Author Archives: Adam Good

03.14.12
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SXSW 2012: My Transmedia Journal

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of film, interactive and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin Texas.

SXSW began in 1987, and has continued to grow in size every year. It was my first time to the event. I found it an innovation smorgasbord, with the latest technologies, most innovative companies in attendance across the web, mobile, film, advertising and music industries.

Marking its 26th year, SXSW swept across Austin, taking over various concert venues, bars, hotel suites, meeting rooms and the Austin Convention Center.
Once arriving you quickly get the impression that attendees were expecting, and even hoping for some new location-based technology to launch and continue the noise about the importance of social media.

I was hoping the opposite to be perfectly honest. I already have enough social media apps on my phone to connect with people. Although I do admit to attending the event and downloading the new app Highlight 1.1.

In my mind there is already enough evidence of the power of interactive sharing tools and platforms. Connecting to your friends happens everyday. My goal for the festival was a simple one. I wanted to find the people who are producing the most compelling interactive content that is shared on the existing interconnected pipes. I wanted to understand their approaches on how each message is modified and optimized for all the most popular screens to continue engagement.

I decided with this approach I would be able to find the story tellers focussed on using transmedia techniques. Transmedia is a form of storytelling delivered across multiple platforms and channels over time. It’s more than just integrating online and offline experiences. It’s about dispersing the story systematically across multiple media, each making their own unique contribution to the whole.

And when done right, transmedia puts a story and message on surround sound with the audience participating right in the middle.

Image sourced from NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey company

I thought if I was focussed on finding well crafted transmedia content examples I could navigate the hundreds of talks on offer.

What I found over the six days were some talented people developing unique content for the right channel, and on the right screen at the right time to enhance the content story and advance the users purpose to change behaviour.

Below are my comments from eleven talks I attended that I really found interesting. I have also provided some external web links to stories about these panels so you can read further opinions.
I should warn you, like all my blog posts this was drafted very quickly. I did this on my flight home to San Francisco while it was fresh in my mind. That said I hope you find the notes and the links of interest.
Overall I throughly enjoyed SXSW and I received some well overdue inspiration. I will certainly be back in 2013.

Panelists –

Walter Werzowa, developed mnemonic for Intel.
Greg Johnson, Creative director for HP
Robin Lanahan, Director of design and brand strategy, startup business group, Microsoft.

Brands today exist in multiple mediums, defined by multiple voices. The media brands inhabit is iterative, with no beginning, no end, and little permanency. In that context, adherence to a big idea and endless repetition of centralized, fixed rules can make a brand seem unresponsive and out of step with its audience. But without repetition, how does a brand create consistency? And without consistency, how does a brand maintain value?

The panelists in this session put forth the idea that a consistent brand today can only be achieved by creating patterns. These patterns should be distinctive (ownable, signature expressions), relevant (personal, meaningful) and active (delivering, doing, moving).

The pattern language should also always follow a consistent story. While the channel and goal of the communication may change, a tightly defined story framework, and an ownable pattern language, can convey a focused brand.

The power of patterns as a branding element was best demonstrated by Walter . He illustrated, by breaking down Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, that repeating the same series of notes would be boring but varying the basic motive resulted in emotion and engagement. With brands, as in music, one needs the right combination of what is expected and what is new to convey an engaging message over time.

The talk slides are worth a look.

Talk 2: Future of Entertainment: Viewer Becomes User

Panelists Mike Scogin, vice president of wireless and mobile for MTV Networks; Paul Chang, senior marketing manager for Showtime; Jared Hecht, co-founder of GroupMe; Kimber Myers, director of partnerships for GetGlue; and Tom Thai, vice president of marketing and business development for Bluefin Labs Inc discussed how audiences and brands are increasing visibility through apps and allowing audiences to transition from being simple “viewers” to actual “users” as they communicate directly with media through evolving social media platforms.
A good read about this talk was written by Impact Community newspaper and found here;

The Code is a BBC documentary about Professor Marcus du Sautoy’s search of a mysterious code that governs our world through numbers, shapes and patterns. It’s also a next-generation transmedia treasure hunt aimed at all ages and abilities that takes place online through games, puzzles, Facebook and Twitter, in the real world, and in Lost-style clues hidden within the TV show itself.

