Dec
05
Dec
05
Smirnoff’s Ad Boss Discusses the Power of Intersectionality
Posted in: UncategorizedSmirnoff is leaning further into intersectionality and inclusivity with a colorful campaign and series of experiences that celebrate the magic that happens when people from different backgrounds socialize together. In mid-2023, the vodka brand unveiled a fresh tagline devised by newly appointed agency McCann, “We Do We.” The hero spot features drinkers of different genders,…
Dec
05
Unfortunate Banner Placement of the Week
Posted in: Uncategorized
Mark Webber celebrates about the impending Children’s Pageants coming to Australia. Original Qantas banner here https://adsfac.info/ads/QAN355/198799.0.0.swf
Dec
05
Air NZ loves viral videos
Posted in: UncategorizedAir New Zealand are on a “viral” video binge with two new videos released this week. First we have Richard Simmons for an in-flight video
and Snoop hooking up with Rico their muppet for a new song.
Rico’s first outing late last year did quite well for Air NZ with the Happy Hour video reaching 380,000 views
Just last year they did a NZ Rugby team safety video which earned them 800,000 views.
These come 2 years after 5 million+ views to their safety video with the body painted staff
You can imagine the other airline marketing departments asking their agencies “we want to be like Air NZ” as they lust after the Youtube view counts and press generated from these endeavours.
Dec
05
Mortal Kombat. A lesson in fan service
Posted in: UncategorizedI love following the marketing of video game releases as they are some of the purest forms of advertising. You have a very defined market, established brands/IP and a huge pool f assets to call on. Oh and you have REAL FANS. Not the kind of fans who occasionally drink or eat your product but people who wear your brand, get tattoo of your brand and basically LOVE your brand.
And for those looking for best practice in “social media” look no further than video games. The developers and publishers live and ie by their fans and go to great lengths to “service” them daily.
What caught my gamer eye today was Mortal Kombat. A game that is banned here in Australia.
Mortal Kombat is about to release the 9th (yes 9th! since debuting in 1992) game in the series next week and they have rolled out the big guns. A cosplay/casting video of their 3 female characters for no other reason than to give the male gamers something to fap about. I present Sonya, Mileena and Kitana. They will be at launch events taking photos with the fans all over Europe.
The videos all push to the Facebook page to vote but in my book they all win.
And if that wasn’t enough how about a live action web series from Machinima for thos who like a little more back story
Here’s the trailer
and the first episode. Just a fraction over 4 million views in a week. And not one article in any ad press about this “viral” success story.
Mortal Kombat is not bulletproof like the Call of Duty series so the marketing teams has to work much harder to build the buzz and I think for this game they have done everything right. The game looks great, the amount of content produced to promote the game is astounding (just check the Youtube channel and FB page)
Dec
05
LBi Creative chief puts his beard on the line for charity
Posted in: UncategorizedLBi resident weirdy beardy, Simon Gill, and his gang of renegade ramblers are setting
off on an epic 30hour trail of the Yorkshire Dales for the Oxfam Trailtrekker 2011.
While he’s mooching around the moors (and during the week before) he’ll have the facial hair
of your choice around his chops.
But he ain’t cheap! He’ll only do it if your donations reach £2,500
So what will it be? Vote & Donate – https://www.manwalksintoabarbershop.com/
Dec
05
Contiki: Pin Me If You Can
Posted in: UncategorizedI love this Pin Me If You Can promotion from Contiki by Poke London. Five locals show their surroundings in a set of video clues and give hints about the location. All you have to do is drop a pin on the map to guess where they are—not which town they’re in, but the very spot on which they’re standing.
Like the Contiki page for extra clues then watch the videos which not only give you clues to the location but do a nice job of selling the sights of the area. A promotion that actually does the job of selling the product. A rarity these days.
Dec
05
100% Smiles…. about Norway killings
Posted in: UncategorizedThis is another sad example (of many) of why news sites should turn off ads for stories of mass killings. Why should they profit from tragedy? What brand wants to risk a contextual message disaster? As found on News.com.au
Dec
05
Occupy The Internet
Posted in: UncategorizedAre you a “webmaster”, admin, blog owner or someone with access to index.html files? Are you interested in taking part in the recent global wave of revolution from the comfort of your home computer? Occupy the Internet!
Add the animated GIF army to websites you control. https://fffff.at/occupy-the-internet/
Dec
05
SEGA launches Sonic The Hedgehog Augmented Reality iPhone App in Australia
Posted in: Uncategorized
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog, JWT Sydney and SEGA have launched a multi-platform campaign based around an augmented reality app that can be used in conjunction with out-of-home, TV, magazines, online banners and websites. The campaign has launched exclusively in Australia and the Sonic Vision app is only available in the Australian iTunes store.
The ‘Sonic Vision – Catch the Blue Blur’ iPhone app (www.sonicthehedgehog.com/getapp) allows fans to capture Sonic in the real world by locating augmented reality markers around the country using built-in maps and GPS.
To catch Sonic, players can point their iPhone at a poster and a gold ring appears on screen. Sonic speeds past onscreen and players have to respond quickly to capture him. The markers also appear on websites, banners, in magazines and on TV.
SEGA is also distributing Augmented Reality Markers to bloggers and gaming websites encouraging them to be part of the campaign by voluntarily embedding the markers (example below) within their pages to attract Sonic Vision players.
Capture Sonic Here – A Sonic Vision AR marker for blog owners
Fans can also submit their points to a leaderboard and follow the progress of other players, win Sonic prizes and share their scores on Facebook.
“JWT has recognised the rising prominence of mobile amongst gamers and created an experience that is a fitting celebration of a gaming icon like Sonic the Hedgehog,” said SEGA marketing manager Neroli Baird.
The campaign also coincides with the much anticipated release of Sonic Generations for Nintendo DS, PS3, Xbox 360 & PC. Sonic Generations delivers the definitive gaming experience for Sonic fans new and old and is considered the ultimate celebration of 20 Years of Sonic gaming,
Dec
05
180+ Agency and Brand Xmas Cards for 2011
Posted in: Uncategorized| Advertising Agency & Brand Christmas Ecards.
This is what $8.6 Million dollars worth of agency hours looks like. 180 xmas cards & promotions created to celebrate the holiday season. It started small in 2005 with just a series of links.
