A ‘Splendid’ Start

So it’s March 1st and I couldn’t ask for a more splendid start to the year. As the majority of you know by now, I decided to leave Profero last December to take a break and look for a new, more challenging adventure.

After a few weeks spent in suit jackets and brogues, I had some very brilliant interviews and got myself a job at PR-extraordinaires ‘Splendid Communications’ as Creative Strategist.

Today it was my first day and I’m terribly excited to be working with such a great bunch of talented people. Splendid is already helping some brilliant clients like Smirnoff, Guinness, Jose Cuervo, Marmite and Kickers creating superb ’stories’ on and offline – hopefully with my help now, we’ll be scooping even more thirlling pieces of work!

This post also comes handy to remind all of you that everything written on this blog is solely my opinion and not of my employers! Just thought I’d point that out once again…

So, watch out for some ’splendid’ work chaps and wish me luck!

Enzo ;O)

Revolution Awards should go to …

I am not going to judge every single category if not I’d stay here all night – but also because I don’t feel I have the right experience to judge them all. I am simply going to highlight some of the works that I think has been outstanding during last year which, in my honest opinion, deserve the gong.

Let’s give it a go.

• The Automotive category has some rather strange entries. Amongst them, there’s none I’d consider particularly award-winning , however I was definitely not surprised to see the BMW Z4 campaign to be there (as they probably spent £ 1.billion on it and I have no idea why…) and also the Fiat 500 Spotify partnership. If we want to be fair, we could potentially say that using Spotify in an online media campaign was rather sweet but I wish they thought about a more carefully integrated approach.
• Within the ‘Consumer Electronics‘ category, LMFM’s The Last Call campaign for Sony Mobile definitely wins above the rest. Rather experiential and buzz-worthy, if they get the gong it’d be a well deserved one. Please do not award the ‘Hopper Invasion’ campaign … dull dull dull !
• Not much to say about the ‘Financial Services‘ category as the only one who could ever win is the Barclaycard Waterslide by Dare. There…
• FMCG might be a difficult one to judge – some nice campaigns in there but I think the award should go either to the chaps at Initials Marketing for  the genius Doritos iD3 campaign or to my friends at Iris for the ‘Face of Kinder’ crowdsourcing project. (I’ve actually noticed the Kinder campaign in many European countries, which makes me believe the campaign worked pretty nicely)
• I am going to be slightly bias on this one as it’s one of the latest campaigns I’ve worked on during my time at Profero. The award for the Pharmaceutical category should definitely go to In-Bed (Bayer) as I truly believe that through this project we clearly defined what ‘innovation thinking’ could mean for the pharma clients out there. Go Profero Team!
• In the Leisure/Travel category there can only be ONE winner and this has to be Agency Republic for Killzone 2 Webgame. The campaign (and the web-tool-browser-plugin-or-however-you-wanna-call-it) definitely set a benchmark for innovation in online gaming. Well done chaps…
• For the Non-Profit category I think Agency Republic  could scoop the gong for the  SmokeFree Generation campaign. Hope they do.
• Orange should definitely bring home the trophy for the RockCorps campaign in theTechnology & Telecoms category. The whole concept is simply genius – I just hope they are going to keep up with the good work and come up with some cool creative idea to make it even more appealing to the younger audience.

TO BE CONTINUED!

I will follow up with the ‘Best in Discipline’ tomorrow…

Enzo

Branded Video Content all the way…

For those who remember, the expression ‘branded content’ was coined in 2001 with the launch of an amazing BMW project called ‘The Hire‘, a collection of 8 short movies produced by BMW with some of the world’s best directors, starring Clive Owen as the main character and showcasing some of the best qualities of the mighty German cars.

As consumers had begun to be engaged with much more interesting, relevant and definitely longer content, in 2001 this was considered a breakthrough innovation. In 2010, nearly 10 years down the line, this marketing approach is still considered to be one of the best around and who couldn’t say the same with a bunch of new ‘branded content’ making their way into our ‘hearts=brains’ ?

