Signs of life - No.4

Fancy seeing some comedy?  Follow me, I saw a sign back there.  Aha! This way!  Oh, no wait.  This way! No, Wait. This... oh, sod it.  Let's go home.

Red Dwarf ARG promotes reshowing on Dave

To promote the showing of Red Dwarf on TV channel Dave, the old crew have got back to gether to produce the ARG at http://www.listerscominghome.co.uk/. The site has a postcard from Lister, on which he explains that there's been a problem caused by hm spilling curry on a comms unit. As a result of this, the crew have become seperated and are being forced to communicate through a 'hacked' web page - http://www.scanningjupiter.co.uk/. On here, players can find some basic messages from the crew and sign up to begin the game and uncover various exclusive content including the communication between the crew. A nice little campaign, with some clever link ups with Google Earth.

Campaign by Red Bee Media.

Saving the world is so.... Bourgeois.

New viral from Stella Artois spoofing 24. Jacques Baudeur replaces the famous Jack Bauer and he's far less concerned about saving the world. Really nice effort from Mother.

Even Meerkats make mistakes...

Following the incredible success of Compare the Market's Aleksander the Meerkat campaign, they have now released a set of 'bloopers' from the recent campaign.  Funny stuff, and continuing to add depth to the current content on the site and buzz to the campaign.  

On top of this, Aleksander recently appeared on Comic Relief, along with many of the public's other favourite advertising characters in an effort to create 'the best ad in British television history'.  Can you recognise them all?

'Monster' caught on film during workout video shoot

Nice Viral promoting the conspiracy website set up to promote the new Dreamworks movie 'Monsters vs Aliens'.  They've gone to a good amount of detail here, even setting up supporting sites, such as PacificMonsterIsland.com, the fortunately-named island where the site suggests Monsters are thriving in a government-created 'monster zoo' following years of nuclear experiments nearby.

Further detail is added with a Twitter feed and even a sponsor, 'Old Man Carl's Flavored Snacks'.  Pretty cool campaign I think you'll agree.  A trailer for the film can be seen below:

What's Eric's Status?

New Video from Sony Ericsson to promote their new C510 model, a feature of which is the ability to get all your friends facebook statuses delivered to your phone.  In an effort to drive clicks through to the site, the video simply shows 'Eric' skydiving whilst reading a book and then invites you to 'find out more' by clicking the video area.

Doing this takes you to a page on the Sony Ericsson site which plays the video full screen and then offers the opportunity to 'win Eric's status' by becoming a fan of him on Facebook and installing a Facebook application to spread the campaign further.

A nice, simple idea, made slightly different with the Facebook link-in.  However with only 299 friends after what appears to be around 4 weeks of the account being live it remains to be seen how succesful the campaign will be.

Ray Winstone Wants Respect

One of the most frustrating things for me as a rugby fan who also enjoys watching football, is the complete lack of respect shown by the players and fans to the officials.  According to the FA, an average of 7000 referees quit the game every year for this exact reason.  

In an effort to educate players, parents and supporters, the FA recently launched its 'Respect' campaign.  It is now beginning to gather some steam and has launched the above video featuring Ray Winstone to build more awareness.  

Ray Winstone scares the life out of me anyway (his Kellogg's optivita ads nearly made me buy out of fear alone), so hopefully his support should add weight to the campaign and deliver the message.  For more information, visit the Respect page on the FA website.

Samsung Extreme LED Sheep Viral

Incredible Viral from Samsung.  How on earth this was even conceived let alone executed is hard to imagine.  Superb.

Energy Wasting Day

Cool new viral campaign from Together, the climate change awareness organisation spotted today. The video is 'Dan Power's single that he hopes will storm the charts thanks to it's two key offerings - wasting power, and Dan himself. Oh, and some 'sexy girls'. Find out more here.

Low on self esteem?

If, like me, you're tired of being upstaged in front of the ladies by greying, middle-aged men called Boris, then finally the answer is here. Don't be scared of his super cool red fleece. Don't let that slightly too small cap worry you either. Just buy yourself a stripey blue and white tee shirt and Join the Ukrainian Army. Seems so obvious now, eh?

Only in America...

Not sure this would catch on, but certainly a nice change from the standard monotonous announcements!

Natasha Richardson PPC ad - surely a step too far?

In the week that OK magazine has begun selling a Jade Goody memorial in advance of her seemingly imminent passing, the Sun newspaper has continued the trend of the media attempting to capitalise on others' misfortune.  Ads have been placed today on Google promoting their coverage of Natasha Richardson's tragic death following her freak skiing accident earlier this week.  Unbelievably insensitive - hang your heads. 

Via Rick.

2012 Viral campaign

The new film entitled '2012', based on the mayan prophecy that the world will end in 2012, has launched a cool new viral campaign featuring Woody Harrelson.  From the trailer for the movie (above) you are driven, through the call to action 'google search: 2012', to the site below:

The site shows the trailer again, but also has links through to two sites:

This Is The End is Woody Harrelson playing the character Charlie Frost, who is desperately trying to spread the message of the end of the world and make sure everyone knows 'you heard it first from Charlie Frost'.  

Additionally, as part of the slowly-becoming-standard holistic approach, you can also interact with Charlie on Twitter, or Facebook.

The second site linked to from the main 2012 page and discussed by Charlie in his blog posts is the Institute for Human Continuity, a really smart site that gives you the opportunity to register for a 'survival lottery', which enters you in to a draw for survival.  

All together a really nice campaign, let down only by the slightly disappointing lack of PPC ads to ensure that their  site was prominent when searchers follow their call to action.  At present, the Wikipedia entry has overtaken the film site, and this is certainly a trick missed.

Vodafone 'Video Games' Viral

Vodafone are cranking up their efforts on the viral front this month. Following on from the cool Lewis Hamilton viral that was discussed on Rick's blog last week, I discovered the above effort as a content ad this morning. I've always been a fan of stop motion animation when done well and this is really nice done. The main guy in the video also reminds me a great deal of Lasse Gjertsen who has done some of my favourite stop motion work.

Signs of life - No. 3

Eat fresh. Learn Slow.

Wi Fi Advertising?

Just when you think digital advertising can't sneak anywhere else, up pop the germans with another clever idea.  The video explains it all, but the approach was to deliver a promotional message through the names of the wifi networks they had set up in various airports.  Very clever....

As reported on my new favourite blog, Adverblog.

Sorry from Gordon

As reported on Brand Republic today, the Conservative party have been bidding on the term 'gordon brown'.  A search on Google returns the following PPC ad...

...which links through to their site www.sorryfromgordon.com.  On this site there is a pre scripted letter that you can create to send to your friends because, the website says, 'Gordon Brown bottled out of saying sorry in his speech to congress today.  So write an apology for him and send it to your friends'.

From a political standpoint it's a pretty standard (and somewhat laughable) bit of tit-for-tat propaganda, but from an advertising perspective it's certainly a nice way of using search to generate PR.

Well spotted Steve.