In 2008 I spent pretty much the weekend collating 120+ ecards for agencies. 2010 was the biggest year yet with 170+ Agency Xmas E Cards If you want to be part of this for 2011 please send us your agency or brand xmas cards or promotions so submit@bannerblog.com.au Subject: Xmas 2011 If you want to save us even more time also send a 550×322 sized jpeg with your submission also. Pet Peeve? Agencies donating small amounts to charities or asking for views, likes or tweets to raise their donations but at a capped limit (which is very low). Not only that but mentioning the charity but not linking them or supplying any information as to why you should care about said charity. Last Updated: Jan 10, 2012 |
2011’s Trends Mainly Video 55 |
| Bannerblog’s Top Picks Every agency in the world with the same brief, the same as the year before. The agency xmas card is the toughest gig in the industry. Here is Bannerblog’s top picks for 2011. |
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Dare Vancouver [CA]: A Very Qualitative Christmas Testing Christmas present suggestions submitted via tweets with a Focus Group exposes all the pain and joy of focus group testing. |
| Fold 7: Advertising With Bells On
The idea is simple but the writing and the delivery of this mockumentary lifts it. |
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Critical Mass [US]: The Christmas Spirit Award
Critical Mass need a special mention for the sheer amount of Xmas related stuff they produced in December. After sending a press release about being named Santa’s Digital AOR they they built a “maker bot” and printed people’s wishes. Their Facebook page was taken over with Christmas activities like Gingerbread decorating comp, xmas jumper photos and a host of other things. I hope they get this excited for Easter! |
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Moving Brands: 3D Printed Chocolate Advent Yum! While the online presentation of the project is lacking they did have an installation at their office in which you could go in and sample the chocolate. |
| Ignited [US]: iPhone Choir “Deck The Halls” The agency is lucky they put a donation limit on their video views ($2,500 donated) as it’s broken 150,000 views. |
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| The Agency Ecards (Brand Ecards and Xmas Promos here) |
Presented in no particular order. |
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VML [US]: What’s Worth Sharing VML win the best charity effort with their installation at a train station which was then destroyed by many eager kids. They also ponied up $10,000 to Toys for Tots which was the largest agency donation we found. It’s like a Christmas charity version of Cyperien Gaillard’s Monument of Beer |
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Mono [US]: Monotunes Here’s what you do in the office today. Crank up your speakers as loud as they can go, randomly click and then go to lunch. |
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David Wilson [UK]: Alternative Advent Calendar Young Director David Wilson serves us a daily dose of WTF in his Alternative Advent Calendar. My faves are Day 4, Day 13 and Day 19. Check out the rest of his work on Vimeo. |
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Deep Local [US]: Deck The Screens The most expensive way to set up Xmas tree lights. I’m pretty sure this will work on a PC or Android device but I’m guessing the Deep Local guys didn’t have any around when filming. |
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Modea: Wisdom Tree Gift Selector A simple gift chooser |
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Inferno [UK]: Guerilla Goodwill You’d think a guy giving away $5 to random people would have received a better response? |
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39 Degrees North: Guerilla GUNDOG Part dog, part gun… all cop. |
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Collective [UK]: Lionel Blair’s Twitter Christmas Charades I had to Goggle Lionel Blair to understand the connection but he used to have a charades show and is well known in the UK. So if you’re a fan you can watch all of the 50+ minutes of charades action captured live earlier in December. |
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Lit Fuse [US]: The Are You Santa Test Take the “Are You Santa?” test but be warned the funny guys at Lit Fuse have made it as tricky as possible. |
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Host [AU]: Butt St Choir The custom built touch screen and overall presentation is fantastic. |
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IdeaWorks [AU]: Fantastic Santastic Christmas Sop Front Contraption Click on an item and have it turn on at the IdeaWorks’ office. Unlike a lot of the streaming efforts this is still running over the xmas break so we can still enjoy it. They’ve also claimed the World’s Longest URL https://fantasticsantasticinteractive |
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McGarry Bowen [US]: Staff Xmas Beatbox I’m addicted to that clap sound. |
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Mediaworks [NZ]: Perfect Christmas Gift Click the gift to find out what the best Christmas gift is. |
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TBWA [UK]: Ad Santa Ad Santa is one person you don’t wont to mess with. He’s like the recent Liam Neeson movies, he get’s it done no matter what the task. Send Ad Santa a request and he’ll send back a hand written note with the solution and many times photographic evidence. |
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W+K [DK]: Virtual Holiday Dinner It’s ‘serial killer’ creepy but W+K have rolled out the Virtual Holiday Dinner again after a successful season last year. |
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W+K [UK]: A Choir of You The Wieden + Kennedy folks in the UK however have kept up the tradition of doing something different with their office front each year and this year created an equally creepy “Choir of You”. |
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Weapon 7 [UK]: Bubble N Tweet This got a little lost in execution I think. |
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Lucidity Digital [IE]: Turkey Libre Want to win an iPad 2? And for those not in Ireland SVP is how The St Vincent de Paul society refer to themselves. Funky logo no? |
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RBH [UK]: Mistletoe Online RBH will donate 10 pence for every message sent! Big spenders as they haven’t put a limit on the number. We estimate they have donated around 150 pounds to Children With Tumours. RBH if you’re reading this you should have just donated 5,000 pounds as a licence fee for using the image of kids with cancer to promote your agency. |
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MediaMind [US]: Happy Holidays [Holiday Message 3] + [Book Transition Effect] + [Funky Tune 11] |
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Pollen [AU]: Ambitious Receiver The gift selector for the global ECD that has everything. |
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YUKI Media [UK]: AR Card Yuki Media keeping it as simple as they can. We’d appreciate a video showing off the AR in action as none of us can be bothered printing it out. |
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TBWA [VN]: QRistmas tree The QR codes take you to the 12 days of Christmas sung by the team which doesn’t seem like much of a reward for all the effort it takes to scan one of these suckers. And for those that were planning on doing this next year note they have already claimed the World’s First Christmas tree made out of QR codes. |
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Connelly Partners [US]: Mistletoe Mixup Have your Facebook friends randomly chosen and if you choose to kiss them the agency will donate a $1 to Children’s Tumour Foundation. Sadly only 497 kisses have been counted so we hope the agency donates the $2,500 anyway. I did find this match up with Russ Tucker quite fitting for my profile pict. |
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Tribal DDB SF [US]: Siriclaus Prank your kids this year with Siriclaus! Parents can predetermine the response and then hand the phone to their kids and them film them! Is it just us or was 2011 the year of pranking your kids? |
| KOKO Productions [CA]: A Shitty Video This has a great punchline. |
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Pixel Pusher[CA]: Plug It In The agency made a donation to the Canadian Brain Tumour Foundation instead of buying presents for their clients, this was a personal donation as their co-founder died of brain cancer just a few weeks ago. The agency also had the time to make an Augmented Reality xmas card too but thankfully made a video for everyone who is too lazy to print the AR marker. These guys were the production team on the Skittles Gif Rap the Rainbow. |
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Big Fuel [US]: Catvent Calendar 31 adoptable cats for your viewing pleasure. Only 10 have been adopted so far so there are still some great cats available. I like the idea of dressing up the cats to make them more presentable than a boring photo. The Humane Society should have promoted this on their less than impressive site. |
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Framestore [UK]: How Will You Be Spending Christmas? A change in direction for Framestore with a simple charity centric message this year. They have raised over £6,010.00 (donate here) which is close to the best agency effort. VML topping them with $10,000. |
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eStrategy Group[AU]: Kidnapped Santa We dare you to watch the entire 3 hours of video captured during the live stream. |
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Glue [UK]: Greenie Meanies This time Santa has been kidnapped by two Greenie Meanies and you must follow the clues across Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube to locate him and save the presents for a kids Hospital. There’s also a prize for the first person who locates them. I feel sorry for the other staff who were probably working on briefs for clients who want everything before they go on holidays while these guys run around London dressed up having fun. |
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Draft FCB SF [US]: Agency Peephole Loosely associated with Xmas this one is one of the few that use instagram. It didn’t take off because I’m not sure many agency staff care about how other agencies party. |
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Rodeo Agency[AU]: Eye Colour Chart Testmas This is a great xmas present for recruiters 🙂 |
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TMS [UK]: Lolly for Lolly Every tweet lights a heat lamp which melts an ice lolly (icy pole) which fills up a container which is marked with donation values for charity. Lolly is slang for money in the UK as is Tom Hanks for thanks. You can watch the archive of 3hrs worth of water dripping into a container here. Or a hand holding the lolly here. A DVD with a directors cut of the footage is being produced to help raise more money for charity. |
