Here’s a teaser for the new Onitsuka Tiger campaign made by Amsterdam Worldwide (AW). What a cool brand to work for. First of all Onitsuka always seems to give its agency carte blanche with respect to coming up with truly creative stuff. Secondly the brand proposition ‘made of Japan’ allows AW to draw inspiration from the rich Japanese culture. Every year the agency creates a giant sneaker with a special Japanese theme. Last year it was the Zodiac calender. This year the agency created an integrated campaign around the traditionally crafted ‘Tansu’ (a chest with box shaped drawers). It took a team of Tansu masters four months to handicraft the shoe shaped ‘Kaidan’ (step) Tansu, using techniques that date back from the time of the Samurai. Back in the days these chests were used both as a cabinet as well as a hidden ladder that made upstairs lofts look inaccessible – and thus not taxable – to the tax collector. But there’s more; the Onitsuka shoe works like a puzzle; the boxes must be unlocked in a specific sequence to unveil its hidden treasures. For those who cannot admire the real chest – on display in Onitsuka’s flagship stores – AW made an online version that invites the consumer to solve the puzzle. The project is topped off with special instore Tansu-themed materials. Talking about craftmanship…
Archive for the ‘Game’ Category
‘Tansu’ sneaker for Onitsuka Tiger
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Nike Football+ Challenge
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
The ‘Nike Football+ Challenge‘, that’s quite a mouthfull for this ’transmedia’ campaign created by Boondoggle. The challenge – accessible through Hyves (the Dutch Facebook) – asks Hyves members to show their football skills to Dutch football player Wesley Sneijder. The best ‘players’ are flown into Milan to train with Sneijder – who plays for Inter. We tried the first challenge, testing whether you can quickly asses match situations and predict where Sneijder played the ball in real life matches – by clicking in the game footage. We performed really badly, but were impressed by the intelligence and the execution of the campaign. It looks like Nike and Boondoggle properly invested time and energy to make it work. The only pity is that you have to be a Hyves member to participate. Though the social network site has a very strong penetration in the Netherlands (it has about 8.5 million members and the Netherlands counts about 16.6 million inhabitants), we suspect that a big part of Nike’s target is not actively involved in the site anymore – it either switched to Facebook or uses other social media tools to stay in touch with friends. On the other hand, these are the kind of games that make Hyves more interesting. So eventually it’s a win-win concpet for both Nike and Hyves.
Vodafone keeps trying, this time with Lucky Calls
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
We’ve been writing quite a lot about Vodafone in the past months. Mainly because the mobile company seems to be in some sort of identity crises. Every time we see a Vodafone advertisement it communicates in a different way, with a different style and seems to be targeted at a different group of consumers. It started with the mutated guinea pigs, then they were giving away phones and other stuff, then you had to search for them (off and online) and the previous promotion asked us: ‘Who wants to be a prepaid millionaire?’. This time it’s not about your knowledge, but about your luck. That is, if we go by the campaign proposition: ‘Lucky Calls’. The concept is simple: you just call your favourite phone and ‘Anouk’ picks it up by moving through the screen in different ways. When you can answer a really simple question, you might win the phone. Not until you’ve submitted your personal data though – so Vodafone can add you to their database. Fortunately digital agency Super Heroes tried to make it all as digestible as possible.
Volvo C30 DRIVe around the world
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
EuroRSCG4D created this Facebook page – together with LBi Göteborg – for the Volvo C30 DRIVe. The new Volvo can drive 1333 kilometer on a full tank, thanks to the start/stop system and regenerative charging. Surprisingly enough these technologies are not mentioned on the website, which is a different approach from Volkswagen that recently introduced a special ingredient brand: Blue Motion Technologies. Instead, Volvo chose the playful route. On the dedicated Facebook page you can invite your Facebook friends to virtually drive around the world in as few stops as possible. So for example, if you live in Amsterdam you virtually drive to Berlin, where a Facebook friend drives the next lap to Moscow, from there another friend drives further east, until the car has completely circled the earth. To win the game, every single lap has to be as close as 1333 kilometers as possible. If you win, Volvo donates € 15,000 in your name to a project that fights global warming. Since we couldn’t play the game (the site told us “Oops, something went wrong. We are working on fixing this problem”), it’s difficult to judge it properly, but we wonder whether this prize gives the consumer enough incentive. We know, global warming is ‘hot’ and all, but consumers are still very opportunistic. So if you want them to play a game online, it either has to be very engaging or give away great prizes – a C30 DRIVe for example.
