscreen at the road. While the person is watching the video, their phone will start to ring at a crucial moment in the video. As soon as they answer the phone, the car in the video loses control and crashes. Then the message appears on the screen saying: “avoid an accident. Let it ring.” They are then given the option to pass the viral prank on with the website’s details. This was supported by a separate campaign aimed at young people who listen to their MP3 players in traffic. Teaming up with popular musicians Sioen, Joshua and Sound of Stereo they created tracks that could be freely downloaded. They songs start as normal, but halfway through you hear the screeching sounds of car tyres and a crashing sound, followed by the brand message.

The Global Online Media Landscape

Social Media And Video Site Engagement Reshapes The Web
April 22nd, 2009
Online engagement by Internet users is deepening, according to a new report on the online landscape released today by The Nielsen Company. This increased engagement is in part a result of a shift toward video content and social networking as popular online subcategories.

Highlights Of The Report Include

• The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
• Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
• In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.
• There are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.
• In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73 percent.
• In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time
• Retail, and the auto and financial services industries, have obviously made dramatic cuts to their online spending. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry is actually spending more on online ads today.

View PDF Report :

The Global Online Media Landscape

View more documents from Ayman Sarhan.

Honda :::Mobile ignition

BRAND OWNER :Honda
REGION :Ireland
DATE :Jun 2008 - Jul 2008


To launch the Civic Type R vehicle model, Honda wanted an interactive campaign that captured the imagination of people in Dublin, Ireland.
Honda teamed up with JCDecaux to create an innovative new out of home format.

The special build was a 2D cut out of the back of the car with special lighting in the brake lights, smoke machines in the exhausts and a sonic element incorporated into it.

There was a text number on the poster that was linked to the controllers of the lights, smoke and sound. Passers by could text the number to “start” the car.

On doing this, the brake and indicator lights on the car started to flash, smoke came out of the exhausts and the roar of the engine was emitted from the board.

The sender then received two messages on their phone – one from Honda saying “thanks for participating, hope you enjoyed the show”, and the other gave a link to a specially designed mobile site that contained more information on the car (images of the interior, specs etc.).

A bluetooth unit contained in the build also picked up on any bluetooth enabled phones in the area, allowing people to download the roar of the engine as a ringtone.

Carlsberg::: Best Mate

BRAND OWNER:Carlsberg Group
CATEGORY:Drinks (alcoholic)
REGION:Canada
DATE:Apr 2009 - Dec 2008


Carlsberg was looking for a campaign to enhance brand awareness as it launched in Canada, building on its brand slogan “Probably the Best Beer in the World”. It wanted to engage with a primarily male target and link the brand to sociability.
Carlsberg came up with a nationwide competition akin to the Canadian Idol phenomenon. Competitors are required to show what makes them the “Best Mate” and why they can lay claim to the title.
The competition looks for “the guy that can make every situation better, is always connected and never lets anything stand in the way of a good time.
Visitors to www.bestmate.ca can enter to prove that with pictures, stories and videos that they are the best Best Mate. The 30 top “Best Mates” will be given a new Sony Ericsson W705 Walkman phone with integrated Facebook and YouTube applications.
The finalists will then be encouraged to record events and interactions as they build their case demonstrating their “best mate” skills.
A final winner will be selected and announced in June. The big prize is a VIP trip for the winner and three mates to Las Vegas. The advertising declares “Sinners needed for Vegas” and was created by GJP creative team Louis Duarte and Craig Burt.
The initial phase to invite contenders will be supported using a combination of outdoor, radio, online, video and social media tactics to cast a wide net.

Huggies::Baby countdown

BRAND OWNER:Kimberly-Clark
CATEGORY:Baby Care
REGION:USA
DATE:Feb 2008 - Dec 2008


There is a very short window in which first-time moms look at different disposable diaper brands and, once they have developed a preference, they generally stick with it.

Huggies sought an innovative way to inspire new moms to try the brand and build brand preference. The challenge was to create a meaningful tool that would allow mums to take information from the Huggies site and save on their personal profile pages online, creating brand ambassadors.
Multi-tasking is an important survival mechanism to help mums with their busy lives and online media play a major role in facilitating multi-tasking. Huggies created the “Huggies Baby Countdown” widget as a tool that expectant mothers could use to calculate how much longer their pregnancies will last based on their due dates.

It serves moms-to-be with daily pregnancy tips corresponding to their particular day along in pregnancy, as well as a picture of the developing fetus.

All content for the tips came from the Huggies brand website while a link on the widget drove users to sign up for the Pregnancy e-Newsletter on HuggiesBabynetwork.com.