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MRM Worldwide [SG]: Nick Handle’s 12 Days of X’Mas A agency version of the 12 Days of Christmas sung by their animated CEO to show how far the agency will go to please their clients. The actual 12 aren’t that bad. |
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Digitas [US]: Gary the Snowdude Digitas went for a three pronged approach this year. They used their Facebook page, allowed you to just simply click and they will donate an unspecified amount (let’s hop it’s a lot) to that charity and then as a reward you get Gary the Snowdude who turns any web page into snowy awesomeness* *Awesomeness may vary depending on your expectations associated with the word awesomeness. |
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Philip Andrews [AU]: Facebook Friend Gift Turn your Facebook profile into a montage of all your friends. It’s their cruddy gift to you. I wanted an iPad 2! |
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Andrew Salomone [UK]: Christmas Jumpers Turn your image into a custom printed jumper thanks to a hacked knitting machine. Check out Andrew Salomone’s work he has a bunch of interesting projects. Watch the video to see the Bill Cosby jumper. So meta! Note: I grabbed this off CR so read all about it and see the other jumpers here. |
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Robinson & Maites [US]: Free-Gifting Catalog A service to help you re-gift all those unwanted gifts. Note they no longer accept fruitcake. Note: Fruitcake seems to have the worst reputation in the US. The fruitcake association needs a Pro Fruitcake campaign soon to risk an entire generation missing out. |
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Drawing Book [AU]: Illustration Buzz The Drawing Book sent us a selection of Xmas inspired Illustration Buzz / Exquisite Corpse drawings from their pool of illustrators. |
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Fluidx Studio [AU]: BRB I think we all felt like this at the end of the year |
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Make [US]: Instant Popularity Xmas Cards A box of pre-strung xmas cards for clients and friends to adorn their office and make them look popular. Click the image to see more. |
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ROB [US]: Custom Cooked Xmas Messages Robert Larsen (ROB) made 29 custom videos to all the people he worked with in 2011. Those chocolate cake letters look tasty! |
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Web Guerillas [CH]: Choir It Yourself The team are under your control thanks to a Youtube hack. |
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Think RLA [UK]: Al’s Granny Al’s grandma died (sad) and left a treasure box filled with recipe cards, magazine clippings and tips on hosting a party. The agency put them together into a book for everyone to enjoy. They also uploaded a few choice clippings to their flickr page like this one for meat pancakes. Yum! |
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Maverick [UK]: Wish Bird Send a tweet to the Wish Bird tree and help the agency decide which charity gets their £1,000 donation. |
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Euro RSCG Discovery [US]: Holiday Sentiment Tracking Track the sentiment of people as they move through the holiday season. It seems stress was at it’s highest Dec 21 while being in the spirit peaked early this year on Dec 20. Must have been pitch time at Euro on the 21st? Interesting to see 40% of women are feeling naughty while just 13% of men feel the same way. |
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Click Fire Media [US]: Shred Sled 2K12 The actual game itself is unplayable (unless that was me?) but the voice over more than makes up for it. |
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Oddcast [US]: Creepy Robot Santa This would make any child cry. |
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Blue Cube [IE]: Santa Spielberg Presents Can you match a famous face with a member of the Blue Cube team? You can win tickets to the Dublin Film festival. |
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Gelia [US]: Creative Ways to Celebrate the 12 Days The agency put a lot of effort into each day as each one is unique in both content and presentation. I’m glad to see Fruitcakes getting a little love here too. |
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SS+K [US]: Big Holiday Message No post its for SS+K just a lot of paper and scissors. |
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Stone Canoe [CA]: Merry la Mort Zombie snowmen need to be destroyed! Chrome only on this one |
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Karo [CA]: Chocolate Yule Tide Log Yum! Grab this as a screen saver here |
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Blonde [UK]: Xmas Message Nice and simple here from Blonde. |
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Excentric [PT]: Digital Santa Claus What does Santa do for the other 11 months of the year? This is the same agency that did the Digital Nativity story from last year which had over 20 million views. Check out their case study on that below. I don’t think this one will have the same impact as last years though. |
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Draft FCB [AR]: End of the World I’m still confused about this one. Something about multiple ends of the world and the staff have acted them out? Contact us to explain what’s going on. |
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Camboyadm [AR]: Profecias Camboyanas Something about digital prophecies but we’re also confused by this one. |
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Guru Studio [CA]: Reindeers Chilln’ The character design is great, we wanted more. |
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Agency Net [AU]: Big Ass Gifmas Message The biggest animated gif this year |
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BBDO [BE]: Best Tweeshes Send a tweet and have it form a musical note. |
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Grey Group [SG]: QR Merry Xmas More QR love from Singapore. This one uses geo-location to drop presents on you. How nice. |
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Droga 5 [US]: Press Release Droga awards McGarry Bowen for their holiday card business. Quite a fun read. |
| Rethink [CA]: Holiday Piñata Bash Nice use of annotated Youtube videos to let people bash a pinata. I also didn’t realise you’re meant to add the squiggly above the ñ. |
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TBWA NY [US]: Holiday Gif Giver More xmas related gifs than you will ever need. |
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G2 [US]: Haikus for Humbugs Send a random Haiku to someone random grumpy person thanks to G2. It lets you pick a grumpy tweet and then fire an @reply to them. This one seems to have gone well judging by the number of Haikus posted. |
| Fraser Communications[US]: Home for Good LA Fraser go all in with a $5 donation to Home for Good LA for every view to this video. At the time of posting its sitting at 651 but with no limit specified let’s hope we can get that up to a around 5,000 to really break the bank. |
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| Tribal DDB [TR]: Mutlu Yıllar! Tribal DDB Instanbul show off their city in this very sweet musical montage. |
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Zaraguza [SK]: Meme Karaoke Party Zaraguza representing the Slovak Republic with their Meme Karaoke Party machine. I’ll throw in a mention of Nyan cat just for the sake of search results. This is the same agency that produced the alcowebizer for sites the year before. |
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Visual Jazz [AU]: Race the Agency The only Ecard to use Unity but luckily they also added a video for you to watch how much fun you’d be having. |
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Ogilvy [AU]: Carol Covers I was surprised at the NSFW language in this one especially considering the agency. Farking Australian covers of classic carols. |
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Carrot Creative [SK]: Instacheer Pick some festive tags and watch other people’s Instagram photos float down for your viewing pleasure. |
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Breakus [UK]: Bella and Christmas Warning: This is an actual animation meant for kids and does not contain any advertising jokes, hipsters, social media christmas puns, swearing, nudity, explosions and is definitely safe for kids to watch. |
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Karmarama Good Works[UK]: Ping Pong 24 The founder of the agency played Ping Pong for 24 hrs straight which raised over 3,250 for for Age UK. Watch the highlights on the site Note: Lional Blair also made an appearance in the last hour after coming off the work for Collective. What an agency slut he is! |
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Crayon [UK]: The Million Pixel Christmas Card Every positive and negative christmas tweet will go towards revealing a side of the Million Pixel Christmas card. We’ve arrived late to the party so both sides are full 🙁 The promise of being featured in one of their picture frames with your twitter profile seems like an odd lure though. |
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Mother [UK]: Psychic Tees 100 unique T-Shirts printed with predictions from a renowned psychic based off the number you choose to buy. You won’t know what the prediction is until you buy one for $100. The shirt however already knows you are going to buy it. All the money goes to Age UK which has made out like bandits this xmas card season. Here’s a sneak peak at what they look like. Many of the shirts have already been sold so this has been a success. |
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Saatchi & Saatchi [UK]: Love Mix Rather than force the staff to sing Saatchi’s asked the talented ones who already do music to submit songs around the theme of Love and Hope. The result is an eclectic mix of tunes to download. |
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The Partnership Group [UK]: Animated Jumper This Christmas ecard video does what it says on the box. |
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A&N Creative [UK]: Xmas Message All I can say about this one is you should always use Youtube or Vimeo to host your videos as it provides a much faster download to view videos and works on all browsers. |
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26 [UK]: 26 Stories for Christmas 26 Writers, 26 Illustrators collaborating to create 26 Stories for Christmas based off a single object that represents Christmas to them. There’s some nice stories in there just around the object chosen like Roshni’s #12 |
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C3 Metrics[UK]: Dog Day Xmas Someone needs to tell C3 that the internet is ruled by cats not dogs. |