The Code is one of the most ambitious ‘native transmedia’ projects ever created by the BBC and Six to Start, and it demonstrates what’s possible when a broadcaster with the reach, reputation, and quality of the BBC meets the breadth and depth of engagement that the web can provide.

Talk 4: Top Chef: How Transmedia is Changing TV

Bravo defines “Transmedia” as storytelling across different media platforms. Lisa Hsia, Bravo’s digital media department, said the channel employed transmedia “out of desperation” to keep their content, both on the computer screen and television screen, fresh.

Dave Serwatka, Bravo’s Vice President of Current and Cross Platform Productions, chose one of Bravo’s flagship shows, Top Chef, because he believed it was an ideal choice for Bravo’s transmedia initiative. Top Chef employed the mediums of internet webisodes (with their online show Last Chance Kitchen), responses through Twitter with assigned hashtags that were broadcasted on air, and traditional television.

Henry Jenkins from Fast Company wrote an excellent article on the ‘Seven Myths About Transmedia Storytelling‘. Also Time Magazine wrote a wonderful story on the talk, follow the link here

Talk 5: The Wars of Tech

Steven Levy is a senior writer for Wired, the former chief technology correspondent for Newsweek and the author of seven books. Washington Post describes him as “American’s premier technology journalist.”
Steven spoke how he felt you can get caught up with the horse races of Facebook versus Google or Microsoft versus Apple or record labels versus the Internet. But in nearly 30 years of covering technology he feels the major conflicts are those of philosophy, politics and power.
He described the last few decades as a spectacular cycle of fantasy novels with the Hacker Spirit as the protagonist and amazing supporting characters including Steve Jobs, Richard Stallman, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Stephen Wolfram, Whitfield Diffie, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Here is Storify account of the talk.

Nearly two decades ago, independent film ushered in a wave of new voices, new stories and a new way of looking at the industry.
Fast forward to present day and independent games are reinvigorating an industry in the same way. The parallels between these respective moments in time are quite strong.
In an age of online distribution and accessible technology, the independent artist of today would seem to have quite a bit more weighted in their favour.
The panel was hosted by Lisanne Pajot, a director whose film Indie Game: The Movie was an official selection at the SXSW Film Festival, and also happened to feature Fish and his adventures in developing Fez.
A good interview with Phil Fish after the panel can be found here.

Amber Case  founded CyborgCamp, a conference on the future of humans and computers.
Her main focus is on mobile software, augmented reality and data visualization, as these reduce the amount of time and space it takes for people to connect with information.
Case founded Geoloqi.com, a private location sharing application, out of a frustration with existing social protocols around text messaging and wayfinding.
She formerly worked at global advertising agency. In 2010, she was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the Most Influential Women in Tech.
Time Magazine wrote a wonderful story on the talk, find it here.

This talk was hosted by Matthew Bishop from The Economist, the session brought together Neil Powell, founder of The Information Blanket; Cindy Gallop, founder of If We Ran the World; Margaret Keene, executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi LA, the agency helping Toyota harness the power of their brand with programs like “Ideas for good” and “100 cars for good;” and Leo Premutico, co-founder of Johannes Leonardo, to explore the intersection of ethics and economics and look at why driving for social good has become has the guiding principle for the world’s leading innovators.

A good summary blog post on this talk from Helen Nowicka from Porter Novelli can be found here.

Andrew McAfee, author of “Race Against the Machine,” interviewed  Tim O’Reilly the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. A good summary blog post on this talk from W Craig Tomlin can be found here.