This aligns Huggies with a useful tool that pregnant women can download to a personal profile page from more than 20 websites, including Facebook, Freewebs, iGoogle and MySpace, thereby connecting moms-to-be with the Huggies brand on a daily basis. All widget-supporting media and creative execution was negotiated as added value. Thus, every successful install was essentially a 9 month-long brand engagement, free of cost. The widget had 1,200+ installs in the first month and garnered an astounding interaction rate of 18%, compared with a Pointroll CPG rich media average of 7.25% (Pointroll CPG benchmarks, December 2008). To date, the widget has had 4,503,983 unique views and more than 31,000 installs

Twilight:The dawn of Twilight

BRAND OWNER:Hoyts
CATEGORY:Entertainment
REGION:Australia
DATE:Oct 2009 - Dec 2009


Stephanie Meyer’s teen vampire saga is a smash in the US but that didn’t help promote the movie of the book Twilight in Australia.
Launching at the same time as The Quantum of Solace and Australia, distributors Hoyts had a tough challenge to attract the girls and young women it wanted to watch the movie.
Research showed that Meyer’s Aussie 14-19-year-old fans could act as cheer leaders to their peers.

The campaign made Twilight part of the conversation with communities on MySpace and Facebook, bespoke MSN Messenger packs and viral trailer distribution.




Young women were targeted via celebrity gossip magazines, incorporating the Twilight characters into the target’s every day reality and backing this up with bespoke and high frequency placements on popular websites.
Twilight generated more than $20m dollars at the box office, 1,110% above Hoyts average revenues for a movie and $7m ahead of target.

Holiday Inn :::Stay smart, presidential style

BRAND OWNER :InterContinental Hotels Group
CATEGORY :Travel/Airlines
REGION :USA
DATE :Feb 2008 - Apr 2008


The Holiday Inn Express frequent business traveller spends a lot of time on the road and they know what they like: practical amenities, without all kinds of extra fluff (and cost).
This is the premise for Holiday Inn Express’ “Stay Smart” brand promise: you’ll feel smarter for having stayed with HI Express instead of “fancier” full service hotels.
Holiday Inn capitalised on the unprecedented level of media interest in the 2008 US Presidential race by creating a media conversation around the Holiday Inn Express brand positioning.
In the midst of the most expensive campaign in history, the Stay Smart, America website exposed how fiscally responsible- and irresponsible- the Presidential candidates were.
The success of the website hinged on a risky but hugely successful communications strategy that relied solely on PR to push the website and its message. No paid media was purchased, online or offline, to tout Stay Smart America. This was an unconventional strategy that paid off huge for the brand.
Leveraging the candidate’s public FEC filings, the website analysed and published the candidate’s campaign lodging expenditures and determined how much they would have saved if they stayed with Holiday Inn Express.
The story was first offered up to respected journalist and blogger Chris Elliott of The New York Times for inclusion on his blog. Once Elliott ran the exclusive, the release was then strategically distributed right before Super to the Top 100 daily newspapers, national television and relevant Web sites, blogs, social networks and message boards.
In the first 2 weeks the website generated over 85m media impressions and secured online and offline, national and international coverage on Fox News, CBS, The London Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, and USA Today, among dozens of political and news blogs. The Stay Smart, America website, developed for $100K, set off a storm of press activity that returned over $2.5MM+ in free media coverage.

Obama :::Rock the vote in-game

BRAND OWNER:Obama
CATEGORY:Government/Public Sector
REGION:USA
DATE:Oct 2008 - Nov 2008

For Barack Obama to win the 2008 election, he needed to secure a majority of young voters in key battleground states. The Rock the Vote campaign sought to engage and incite young Americans under 30 to register and vote.
In-game advertising has become an effective way for brands to reach coveted young audiences. Among the hard to reach 18-34 male audience, console and PC gaming is strongly preferred as their favorite leisure activity.
While playing videogames, engagement is extremely high and multitasking is almost non-existent compared to watching TV or surfing the internet.
Brand Obama partnered with Microsoft in-game advertising specialist Massive to reach the Xbox Live community.
Rock the Vote was able to successfully call this social community to action through relevant political issues that they care about. Gamers could get voter registration forms sent to their email, vote in an online presidential poll, download themes and gamer pics to show their allegiance for favored candidates.
Obama ran his “Rock the Vote” campaign in 11 Xbox 360 titles across 10 battleground states using geo targeting, time date targeting and content targeting. Gamers who were online in those states saw key messages in realistic settings while playing the video game titles running the campaign. ‘Early Voting has begun’ and ‘Vote Early’ were on billboards, stadiums and outdoor locations.
Additionally, the Xbox LIVE community was polled on their candidate of choice. Nearly 100,000 participants cast their votes, with Obama trending 12 percentage points ahead, providing a unique insight into young voters minds and served as one of the largest unofficial polls in the nation.
The campaign was a first for a political party and succeeded in targeting a hard to reach audience that spends more time gaming than on other media. Some 80,000 voter registration forms were downloaded through Xbox LIVE and Xbox.com and 100,000 Xbox LIVE member were polled voting preference and often acted as the bellwether of national polls.