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Metal Creative [US]: Kids of Metal Creative Say Thanks Awww so cute |
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Mortar Creative [US]: Chalkboard Greetings The agency fights over what the Agency Christmas Ecard should be about. |
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Hart Inc [US]: 12 Mystery Presents for Christmas Guess the mystery wrapped item and win the gift for that day. They gave you clues though to help make it easier. |
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CP+B [US]: Nutcracker 5000 Your chance to fire a snowball at the CP+B crew and raise money has passed but you can watch the highlights in the video. Glad that the machine doesn’t pull any punches when firing those snowballs and that CP+B raised $15,000 |
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GSDM [US]: One-Sided Snowball Fight Compared to the CP+B team these guys got off lightly. |
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Ogilvy / DT Digital [AU]: Naughty of Nice Another iteration of the shoot a staff member. This time with a slingshot (I thought they were illegal in Australia) and semi slow mo video. |
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TBWA [UK]: Window Advent Calendar TBWA UK Collaborated with 24 different artists to create a new piece for each day. View the pieces on their site. |
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Lean Mean Fighting Machine [UK]: Frozen Janet Trust the LMFM guys to come up with something completely random. |
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Boussias [GR]: Note for Santa The Boussias team left some notes for Santa on where to leave the presents they are expecting when they return in 2012 |
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Fearless [UK]: Robbery Xmas Invitation The Fearless team were robbed of a laptop with the Xmas party invitations (they didn’t have their invitations in the cloud) So they used the security footage as their message. |
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Studiobanks [US]: Occupy North Pole After being selected as the Digital Agency of Record for the Occupy North Pole movement Studio Banks went into 5th gear to produce a blog to encapsulate the 99% demands. The mash up videos are well done as is the agencies commitment to the idea for all of December. |
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Conversation Agency [US]: Occupy The Holidays They have even allowed people to download the track! But you have to give your email address, so no tyre kickers please. |
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HCB Health [US]: Occupy The North Pole The Elves campaign for better Elf Car by throwing things at Santa |
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Cadient [US]: Holiday Dashboard Lots of little jokes hidden throughout this Holiday Dashboard. |
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Atmosphere Proximity [US]: Santa Clout The Boussias team left some notes for Santa on where to leave the presents they are expecting when they return in 2012 |
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22 Squared [US]: Flash Mob I do believe this is our only flash mob |
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22 Squared [US]: Note for Santa Not wanting to rest on the Flash Mob brilliance 22 Squared also put together this Instagram mash up tool called Drunken Mistletoe. |
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Boussias [GR]: Note for Santa What if Santa ran his own agency? That’s ad agency not talent agency. |
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Plan B [GR]: Kris at the Office They previously hired AIR to do the music for their agency website. Expensive but worth it. |
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Silverfox Agency [US]: Christmas Dress Ups The entire team dressed up as a Holiday film. There’s some pretty good efforts in here. |
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Team One [US]: 12 Days of Non-Denominational Celebration 12 Days of Celebration with a different piece of content for each day. Including the Ugly Holiday Sweater tumblr. |
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Ardent Creative [US]: Out of the Frost Suspense, action, special effects, cliches… this film has everything except a gratuitous moonlight butt shot. |
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Mullen [US]: Snowify.me Type in your address and Snowify it, as simple as that. |
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Swirl Marketing[US]: Swirl Sings the Holidays More staff singing Christmas Carols for the charity Little Kids Rock. |
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Thornberg & Forester [US]: Holiday Jam A digital “exquisite corpse†app with a festive theme. |
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Marcus Thomas [US]: Wheel Of Holiday Destiny 6 hrs of awesome wheel spinning action watch it all here. They even created a dedicated Twitter account for this card. |
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Landor [UK]: Office Tree Synchronised office windows in Landor’s amazing UK office. |
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Landor [US]: Projection Display Landor US looked back at the heritage of their building for the projections in their office street front. |
| Carmichael Lynch [US]: CL Stocking It doesn’t matter what you do the Stocking will be there even on Facebook. |
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Katapult [UK]: Made by Us For You The journey of Katapult’s Spiced Apple Chutney from tree to table. |
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Alexandre Rivaux [FR]: 2012 Not sure what to make of this one but it’s an interactive 2012. |
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BBDO [DK]: What’s My Fucking Nw Year’s Resolution Surprising we had only one of these type of sites this year. Always good for a laugh. |
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Up Shot [US]: White Elephant I actually wouldn’t mind some Super Mario 3-Dees Gummies…. mmmmmm |
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Creative Lift [US]: Snowflakeinator The ONLY snowflake maker this year. |
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OBM Advertising [AU]: What’s Under The Tree Even more scrolling for you to do for the good of Second Bite charity. |
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Javelin [US]: Itty Bitty Holiday Tale AgencySpy nominated this as the worst Xmas card of 2011 but I think there’s worse out there than this. |
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Brand Sugar [TW]: Claymation Xmas A cute animation made with clay. |
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Blammo [CA]: Santa Fraud Exposing Santa as the fraud he is. |
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Youtube: Festive Tweaks Youtube has had a couple of festive tweaks you may have noticed. On certain Christmas videos the progress scrubber button now has a snowflake icon on it. There’s also a snowflake icon in the main bar which produces snowflakes over the video which can be controlled by the cursor. |
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Google [UK]: Let It Snow Typing “let it snow” into the Google search bar produces a snow effect on the site. |
| Brand Ecards and Christmas Promotions | |
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Riot Squad TV [US]: Merry X-stitch The only other entry to use the 99% and the Occupy Wall Street protests as part of their xmas theme. Agency: Unknown [US] |
| Destructoid: Sexy Santa 1.5 million views to this piece to promote game blog Destructoid. Not bad guys. Agency: Unknown [US] |
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Skittles: Gif Rap The Rainbow Skittles Canada gets a little funky for xmas. Agency: BBDO Toronto |
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TJ Maxx: Share a Carol with Google Street View Would you like that with extra cheese? Agency: Unknown [US] |
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Deutsche Telekom: Hologram Christmas Surprise with Mariah Carey Talk about bringing out the big guns for this event. Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi |
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Museum Of London [UK]: Dickens Installation The Museum of London commissioned Simon Costin to create a Dickens inspired street scene for their exhibition. Read about it here on CR. |
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Barclays: UK’s First Cashless Carol Singers Just tap your card to make a donation. Don’t have a Barclays card? No worries you have a great excuse as to why you didn’t donate. Agency: Unknown [UK] |
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Victoria’s Secret Holiday 2011 Michael Bay at it again. Lucky bastard. I was waiting for them to transform! If your after something with a little more personality them sample what these ladies sound like singing Jingle Bells… |
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Walmart: Yodeling Cat The Victoria’s Secret Jingle Bells video was the perfect segue to introduce this video. (boom tish) Agency: Martin Agency [US] |
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LOVE Magazine: Sexy Advent Calendar A sexy and somewhat famous model each new day (even a few guys if you’re into that kind of thing) presented in an annoying interface. You can catch a few of the videos on Vimeo |
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AT&T U-verse TV Santa Tracker Flip to channel 98 to get all your family holiday fun. An interesting idea as we’re seeing a lot of custom promotion channels being created lately with this one being a fully fledged micro site of entertainment. There’s even live new cast of Santa’s journey around the world. |
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Lynx: Xmas Kisser This doesn’t really live up to the Lynx (Axe) standard. Agency: BBH Asia |
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Brighter Planet: Snow Flakes If actual environmental impact calculations sounds exciting to you then THIS is the xmas message for you. |
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airBaltic: Elves on a Plane Elves take over a plane in a very cute video projection piece. Agency: cub.lv |
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Swiftcover / AXA: Reindeer Chatter Tinselitus… ha! Agency: Unknown |
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Vodafone Ireland: Christmas Laser Graffiti Vodafone went to town this Christmas kicking off their Vodafone Playground Facebook page with a series of projects under the banner of “Make Someone Happy” with Christmas cupcake delivery and Christmas Tree delivery. Laser Graffiti is meant to make people happy to it seems Agency: Cybercom [IE] |
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Square Enix: Xmas Fisheye Polaroid’s A fairly simple affair from Square Enix this year. |