It’s always good to remember what Gary Knight, ex ITV, once said:

The content element must be real, for real people, in the real world. It must never be advertorial, as it then becomes “fictitious” and the franchise is lost. The best starting point is to think about how to create a genuine viewing experience that can adopt true brand-extension positions, both on-and off-air.

The new decade has definitely started with a BANG within this marketing environment as more and more marketeers try and come up with cost-effective ideas; new ways to reach diversified audiences and create content that can be easily integrated within a marketing mix using different channels.

Just thought I’d show you some of the great examples from the last couple of years that I’ve loved, followed by some of the newly-launched ones, as I am really excited about 2010 being the year for branded content.

In the same style of The Hire, towards the end of 2008, Sony Ericsson launched an awards-winning campaign called ‘Who is Jonny X‘, a nine-part digital drama series to promote the new line of Xperia phones. Each episode (2 to 3 minutes long) followed Johnny X as he used his X1 mobile phone to try and piece together elements of his life following a kidnap by a gang. For those of you who didn’t see it, you can either watch the whole movie on the official website, or go to their YouTube page to see each single episode.

In 2009, Red Bull decided to create an online series whose target audience of extreme-sports fans could completely-relate-to and entirely-get-addicted-to. For this reason, they decided to launch ‘The Atherthon Project’, an awesome show tracking the exploits of the most famous family in mountain bike history. The series follows British riders Dan, Gee and Rachel Atherton as they compete in the 2009 UCI World Cup Series and the World Championships in Australia. Totally addictive and perfect for their adrenaline-junky-core-audience.

Also last year, Schweppes launched a short movie called ‘SIGNS’ which is one of the videos I simply can’t stop watching. The viral seeding activity was brilliant as no one actually knew that it was a branded project by the Orangina Company. The video has reached around 10 million views since launched and it’s an absolute masterpiece in my honest opinion. It’s quite funny that until the last time I saw the movie, I didn’t realise at the end the ‘Schhhhhh’ sign made by the actress (which kinds gives it away…)

In 2006/07, Orange commissioned a TV show called ‘Orange Playlist‘ to promote the existing Orange Mobile Music Store. The show was broadcasted on ITV every Wednesday featuring different celebrities picking their 10 favourite songs. The show was so successful that it was commissioned for the following year. Orange and their brand entertainment agency Cake also managed to extend their Playlist content into experiential marketing through roadshows touring universities and city centres.

In 2009, Australian ‘uBank‘ launched a rather successful campaign to help consumers understand the tough economic climate with a series of some very ‘tongue-in-cheek’ video-tutorials. Called ‘Money Box‘ the content aims at making the world of finance simple and easy to understand, helping you “make the most of your money right now” (Very ASDA-ish)

2010 has already had an impressive start with branded content….

Devil-worthy fashion brand PRADA has just produced a new short-movie called ‘First Spring’ in collaboration with one of the most established Chinese artists, Yang Fudong. The short clip has been shot beautifully and the awesomeness of the video is very much in the lack of heavy branded material. You don’t see the PRADA logo anywhere during the movie; a well thought technique that will definitely allow the brand to grab consumers’ attention even more.

As Daniel Granatta has already mentioned within Adverblog, ABSOLUT is one of the brands that better understands the concept of branded content. One of their recently launched sites to promote their ‘Rock Edition’ vodka bottle, called “You’re with the band“, is in fact a very good proof of that (this is a documentary made by Danny Clinch on how’s the life of a rock band such as Wolfmother).

However, their latest work is something that looks absolutely exceptional.

In collaboration with ‘Where the Wild Things Are‘ director Spike Jonze, this week Absolut has launched a short-movie at the Sundance Film Festival called ‘I’m Here’. As Contagious magazine reports, this is a wonderfully whimsical tale about two robots living in LA that Jonze says is his first love story.

Jonze says of the collaboration:

Absolut didn’t give me any requirements to make a movie that had anything to do with vodka. They just wanted me to make something that was important to me, and let my imagination take me wherever I wanted’.