Know better::: I Cant Believe Its Not Butter

BRAND OWNER :Unilever
CATEGORY :Food
REGION :USA
DATE :Jan 2008 - Mar 2008

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!(ICBINB) was under a new threat. The growing health trend towards all-natural products reinforced many women’s long-held belief that butter is healthy because it is natural.

ICBINB had been communicating that it was the healthier alternative to butter for years, but consumers were confused about which health messages to believe.

ICBINB had to reinforce its health credentials and dispel some incorrect beliefs held by the target audience of women aged 45-54.
The brand worked with MSN Games to develop Now You Know Better, a custom online trivia game with an opportunity to win $1 million. In the game, players answered a variety of trivia questions dating back to the '50s on topics ranging from U.S. history to health to movies.

The questions focused on ‘then vs. now’ and took a tongue-in-cheek look at the naiveté of the past, while educating on the present and on ICBINB.

Players could compete against up to four other players online and select an animated online personality and screen name. Celebrities like Gary Coleman and Dustin Diamond took part in the game through a series of public service announcement-style vignettes in which they confessed their "Know Better" moments. In addition to the $1,000,000 grand prize, there were more than $40,000 in prizes up for grabs during the Sweepstakes.

The Web site also featured recipes and instant print coupons for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! Now You Know Better was the most popular trivia game on MSN Games ever, with 1.2 million unique players. Among its target 45–54 female audience, the campaign increased the perception that the brand “is healthier than butter” (21.4% increase) and “has the great butter taste” (11% increase). The campaign helped ICBINB to outperform the category during the first half of 2008 in terms of both volume and dollars.

McDonald’s::: Personalised coupons

BRAND OWNER:McDonald's
CATEGORY:Food
REGION:China
DATE:Feb 2008 - Mar 2008


Discount coupons are an important element in driving in-store traffic, but McDonald’s wanted to help lower cost of its coupon strategy while breaking through the cluttered coupon market and targeting 18-25 year olds.
McDonald’s came up of a way of putting the target audience in control of their coupon – allowing them to customize their personal coupon according to their preference.

McDonald’s partnered with China’s largest online network QQ, and created an advertising banner that was embedded within the QQ Member Instant Messaging screen to encourage click-thru.

After clicking on the banner, users are able to customize their meal according to their preference.

They could then either print or download their personalized coupon onto their mobile phone.

In just 4 weeks a total of almost 550,000 clicked through and some 800,000 coupons were created. 680,000 QQ members downloaded the coupon onto their mobile or printed them after having customized them.

This represented a 43% conversion for McDonald’s. Furthermore, 190,000 people redeemed their coupons at a McDonald’s store, giving the campaign a total response rate of 11.87% (compared to a traditional insertion coupon campaign that yielded a 0.62% response rate).

Sony Ericsson:::15 seconds of fame

BRAND OWNER:Sony Ericsson
CATEGORY:Telecoms/ Mobile
REGION:Netherlands
DATE:Nov 2008

For the launch of its C905 model, which boasts an 8.1 mega pixel camera, Sony Ericsson transformed a bus shelter at Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam into a photo studio.
The aim of this campaign was to demonstrate the camera’s capabilities, with a special focus on how the mobile imaging of this model is as good as any digital camera.

To illustrate this, the panel was fitted with a touchscreen, which passers-by could interact with. The panel was fitted with a C905 camera, and people could pose for a photo in the bus shelter and then have their image transferred to a large 87m2 screen opposite.

The campaign took seconds but gave everyone who wanted it their 15 seconds of fame.

Starburst::: Share something juicy

BRAND OWNER:Mars
CATEGORY:Confectionery/ Snacks
REGION:USA
DATE:Jun 2008 - Dec 2008

Confectionary brand Starburst had aggressive growth goals in 2008 and wanted to revitalize itself among 18-24 year olds online, with the launch of a new product, GummiBursts.

Starburst realised that for 18-24 year olds, the digital space provides the setting to create the identity they want the world to know. They use every opportunity to share themselves with anyone who will pay attention. The Share Something Juicy campaign connects the candy to insights about today’s TMI (Too Much Information) culture, where people's personal moments are captured and broadcast more than ever.

The campaign is highlighted by partnerships with popular vloggers, entertaining viral videos about sharing, with creative control given over to vloggers to create videos that show what happens when people share everything in their minds – Moments in Sharing.

Starburst also produced, in partnership with Nest New Networks, Nite Fite - an episodic cartoon series in which Starburst was integrated into the fabric of the show. Within the cartoon, two talk show hosts share their feelings about the challenges of their new sponsor, Starburst, in an interesting twist on a traditional media sponsorship.

Nite Fite and vlogger videos combined to deliver nearly 11 million engaged video views. The GummiBurst launch creative received strong branding, with the new product messaging driving a 14% lift in purchase intent and brand favourability among the target.