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Heineken Lebanon: Color Your Christmas Each like on Facebook lights a globe on the billboard in the middle of Lebanon. Agency: JWT MEA |
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Heineken Singapore: Social Christmas Tree Create your very own Social Christmas Tree with your Facebook friend’s photos. I can’t imagine the power bill for that tree! Watch the rest of the videos and see how it worked on the site. Agency: Iris Worldwide [SG] |
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Heineken USA: Beer Finder Buy yourself a BeerTender and have it disguised as a gift from someone else with the power of Facebook strangers. This is one of the few Xmas promotions directly tied to a purchase and as of posting the app had 160,000 monthly active users so the app got around. |
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Heineken USA: The Heineken Holiday App And to top it all off Heineken also produced a Holiday themed app to let you plan the perfect party, send ecards and according to Heineken “This app is all you need, aside from Heineken, to throw the perfect holiday party.” |
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Calgary Tourism: Singing Tweets To help warm up the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus, Calgary Tourism asked Calgarians to tweet their tips on how to keep warm. |
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Guinness: Festive AR Pint “Blipp AR a Guinness pint to drag and drop a menu of ornaments and create a perfect Guinness postcard.” Why? because you’re already drunk? |
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FNAC: Santa Snaps You’d think Santa would be packing a better camera than that. Surely he would have bought a better one online at FNAC? |
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American Express Australia: Snowman Builder I can’t escape these things on Facebook as they are targeting me so heavily with ads. |
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American Express Australia: Talking Tags A bit of the old Augmented Reality huh! Check out the site if you want to see the in action. You’ll notice the same mouth used in Ogilvy’s Carol Covers. Although these are not so foul mouthed 🙂 |
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JC Penny: QR Santa Tags One of the more practical uses of QR codes. It’s the modern day version of recordable talking cards. |
| Children’s Choir Shopping Mall Bullying De Opvoedingslijn is a Flemish advice hotline for parents with out of control kids. The kids were pretty tame in the end but it’s a successful video. |
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Old Spice: MANta Claus Old Spice guy attempts to give everyone in the world a present. I saw the teaser for these on Hulu which now makes much more sense. |
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Webroot: Social Media Sobriety Test Save yourself from embarrassing drunken updates with Webroots Sobriety Test browser extension. This was released in 2010 but we didn’t cover it so posting here to be completionist |
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Webroot: Holiday Party Sobriety Test I believe this is new for 2011 and allows you to set up an app on your phone to save you from posting embarrassing drunken photos from the office Xmas party. |
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Starbucks: Augmented Reality Magic Cups There was also a bonus gift voucher for finding all 5 of the characters in the store and sharing with friends. I thought this was an added feature of their existing Starbucks Card apps (which already has a large user base) but this was a special build. View the full mobile app range here. |
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Ebay: Give-A-Toy Store Ebay created an installation and web store to allow people to buy toys for kids directly from their phone. The installation is much more rich than the online store. Watch the overview video or visit the site to make a donation. |
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Macy’s: Believe-o-Magic App We might be cynical but you an imagine that Augmented Reality is amazing to a kid. The ability to take photos and then send them is a nice touch. The fact it forces you to go to a Macy’s store is a little strong though. |
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Macy’s: Letter to Santa Every Macy’s store has a letterbox for Santa so why not use this site to help your kids create and decorate a letter. For every letter received Macy’s will donate $1 up to 1 million to the Make a Wish foundation. They’ve since received 1.4 million (that’s a lot of paper waste!) but it also means one major donation to a worth charity. |
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PNC: Christmas Price Index The PNC Christmas Price Index is a great tradition (it’s been going since 1984) and this interactive edition is one of the best. The amount of work that went into making it is a little OTT but that’s how you have to roll these days to stand out. I hope the actual model is kept somewhere for public viewing and not thrown away. If you want to read more about the methodology check out the Wikipedia page. Agency: Deutsch [US] |
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Swedish Post: Xmas on Wheels Another big production piece where an actual set was built for the interactive piece. Users could log on and take control of the camera, take photos and then send real postcards to their friends.The things we do to encourage people to send a postcard 🙂 The actual site is closed up now which is a shame. Agency: Ã…kestam Holst [SE] |
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Toyota: Life After Santa Santa bought a Prius to get around to the reindeer had to find other work. |
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Peanuts: A Charlie Brown’s Christmas App Great idea and perfect timing. Look to 2012 and beyond to see a lot more “classics” getting the app treatment as a new way to get revenue from the same material. Agency: Loud Crow Interactive [CA] |
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Toronto Tourism: Giant Charity Snowmen Toronto put giant snowmen illustrated by various artists around the city for the festive season. For every snowman photo uploaded to Facebook they donated $2 to Starlight Canada. Check out the full gallery here. |
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Saks on 5th Avenue: 2011 Holiday 3D Projection Here’s one thing that online stores can’t do. A big ass projection onto the side of the flagship building. |
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Westfield: LOL Cards The site has been closed off but you can still download the apps here. Agency: EVB [US] |
| Sadly there were a few Xmas cards we didn’t catch during their live time and thus cannot really feature.
So if you have a case study video for the following let us know we’ll post that instead. Nogpong, Ugly Sweater, Holi-Cray-Matic, Roll With Santa, Xmas Carol Torture. |
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| Here are a few non interactive Xmas ads.
Adage has a more comprehensive breakdown of Christmas related TV ads. |
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| A Harvey Nichols Christmas: Walk of Shame They are also encouraging women to tweet their walk of shame. But as the top Youtube comment explains just make sure you have cab fare and you’ll avoid any need to walk at all. |
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| John Lewis Christmas Advert 2011 Awww how could you not tear up over this one. Agency: Adam & Eve [UK] |
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| Apple: Santa Siri I had no idea Santa was so disorganised |
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| BMW: World’s Fastest Christmas Card BMW goes all Top Gear for their Christmas Message. I can imagine the reactions when customers received the card in the mail. Gavin Patterson’s slow illustration work can be seen here. Note: BMW has been in love with “viral” videos lately. |
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| BONDS: 12 Days of Christmas One of my faves. It’s a pleasure to watch on TV Agency: Banjo [AU] |
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| Various links found (read: stolen) from CR Blog, AgencySpy, Ad Age, Adverblog and Digital Buzz Blog. | Achievement Unlocked: Scrolled Like A Boss! |
Dec
05
Media Placement of the Week: The Grey
Posted in: UncategorizedI love it when a media plan comes together…. no wait wrong film.
Dec
05
What is WAKE UP AUSTRALIA?
Posted in: Uncategorized
Mysterious WAKE UP ads have been appearing for the last few days counting down to May 4-5th (or 980,690 seconds from now) with Wake-Up-Australia.com.au being the destination.
The flash banners on News.com.au show a idealistic scene that then fills with black ink to end on just WAKE UP in white text.
The bold design stands out as does the intrigue of having something unbranded spend so much money on advertising.
And just by chance (or maybe it was staged) popular Aussie Youtube blogger Blunty3000 was witness to a bus load of people people shouting “WAKE UP” with the same white text on black background.
What is this for?
Who has this much money to spend on a unbranded teaser campaign?
Didn’t they learn from KONY2012 that you cant expect the public to stay interested in anything for more than a week?
My initial thought was for a solar energy company (the black in representing oil), then it might be a new NAB campaign for people to wake up about bank fees, it could be a new coffee/iced coffee but this is some serious spend that would rule them out.
The agency who registered the domain is Tongue and their client list doesn’t give much away. They are part of the STW Group so could be helping out a larger agency in the group with the domains?
I’m guessing the WAKE UP ads will ramp up and all will be revealed soon. Wake Up! budget accommodation must be loving it as any search traffic is helping them as the campaign doesn’t currently have any search buy (That’s another lesson when doing a teaser campaign)
Interested to see how this pans out and if the teaser phase is justified. There’s very little chatter on Twitter about it despite all the activity and a simple call to action. I’m waiting for sky writing, newspaper wrap to follow on from the bus protest and banner ads.
Dec
05
The Mobile Landscape: What Creative Agencies Need to Know
Posted in: UncategorizedJoin Google on Tues, June 19th at 4pm ET/1pm PT, for a 45 minute LIVE conversation with Wook Chung and Nate Racklyeft of Google’s Mobile Product Team!
Wook and Nate will discuss the key technology issues around Mobile and strategies for creatives to drive success now.
Creatives worldwide can join Hangout on Air: youtube.com/creativesandbox
There’s a special opportunity for a maximum of 8 leading creative agencies who have done work in Mobile or are planning a special push in the arena, to reserve a spot on screen in the Hangout with Wook and Nate, available on a first come basis. Contact Jeff Sundheim (jsundheim at google.com) to check availability.
