Hasta La Creative!

Advertising Agency: Play Farfar, Stockholm, Sweden
Production Company: Hobby Film
Aired: April 2008

Advertising Agency: Villarrosàs, Barcelona, Spain
Creative Director: Oriol Villar
Art Director: Dani Zomeño
Producer: Edu Farré
Account Director: Juan Badilla
Account Supervisor: Milona Kosanovich
Production Company: Stink
Director: Stylewar
Producer: Dick Jeffares
Post-production: Stop, Swiss, Metropolitana
Sound: Plop, Infinia
Aired: May 2008

You might have already seen Clay Shirky’s now famous speech about cognitive surplus given at Web2Expo and the dramatic comparison of the time spent watching TV (200B hours a year in the US) and building Wikipedia (100M hours total).

He mentioned another number I thought was interesting: “In the US, we spend 100 million hours a weekend watching just the ads” (fast-forward to 5:52, or read the transcript). The order of magnitude seems right but I can’t figure out how he arrived at his estimate. Here are the inputs I’m working with.

– Number of hours spent by men watching TV on weekends: 6.98hrs (less for women, but I’m keeping the math simple). I don’t know if the number is an average across the entire population or only accounts for those who watch TV.
– Number of ad minutes per hour of TV programming: 16 (wiki), which means 3.72 hours of ads total for a two-day weekend (16*6.98/60*2).

Now, to arrive at the 100M hours number, we need to assume an active audience of 26,881,720 (100M/3.72hrs) viewers on each of the two days. How accurate is this number? I’ll try to check with our media folks next week, but drop a comment if you have ideas.

Of course, this little calculation assumes that Shirky’s remark was not a mere rhetorical device (hey, if we just stopped watching ads we could build a wikipedia in a weekend) and that people do watch all of the ads throughout the entire 7-hour TV binge instead of doing laundry or zoning out.

Related:
Dissecting Advertising Clutter
The Ad Zapper in Your Brains

Advertising Agency: Amalgamated, USA
Executive Creative Directors: Jason Gaboriau/Doug Cameron
Creative Director: Jim DiPiazza
Senior Copywriter: Tommy Noonan
Executive Producer: Claire Londa

Director: The Russo Brothers
Production Company: RSA Films, Inc.
Producer: James Kadonoff
Director of Photography: Michael Bonvillain
Production Supervisor: Russel Sher
Art Director: Tom Meyer

Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors
Editor: Chan Hatcher

Sound Engineer: Sam Casas, Loren Silber
LIME

Color: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Company 3

Finishing: Vendetta Post

Advertising Agency: TBWA Brussels, Belgium
Director: Frank Devos
Jingle: Geluidshuis

Advertising agency: Host/Happy Soldiers, Sydney, Australia

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy Beijing, China
Group Executive Creative Director: Nils Andersson
Creative Director/ Copywriter: Doug Schiff
Creative Director/ Art Director: Michael Wong
Agency Producer: Jeff Wong, Catherine Law
Film Director: Marcus Nispel
Executive Producer: Jaclyn Lee
Producer: Daniel Yu, CC Mak
Director Producer: Vincent Oster
Director of Photography: Phil Meheux
Stunt Coordinator: Kenny Bates
Production House: Saville Production, USA
Production House: October Pictures Ltd, China
Post Production: Union Editorial, LA
Editor: Jay Friedkin
Senior Producer: Megan Dahlman
Telecine Editor: Rob Scirata (Company 3)
VFX: Evan Guidera (Dominik Bauch)
Audio Mixer: Mike Feldman
Music Composers: Mophonics, LA/NY
Account Service: Raymond Tao, Ronald Sun, Terence Lin, Crystal Chen, Fan Yang

Advertising Agency: DDB Milan, Italy
Creative Director: Vicky Gitto
Art Directors: Gallardo Hugo, Guerrera Francesco
Copywriter: Lampugnani Nicola
Production Company: Movie Magic
Director: Marcus Walter
Post Production Company: La Maison
Aired: May 2008

Advertising Agency: JWT, London, UK
Creative Directors: Greg Martin, Mike McKenna
Creatives: Rob Welch, Naz Nazli
Agency Producer: Sarah Patterson
Assistant Producer: Jodie Sibson
Production company: Moon
Director: Helena Brooks
Production manager: Agnes Szyperek
Producer: Linda Peryer
Director of photography: Malcolm McLean

This is an anti-violence campaign, that ironically promoting the extremely violent game Condemned 2 on Xbox 360.

Condemned 2 is the second title in the series. In the game you are Ethan Thomas, a disgraced member of the Serial Crimes Unit who is unstable and one drink short of self destruction. The game includes brutal in your face combat including combo attacks and over the top “finishing moves”. The game is most definitely not mainstream, it is for a niche audience of ‘hardcore’ gamers.

The communication challenge: find a fresh and engaging way to connect with the target, who are used to companies just re-skinning a site with game footage, and, think they have seen everything there is to see when it comes to the ‘shoot‘em-up’ genre.

Hardcore Gamers (typically male), 18-30yo. Tend to be cynical, curious by nature, like problem solving and challenges, and spend their life in the online gaming world.

We know that playing Condemned 2 is a brutal, blunt experience and it seems that Sega does too. OffSetTheEvil.com allows you to balance your karma by “offsetting the evil” much like you would with your carbon footprint. Thankfully, offsetting evil doesn’t cost a penny – instead you simply need to explore the sickly sweet saturday-morning cartoon of a website.

Once there you can make yourself feel less wicked by playing a ridiculous flash game involving helping horse across a river. Don’t worry if they fall in, though. They still love you! If that’s not for you then explore the Forest of Fairy Flowers, with hidden links to sites which will teach you to dance or show videos of the Teletubbies. There’s plenty more content to reduce your sin footprint included on the site. If you can handle it, that is.

The creative execution is made up of 3 x virals ‘Pony Heart Quest’, ‘Clown Flower Time’ and ‘Lollipop Gift Parade’. These virals drive you to the website www.offsettheevil.com. Once on the website you can play 3 x games based on the virals.

Online banners are also going to be run on IGN.com and Gamespot. One of the banners (300 x 600) is going to be a game in itself called Panda Rainbow Delight.

It remind me a little of “Happy Tree Friends” but the purpose is different.

Many thanks to Giorgi Ciot for sending these creative materials.

AGENCY TEAM:
Creative Team – Michael Dawson, Chris Berents
Executive CD: Richard Maddocks, Associate CD: Guy Rooke
Account Service – AM: Adam Levee, GAD: Rob Nichol
Digital Designer – Brett Bimson, Kevin Phillips
Designer – Gustavo Vampre
TV producer – Denise McKeon
Digital Producer – Harley Tesoriero
Editor – Joe Morris
Sound Design – Andrew Stevenson
PRODUCTION HOUSE:
Yukfoo Animation, Auckland
Director – Julian Stokoe
Producer – Glen Real

MUSIC:
Liquid Studios, Auckland
Creative Director – Peter Van Der Fluit
Composer – Max Scott
Engineer – Matt Scott
Producer – Dee Taylor