April 24th, 2007

This week our Asia Pacific offices got together to review our recent Interactive creative work. We reviewed client work in the following digital categories;

• 10 entries for Marketing web sites: Short term/promotion sites built to support or lead a marketing campaign
• 7 entries for Online advertising: Banner and Rich Media Advertising
• 4 entries for Viral marketing entries: Digital video spots made for the Internet only, Email advertising, including. e-cards
• 3 entries for Interactive campaigns: 3 or more different and separate interactive online elements for the same concept (e.g. 1 online ad, 1 e-mail, 1 website)
• 2 entries for Corporate web sites: Destination sites built as a storefront for a company’s long-term business
• 1 entry for CD-ROM: Digital marketing material launched or delivered via CD-ROM

We discussed that all communication should be anchored by a great idea and surrounded by several small ideas. We are looking for “What is the idea in one sentence?” With Interactive communication we are asking ‘What is the Value Exchange’ – What pulls me in?

Integrate the idea
Quite often and very frustrating, online work is expected to follow a piece of offline work already created for another channel such as TV or print. The online creative should be an expression or extension of the ‘idea’ and not simply just matching the look and feel of other communications. ‘Matching luggage’ online creative is no more than an opportunity to see more of the same message. We are asking “Have they made the most of the idea and most importantly made it interactive so a consumer will come forward?”

Simplicity
Keep it simple and just when you think it is, make it even more so. When we look at the work we are asking ourselves,“Would everyone get this?”

Collaboration
Bringing ideas to life online in 2007 can rarely be achieved in isolation. Successful campaigns require a mixture of good engagement planning, creative, technical, directors, film companies, animators, research and media thinking. When we look at the work we are asking ourselves, “Does the work fit created media or contributed to any paid media plan”

Consumer insight
The exciting thing about interactive is that a consumer can do something – open it, play with it, watch it, click it, interact with it or at worst ignore it. In order to increase our opportunities of success, we need to be clear on what the audience want and what they are likely to do. This insight will not only drive the idea, but also steer our decision on the levels of interactivity we apply. When looking at the work we ask, “Why would I bother?”

It was a wonderful half day of discussion and below are what we selected as our ten best Tribal pieces of work for Q1, 2007, they are in no particular order. Please note each screen grabs will link to the work.

Tribal DDB India

MTV: AIDS Awareness – Protected Entry	MTV: India Show Semi Girabaal

Times Jobs Portal Career Champions	Paras Pharma Skin Ointment: Itch Attacks

Tribal DDB Greater China

McDonald’s China Professor Super Savings	McDonald’s Hong Kong Shake Shake Fries

Tribal DDB Australia

Nike Australia Nikeology Retail Education Program	McDonald’s Australia Make Up Your Own Mind

Gatorade Australia Operation Gatorade	News Limited Australia the Ashes ‘Australia Strikes Back’

Philips Consumer Electronics went online to launch the 800 Series electric shaver in China, one of the biggest internet markets in the world.

"Philips will always look at where our consumers are and try to come up with simple yet innovative way to reach our targets there," said Lenze Boonstra, Philips’ director of brand and media in Hong Kong.

Sales of grooming products and accessories aimed at men remain low in China. For one thing, Asian males tend to grow less facial hair than western men.

Social factors are another factor. Young, urban male consumers, the target market for pricey foreign products like a Philips shaver, probably started shaving with the same double-edged type of razors used by their fathers, who were raised during a time when more sophisticated products were unavailable (and unaffordable) in China.

While young Chinese women rushed into the marketplace, snatching up Japanese and European skin care brands, cosmetics and other personal care products, men are just beginning to explore the category.

Therefore Philips–and Procter & Gamble, which now owns Gillette–have identified the mainland as a market of great potential rather than a lost cause. In fact, China is the first country where Philips is selling the 800 series.

The digital campaign, created by DDB Worldwide’s Tribal DDB offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong, promotes the shaver as a cool "must-have secret weapon designed for success," said Adam Good, the agency’s Hong Kong-based president, Asia/Pacific. Although China has a large, fast-growing economy, competition for white-collar jobs is high and many male college graduates struggle to find first jobs. And dates.

The shaver’s web site, features three "hot" female advisers, said Mr. Good. Named Victoria, Jennifer and Angelina, they are collectively called My Secret Weapon.

   A shaver that looks as good as it shaves!

"They provide an enticing way to shake up what is normally considered a mundane everyday activity. Our aim is to transform a traditionally taboo grooming activity into something cool and enjoyable."

Also, the act of shaving in China is regarded as "a very private activity which is not openly discussed," he added. So the campaign seeks to give the product "street cred" in a format that is entertaining.