Dec
05
Channel 9's Olympic Coverage & their Facebook Page
Posted in: Uncategorized
Someone at Channel 9 is running around stressed. Meetings are happening to discuss how to handle this and the social media monitoring companies, the social media commentators (me included) are already gearing up for another “How to handle a social crisis” Slideshare deck.
Australia’s biggest TV channel and Olympics broadcaster channel 9 is being “smashed” on their Facebook page over their coverage. Mostly around the coverage, or over coverage, of swimming. In heir defence, swimming is usually the area where Australia does the best in the medals so 9 probably over invested in their prep around swimming.
The page is getting around 10 angry posts a minute and I found a lot of them funny. There’s even some memes (both good and bad) popping up.
The example below sums up Australia’s youth well.
But it’s not all young kids there’s also some people that will pick out any fault whether it be the pronunciation of a country or even when the channel accidentally broadcasts old footage. Whoops.
What surprised me was this “Dear Channel 9” post by Matthew Taylor which has since reached 94,000 likes and 4,000 comments. It’s as if it was posted by Lil Wayne himself.
Foxtel, Australia’s only pay TV provider, must be loving it. If they don’t have a reactive ad coming out soon to capitalise on this I would be surprised. Foxtel’s games profile, Follow The Games* is dedicated to the games in this period.
It’ll be an interesting few days to see how Channel 9 respond to this and how the other networks cover it. Oh and more importantly how the “social media experts” say they should have handled it.
It also begs the quest does Australia’s largest television network have anything to gain by running a Facebook profile for the channel itself? Sure their shows desrve a place for fans to chat but people don’t like a channel, they like the content on it. Their 54,000 fans are nothing compared to their viewership and unlike brands they already have a channel to reach and engage people with, it’s their own network.
Dec
05
V21 Digital Summit – AIMIA
Posted in: Uncategorized
V21 is the leading annual conference in Victoria, Australia for bringing together digital media businesses and practitioners to help develop and better understand creative and commercial opportunities that digital media can bring to business.
The V21: 2012 Digital Summit focuses on creative and commercial success in the digital age. A roster of high calibre speakers has been assembled, including two-time Emmy Award winner Seth Shapiro, co-found Stuart Eccles of Made by Many as well as Darren Woolley of Trinity P3, Jason Davey of Bullseye and Hamish MacKenzie of ANZ. Each speaker represents a cross section of native digital media businesses; companies who are leading their industry in product and service provision, or going through a major transition. Speakers are presenting case studies across several industries including media, entertainment, publishing and retail.
Tim O’Neill, Joint Managing Director of Reactive commented “The AIMIA V21 Conference is a great opportunity to hear (and share) the latest trends, insights and best practice examples, and is a regular event on the Reactive calendar. It’s for agency decision makers, account directors and anyone in a business who is serious about growing their reach and response in the digital world.”
The V21 Digital Summit starts Friday 23rd of November 2012.
For more information about V21 visit https://www.v21.com.au
Dec
05
120+ Christmas Cards & Campaigns from Advertising Agencies and Brands
Posted in: Uncategorized| Advertising Agency & Brand Christmas Ecards.
This is what millions of dollars worth of agency hours looks like. 120+ xmas cards & promotions created to celebrate the holiday season. History
In 2008 I spent pretty much the weekend collating 120+ ecards for agencies.
2010 was the biggest year yet with 170+ Agency Xmas E Cards Submit? If you want to save us even more time also send a 500×322 sized jpeg with your submission also. Pet Peeve? Last Updated: Jan 2, 2013 |
2012’s Holiday Trends
The Big Losers in 2012’s Holiday Trends
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| Bannerblog’s Top Picks It’s the same brief every year yet every year we’re seeing new ideas. Here are Bannerblog’s top picks for 2012. |
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Haddon Sundblom for Coca-Cola – The Man Who Painted Christmas This isn’t a recent campaign but a fantastic round up of the iconic Coca-Cola art (and the artist behind it) that shaped the way we see Santa. |
| Cyriak: The Spirit of Christmas
Do not attempt to watch this if there are kids around. You will scar them for life. |
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BBH [US]: Warm Wishes from Ad Land The voiceover just kills me. Well done to all on this one. BBH NY seem much more bitter than their UK counterparts. |
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EnjoyThis & Ryan Todd [UK]: Christmas Gifs 256 colors of animated awesome. |
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Swedish Post [SE]: Parcel Memory Game A giant, real time game of memory for prizes! The game took 30 hrs to complete and is a great tie in with the actual parcel service that the Swedish post provide. |
| Publicis Groupe [FR] : Maurice Lévy’s Digital Wishes for 2013 After the click make sure to change quality, volume and go full screen. Quite well done and much funnier than we were expecting. The bar has been set Mr Sorrell. |
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| The Hungry Castle [ES]: Shit Log (Have a shitty Christmas) I will not even try to explain this one as the agency has kindly created a video to do that. |
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The Poke [UK]: There’s a problem with Brighton’s Christmas lights Hahaha the UK has the monopoly on dick jokes for Xmas 2012. It’s the subtly of this that works. |
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The rest of the Christmas Ecards and Campaigns Presented in no particular order. |
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ISObar | Fighting Fish [FR]: Jean Paul Gaultier’s Naughty Xmas You don’t often see such fluid animation these days but when you do it feels special. I didn’t want to enter the comp I just wanted to see all the funny interactive toys and games. |
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HI-RES [UK]: The Kitchen Project
Hi-Res take their ongoing kitchen project and turn it into something festive. |
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FALLON [UK]: Check Your Bauballs Testicle shaped decorations for your tree. We love how the message is intertwined with the product. Sadly, they are SOLD OUT. Fallon please send us a pair, we’ll pay! |
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Albion [UK]: Bauballs Awkward… you’re also doing ball shaped tree decorations… We LOL’d at the Elf balls. These are sold out too. If anyone at Albion has some left we’d like to buy! |
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BBH [UK]: Home for Xmas Probably the best reward for donating this year. Your very own custom snow globe. I hope they post a gallery of the snow globes created. |
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ADIDAS | SID LEE [US]: The Cautionary Tale of Ebenezer Snoop This seemed to be posted everywhere and I suspect it’s because ADIDAS got in early and posted this Nov 25th a full month before Xmas. There is even a Facebook app to go with this although you need to wait for the 4 minute video to finish before getting the link. That said 70,000 people used the app at the time of writing so it’s done OK. |
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VML [AU]: Reindeer Races Arduino powered reindeers. Watch the demo trailer (which explains what’s going on) or play the game. |
| Agent Provocateur [UK]: Secret Santa Love the Youtube comments like “That’s very nice of you! Not many girls? think of getting their partner a tart for christmas!” |
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Pusher [AU]: Christmas Surprise With over 500,000 visitors this year (it was released in 2011) this simple idea has struck a chord with people. |
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Pusher [AU]: Memerry Christmas Pusher get two entries only because we didn’t realise this one was new 🙂 And with 500+ pages of submissions this has done well also. |
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Fusion [AU]: Lego Xmas The entire agency got all Legofied for the festive season. They also hand crafted each of the client gifts from Lego too. |
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Yoke Design[AU]: Ad-Vent Calendar Each day a new message up ad message to make you smile. |
| Lucinda Schreiber & Yanni Kronenberg [US]: Saks Fifth Avenue Window Display 2012 Inspired by this film clip for Firekites, Lucinda and Yanni worked on in 2009. |
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AnalogFolk: Radvent It’s totally rad! Always remember to have someone update your Radvent calendar when the agency breaks for holidays! |
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Reborn [AU]: 5 Steps to Survive Christmas Not too sure about some of these “tips” |
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PNC | B-Reel | Deutsch [US]: Christmas Price Index A continuation of their popular series which has been a PNC tradition since 1984. |
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Various : The Christmas Experiements Everyday a new piece of HTML5 for your Christmasy enjoyment. |
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Hallway [AU]: Cake Club’s Christmas Single Battle of the Ad Bands winner’s latest single. Deck the Hallway. |
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DT [AU]: Christmas Party Apology Maker This was our fav “Forcing you to follow me on Twitter so I could improve my Klout score.” |
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Coopers | KWP! [AU]: Beer Tree Mmmmmm beer tree |
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UNICEF | Y&R [NZ]: Naughty or Nice What a random person to use as Santa. I assumed it was UNICEF’s NZ boss but this is him using the app. |
