Since the site is freshly launched, we don’t have much in the way of metrics yet. But our experience is that video-rich sites like this have a significant impact on visitors and encourage longer visit durations. When the goal is to communicate an open, accessible, authentic brand persona, video is a tough medium to beat.

It’s also becoming more popular not just on campaign-specific microsites, but – like in TSH’s case – as a fundamental component of a brand’s main website.

Nike is a great example of this. A slick video carousel serves as a portal to Nike’s portfolio of category-, product- and campaign-specific microsites. A home-movie microdoc spot about pond hockey plays next to a mashup of richly lit behind-the-scenes footage of industrial sewing machines with Beyoncé-like glamour shots of the finished kicks. Although the videos are unrelated, they all share the brand’s classic just-do-it messaging. The result is a brand entry point that speaks to both the core brand personality and the diversity of the company’s offerings.

-Nick

It’s true, such a thing exists and I’ve discovered it.  Whilst perusing through the latest offerings on YouTube, (now with new widescreen player!) I came across this little gem that’s sure to be a classic in the brand film world.  The JCB Action Brand Film!. Admittedly they we’re probably just setting out to make a really cool film about their construction equipment but I was pulled in to what is probably some of the most heartfelt brand emoting I’ve ever done. Seriously, after watching this I simultaneously wanted to own a JCB construction vehicle and make a career out of digging holes in the rain while in slow motion.

Would I have done anything differently? No absolutely not. This film is a masterpiece of extraordinary cinematography and editing. My only addition might be to intercut scenes showing a rain soaked battle between vikings and medivel knights happening in between the construction vehicles while bikini-clad, models playing electric guitars rocked out on top of the diggers.  If JCB wanted to take this viral anyway…

But in all serious I tip my hat to this production team, they’ve explored new frontier in the burgeoning brand film genre and it is sure to be repeated by others.

check it out:

JCB

So there’s been some buzz going around about Ogilvy Toronto’s newest effort for Dove.  An interactive choose-your-own-adventure microsite/webseries called Waking Up Hannah.  Now what I find interesting about this series isn’t necessarily the interactivity features (which are well integrated if somewhat superfluous) what I’m excited about is the fact that this is one of the first branded web series to adhere to TV quality production values.

And that’s what it’s all about ladies and gentlemen.  The genre of the Web series has thus far been relegated to low quality standards, cheap cameras, bad acting, poor narrative, dull storylines.  It all combined to give web series a bad reputation when it came to hunting down advertisers and sponsors.  Ogilvy’s Hannah series is game changer although I doubt few will recognize it.

Our mission all along has been to bring TV/film production values to the internet sphere.  It’s absolutely possible with today’s technology and know-how.  But more importantly it’s an absolute necessity if we hope to make the final leap from the dulldrums of the 30 second spot to something more engaging and effective in the online environment.

Once brands realize they have just as much potential to create entertaining content as good or better than Hollywood can output we’ll be in a totally new advertising dynamic. “Hannah” isn’t going to win any Emmy’s but it’s a significant step in the right direction.  Brands don’t have to wait for good shows to come along so they can slap an ad in the middle, they can make their own, but here’s the catch, it has to be entertaining first and foremost, it has to be well produced, and product integration has to be as clever as possible so as not to distract or confuse the viewer.

The screenwriter William Goldman advises, “Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience.” People know when they’re being patronized, people also know when they’ve found something that’s authentic and real to them.  I think as an industry we’ve got the patronizing part down pat, what we need to work on is the authenticity of the content. If they’re genuinely enjoying what they’re watching you can sell them anything you want.

- Evan

How do they do it? Well without getting too geeky on you…

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a normal YouTube channel below Nintendo’s fake YouTube interface. They’ve recreated a mock YouTube interface in a huge flash animation nested in an iframe 1500 pixels tall (all the way down to where the normal channel stuff starts). Some of the links and buttons work (e.g. links to other Nintendo videos, subscription button, playback controls), but they’re all done manually – none of the fake YouTube elements draw on the real YouTube. The view count, for example, seems to be stuck at 2,752,987 (but even if it moved, Nintendo would be the one keeping track).