The sultry, attractive advisers offer tips about etiquette, job hunting and dating (unsurprisingly, each one recommends daily use of an electric shaver) to help young Chinese men to achieve success and become more presentable. The web site is backed up with online banner ads, blogs, and viral promotions.

Working with the Lipton team has been a great experience. We’ve been able to create a thoroughly entertaining and interactive digital destination at the Hirameki Park. It’s very exciting to be rolling out such an innovative campaign across Asia too.

Tribal DDB’s Lipton Hiramaki campaign leapfrogs from the fact that tea is already an integral part of everyday Asian culture. The campaign adds fun and creativity to the daily ritual. At the root of the campaign is “HIRAMEKI” the Japanese expression which means “unleashing inspiration and creativity.

The idea is that drinking Tea, which provides “Theanine” allows you to be “relaxed and alert”. This state of mind provides the perfect mental condition to get a brilliant idea or be inspired – thus HIRAMEKI. Have a cup of Lipton Yellow Label and see things with new perspective. Tribal DDB Shanghai and Hong Kong have launched this first campaign for Lipton Yellow Label across Asia, it will eventually run in 11 Asian countries, including China, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

Tea drinkers are invited to Lipton’s Hirameki Park – a funfair of interactive entertainment. The website allows users to play, co-create, as well as gain tips for how to be enlightened and inspired. People post their favourite tea recipes, they can download interactive desktops and wallpapers which remind them how to have a Hirameki moment once a day. There are magic tricks to learn and quizzes to make you smarter.

Lipton ads to go regional
by Arun Sudhaman
Media Asia 21-Mar-07, 06:08

Click here for full story.

Professor Super Savings is an amusing character with thick brim glasses and a black hat developed by Tribal DDB Shanghai. This cool geek’s mission is to investigate other ways of getting the best value out of just 6 Renminbi (RMB): the price of a McDonald’s Super Savings menu. His adventures are captured in entertaining mini films which are broadcast throughout the internet, on popular video portals such as tudou.com or social networking sites like QQ.com. One film shows people pilling into a taxi (in the trunk and on the roof too) in order to cut the cost of a taxi fare to the airport. Professor Super Savings always comes out victorious – a McDonald’s Super Saving menu is definitely the most profitable way of spending 6RMB.

We aim to provide fun whilst educating the consumers’ perception of McDonald’s Value meals. The Professor’s unusual quirky character gives consumers a different perspective of what 6RMB is worth. Using a digital platform and leveraging on the popularity of blogs, video websites and social forums enables us to give the Professor as much exposure as possible.

Consumers can submit their ideas to the Professor online. The person who submits the best proposal for how to optimize the use of 6RMB will win the chance to direct the next mini commercial. Professor Supers Savings is quite a personality; his nerdy yet cool manner has already earned him a huge fanbase. He even has his own blog as well as conducting interviews about his personal life. Visitors can also download special discount coupons to use at McDonald’s.

IN THE MEDIA

McDonald’s drives value
by Arun Sudhaman Media Asia 
Media Asia 21-Mar-07, 05:24

SHANGHAI – McDonald’s has created a new fictional ‘geek’ that challenges consumers to find better value than the brand’s Value Menu in China.

The Professor Super Savings character, billed as a ‘value expert’ who checks, compares and runs tests on McDonald’s value menu proposition, is being rolled out via a new digital campaign developed by McDonald’s China digital AOR, Tribal DDB.

The first phase of the drive includes a series of web-only TVCs that are being broadcast on mainland social networking sites, along with a Professor Super Savings blog and interviews.

A media partnership with QQ.com, meanwhile, asks Chinese consumers to challenge the Professor on where they can find better value for  six renminbi (US$0.75) – the price of McDonald’s Value Menu. Consumers are also able to download vouchers.

“It’s really all about having fun with consumers and showing what you can do for six renminbi,” said McDonald’s China chief marketing and corporate affairs officer Gary Rosen.

“We are asking consumers for stories on how they save, and actually our website has already slowed down because of the overwhelming response.”

The next phase of the campaign, meanwhile, will feature the Professor asking consumers to submit their own Value Menu TVCs, which sees McDonald’s tapping into the current craze for user-generated content.

“People like to interact with the McDonald’s brand, and we find it is a good seeding strategy,” said Tribal DDB Asia-Pacific president Adam Good. “If we get something interesting into that online market, it just explodes, and we want to give Professor Super Savings some sort of longevity.”

The campaign targets a slightly younger demographic of university students and young adults. “These are people who don’t always have a lot of money in their wallets,” explained Good. “It’s more like developing a TV programme, but one thing is that consumers are getting the value message.”

Click here to see overview of campaign.

McDonald’s has for the first time ever invited a regional celebrity to appear in its TVC series. Superstar actress/singer Miss Kelly Chen will participate in the promotional campaign and star in the “Shake Shake Fries” campaign.