| Cadbury | DDB [NZ]: Clap your hands lights We missed this from 2011 but thought it was worth including here. |
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Schick | Y&R [NZ]: The Schibliminizer Use subliminal messages to get your wife to buy you a dirt bike! |
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Fenton Stephens [AU]: Christmas Rewound We’ve missed the live streaming event where you could select records to play (or torture) the office with. |
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Common Ventures [AU]: ACD App Let the ACD app take over and make the calls this Christmas break. |
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GPYR | LADDER [AU]: Homepage for the Homeless Set as your homepage and start shopping to help the homeless. Nice and simple. |
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JSA | Smoke [AU]: A Bad Bad Christmas Looks like you’re on Santa’s naughty list. Do a deal with some dodgy elves. It’s well shot and a little darker (which is good) than I was expecting. After all that effort, I actually thought the dancing Santa’s on fire at the end were more interesting. |
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Australian Red Cross [AU]: Give a Gift that gives twice Thanks to Dumbs Ways to Die we can expect a lot more cute animations in 2013. |
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Bible Society [AU]: Live Light in 25 Words What do a convicted murderer, a magician, a holocaust survivor and sports legends have in common? They all helped pimp the bible this Christmas. More detail here on this random campaign. |
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Lego | Host [AU]: The Lost Brick One epic journey for a little piece of Lego |
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Publisis Life Brands Resolute [UK]: Never-ending card A holiday message for everyone |
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Variety | We Are Social [AU]: 10,000 Shares The challenge is now closed and the app is shutdown. Which is a shame because sharing doesn’t stop at Xmas. I will say that charities need to be a little less hard sell when asking for participation. |
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Engine [AU]: Xmas House A charming little Xmas house to explore. I hope that’s a 3D Augmented Reality Reindeer! |
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Thomas Dux | The Works [AU]: Pinterest Foodie Advent Calendar One of the few Pinterest campaigns this year. |
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Wasserman [CA]: Shopping Channel The fake TV demos are pretty funny and if I was Canadian I’d understand half these Ice Hockey Lock Out jokes. Sadly the agency only raised $200 🙁 |
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Piston [US]: The Legend of Douglas Firr Guess who drew the short straw at Piston. |
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Ayzenberg [US]: Punch a Holiday Bear Poor little bear |
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Mediaworks [NZ]: The Gifterator The old crappy gift generator on a web site trick. |
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Ogilvy [CH]: Santa Tattoo Find the wrong tattoo on Santa and win a tattoo voucher! |
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Framestore [AU]: Santa Tattoo Vimeo? Youtube? pfft Quicktime is where it’s at! Another winner in the “agency short straw” competition. |
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Traffik [AU]: Xmas Photoshoot Contains the right amount of people but not enough driving for my liking. |
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Guru Studio [CA]: Belly Flop Short and sweet |
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Muji | Tha [JP]: Homemade Gingerbread a lice stream video of the Gingerbread town can be viewed on the site or watch this video for an overview. More info on PSFK. |
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Aardman | Google [UK]: Hangout with the Family Wallace and Gromit and the extended Aardman family meet up on Google Hangouts this xmas. It’s the wrong browser Gromit! |
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Dos Equis [US]: Xmas Lights Theme Song From the same family in Texas that made this Gangnam style video! They’ve turned their lights into a media channel. More info here on PSFK. Here’s another Gangnam light show although not as epic it’s still pretty good. |
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GM [UK]: Christmas tree made out of Chevrolet Volt parts More info here. A video would have been nice for those that are not in London. |
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B-Reel [US]: Santa Tattoo You’ll need a smart phone for this one. |
| Applegate [US]: Bacon Yule Log Mmmmmm bacon |
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| BBH | Barclays [UK]: Toy Overload The ad is charming. Make sure to watch the making of. There is also an IOS Augmented Reality app thrown in for good measure. More details at Adweek. |
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Chicago Children’s Museum | EnergyBBDO [US]: Mister Imagine’s Toy Store This looked like a lot of fun and a clever idea to get kids to use their imagination. |
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Old Navy [US]: Jordan Knight Before Xmas Jordan Knight and Boyz to Men. Old Navy brings out the big 80s guns. I feel lame that I needed to Google Jordan Knight to realise who he was. |
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Old Navy [US]: Griswold’s Christmas The entire cast of Christmas Vacation in a fun series of ads. Chevy Chase is so hot right now. |
| AKQA [US]: Carol of the Bells AKQA stay classy with this mobile and tablet orchestra that you can actually download and compose yourself (well with friends with a lot of other mobile devices). They even teamed up with members of the Pacific Chamber Symphony and Music Director Lawrence Kohl to compose this. Hard to top their microwave effort though. |
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Outback Steakhouse | Deutsch [US]: 12 Days of Leftovers So random. |
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Havas [US]: Buzzed Buzzer The noise maker that only works when you’re drunk. Comes with instructions to make your own! This did the rounds of the tech blogs so nice work. |
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Mr Kipling & Salvation Army [UK]: Free Christmas Cake Mmmmm cake |
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Strike Bowling | Loud&Clear[AU]: Save Xmas This could have totally fallen down but the delivery is well done. |
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eBay [DE]: Suddenly Xmas Wait a minute no one pushed a button. It’s a scam 🙂 |
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Fourground Media [CA]: If Santa was Hipster I’m glad he isn’t. Hipster Santa is a douche. |
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HBO | BBDO [US]: DVD Gifts The “Crazy about intercourse” got me. |
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WestJet [US]: Surprise Christmas Flashmob This is the plot for Die Hard 5 right? The flashmob is a cover for terrorist? |
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John Lewis | Adam & Eve DDB [UK]: Mister Imagine’s Toy Store John Lewis does it again with another tear tugging video of pure class. Behind the scenes interview here. |
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BMW | DraftFCB [CH]: Fastest Christmas Song in the World The follow up to last year’s fastest Christmas card is even better (music is better too). See the site for behind the scenes. |
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TBWA [VN]: SnowMe App I can’t find the actual app mentioned!? |
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Spark Brand [US]: The Holiday Gift So hot |
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Sparkfun [US]: Holiday Gift Guide I thought this was an agency until I went to the site. Ginger Lumberjack Hipster stole the show. |
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Office Max [US]: Elfyourself Mobile It’s back in mobile form. |
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Wing Advertising [US]: Happy YOLOdays! You can download the template here on the official site |
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GSDM [US]: Frosty’s Holiday Sweater Soiree Help choose Frosty’s Holiday Sweater. That is one cool snowman BTW. |
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Planit [US]: Holidares Vote on what evil things the staff at Planit should do for being naughty this year. |
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Traction [US]: Apocalymas A advent calendar with a Mayan feeling. |
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Cutwater [US]: Kissmas Party The safest way to kiss your office crush. |
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Hart [US]: Apocalymas The old worst holiday gift trick but this time crowd sourced |
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LOWE ROCHE [CA]: The Intern Holiday Bonus I hope the interns pay tax on their gift! |
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Under.me [US]: Bar Refaeli New Xmas Clip Mmmmm underwear… |
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Klick Health [US]: Know Your Memes Mmmmm memes… |
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Victoria Secret [US]: Deck the Halls Mmmmm underwear….. models… |
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Marcus Thomas [US]: Noggin Cam The shortest straw in all of agency town goes to these guys. See the team get dunked in eggnog. View archive site here with a full ustream video. |
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Sprint [US]: Holiday Medley! – Victoria Justice & Max Schneider I assumed these guys were Glee cast or something similar but they are Youtube stars so I feel slightly less annoyed. I still wanted to punch something after watching this. Watch the behind the scenes for more cheesy goodness. |
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Skittles | BBDO [CA]: Create The Rainbow YOUR NAME THE RAINBOW! |
