This month’s ‘Planner’s Favourite’ goes to...
The latest guest post in our ‘Planner’s Favourite' series, is written by David Wilding, Head of Planning at PHD. We've asked David to choose a favourite between three campaigns from Old Spice, Samsung, and LG. Many thanks to David for a great post. - Ed.
Old Spice – The man your man could smell like
There’s been so much said and written about this already it’s surprising that the internet hasn’t fallen over. So in the interests of space I’ve picked out just three things to love and admire about it.
1 – The original ad itself. It’s won awards as a piece of entertainment as much as a piece of advertising and it deserves every one. With such a fertile idea using YouTube masthead ads, and promoted video was a very smart way of kick starting the path to social media.
2 – They just got on with it. Convention has it that you only use brand spokespeople in broadcast media channels – they’re expensive and have agents and stuff. Old Spice turned convention on its head with incredible results - launching a breakthrough, real-time social media campaign fronted by Isaiah Mustafa in which he created personalised YouTube videos in response to messages on Facebook and Twitter. How many brands would honestly work so hard for no guaranteed results? Many would still be in meetings talking about it now.
3 – The results. 11.5m channel views, 812k Facebook fans, 134m upload views, 164k channel subscribers and sales are up 107% (according to Nielsen). They’d only look better if you sat them on a horse…
Samsung : 3D LED TV
Samsung have used 3D Outdoor projection mapping at the Beurs van Berlage building in Amsterdam to showcase the quality of their new 3D televisions. Then to amplify this activity they’ve translated it into YouTube via a ‘game take-over’.
So at first, it appears as if you’re watching a video of the projection. But then the YouTube page seems to crack, butterflies start flying out of the projection towards you, and an image of the Samsung 3D takes over the page. You’re then invited to try to catch the butterflies flying out of the screen.
If that all sounds like rather convoluted hard work, that’s because it is. I was bored, confused and butterfly-less after about 10 seconds only to find there didn’t seem to be a “close” option. So I quietly navigated away from the site and I suspect I wasn’t the only one. The butterflies may still be flying around somewhere for all I know.
LG : The Young and the Connected
LG are using a YouTube channel to showcase a new mini soap opera they’ve created called The Young and the Connected. The content is essentially short form web videos featuring obscenely attractive 20 somethings.
It all resembles a particularly sexy episode of Home & Away with added mobiles thrown very heavily into the plotline. Characters have discussions about whether it’s best to propose by Twitter or Facebook, for example. Which all seems a long way from Ailsa’s novelty hamburger phone in the Summer Bay Diner.
There’s much to admire in this strategy – they’re working off the insight that mobile devices only become interesting in the context of how people use them and have recognised that entertaining short form video content is a great way to connect with their audience. That said it could certainly have benefited from activity to ensure more people knew about it. To date the videos have received 60k views with 10k on the channel itself. And, perhaps linked to these low numbers, the quality of the content is questionable. Not especially funny or dramatic – I wasn’t sure whether it was a spoof or whether this was serious material. (A problem I've never had with Home & Away)
So a very clear winner for me anyway. The campaign your campaign could smell like?