Treasure hunt for Vodafone’s mobiles
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
We ended our last post about Vodafone with ‘to be continued’. Why? Because we were surprised that Vodafone’s new, distinctive characters (the ‘mutated guinea pigs’) weren’t used at all in Achtung!’s brand activation, ‘Upgrade a stranger’. And while Vodafone internally is still being divided over the new ad property – created by THEY – Achtung! was asked to create yet another activation campaign for the (young) consumer. The principle is quite similar to the previous activation; through two different micro-sites Vodafone gives away more mobile phones. The first campaign is called BlackBerryHideout; phones (BlackBerry Curves) are hidden around universities, video clues are given by two students (in English) on the website and anyone can search for it – in real life. The other activation, is called TheYouFlickInMyHyveFaceChase; an online treasure hunt through social networks and blogs. This time the prize is a Samsung H1 (and some other prizes). We are not sure how many consumers are involved in these activations, but it definitely sounds like something that will cause a lot of rumour around the brand – this time mainly positive rumour…
J&B’s hunt for 24 carats of Aroma & Taste
Monday, August 10th, 2009
This arty commercial was made by KesselsKramer (KK) for J&B Spain. When the whiskey brand asked KK to develop a ‘digital event’ this summer, the Amsterdam agency chose to translate the quality of the spirit into two icons representing aroma and taste; a 24 carat golden nose and mouth, weighing both a kilo and worth €25.000 each. In an online game in a surreal London, the consumer can search for the icons and win them. Since the website is only in Spanish, we haven’t really been able to understand the exact rules of the game, but we definitely like the strong iconic images and the well executed Avengers-style commercial. A convincing way to make the brand stand out from its often conservative and dusty competition.
Pak de Polo; on-offline activation
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
With the BMW test drive – a live, webcam broadcasted, online test drive – we already had a peek in the future of ‘on-offline’ activation. And although Pak de Polo (catch the Polo) seems heavily inspired by the BMW concept, this new Volkswagen campaign by Achtung! brings the idea to a much higher level. During one week the new Volkswagen Polo is driving through the Netherlands and anyone that sees it pass by can simply flag it down and become the next test driver. On the dedicated website you can submit your zip code if you want the car to move into your direction. A computer calculates an itinerary (based on the average of all the submitted zip codes) that is shown in the little GPS screen online. At the same time the co-pilot has little chit chats with the test drivers, making it a real life in-car soap that – we have to admit – is more compelling than we expected. There’s also a car following and filming the Polo, which enables the online viewer to change camera positions (top right corner). TV, Radio 538 and Hyves (= Dutch Facebook) give Pak de Polo extra exposure. Every day the test driver making the most kilometers is the day-winner. And at the end of the week all the day-winners battle each other for the most kilometers. We are really impressed and predict this concept to be the springboard to many more on-offine brand activations.
NY Festivals; what’s all the fuss about…
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
With this fantastic idea about global warming for MTV Switch, Ogilvy won a golden Outdoor award at the New York Festivals. Last week we were slightly disappointed with the meagre Amsterdam-score in Cannes (except of course for the wonderful Grand Prix by Tribal DDB); we only won a few silver and two handfuls of bronze – no gold! Fortunately we scored better at the New York Festivals. Although we have to say that their website is so crappy that we doubt the quality of the awards. Anyway, EuroRSCG 4D won four awards – two gold, one silver and one bronze. Gold (2x) was for Volvo – we’re not sure what exactly they made (couldn’t find it on the NYF website), but the awards were won in the categories ‘Art & Technique’ and ‘Interactive’. This doesn’t surprise us, since 4D has won a truckload of prizes in the past years for Volvo already. 4D’s online partnership with Volvo is surely one of the more successful ones in the business. Creatiefteam.nl won gold for DHL and New Message silver for promoting a program called The Phone. The program is an Augmented Reality Game (inspired by the great movie The Game) with hidden phones, assignments and the chance to win a big sum of money. New Message hid some ringing phones in TV and Radio programs, which of course generated instant word of mouth. Simple & Smart. It also won bronze in Cannes last week.