Hulu content Senior Vice President Andy Forssell moderated a panel entitled “Changing the Channel: The New Golden Age of TV.” Enlisting filmmakers Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused”) and Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) and actor Timothy “Speed” Levitch (“The Cruise”) for a discussion about the migration of television content to online outlets such as Hulu. See more here.
Al Gore the former US Vice-President and Sean Parker Napster and Facebook fame presented in front of a packed house on how digital has the power to disrupt what Gore described as ‘Democracy has been hacked…it’s time for Occupy Democracy”.
The rallying cry of Al Gore, talked about his work with campaigning sites Votizen and NationBuilder.
Gore applauded the recent efforts Stateside to stop SOPA, urged people to also campaign against efforts by governments worldwide to censor the internet and talked passionately about the coroding effects on US politicians of the efforts to keep collecting money from special interests to pay for TV campaign ads.
Parker talked about his belief that new online tools will reduce the need for such cash-calls and ensure campaigning is less dominated by TV coverage. He admitted that just because there are large numbers of people online with digital personas, it doesn’t mean that they’ll do anything other than “build farms” (zing-Zynga). He explained that passive participation in the political process through low effort online petitions is not the same as getting people who are connected online to meet offline and protest

End

02.29.12
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SouthxProxy powered by you

The Digital Lab is a global digital thought leadership and strategic innovation practice powered by BBDO and Proximity.

The Digital Lab’s mission is to continually raise and maintain the “Digital IQ” of BBDO’s staffers and clients by providing timely, relevant and actionable thought leadership, strategic analysis and venture development services connected to the most disruptive emerging media platforms and innovations across the globe.

For this year’s SXSW event Barefoot Proximity in Cincinnati wanted to provide an exclusive coverage streamed to Digital Labs.

So they come up with the idea SouthxProxy.com

Basically Proximity is sending a proxy for you to SXSW Interactive in Austin so you can experience the most popular interactive conference in the world from home or work. As well as this a few lucky people will be chosen to remotely control the Proxybot via Twitter. They’ll decide which sessions and which parties to attend.

Check it out.

01.31.12
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BBDO Tops The Gunn Report for Record Sixth Year in a Row

The Gunn Report, created in 1999, is based on a simple idea. It combines the agency winners’ lists from all of the world’s most important award contests, thus to establish the annual worldwide league tables for the Advertising industry. Some of these are global contests, some regional, some national.

BBDO was the top agency network on 180 awards, beating DDB on 125, Ogilvy & Mather on 124 and Leo Burnett on 121. On the heels of being ranked the most awarded agency network in the world across every marketing communications discipline as published in the Directory Big Won won at the start of the year, and the Most Effective Network in the world, according to the global Effies.

This is the sixth year in a row that BBDO has topped The Gunn Report and the ninth time in the 13-year history of these rankings.  No other agency network has won more than twice.  Twenty-six (26) BBDO agencies from every geographic region contributed to the network’s success.

For this years winners for 2011 work it would seem campaigns taking an integrated approach across television and the digital received the greatest recognition. Mark Tutssel, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett and guest editor of the Gunn Report, said. “People today have technology at their fingertips and are in complete control. In the ongoing battle for attention, brands are no longer competing against each other but with the whole of popular culture. Creativity is key to winning the battle,”

Five well awarded peices in digital (not from BBDO) that I would like to point out were;

1. Nike’s “Write the Future”, tied to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa and developed by Wieden+Kennedy. It picked up 38 awards in all. This work made extensive use of social media and reached 120m people on Facebook and took 12 awards for its digital component.

2. Old Spice’s “Responses” campaign from W+K, Portland which saw Isaiah Mustafa, the pitchman from “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ad answer questions from internet users, led the charts with 15 awards.

3. Google Chrome’s “Speed Tests” out of BBH/Google Creative Lab for its Chrome web browser – measuring how quickly it worked compared with
everything from a sound wave to a gun firing a potato – scooped 13

4. Mini Countryman’s “Mini Getaway Stockholm” from Jung von Matt, Stockholm.

5. Uniqlo’s “Uniqlo Luck Line” for Dentsu Tokyo.
12.21.11
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The Great Paper Airplane Fly Off

Hundreds of Tucson area school children will get a chance to let their lessons take flight and their imaginations soar over the next month as they participate in the Great Paper Airplane Project through an innovative competition developed by BBDO San Francisco for the the Pima Air & Space Museum.