All I can say is that the movie seems to be fitting perfectly with the ABSOLUT brand and even more with their latest comms positioning. The investment in such an acclaimed director seems to have already paid off with the 30-minute film being accepted into film festivals globally, including Berlin next month, Turkey and the aforementioned Sundance. (Ref. Contagious)

One last thing to mention for those who really don’t get the difference between ‘Sponsored Content’ and ‘Branded Content’.

Sponsorship is adding a brand’s logo to an already existing event or entertainment property, whereas Branded Content involves coming up with the creative idea together with the brand and the producers. It is an effort of collaboration in order to bring consumers entertainment that they want, in the form that they want it!

Who is gonna be next?

E./

Italian Marketing is keeping up…

So… gone are the days when I’d think I’d never come back to Italy as the market was far behind compared to the English one! I’ve been down here for the past couple of weeks and I have to say, I’m extremely impressed by how far they got to!

I’m not sure if you all know, but  the Italian audience is now one of the most prolific both in terms of iPhone  and Facebook usage throughout Europe (2nd in Apps’ Downloads and 3rd biggest audience on FB). From what I’ve seen and heard, ’social media’ campaigns seem to be working pretty well; also, in terms of ‘innovative use of media’ the market currently looks pretty healthy and not entirely different from the UK. What stood out while surfing the internet over here or watching both TV and the ‘bigger’ screen is how creatively they are producing and delivering content.

Some examples below:

I spotted a lot of bespoke landing pages to promote movies á la Nintendo Wario Land YouTube page. If you haven’t seen it before, this is something that’s been done over and over again by other brands. In Italy I’ve spotted the trailer of ‘Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs’ (Piovono Polpette) using the same technique. Check it out here!

Another interesting thing I saw through a YouTube takeover was this campaign launched by Intesa SanPaolo, an Italian bank, to put trust back into their consumers. Called ‘Per Fiducia‘, (English Version here) the project includes three short-movies produced by three young talented directors with the mission of highlighting the positive and vital energies that animate the Italian country. Named ‘Per Fiducia 2.0′ the campaign is now asking users to participate through an interactive story-telling tool and create their own stories. Through a crowd-sourcing tool, users will be able to vote and rate the content, deciding the winners and therefore the next batch of short-movies to be showcased online…

Flashmobs seems to be taking over the more adventurous Italian audience as well. The Italian FOX TV decided to promote the American TV Series GLEE with a flashmob in ‘Galleria Alberto Sordi’ in Rome – check it out down here:

Also I haven’t managed to find a link anywhere online, but there is a new Italian TV show called ‘InnovatiON‘ where users are asked to interact with the content on TV from their computers while watching the show. Something like this obviously works if you are watching the show live – but no issues there at all as in Italy there is no SKY forwarding/rewind/recording facilities yet!

Last but not least, I’d like to give a massive thank you to Andrea Genovese who is providing an excellent review on everything happening in Italy through his 7th Floor website. If you speak Italian I’d really recommend you all to follow him – he’s an increadible source of inspiration and definitely keeps me in the loop with everything that’s happening “back home” – Grazie Mille Andrea!

I think there is a little bit of work to do in terms of using more emerging technologies but I am definitely going to keep Italian case studies in my mind now that I know things are working nicely here! ;O)

Over and out … happy holidays peeps!

E/.

Google – Favourite Places

I don’t know what’s happening with Google but there are definitely way too many things to demonstrate that they are going to be taking over the world very very soon!!! After Google Goggles, they’ve just launched a new marketing initiative together with Business Owners to integrate even more the offline/online brand experience, taking advantage of all their existing internal tools/resources. I am talking about the newly developed Google Favourite Places which allows users to scan a QR Code outside any participating business and receive reviews and ratings from the Google community.

Take a look at the demo-video below which will show you how it works in more details…

Overall I think this is an amazing idea and will hopefully increase QR codes’ penetration, however I am not really sure how it compares to augmented reality applications which do exactly the same and with an easier procedure (used on apps like Layar or the same Google Goggles)

What’s your thoughts?

E./