To promote its O Face Satin Lipstick, e.l.f. Cosmetics worked with Snapchat to launch the platform’s first Bitmoji Beauty Drop, allowing Snapchat users to claim a free digital item for their Bitmoji for 24 hours. Snapchat users in the U.S. and U.K. will be able to tap the e.l.f. Cosmetics Drop banner in the app’s…
(TrendHunter.com) A bottle of hot sauce is one of the many gifts for hot sauce lovers that will always be appreciated but there are plenty of other options for gift-givers in search of unique and memorable presents….
Dentsu X, the communications and media division of the advertising agency network, has named Shenda Loughnane as its new global brand president, succeeding Sanjay Nazerali, who is leaving the business. Loughnane will take up the position from Jan. 1, stepping up from global managing director of iProspect, a role she has held since November 2021….
Fascinating -albeit deeply depressing- news stories have been emerging recently in mainstream media about the conflict between, on the one hand, the development of digital society and, on the other, the protection of the environment and of key natural resources. The stories and scientific studies reveal the energy and water voracity of ChatGPT, the threat that sea level rise poses to internet infrastructure, the water wars in Taiwan between microchip manufacturers and local farmers, etc. The most visible and debated facet of the debate are the data centres. This Summer, people in Uruguay were protesting against the plan to build a Google data centre that will use millions of litres of water a day while the country was suffering its worst drought in 74 years. And with temperatures rising in Europe and elsewhere, the energy-demanding cooling systems of data centres are worrying local populations. In particular, when the tech giants’ claims of a 100% sustainable activity mean that they hog the green power infrastructure that could benefit local taxpayers.
Alexander Walmsley, Memory Architecture, 2023
Yann Mingard, Server cabinets, Bahnhof.se, “Pionen”, Stockholm, Sweden, 2011. From the series Deposit
A few years ago, data centre providers and operators started moving their infrastructures to Northern countries such as Sweden where sub-zero temperatures, cheap hydroelectric power and fast fibre-optic network ensure lower carbon footprint. While boasting about their new energy-efficiency and green credentials, tech companies neglect to mention that their main objective is still to make us consume and generate more data and that the sea ice cover is rapidly melting in the Arctic.
Alexander Walmsley, Memory Architecture (Full-length version), 2023
Alexander Walmsley, an artist and programmer with a background in anthropology and archaeology, has been looking into the boom in data centre construction in the Arctic during an artist residency at the Moskosel Creative Lab in Moskosel, a small town in the North of Sweden.
His short film Memory Architecture explores the structures of data and memory. Named for the set of methods used to implement computer data storage, Memory Architecture explores the phenomenon of remote data centres near the Arctic Circle through the fictional story of a surveyor who has travelled north to survey a site for the building of a server farm, only to find that the systematic task of transforming the terrain into a digital model quickly becomes an impossible challenge as the landscape itself shifts beneath his feet.
Neither speculative nor documentary, the fiction propels the very rational narrator into a world altered by Swedish folk tales and Gothic literature. By adopting this oblique strategy to look at tech infrastructures, the film makes tangible a future that is drifting away from logic and certainties. I asked Alexander Walmsley to tell us more about the video:
Alexander Walmsley, Memory Architecture, 2023
Hi Alex! What was the motivation behind the work? How did you find yourself in a remote village located in the North of Sweden to develop a work about data centre construction currently taking place in the Arctic?
The phenomenon of data centres being hosted in arctic areas is an interesting inflection point where narratives of climate change cross over with narratives of the global cloud infrastructure. One of my recurring topics of interest in the past has been the digitisation or “virtualisation” of cultural heritage and how this conflates categories of “data storage” with “memory”. The arctic data centre phenomenon has been developing over a number of years and seemed to provide a relevant but contrasting angle on this issue, with data centres accounting for more global carbon emissions than aviation and therefore being a very direct cause of the warming taking place in those arctic areas in which they are being built! This is the paradox that first attracted me to the subject.
The opportunity to explore the subject further came in the form of a residency at the Moskosel Creative Lab in the village of Moskosel in northern Sweden. I was generously hosted in the lab for 3 weeks in February and got the chance to work on the film as well as experience life there during the coldest (and darkest) month of the year (it was minus 22 degrees when I arrived…).
Alexander Walmsley, Memory Architecture, 2023
Alexander Walmsley, Memory Architecture, 2023
Why did you choose to work with a game engine? What makes it an appropriate medium for the project?
Game engines are an important part of my practice and more broadly are increasingly being used as environments for rendering entire films. They are powerful things and one interest in this project was the ability to combine different kinds of data within the same visual environment – film, photography, 3D models, satellite data – something that they are built to do. They also have a very different relationship to the world than do lens-based media – namely, there is no assumption that what you see in a game engine represents something in the world. Therefore for me game engines often present a way of transforming material from the physical world (e.g. photogrammetry scans, which I use a lot in the film) into objects and environments that are freed from their representative role and can therefore take on new meanings.
The film reminded me of a literary genre that is called fantastique in French (with novels or short stories by Prosper Mérimée, Jean Ray, Guy de Maupassant but also Lovecraft, etc.) Was that the style of narrative you were looking for?
Yes, there are elements of the fantastique and also of Gothic literature that I find very intriguing and fun to play with. There is the supernatural horror element that is prevalent in Lovecraft as well as authors such as Karen Blixen and Mary Shelley, but also the narrative device of a slightly naïve narrator going off to a distant location, often under the pretence of scientific investigation (this is at least common in 18th/19th century Gothic literature).