The Pima Air & Space Museum is one of the largest aviation Museums in the world, and the largest non-government funded aviation Museum in the United States. The Museum, which opened in 1976, maintains a collection of more than 300 aircraft and spacecraft from around the globe, including many rare and one-of-a-kind, and more than 125,000 artifacts.

The inspirational science project to promote the museum is part of a greater campaign to interest kids in aviation and engineering. Yvonne C. Morris, Executive Director of the Arizona Aerospace Foundation and Pima Air & Space Museum said “Museums today are not just repositories of our past, they must inspire the future. Having kids help us create aviation history is what this project is all about.”

At the end of a month of paper airplane construction and practice sessions, the first 300 children between the ages of 6 and 14 who sign up on the www.GreatPaperAirplane.org website will be eligible to compete to see whose paper airplane can fly the furthest. The competition begins at 11 a.m., Saturday, January 14, 2012, at the Pima Air and Space Museum, 6000 E. Valencia Rd.

The young paper airplane flier whose plane flies the furthest will win a spot as Guest Engineer on the team challenging the Guinness Book of World Record’s largest paper airplane honors. This massive paper airplane – with the young Guest Engineer’s name on the tail or nose — will eventually soar from a height of 5,000 feet over the Arizona desert.  It may fly for miles or crash and burn, but that’s all part of the fun of scientific experimentation.

“We know that an early interest in science can lead to a lifetime of discovery, Morris said. “We want to help inspire the next great scientific minds in our country and this contest will be a fun way to engage students and get them thinking about the science of flight.”

 

UPDATED – March 21st, 2012

It flew!

11.09.11
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Proximity China Digital Agency of the Year at Digital Media awards

The Digital Media Awards celebrates the best that Asia’s digital marketing industry has to offer.

At this year’s awards held in Beijing, Proximity was the most awarded agency network and Proximity China was named Digital Agency of the Year with Goodstein & Partners.

Five Proximity agencies combined to win 17 awards for clients Volkswagen, Mars, FedEx, Levis Strauss, Mountain Dew, Aviva and Westpac Bank.

Proximity China led the way, winning three Golds and three Silvers, along with the Platinum Award for Best Digital work for Volkswagen’s “People’s Car Project.”

This was the fourth year in a row a Proximity agency had taken out the Platinum Award for Best in Show digital piece for the entire region. Check out the winners from 2010 and 2009.

Below are links to four of these winning pieces that have been featured on this blog during the year. I think each one of these campaigns are good examples of digital marketing that has innovation embedded to the core of the idea so they are created to drive participation, and deliver a brand user experience that people want to share.

A big congrats must go to Richard Fraser, MD of Proximity Asia and his team for such an outstanding result.

Platinum Best in Show
Gold Automotive category
Gold B2C category
Gold Website
Silver Online Marketing category
Silver Best Integrated category

Gold Financial Services category
Silver Mobile category

Gold Online Marketing category
Silver Website category

Gold Best Integrated category
10.19.11
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The role of Innovation in agencies

I was asked by Creative Social to talk about the role of Innovation in agencies. Creative Social is the global digital collective founded by Daniele Fiandaca the Head of Innovation of Cheil UK and Mark Chalmers former creative partner of Strawberry Frog.

Below are the answers to their questions.

How do you define innovation?

It’s the opposite too madness and doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. In business, advertising or production development innovation is the delivery of value through an idea or set of ideas that focus on improving the customer experience. It’s about developing a culture to trying things, pilot programs, test and learn always seeking incremental change that show improvements in the customer experience. 

You have had Innovation in your job title before, what does that actually mean?

When I moved from President Tribal DDB Asia Pacific to the Clemenger BBDO Group as an Executive Director responsible for the group digital direction I added the word innovation to the title. It was 2007 and many marketers had a perception of just digital advertising as banners and web sites. The guy or girl who came along to an agency meeting speaking internet stats, digital promotions, online advertising and email campaigns etc. I really wanted clients to look at digital as not a channel but as a new language to enhance their customer experience. Social media was on the increase at the time enabling immediate broadcasting of positive and negative experiences of brands which ultimately influences the buying decisions of others. I wanted clients to see digital could be used beyond a cold fixed desktop screen communication platform. I wanted them to look at the entire customer journey using digital to create action sensory communication. 

