This is a project that I was involved in and I would love to hear your feedback. It’s a collaboration between electronic music producer j.viewz and Irma.dk. It’s for the online shop of Irma, a high quality chain of grocery stores in Denmark. It’s been around for 127 years (making it the second oldest in the world), and is an institution here in Denmark that has always represented high standards. As such they’re quite conservative and have never actually advertised on tv before let alone created videos intended for viral distribution. It’s a long story but basically I discovered this guy, j.viewz, from NY that played Teardrop on vegetables, via a tweet. I thought he was amazing so we convinced the client, to fly him over to be a part of the campaign.

The TVC focusses on what we believe to be the number one barrier for online grocery shopping: It is not natural for humans to ask someone else to choose what we eat. By introducing the staff as the nose, eyes and taste buds of the customer we aim to break down that barrier. While the musician is briefly introduced in the spot, he is the main attraction of the viral videos. The location is the actual facilities of Irma.dk. I think it’s a good example of adverting that isn’t advertising. Do you agree?

Credits: Client: Irma.dk Agency: Republica ECD: Peter Zimmermann CDs: Winnie Korse & Nikolaj Fremming (Me) Account Director: Cathrine Borre Director: Michael Langhoff DOP: Peter Riis Production: Uitch Iscratch Editors: Jimmy Fallinski, Michael Balle, j.viewz Post production: Gimmick Sound Design: j.viewz & Supersonic Music (TVC): Far Too Close by j.viewz

Adobe advertised their live event “Adobe Creative Day” with one of the best bus stop street stunts I have seen in a while. Waiting passengers were photographed and retouched in real time, half freaking them out, half entertaining them. Well worth the wait for a bus.

Agency: Abby Norm

Here comes a fantastic, barely legal, example of disruptive (and free) media placement. The right message, at the right time, to the right audience. This is the winning trick of media planning and advertising, right?

Let me start from the beginning… All around the world when you live outside the US and you don’t have access to services like Netflix or iTunes, you download American TV series from pirate websites. Breaking the rules is the rule to get access to great fresh content without waiting for the episodes to be localized in your own language. However a lot of the people who download the shows in English don’t know the language well enough to understand what the heck they are saying on the screen. So they download translated subtitles in the form of .srt files. And this is were the genius of Y&R Peru started to play. They hijacked the subtitle files, by uploading their own, not perfectly translated version of the transcript, where characters like Walter White were coming up with completely random and out of context lines. Wanna know what Mr White was really saying? Improve your English, go to Británico English Institute.

Great insight, fantastic thinking out of the box. However, I can’t help it, I have to keep my client hat on: too bad the video doesn’t show the results. Without a bit of the context on consumers reactions and conversion rates it’s hard to get the full picture and tell if this was really a good campaign.

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Transformers toys have the ability to transform themselves and become something else to adapt to the situation. For example, they can become a car or a fighter jet. And now also a transformable print ad. It’s a simple, apparently obvious, surely very smart idea by DDB Paris, who worked with paper artist Bertrand Le Pautremat to create the first print advertisement that using the origami technique can turn the magazine page into a robot ready for battle. A zero-tech interactive and engaging idea. Love it!

Ice is the hottest thing in experience marketing at the moment. I know it sounds like oxymoron, but there is actually an interesting coincidence worth checking out, as two soft drink brands, Coca-Cola and 7UP have both recently opted to use ice to bring some innovation into their product marketing. The most recent initiative is made in Colombia, where Coke launched the first ever bottle made out of ice. Same flavor, same refreshing experience less the plastic or glass waste when you are done drinking. Pretty smart, especially if served in a bar on the beach. You might wonder how clean and good for your health an ice bottle might be… I hear you! But let’s make a choice here, do you want to save the planet or not? (Just kidding of course…) The agency here is Ogilvy & Mather Bogota.

The second idea came out of Argentina a few months ago, where BBDO created the first vending machine made out of ice which melts down under the sun giving away free 7 Up drinks to passer-byes. And once the vending machine was fully melted no waste was left behind, there was just the memory of the experience in a puddle.

Love the fact that there wasn’t much technology involved here, the tools for the installation were provided by Mother Nature, and the interaction was bringing together both fun and service during hot summer days. The only (nice) geeky twist was in the possibility of guessing at what time the vending machine would have melted. By sending a tweet out tagged with #meltingmachine, consumers were able to submit their bets for the chance to win a 7UP six pack.

For the victims of an abuse, I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to speak up, to pick up the phone and ask for help. ChildLine is a UK-based, confidential, free, 24-hour counseling service for children and young people that, together with YCN Studio in London has created a powerful animated short video to encourage victims to overcome fear and feel comfortable about the process of speaking with a counselor about sexual abuse. It’s a multimedia experience, pretty intense and sadly poetic. For sure it will do a great job raising awareness on the child abuse. However I feel the film is beautiful but uses a very mature visual language so I must say I’m not convinced the treatment that they have chosen will prove adequate to the audience. What do you think?

The short was directed by BUCK.

Via Osocio

Time to start talking about Cannes Lions potential winners. This one for me is a serious candidate: Facebook 1914. Imagine if Facebook had existed 100 years ago during World War I. Imagine living the War through the words, the images, the emotions of Leon Vivien, a French soldier sent to the front to fight for his country, to fight for his life. Leon’s page featured eight months worth of content, and has been updated daily, telling the story live, for the past two months, using the images and the resources from the Museum of the Great War archive. Facebook 1914 by DDB Paris is more than an ad campaign. It’s a strong educational piece, touching and engaging that showcases the impressive archive of the museum bringing to life history like a few other projects have been able to do in the past (We choose the moon being a pioneer) .

Results for this idea are pretty impressive too: the initiative generated 3 million Euros of earned media, and increased by 45% the number of visitors to the museum.

If you enjoy history related projects, have a look at this one by Leica.

The Jeep is an iconic car. Freedom, discovery, adventure are just a few of the keywords that get usually associated with the model. The car is very popular in Argentina however, most of the 4×4 vehicles never cross the city limits. To help out Argentinians lacking the inspiration to get out of town, Jeep has created a fantastic a GPS add-on app that will get you “God knows where”, to discover 28 lost off-road spots in the country. Just push the button and start following the instructions. A great brand service initiative, targeting to existing customers (which is quite rare) that definitely delivers a strong reinforcement of what the Jeep stands for.

After watching the inspiring video, I just hope the app provides you with info also on the amount of gas you should have in the tank in order to get lost but not stuck

Nice one by Leo Burnett Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Urban Ears wanted to promote their new product Slussen, a mobile DJ mixing system app for iPhones. They went about it by using 3D printing to create an analogue but interactive scratch-atch-able poster. The illustration is engraved with ridges, that in the design produce sound as they are scratched with your fingernails.

Agency: Uncle Grey

The two biggest Cola brands keep upping the ante in terms of vending machines. While Coke brought together Indians and Pakistanis in their ‘Small World Machines’ Pepsi in Belgium built a machine that combined a free sample can with a Like on Facebook.

Agency: TBWA Brussels