Toronto Silent Film Festival Creates Awesome Interactive Instagram Campaign

What with all the silly social media campaigns and stunts that fill our inbox every day, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a project that demonstrates how to “hack” a well known platform in a smart, strategic way. And no, I don’t mean create a top-heavy Facebook app that crashes when you try to vote for some stupid brand idea.

From Toronto-based Cossette comes the “Instagram Time Machine,” part of a campaign for the Toronto Silent Film Festival. Now, if looking at Instagram your mobile phone vertically (or via desktop view), this makes no sense. “Why are there photos of just white spaces?” you may ask. But, if you turn your phone horizontally, voila! A virtual tour celebrating a century of silent film’s greatest star, Charlie Chaplin featuring videos, old movie posters, etc. Now THIS is a smart, innovative new way to use Instagram.

Now, as with any social “hack,” this has its limitations. There’s the aforementioned inability to make this work on a desktop (unless, i guess, you turn your monitor sideways). There’s also the issue of following this account, as it’s not going to be sending any new photos anytime soon due to its already completed structure. But, for five minutes, it’s a really ingenious thing to play with, even if you couldn’t care less about silent film. Good on Cossette, and if this thing gets more eyeballs, expect to see copycats creeping up next week. Search for “TSFF2014″ on Instagram to find the account, and view credits after the jump.

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Cossette Launches Bats**t Crazy ‘Competition Crunch’ Campaign for Oatmeal Crisp

People like crunchy cereal. Oatmeal Crisp is a cereal that is crunchy. Cossette took this idea and handed it to a bunch of deranged copy writers who escaped from a mental institution. The result is their batshit crazy new campaign, “Competition Crunch.”

The four spots that comprise the campaign all feature varying degrees of absurd, random humor. Think of recent Old Spice campaigns for a point of reference, though that only gives you the basic idea. For whatever reason, Oatmeal Crisp’s spokesman is a Scottish dude in a kilt, who introduces “Competition Crunch.” Each spot features a new opponent for Oatmeal Crisp — a hungry tortoise, a ginger wedding, an elitist marionette, and romantic robots. That should give you some idea of the kind of crazy we’re talking about. This is filed in our “What The…?” category for a reason.

The spot featured above (my favorite), “Hungry Tortoise Vs. Oatmeal Crisp” presents a hungry tortoise, for absolutely no apparent reason on a Japanese game show, eating a crunchy head of lettuce. Our Scottish spokesman admits that the hungry tortoise eating a head of lettuce is very crunchy, but it’s no match for Oatmeal Crisp. Believe it or not, this is on the less crazy side of the campaign. Out of all the spots, it comes the closest to making sense.The only tamer spot might be the “Romantic Robot” spot, in which two romantically inclined robots make a toast and break their glasses.

On the crazier side, we have “Elitist Marionette” and “Ginger Wedding.” What can even be said about these? “Elitist Marionette” centers around — you guessed it — an elitist marionette who flaunts his “100% Egyptian cotton” strings, and his overall superiority to a second marionette. Then the puppeteer controlling him loses his cool and repeatedly stomps on him. Yes, it’s as crazy as it sounds. “Ginger Wedding” almost matches its mishigas, when a wedding of gingerbread people is interrupted by the Aflack duck, who massacres the congregation. If you’ve ever wanted to hear a church full of screaming gingerbread people, this is probably your only opportunity.

These spots are worth a chuckle and/or befuddled stare, but I’m not sure what they’ll do to sell Oatmeal Crisp. Check out “Ginger Wedding” below, and “Elitist Marionette” (along with credits) after the jump.
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