What is your background? How did you get into an innovation role?

I have been in digital media, marketing, content, advertising, publishing and technology for over twenty years. I started in the Australian film and television industry, moved to Microsoft and then onto Newscorp. I jumped into advertising with Omnicom agencies DDB, Tribal DDB, Clemenger BBDO and now with Proximity Worldwide.

During this ride I have lived and worked in varies countries including United States, China, Australia, and New Zealand. The advertising and technology industries continues to change, but my professional goal seems to stay the same. I just want to always be part of a team looking to break new ground and develop creative interactive brand experience programs for clients. I’m passionate about how brands and businesses can create participation with consumers in both the real and digital channels.

What do you think are the key characteristics to being successful in an innovation role?

You have to be an energetic, creative with analytical  skills. Be focus on teamwork, collaboration and building effective working relations with clients and all members of your team. When driving a project for a client be the one leading consumer engagement and always getting to the truth of the brand. You also need strong understanding of brand marketing functions, as well as operational dynamics that can affect a company’s ability to reach audiences and drive sales. Be driven to create meaningful tools and architecting user experiences. Once you have an idea on the table, apply and interactive mindset and a focus on making the end user feel personal with it. The idea must be helpful towards advancing the users purpose. Always ask yourself why do I care about this idea?

Give us an idea of what you do day to day to deliver innovation in your business?

Obviously plenty of reading, following innovation blogs and people with a strong design background is something I do each day. I also think it’s important to get away from technology and try to do things that don’t use it at all. Try to move away from complexity and get to enjoy very simple things. Here is where you find great ideas.

From your experiences, what can be the biggest barriers to true innovation?

Worried about failure. No one likes it but unless you make mistakes you don’t learn anything and you don’t move forward with new thinking.

What has been the most innovative thing you have seen in the advertising space over the last six months?

We all can impulse spend but what about a product to help us impulse save. Westpac launched in March this year an innovative impulse savings product to help New Zealanders save as impulsively as they spend.  Impulse Saver, a free iPhone app that enables customers to save denominations of their choice up to $50 with a simple click of a button.

What technologies/behaviours that we can see coming up in the next 12 months excites you the most?

People are in love with their personal internet enabled smart devices. Doesn’t matter if it’s a phone or tablet they are never more than a couple of meters away from them at any given time. These devices for the first time in our short technology history are actually becoming smarter every day. To make them smarter people choose and seek out an array of useful applications to download and improve their device and of course their lives.

The increase in hand held internet enabled devices has allowed us the ability to create action sensory communication. Mobile phones and smart devices today have eyes with inbuilt cameras. They have brains to know where they are located via mobile networks. They also have ears with built in microphones. They have a skin that you can touch which increasingly allows a brand a platform to augment consumer’s senses and truly change behavior.

09.17.11
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Online film from Barefoot Wine about beach conservation

Strewn across beaches, it’s ugly as sin. Gathered up and presented on a billboard, it cleans up quite nicely.
BBDO San Francisco this month constructed a billboard on Venice Beach made from almost 18,000 pieces of beach trash—as a teaser advertisement for One Beach, a film about beach conservation, sponsored by Barefoot Wine & Bubbly.
The client has worked for more than 15 years to support clean and sustainable beaches—ones that are “barefoot friendly.” One Beach, directed by Jason Baffa, looks at how creative innovators are cleaning beaches and changing the world.
08.02.11
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San Francisco Giants Seek World Series Championship Baby


Last month, BBDO San Francisco and Comcast got together to create “Help the Giants Win” which asked fans over social media what rituals they took part in that led to last year’s World Series win.

Now, the two are getting a little more personal, trying to decide what fans decided to go past third base to celebrate the Giants successful season .

The  “World Championship Baby” contest  in an attempt to determine what San Francisco baby is born closest to 7:54 p.m. PST on August 1, the official nine-month anniversary of the World Series.

