Just in case you haven’t stumbled upon it yet, here’s the masterfully produced interactive narrative for Philips new TV set, by Stink Digital and Adam Berg.

You really get what the big screen can be. On TV.

Source: Motionographer.

On the week that Champions League is back, some new work by W+K London and AKQA for Nike with Show Your 5, with Wayne Rooney and Joe Cole captured on CCTV along with local footballers.

Besides the TV ad (above), the website has a lot more footage,  where the young kids show their ball skills to the football stars. If you register on the website, you get a chance to take part in more than 200 tournaments over an 8 week period, on your way to the big final on the 10th May in London.

Detective Stripes is a hot-site announced this week by Grupo W for Rexona. The interactive plot revolves around a Shaft-like detective whose deodorant leaves no stripes on his impeccable black turtleneck.

Dani Granatta told me last year he was working on a super secret big project, and i was quite curious to find out about it (altough i suspected it would be for Rexona, based on the teasers).

The result is linear storytelling experience, with high quality production work. I always loved when digital agencies gives a behind the scenes look on their work, and Grupo W posted the whole making-of, turning the project a lot more interesting. If you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, let me shorten that for you:

• Real life, photographed storyboard plates
• 10 days of intense shooting on Mexico city, teaming with Distrito Films
• A “TakaTakaTan” beat along with an original song for the website soundtrack
• Lots of green screen shooting, superimposed later on 3D
• Huge doses of color correction and post production art-direction
• Amongst other goodies, a Detective Stripes papertoy !

More pictures on Flickr.

Congratulations, Dani & W team!

After a few months absent, my favorite Portuguese online magazine has returned. Rua de Baixo launched today their second version, a truly 2.0 release, as the site is being powered by Wordpress and it’s still in beta.

Started in 2003, it achieved a recognition as one of the main online references of portuguese urban culture, publishing the latest news, events and featuring a wide range of artists and projects. The quality of their online publishing efforts is testified by their faithful readers and newsletter subscribers and more than 40 contributing writers.

Rua de Baixo V2 Launch Teaser on Youtube
The team/collective did a great job on the new version, with new features and a more acessible website (the old one was a frame nightmare). Congratulations, David Carvalho, Hugo Pinheiro, Mário João Camolas and Pedro Marques and to the tech team at Spirituc.

The relaunch edition goes by the theme of DIY, a look on the Do It Yourself spirit of 7 portuguese artists: Joana Bastos (Art); António Aleixo (Cinema); Photonz (Production/DJ); Paulo Almeida (Fashion); Noiserv (Music); Rui Vieira (Design) and Cristina Miguel (Fashion).

On the regular sections, you can fin the usual great news coverage of music, with a a new X-Wife video (canIHaz embedded video player, plz ?), the always surprising cult findings, and an interview with the director of with my latest tv series addiction, made in Portugal, Um Mundo Catita.

Even if you don’t understand a word of Portuguese, have a look and bookmark it as one of the main online references on portuguese urban culture.

No, this blog is not turning into a personal teenager diary. I’m just sharing Love For All, the latest work by FarFar for BjornBjorg, that i’ve found out via Brainstorm9.

I knew about the commercial before, but somehow i’ve missed the campaign site, where, after a few questions, i got myself involved with Martje, as you can see at this video.

The work has the usual outstanding production values (film, sound and art direction) and even a cheesy soundtrack selection. Although the photo customization could be more fine tuned (i’m a big fan of oddcast) it does a good job of showcasing the product while keeping the experience entertaining. If dating sites were this fun, i could even stop hating them.

Now, let me go buy some new underwear just in case Martje answers me back.

P.S. It really annoys me how digital agencies never pay attention to the embeddable video players. The shareable player provided was way too large and had no playback controls. If it’s supposed to go viral, how come they don’t make it easy?

This has been a delicious interactive week, with the discovery of 2 great interactive experiences, both sponsored by chocolate brands.

Ogilvy Athens launched an interactive love story for Lacta chocolate (Kraft), entitled “Love at first site” at http://www.loveatfirstsite.gr.

A 17 minutes interactive film shot this summer, with users invited to play the role of Peter and Joanna, on their summer love story in Paros, and help them get together for a big finale. The campaign was also run on television, radio, cinemas and on all Lacta packages.

And today there was FWA’s site of the day for Sweddish chocolate Premyum, a Papervision delicacy.

Unfortunately, as usual with Papervision powered websites, the whole thing is heavy on the CPU. And the fact that i don’t understand a word of Swedish didn’t help either. But we’ll always have chocolate. I’ll give thanks for that.

As if it wasn’t enough that CP+B grabbed Brooke Shields for their VW Routan Campaign, they partnered with Oddcast to create RoutanBabyMaker.

On this genetic online mashup, with careful attention to interactive details (loved the buttons), the user is invited to upload mom and dad’s photos to envision how their baby would be.

A simple but great use of this technology, and spot on at the van’s target audience. That’s how interactive briefs should be interpreted – ask not what can technology can do for your campaign, but what the campaign can do for technology.

Source: FWA

With all the season premieres the past few weeks, it’s easy to forget about online video. With low production budgets, webisodes have to fight hard with outstanding content to keep their audiences. And one of the strategies involves interactive storytelling, by taking advantage of a new kind of web narrative.

That’s what “The Outbreak” is doing. An interactive movie, where choices have to be taken, determining the plot and movie’s final.

Directed by Chris Lund and edited by his wife Lynn Lund, the zombie adventure challenges the user to make the right choice or die.

Beware, there’s a lot of blood if you don’t succeed. I wonder if we’re starting a a trend with B-interactive websites ?

GPS Mission is a location-based game for mobile phones. Using the Mission Designer application, you’re invited to create your own mission using GPS coordinates.

Anyone with a GPS enabled phone can go through mission tasks, control checkpoints or complete their photo assignments, on a new kind of personal ARG.

The Flex application was developed by Orbster. Recently, at Ars Electronica, they were involved in Mission Future’s location based hunt, with several GPS Missions around the conference venue.