The agency was asked by McDonald’s to develop a holiday season online campaign to promote this ‘Shake Shake Fries’ product and to highlight the four sachet flavors. The big idea was “How do you shake your fries?”

The agency created two fun and engaging interactive components. “Shake Shake Video Competition” encourage public to use their own creative ways to shake the fries, shoot it as video and enter the competition. At around one month’s time, 161 creative videos were received, which shows the campaign interact and involves the customers successfully.

Another component, “Shake and Dance with Joey” allow participants to upload their pictures and then star in a music video also receive a encouraging result.

Other than banners, innovative media was explored to enhance the viral effect. “Gunners” are employed to initiate topics on discussion forums in Hong Kong. Also, some funny videos submitted were uploaded to YouTube as a promotion channel to generate more awareness of the campaign.

UPDATED POST
July 6th, 2007 7:04 PM

McDonalds Shake Shake Fries has one a Gold Effie.

This is the first ever Gold Effie for McDonalds in Asia. Effie awards Ideas that Work – the great ideas that achieve real results and the strategy that goes into creating them. Effie winners represent client and agency teams who tackled a marketplace challenge with a big idea and knew exactly how to communicate their message to their customer. Since 1968, winning an Effie has become a global symbol of achievement.

It’s been a busy time in China as Tribal DDB Shanghai gains momentum. We have picked up two Unilever brand assignments, Lipton (more on this later) and also working in Zhong Hua toothpaste.

The main objective for Zhong Hua is to deliver an attractive communication about the new product format “gel in gel”, the “Fresh Core Cool Blue”. 

We are using the Valentine’s season as a platform to build a word of mouth device around “Freshness you can see”, modernizing and uplifting Zhonghua Brand Image at the same time.

We have based the concept on when you are chasing a girlfriend, if you get close to her within 10cm, you can successfully get a kiss (if your lucky that is).

At that moment, your freshness’ breathe and your healthy teeth are the most critical things. Zhoughua prepare them for you, helping you get close-up with others.

Combining love and freshness together, the tagline came naturally: “Get close within 10 CM freshly; there is no distance about love”. To support the campaign we used Netease, the famous Chinese portal as a partner and we built an online competition to encourage people to upload their creative ideas about how to get close to their lovers and asking for love. People could upload video, picture and copy to express their fresh love.

World AIDS Day
Client: MTV India

The poor cursor gets protected and its user gets aware of the importance of condoms. What else can one ask for on the occasion of World’s AIDS Day?

Synopsis:
Promoting the cause of AIDS on the web is no easy task. AIDS has emerged as one of the biggest killer worldwide. A fact that perhaps every Tom Dick and Hari is aware of. In spite of that the use of condoms is pitiably low in India. A fact we wanted to change.
What was common between AIDS and the web is protection. Web users are always cautious and require assurance that a site is ‘protected’ before they enter it. This triggered a sudden thought in our minds. What would happen if websites refused entry into their pages without a condom? The answer was that thousands of surfers would get protected and talk about protection.
So on the occasion of World AIDS Day we designed a banner for MTV India that appeared before site launched. The banner asked users to choose a condom for their cursor. They were given a wide choice of condoms and 10 seconds of time. If they could not make a choice by then, the cursor was given a default condom to ‘wear’. The message was clear. No condom. No entry.

Response:
The promo definitely created a buzz around cyber town. There were postings on blogs, networking sites were scrapping about it, links were forwarded and by the end of day we had close 50,000 people getting protected online

UPDATED POST
June 16th, 2007 10:12 PM

Tribal DDB India has over the last two years been extremely salient at the awards – winner at AAAI and Abby in India, the Asia Pacific Ad Fest, and finalist status at the One Show and at Cannes and also a two-time winner at the Webbys.

It was a proud moment for Tribal DDB India when the team opened at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2007 for the Cannes Lions Daily to find their name as the only one from India in the Cyber Shortlist’s.

The entry is titled ‘Protected Entry’ in the category Charity, Public Health & Safety, Public Awareness.

“We had a few, well-chosen entries this year, but we knew had some strong contenders among them. This one for MTV particularly startles with the sheer simplicity of the idea,” says Leroy Alvares, Country Head, Tribal DDB India.

“Every shortlist reaffirms our belief that our grooming of our young talent to strive for global standards is working and is well on track. As a jury member at the One Show and the Clio’s this year, I could see that we had work of high international quality,” adds Meera Sharath Chandra, National Creative Director, Mudra Marketing Services (of which Tribal DDB India is an important SBU).

“This entry has already proved itself as a finalist at the One Show and as a People’s Choice Award winner at the Webbys. We knew we were in with a very good chance,” says R Lakshminarayanan, CEO Mudra Marketing Services.