Planner's Favourite: Kick-Ass, Suzuki & Carlsberg
The latest instalment in our Planner's Favourite series is written by David Graham, Digital Director at Starcom MediaVest Group. We have asked David to choose a favourite between three campaigns from Kick-Ass, Suzuki and Carlsberg. Many thanks to David for being a great judge. Read on to find out his verdict... - Ed.
Universal: Kick-Ass
The key point here is that Kick-Ass is a completely new franchise with no fan base or latent interest to lean into for the launch. With no brand heritage, tapping into the massive YouTube audience and taking advantage of an environment that has established itself an effective platform for promoting big movie releases online is a smart move.
The story is about an average teenager who decides to be become a super hero, something that I’m sure many boys have imagined at some point in their childhood. Donning a pair of green pyjamas, a mask and a couple of rolling pins strapped to his back as weapons he actually goes through with it and inspires a subculture of teenage copy cats, vigilantes and other fledgling superheroes. YouTube is the ideal place to bring this to life with a competition encouraging visitors to upload videos of themselves dressed as superheroes. Of course there is the movie trailer itself, but additionally there is plenty of footage from the creator Mark Miller, Matthew Vaughn (director), Jane Goldman (screenwriter) as well as the actors to provide depth and colour to its genesis and establish the franchise beyond a hardcore comic audience. A top ten all time best sponsored channel is an excellent result, while the first week box office takings point to the success of the movie itself. All in all a commendable job well done.
Suzuki: Make a difference
Besides the basic competition mechanic, I struggled to see a clear rationale as to why Suzuki decided to establish a brand presence on YouTube. There is no additional video content about the car or the brand; nor does there appear to be a sense of an active community being nurtured. The majority of the clips have few if any comments and the entire experience is quite cold and corporate. It feels like a tactical piece of activity that doesn’t link to anything more substantial or broader around the brand. Putting a car up as a prize is a big deal for any car maker but in this case I think it was needed to have any chance of success. In the end, the competition garnered over 90 submissions which is not a bad result. 
Carlsberg: England Team Talk
Unbeaten in the qualifying stages and an all star line up, England was expected to do well at The World Cup. Could this be England’s turn? As such, the banter and build up towards to competition started in earnest months before the actual event. Despite not getting to a final since 1966, the English fans are a committed, passionate and vocal bunch, with amateur pundits in pubs and offices across the country. Drawing on this passion and willingness to give our two-pennies-worth, with little encouragement, Carlsberg gives us the opportunity to show how we would encourage the team, with the chance to win the ultimate team talk to the England World Cup team in the run up to the competition. An imaginative and well laid out YouTube brand channel acted as the hub for fans to upload their team talk as well as view celebrity efforts along side. But the brand acknowledged their audience aren’t the most active when it comes to UGC, so to make it really easy, they took the Carlsberg mobile studio on a road show round England. These recordings were also added to the brand channel and the result was over 1,000 entries which a phenomenal result. A good curating job highlighted the funniest clips, while the winners’ day including their live team talk was also recorded and added to the site providing plenty of content to view and a reason to come back.
Finally, just to show how it should really be done the brand draws on the familiar “if Carlsberg did...” and produces a sports star studded TV ad that outdoes us all. Frankly, we’d have been disappointed if they didn’t. The end frame has the YouTube hub url where the ad is showcased alongside all the existing content. This campaign stands out for me because of the way it uses YouTube to bring the insight to life. They countered potential limitations through the road show and neatly used the online activity as a lead up towards the big reveal of the TV ad which itself linked back to the YouTube activity. A really well rounded and well integrated campaign.