Planner's Favourite #2: Nike's Show Your Five, 20th Century Fox's Wolverine and Sony's Little Big Planet for the PS3
This is the second round of our 'Planner's Favourite' series. Each month we ask a respected planner from the media industry to judge a selection of campaigns that are running on our platforms. -Ed.
Last month, Steve Hatch, MD of Mediaedge:cia, chose Barclaycardcreate as the winner of our first 'Planner’s Favourite'. This time round, we will ask a new judge to choose from three recent campaigns from Nike, 20th Century Fox and Sony. Details on each of the campaigns is below, we'll announce the winner later this week.
Nike's YouTube homepage takeover
At the launch of its inaugural national five-a-side football tournament 'Show Your Five', Nike invited YouTube users to enter a team and embark on a winning run to the national finals. At the heart of the campaign was their YouTube partnership, a core part of which was to enable young players to get famous and express themselves.
Faced with having to recruit over 2,000 teams within 10 days, Nike engineered the first-ever simultaneous TV commercial and YouTube homepage takeover launch at 20.31 in the half-time break of a key Champions League game. The concurrent broadcast and distribution platform launch planned to engage audiences and capture subsequent Nike 5 content searches through the YouTube Homepage. This was amplified by supporting display advertising across releavnt sites within the Google Content Network and YouTube.
As the competition progressed, the NikeFootball YouTube Brand Channel showcased the best edits of the action giving bragging rights to the better players who were featured. Additionally, the channel gave team members and football fans from across the YouTube community the opportunity to video edit and publish Nike content, tournament footage and their own photos and video through a Video Masher tool. Community involvement was also given new meaning, as Nike directly involved one of YouTube's super-users (Smivadee) to attend tournaments and produce video content.
All regional winners went through to the final play-off held at Alexandra Palace - which was broadcast on YouTube on Sunday 10th May @ 21:30 - the first time a brand has created an "appointment to view" experience on YouTube in the UK.
Fox's Wolverine YouTube homepage takeover
In April 20th Century Fox embarked on the biggest YouTube homepage takeover yet to coincide with the launch of their latest blockbuster movie 'Wolverine'. Fox ran a multi-market campaign using one of Youtube's newest and most impactful formats - the masthead takeover across YouTube homepages in 11 different countries simultaneously.
In conjunction with the campaign they also partnered with Google to conduct bespoke research evaluating the success of the format in driving a wide range of metrics from buzz generation right through to purchase intent. The research study aimed to go beyond standard metrics, as the client and agency were keen to measure things that most brands do not take into account. For example, they wanted to measure user likelihood to search for Wolverine content after seeing the ad and whether users wanted to discuss, pass on or share information about Wolverine; thus they hoped to map the likelihood of ongoing engagement. The results will be published soon.
Bettina Sherick, Vice President of Digital Marketing, 20th Century Fox International, said: "X-MEN is one of the biggest superhero franchises, and it seems only fitting that we promote X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE with the biggest YouTube homepage takeover ever. We know fans will want to spread the word, and YouTube will give them the opportunity to do so."
Sony's Little Big Planet channel on YouTube
There's a whole world of possibilities in Little Big Planet, a unique game for the Sony PS3, combining an amazing platform adventure with a huge social community enabling consumers to play, create and share their gaming. The launch in October 2008 was supported by a considerable marketing push. A second phase of communications designed to add longevity and maintain sales through 2009, started in February 2009, driven by a YouTube Channel including competitions, Google Maps mashups and continuous dialogue between 'Sackboy' and his fans on YouTube.
The 'Around the world in 80 Sackboys' competition offers two round the world tickets to the user who builds (and then uploads a video of) the most inspiring Little Big Planet level (voted for by users) based on their favourite world location. In addition, to give something back to the LBP community on YouTube, the first 5000 users to subscribe to the channel received a free knitted Sackboy toy in the post. As word got out, subscriptions skyrocketed from 5000 to 15000 in under a week, making it the number one most subscribed UK YouTube Sponsor Channel of all time. To keep users coming back, new competitions will keep replacing closed ones.