Over 900 expecting parents who presumably got past third base that fateful evening have signed up via digital channels.

And the winner!

At 8:02 pm on that day, CSN have said hello to its Champion munchkin, Brooklynn Olivia Bird.

Just for arriving at the proper time, Bird has received a birth certificate signed by the Giants team, a commemorative brick paver at AT&T Park and a $2,010 gift card.

The initiative was the kick off for BBDO SF’s new campaign for CSN, which is based on the theme of “Let’s repeat last year.” The idea being: CSN can bring you another winning championship season.

What’s next?

07.02.11
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Creating useful and immersive digital experiences

Campaign Brief May / June 2011

Agency creative’s can learn a lot from the application developer approach in creating useful immersive ideas. To have such a mind-set the focus must begin by making the user – feel personal.

The idea must be helpful towards advancing the user’s purpose writes Adam Good, Executive Director of Digital Innovation Clemenger Group Australasia – who  has just relocated to San Francisco as Executive Vice President of Proximity Worldwide.

Get your copy at http://campaignbrief.realviewtechnologies.com/

___________________

It’s no secret that customer experience is one of the cornerstones of an effective business and marketing strategy. In all honesty, customer experience should have always been the focus all along, but many companies have chosen to hide behind corporate walls and only communicate to customers when it was convenient for them, instead of when the customer actually needed them.

There’s no need to belabor the point that social media has put customers in the driver’s seat. Marketers continue to be challenged in getting through to people via traditional advertising methods. With digital TV recorders (DVRs), do-not-send lists, pop-up blockers, and spam blockers, people are doing everything possible to tune out of advertising messages.

At the same time, word of mouth continues to rise as social media sources enable immediate broadcasting of positive and negative experiences which ultimately influences the buying decisions of others.

The best way to influence people is to focus on the brand customer experience. What is the brand doing to delight people and make their lives better? Many businesses this year face the task of fixing their customer experience to ensure that products and services actually do what they’re supposed to do, and the company’s support and service are actually helpful.

Who will business and marketing leaders turn too to deliver brand experience ideas?

In 2011 the creative industry has an opportunity to captalise and look to create ideas that are useful and immersive.  There has never been a better time to embrace digital technology and give a brand a true useful purpose. People are becoming more adept and comfortable using technology and applications to better their lives, but still few marketers are leveraging digital to create tools and experiences for people to use and interact with, and find it easier to create messages where a brand is just talking about itself.

Digital no longer offers a cold fixed desk screen communication platform. The increase in hand held internet enabled devices has allowed us the ability to create action sensory communication.

Mobile phones and smart devices today have eyes with inbuilt cameras. They have brains to know where they are located via mobile networks. They also have ears with built in microphones. They have a skin that you can touch which increasingly allows a brand a platform to augment consumer’s senses and truly change behavior.

People are in love with their personal internet enabled smart devices. They are never more than a couple of metres away from them at any given time. These devices for the first time in our short technology history are actually becoming smarter every day. To make them smarter people choose and seek out an array of useful applications to download and improve their device and of course their lives.

There are now hundreds of thousands of quality free and low cost easy to use applications to find and download. Many of these applications are useful ideas that are both social, can deliver on productivity, offer supporting utilities or just enhance the user’s entertainment and idle time.

Agencies creative’s can learn a lot from the application developer approach in creating useful immersive ideas. To have such a mindset the focus must begin by making the end user feel personal. The idea must be helpful towards advancing the users purpose. Being a useful idea means you have the power to produce or make improvements for the user.  Useful ideas can be as simple as save me petrol, lose weight, get more sleep, use less electricity, save more money, find me a holiday, enhance my photos, or even help me run a marathon. Combining both the brands data with the users input data is the basis of true useful customer experience.

An example of a useful idea is the EcoDrive solution from AKQA London that demonstrates that an auto maker’s environmental responsibility should not stop when the car leaves the production line, but extend into the way people drive their cars. EcoDrive collects all necessary data relating to vehicle efficiency and, transmits it into an advanced USB key.