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Fullsix [ES]: Touch My Food Xmas Tune | Gran Toccata Típica sin Tópicos para Mmmmmm buena comida sabor! |
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Philosophy Communication [US]: You’ve Been Good Mmmmm chocolate and socks |
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Boa technology [US]: Snow Cheer That’s one rad Santa and a really interesting piece of footwear technology. |
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Cactus [US]: Cactus Beard A total of $73 donated so far. Sad face with a beard. |
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Mercedes AMG [US]: Cookies This is how the 1% bake cookies. Tastes like dolphin. |
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Sapient [US]: SapientNitro Social Media Engineered Christmas Bauble of Friendship You can read the press release here. It’d be nice to see these with the map. And while I’m making requests I’d prefer an edible cookie than a tree bauble too. |
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The Mill [UK]: The Wish Machine Every tweet is is written on paper then added to the window display. And 10p is donated to charity. 377 tweets so far though so I hope The Mill donated more than $37 quid. |
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DraftFCB [CA]: Our Gift From You A giant greeting card signed by a robot arm with a Sharpie (their client… nice work). Sadly the ability to sign is finished but you can see the final result on the site and hopefully they have a video to show it in action. |
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Turnbull Ripley[UK]: Christmas Jingles Mmmmmm bells… |
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Google [US]: Santa Tracker Sadly the cute site is now on hiatus until next year. Which is a shame as the site housed some fun little games and activities. Even without the tracking it seems a shame to hide it. Although it seems Microsoft and NORAD took a lot of wind out of Google’s sails this year. |
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Rolf Holleis [US]: 3D Printed Cookies Now we’re talking. Yum! More details here and here |
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Limbic Media [CA]: Wintertree The city commissioned Limbic to create audio reactive cherry tree in the middle of the city as part of the Holiday festival. More info here. |
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Dennis Adams [US]: Twitter powered LED Holiday Wreath This is what a video looks like without the agency jazz added to it. No hip soundtrack, no cross fade or depth of field shots. Just the guy explaining what is going on. Read the breakdown on how it was made here so your agency can do it even better/bigger in 2013. |
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Voltage [US]: Fruitcake Font A free font for Christmas! |
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Oi [ES]: Santa Hotline Payphone Sooooo cute. |
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KOA | LRXD [US]: Instacamp For when you need to feel like you’re by a camp fire. |
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Crush [CA]: Toronto Christmas Classics Bad Santa 🙂 |
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Switch [US]: Ugly Sweaters This is the 3rd Gangnam style ugly sweater this year but on the best looking model so it balances out OK. |
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Mekanism [US]: Mekanistas Needed more cowbell lasers. |
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Team One [US]: Technolidays RoboCarol It kicks into gear after 45 seconds so give it the time needed. |
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Superheroes | Diesel [NL]: Get it While you Can Close enough to Xmas to make it in and worth the 2 minutes of your time. |
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Superheroes | Diesel [NL]: Magic of Christmas Diesel hypnotised people into thinking they were 5 years old ten filmed the results. It has your weekly intake of good looking people viewing. |
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Pure Brand [US]: Dogstagram Tag your dog photos with #christmasdog to help charity. |
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Jamie Kripke [US]: Lots of Trees It’s a $1B business in the USA alone and Jamie has documented a few of the lots where they are sold. Make sure to also check out his series on the Freemasons. Quite intriguing. |
| NBA [US]: Dribble of the Bells Nicely done. Check out the behind the scenes. Also dear NBA. Tag your Youtube videos better this was very hard to find via search. |
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The Piano Guys [US]: Upside Down Playing Not only is there a channel on Youtube about 5 guys who play the piano it has 200,000,000 views and a million subscribers. |
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Deepblue [DE]: Christmas Tunes You’ll need your smart phone for this one also. Luckily there’s a video for those that are lazy like me. |
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Marmite [UK]: Love it or hate It People can upload their photo from a facebook app or visit the bus shelter outside Oxford St mall and upload their photo and whether they love or hate Marmite Gold. Their faces are then displayed on the streets Christmas lights proudly displaying their choice. I love that Marmite is proud to announce people hate their product as it is decisive. |
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JMW | Coca-Cola [SE]: Sing for Me Vending Machine Each vending machine comes with a model release form and a camera crew. |
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JWT | Jamin [NL]: ChocoTweets Warning for Dutch tourists: DO NOT dress as Sinterklaas if you live anywhere else other than the Netherlands. Even Chocotweets sounds racist. It does sound pretty cool to say SINTERKLAAS!!! Oh the campaign… The best choco tweets will be turned into real chocolate and hand delivered by a guy in blackface. |
| Lytro [US]: The Lytro-izer I don’t think I have ever wanted to participate in a promotion more than this. I want to be recreated by Screen Novelties! I also want a Lytro now too. |
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Made Movement | Deep Local [US]: thecommunitree I have no idea how this worked but the site is still semi live and knowing Deep Local it involved robots that do cool things. Also they raised $21k which seemed to be the highest this year. Here’s a time lapse of what went on day 1. Yep I’m still confused. |
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Stella Artois [US]: Holiday Alice Eve Carole Alice will drive to your house and deliver a sexy Christmas Carol. A lot of work went into this one. |
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Reddit [US]: Secret Santa The biggest secret Santa went down on Reddit this year with 58,000+ people spending almost $2 million dollars. |
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Mullen | Hungryman [US]: 12 Days of Relief The classic carol sung by those affected by Hurricane Sandy about what they need to fix some of the damage. Four cans of paint is fine but 5 million hugs! |
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BMF | Aldi [AU]: Surfing Santas Finally a surfing Santa (well many) back on the list. Thanks Aldi. The Inspiration Room has a full breakdown of the Aldi campaign which encompassed every piece of media you can think of. |
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Viget [US]: Jinglebots I’m guessing this involved dancing robots but the agency is getting back to me on that. Another creation from Viget’s side business Pointless Corp which has done some interesting things. |
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Boussias Communications [GR]: RED & YELLOW XMAS Red and Yellow rather than red and green? Those whacky Greeks!. |
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IRIS Nation [US]: Happy Facetivus HappyBukkakivus.com was already taken? |
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GHO [AU]: Chalk Wall The GHO staff draw some big balls for Xmas. This is the tasteful way to integrate your staff into an Xmas video. |
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Waste Creative[UK]: Jinglebots The ultimate Xmas Party for you to enjoy in eye-popping, mind-blowing Stage 3D AWESOMENESS! It’s a veritable sound and light spectacular! |
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Studio Hang Loose [IT]: Interactive Tree Every Xmas tree should be sold with scalextrix cars attached. |
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Zaraguza Digital [SK]: Partyanalyzer This told me I looked 45! If only I lived a drug and alcohol fueled life to warrant that. (sadface-emoticon.gif) |
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Animation Domination [US]: Charlie I couldn’t get the “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…” out of my head all day. |
| Various links found (read: stolen) from CR Blog, CampaignBrief, AgencySpy, PSFK, Denveregotist, Ad Age, Adverblog and Digital Buzz Blog. | Achievement Unlocked: Scrolled all the Way |
Dec
05
Republicans Weigh New Debate Rules That Could Lead to More Onstage Clashes
Posted in: UncategorizedThe party is considering whether to open the door to debates not sponsored by the Republican National Committee, which could lead to more onstage clashes but also diminish their fanfare.
Dec
05
“GTA VI”: primeiro trailer oficialmente lançado pela Rockstar Games
Posted in: Uncategorized
A espera acabou para os fãs de “Grand Theft Auto”. Rockstar Games lançou o tão esperado trailer de “GTA VI”, retornando à icônica Vice City com lançamento previsto para 2025. A revelação veio após um vazamento antecipado, forçando a empresa a antecipar a estreia oficial do trailer. Porque isso importa: GTA VI marca uma evolução …
Leia “GTA VI”: primeiro trailer oficialmente lançado pela Rockstar Games na íntegra no B9.
Dec
05
Former Top Tucker Carlson Producer Is Accused of Sexual Assault
Posted in: UncategorizedFox News fired the producer alongside Mr. Carlson this year after its $787.5 million settlement in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case.
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