A more direct starting point for the narrative was Swedish folk tales, many of which originate in the Middle Ages and were transcribed by a number of different authors in the 19th century. What was particularly remarkable to me was the prevalence of mythological creatures that were associated with or even disguised themselves as different parts of the landscape. Nordic folklore seems replete with them: trolls disguised as or living in mountains; shapeshifting water spirits that can transform into different animals (known as Nøkken); human-like spirits that can transform into sand to pass through keyholes (Nattmara). This tradition was certainly an early source of inspiration.
The film is also anchored in reality. One of the topics it touches upon is the installation of cloud architecture in the Arctic. How big is the phenomenon?
It is a phenomenon that has been growing for a while, but taken off particularly in the past 10 years or so. The Nordic countries have worked particularly hard to attract clients from the sector – Facebook founded its first European data centre in the northern Swedish town of Luleå in 2013 and has since then expanded the campus significantly. The world’s allegedly largest data centre is currently being planned in the remote Norwegian town of Ballangan, above the arctic circle.
An interesting sub-phenomenon is data centres built in the empty caverns left from mining operations in the area – another industry that has brought those countries a significant amount of wealth over the years. The main draws of the area are its cool climate, which helps to naturally cool the servers, as well as cheap electricity (often provided through renewable resources). Among other companies, I found out that Github has something called an Arctic Code Vault, which stores all active public code repositories that were hosted by the platform on 2 February 2020.
The idea of taking advantage of the Arctic’s cool climate for storage of data and non-data objects is much longer however. The cool climate also slows the process of decay. The Global Seed Vault on the island of Svalbard, Norway, is an example of the archiving of organic material as a kind of “back-up drive” for earth’s plant biodiversity.
Alexander Walmsley, Memory Architecture, 2023
Memory Architecture briefly hints at global warming which made me wonder about the social and ecological impacts of all these data centres on the Arctic area. Do local communities living there welcome these businesses? And what is the carbon footprint of these constructions? Are these issues you’ve been looking into as well?
These are interesting questions into which I was not really able to dive deeper. There is undoubtedly a lot of local and national politics at work. The village in which I was staying used to be much bigger and was home to people working in the region’s once-burgeoning forestry industry. That seems to have declined significantly in recent years, and data centres are being pushed on a regional level as a new economic possibility for the area. For some towns it seems to be working – Luleå, where Facebook has their European data centre, is a big contributor to Sweden’s GDP (also because of the mining industry there).
As a rule, figures for the carbon footprint of the industry as a whole are much easier to come across than the figures for individual data centres. However, the data centre I mentioned above (the Kolos data centre in the town of Ballangan, Norway) claims that at full capacity it will draw on 1000 megawatts of energy – about as much as 100,000 (US) households – but currently is operating at only a fraction of that. And data centres themselves make up only about 15% of the carbon emissions of the IT industry.
How much does the narrative of the short film reflect your own experience in Moskosel: the working process to document the landscape, the meeting with scientists bringing back ice cores to study, the history of mining activities in the region, the existence of an AI calculating the extractive potential of landscapes based on satellite data…?
The narrative of the film is a hybrid thing assembled from previous events in my life, sources that I came across during the residency, and fictitious plot devices that I invented based on these. I studied anthropology and archaeology at university and for a while worked as a surveyor on archaeological sites in the UK – the process that the main character is enacting in the film comes directly from this experience. The ice cores also are sourced from my previous archaeological studies, as they are used to reconstruct (pre-)historical environmental conditions. And the satellite data-reading AI is a small fictional extrapolation on something I came across during (somewhat tangential) research for a PhD at the Film University Konrad Wolf in Germany.
Moskosel itself provided me with the entire visual and auditory context for the work. I spent the weeks I was there walking through the village and surrounding countryside making scans and field recordings, much in the way the main character surveys the landscape in the film (although perhaps less structured). The narrative itself however is fundamentally fictional – there is no data centre in Moskosel, nor are there plans to build one (I don’t believe). So in the film it functions as a surrogate for phenomena that are taking place in the wider area.
Why did you decide to center the narrative on difficulty/impossibility to produce an accurate map of a landscape? What kind of lessons should we draw from this?
After I had accumulated a fair amount of background research on this phenomenon, the time came when I felt compelled to do something with it, rather than just let the information pile up. I decided that to try and address the subject head on would not only come with a certain responsibility to represent the situation as it is, but perhaps also to reach for some kind of concrete solution. Ultimately I don’t feel that this is what art is equipped to do. Instead, I wanted to use the context of this phenomenon I had researched to explore the ambiguity between “data” and “memory” and the process by which the physical world is eaten up and transformed into digital media and stored on remote servers like the ones being built in the arctic. For me this ambiguity and the conflict inherent between these two categories opened a significant conceptual space that could be explored through a fictional narrative. The difficulty of mapping the terrain accurately is perhaps therefore the difficulty of mapping one category onto another, or maybe a parable of digitisation, or perhaps a metaphor for the structural differences between a model and the thing-being-modelled.
Thanks Alexander!
(TrendHunter.com) Aromatherapy gifts as sought-after presents year-round and during the holiday season, catering to people seeking the transformative power of scent for their well-being. The evolving understanding of…
Blame Pepsi for the plot of Home Alone. Each holiday season, a new generation of viewers watches McCaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister fume as his bed-wetting cousin Fuller shotguns a 1990-vintage can of Pepsi just before they’re supposed to share sleeping quarters. When Kevin’s brother Buzz eats the last slice of cheese pizza, Kevin flips out…
Super Bowl 58 (or Super Bowl LVIII for the Roman numeral traditionalists) is virtually sold out to advertisers, according to CBS, the network airing the game. More than two months before the game, only a handful of advertisers have revealed themselves, which means this Super Bowl ad tracker will be updated as for announcements, teasers…
Smirnoff 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,…
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
Air 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.
I 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)
LBi 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/
I 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.
This 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
Are 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/
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,
| 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! |
I love it when a media plan comes together…. no wait wrong film.
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.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