The driver plugs this into a PC. The EcoDrive system presents the driver with detailed environmental performance of the car including the CO2 emission level for each trip. It analyses the driver’s style and then provides tips and recommendations on how to modify style to achieve CO2 reductions – and save money on fuel. EcoDrive will encourage the driver to set himself challenges such as CO2 reduction targets for specific journeys or over a set period of time. And in a community site will encourage all drivers to come together and pool their savings – working towards much bigger collective targets and showing that a lot of small contributions join to have a massive impact.

Another example is RGA New York’s Nike Football Head2Head from RGA which gives competitive high school football players the ultimate tool to see how they stack up with the best in the game, at any stage of their career, as well as their next opponents. Part numbers cruncher, part data visualizer, and part video trainer, Nike Football Head2Head gives players the tools they need to get stats, get motivated, and get better.

My final example is the world’s first Impulse Saver™ from Westpac developed by Colenso BBDO. Save money as easily and impulsively as you spend is the useful goal for this useful iPhone application. It allows you to save money on a whim, anytime by just pressing a button. New Zealanders spend on average $16,600,000 daily on impulse purchases such as chocolate bars and drinks, simply because it’s easy and convenient. So what Colenso BBDO did was make saving as simple as spending. Forget logging into a bank website, choosing an amount, selecting the account, confirming the transaction with your password, than logging out again. Now saving money whenever, wherever, is as simple as pressing a big red button.

The question on how to create a useful brand depends on many factors. Foremost among these is our own possibilities, our talents, style, propensities, knowledge, skills, and level of being. We may need to hone our skills, learn new knowledge, and develop our talents. When we get it right creating a brand idea to play a more integral and ongoing role in people’s lives can be very satisfying.

06.10.11
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Mountain Dew, a pinball machine you can actually ride

In New Zealand, Mountain Dew is still in its infancy with only one national advertising campaign pre-dating this.

Therefore Colenso BBDO brief was two-fold. Launch their three new flavours and make Mountain Dew famous amongst Kiwi teenagers.

Building on Mountain Dew’s association with extreme sports, the agency mixed their three electric-themed flavours with skating and came up with an audacious idea: A pinball machine you can actually ride.

But the intention wasn’t just to create an ad. Colenso were going to make real skaters the ball in a world first skatepark, wired with sensors, sounds and lights, to score your run just like pinball.

The park had to look like a real pinball machine but also had to be good for skating. That challenge fell on Corban Walls (Remain Industries) who was the man behind the architecture of the park.

Corban designs skateparks for the NZ Nationals and sets for films such as Avatar, so the agency knew he would understand the logistics of making the park work from both an aesthetic and practical point of view.

Brendon Reid (Automation Associates) and his team were then tasked with making the machine function. This involved installing and programming hundreds of sensors, sounds and lights as well as the huge L.E.D screen on the backboard.

Colenso gave the job of designing the look of the park to Mark Ward, a UK-based graphic designer known for his unique Americana inspired street-style graphics.

Lastly, the agency enlisted the help of three Mountain Dew Ambassadors, Haimona Ngata (BMX) Brett Band (Skate) and Mike Bancroft (Skate), who fronted the campaign in a video blog throughout the build and launch of the park.

After months of planning, the 600 square foot skatepark got underway and took approximately one month to build. No detail was left undone, with a 13 metre high backboard, bumpers, flippers and plunger. There were even zones dedicated to each flavour.

On 4th June 2011 the park opened to the public with an invitational skate competition with 30 of NZ’s best skaters. A TVC also ran on National TV, promoting the three flavours and the opening of the park.

Colenso also created and launched a website where people could explore the park, sign up for individual runs and share 360 degree, Matrix-style images of themselves mid-trick.

So far the park has been featured on over 100 international news stations including CNN World Report, not to mention hundreds of websites and blogs. Even Tony Hawk has tweeted about it.

There’s no doubt that this has already been a great success and Mountain Dew have had fantastic feedback from the skating community. But the nostalgic-retro aspect of the idea seems to have appealed to a much broader audience and age bracket, not to mention pinball enthusiasts everywhere.