Can you do this on your own partner channel?

Unlikely. It seems that Nintendo has been granted special privileges for this one. Normal YouTube channels are restricted to a banner measuring 875px by 150px. If you dig into the code, those banners are in a div whose class is “profile-banner-box”. But that div doesn’t appear anywhere on the Experience Wii channel, instead replaced by the 875px by 1500px iframe & flash video.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised YouTube was ok with it. While the gag is clever and lighthearted, most sites like YouTube have pretty strict rules about imitation. Strictly speaking, the ad deceives users – even once the joke is obvious, most users would still believe that the viewcount is a real viewcount, the related videos are true YouTube-generated related videos, etc.

But props to YouTube for overlooking what ultimately isn’t that big a deal and letting Nintendo have some fun.

-Nick

Second, a drunken twist on historical docu-drama (after the jump)…

This one is part of a series called “Drunk History” – this one features Danny McBride (NSFW).

-Nick

Follow Your Instinct is an annotation-powered choose-your-own-adventure movie in which you (a young heterosexual male office worker) must make a series of choices between (1) having sex and (2) doing boring shit. You’re rewarded for following your rebellious instincts (jury’s out on how the compulsively boring dudes out there feel about this).

Points for the risque approach, and for getting out there early while the technology is still novel. We think they’ll do well.

In other sexual choose-your-own-adventure news, check out lingerie brand Agent Provocateur’s new hauntingly carnivalesque microsite. Stumble around a Rocky Horror castle shot like a Super8 porno and try to decide which actions to take to stop a virgin from getting her throat slashed. Hint: Choosing “No” tends to trigger a chicken sound.

-Nick

I’ve been listening to the new album from mashup artist Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) a lot over the past couple of days and it brings up some issues in the same vein.

2006’s “Night Ripper” (torrent | complete list of samples) launched him into Pitchfork shininess, and the critical acclaim is well deserved. To give you an idea, here’s “Hold Up”, in which the samples range from Ludacris and 50 Cent to Weezer and the Pixies (NSFW):

None of the samples on Gillis’ albums are rights-cleared. The costs would be prohibitive given the volume of material, but that’s still not the main issue (the record label is called Illegal Art, after all). This is about the struggle between private ownership and public access to popular culture. The music itself reminds us of the public-ness of pop culture: the whole effect of Girl Talk comes from taking the mass of personal and cultural associations you have with Missy Elliot, and smashing them together with those about Phil Collins. It reminds you how much of your own experience, how much of our shared experience, someone claims when they say they own a music track.

While he hasn’t been hit by any major suits (as far as I know), Gillis has left himself pretty vulnerable with his carpet-bomb approach to infringement. iTunes doesn’t carry him, and Amazon only has him through third party sellers. But Timothy Gabriele at PopMatters wonders if the new album, “Feed the Animals” (buy/download) might be able to find a loophole in its pay-what-you-want distribution model:

Consumers are not being asked to give money out for the purchase of Feed the Animals. They’re being ask to donate to a musician and his label for having made Feed the Animals, which they will gladly give you for free. In this context, Feed the Animals is about as illegal as any mashup some kid in his living room designed for his blog.

Now, I’m pretty sure this line of reasoning won’t hold up in court (open source software, for example, isn’t allowed to infringe on patents just because it’s free), but Gabriele is right that the freebie option (which is at full-quality 320kbps, by the way) blurs the line between commercial artist and basement teenager. Not that that stopped EMI with the Hi5 thing – but most people (and most record companies) would want to distinguish between the two. As I argued in the EMI/Hi5 post, user-generated content can be a valuable source of buzz. The question, here as with EMI/Hi5, is whether or not the potentially valuable product exposure outweighs the danger of setting precedents by turning a blind eye to third party profit.

-Nick