When everybody zigs, zag. So instead of the fashionable paralax scrolls or the deepest site, go sideways instead with the world’s longest panoramic portrait of Cannes Film Festival.
To showcase the festival and all its glamour, Chivas Regal presents The Legend Of Cannes, created by EVB and produced by UNIT9 and Holster Productions.
The most impressive was it was delivered in only three weeks. I’ll drink to that.
A brief look at One Show Interactive winners and what do they mean.
PRELUDE: Yes, i still blog. Though much of my writing lately is for portuguese media and corporate communication, i pulled myself together and figured out that blogs are still my voice and always will be. Notwithstanding what blogs are nowadays, with services like Tumblr and Medium.
Never understood how the Nike+ ecosystem and their Fuelband case is still the creative’s favorite Quantified Self product, with Fitbit being there first and Jawbone Up delivering some Yves Béhar goodness. But then again, i’m an Android “think different” user and don’t really buy into this “Brand Transformation” award for Nike.
Wieden+Kennedy delivers some of the more challenging work in digital, proving that it no longer makes sense to distinguish between traditional and digital agencies. Maybe between creative and production, but that’s a whole different article. Dikembe Mutombo for Old Spice (no longer online, but case is embedded below) presented us a 8 bit branded game and saved the world of creative mediocrity. Interactive storytelling at his best. Also, check their other Gold Pencil for Paranorman.
From South Africa, Volkswagen Street Quest by Ogilvy Cape Town challenged users to Pin to Win on a Google Street View mashup. The idea is not new, but the execution is flawless, specially the social design efforts, with Open Graph integrations. Another Street View winner with Bronze was Nature Valley Trail View for Generall Mills. While we’re at it, do not click on this huge Street View time waster i’ve found last week.
Another Silver Winner worth mentioning is McDonald’s (discl: client) with Your Food, Your Questions, walking the talk of transparency for the digital age.
Brackets by 6 year olds is a great idea by BBDO for AT&T. And probably originated from an insight similar to the one i had a few years ago when reading James Surowiecki: the wisdom of the crowds when applied to fantasy sports leagues could probably beat sport pundits. Too bad the sponsor brand didn’t like it (queue, “story of a creative’s life” tune).
Killing Lincoln by Mullen (congrats Edward and tema) was the first award with second screen experience considered, something i hope to see more 2013 onward, hopefully with more than a Bronze.
EasyWayTest by Loducca is a great example of what you can do when tech is used for purpose and not for show off. That’s what creative technologists should aspire to. Unless your audience are japanese teenagers.
Regarding social media, it was quite curious not to find Oreo’s Daily Twist, but i was never a big fan on giving awards to social media “campaigns” (emphatic quotation marks here). Extra social points for Droga5 and their cynical Newcastle Brown Ale SubTexter App.
Game mechanics are here to stay, and this trend speaks volume how it’s increasingly harder to get users to spend time spent with branded content. Perhaps interactive folks have been reading too much of behavioural economics. I am, at least. And yes, people do need to be nudged to change their behaviours which includes brand preference.
Street View is the new real. The subtext here might read that people still crave for authentic experiences even if camouflaged with technology. Seems a whole lot like New Aesthetic.
I’ve excluded all Google commissioned projects or Chrome Experiments. Though it’s not fair for brands to compete with the Google tech juggernaut and their deep pockets, it’s also a cause of concern for brands when tech startups are the ones to offer enough creative freedom to agencies. No wonder results then show up. There’s a lesson here, dear CMO.
Below, many of the reasons why i don’t blog as often as i did.
FULLSIX – Portugal from Fullsix Portugal on Vimeo.
Visit Fullsix’s video portfolio at http://vimeopro.com/fullsixpt/selectedworks.
Interesting project by Foursquare, showcasing the last three months of checkins, using their big data to create a mashup on top of a Mapbox map.
Of the SoLoMo team, Location hasn’t really gone mainstream unlike Social and Mobile. Privacy concerns not withstanding, when you get aggregate data like this, i start to wonder if we could use this location data for urban planning. Of course brands are only interested on traffic and consumption patterns, but there’s still a lot to explore once we get to learn on how to live in public and share our data for good purposes.
Blogs are still my favorite source of inspiration, but lately YouTube (and Vimeo) have pushed curation skills further. One of my latest discoveries was this web series from PBS digital, exploring cutting edge art, internet culture, and the people that create it.
The latest video was about the Art Of Creative Coding. Enjoy.
“A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice.”
A free and open web depends on taking a stand against governments who try to filter and censor content.
And maybe the people you elected are using a closed-door meeting to regulate the Internet, where regulators try to change one of the most remarkable inventions of humanity.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) only listens to governments, with no place for engineers, companies, and people like you to have a saying on the future of the web. A secretive and bureaucratic organization were we, the users, are not welcomed.
Pledge to support a free and open Internet and invite your friends to #takeaction. Join this Google initiative at: http://www.google.com/takeaction
Not a week goes by without a new mobile photo app by a brand. Last month it was Sony with their PhotoHopping, develop by LBi, and last week it was Coca-Cola with their fancy new photo-sharing app Happy Places.
But the one that seemed less of a bandwagon jump was Ray-Ban’s Ambermatic App, developed by R/GA Stockholm.
The free iOs App allows Ray-Ban users and fans to shoot their the photos and once taken, the App sends the image to the Ray-Ban flagship store in Covent Garden, London, where it is re-shot through an analogue Ray-Ban Ambermatic lens, and returned to the handset in Ambermatic style.
With so many photo apps, it’s about time for Instagram/Facebook to consider premium filters for brands, much like Hipstamatic did when it was *hip* (pun intended).
This.
Halloween is now gone, but Zombies are always worth mentioning. Specially when they are part of and HTML5 Experiment where players find themselves being chased on an interactive 3D environment built on WebGL.
They Will Eat You is set on a cemetery and you can run for your live and score high amongst your friends. Since it’s damn scary, perhaps i can leave you just with the demo video with original music, all part of this experimental work created by B-Reel.
They Will Eat You! from B-Reel on Vimeo.
Tim Nolan over at BBH Labs, discussed this week how despite brands wanting to be more human, they seldom are mean or call bluff on consumers because “the customer is always right” cliché. From trolling or just plain dumbness, i’ve witnessed my share of idiocy directed at brands by consumers, and you just want to send them to that place.
But sometimes, brands have the courage to do something brave. Kudos to Bodyform for having the courage to answer back.