Chrome Fastball

Every fortnight, like-minded Wunderman colleagues get together to indulge our passion and appetite for all things digital. We swap links, engage in 'wide-ranging' discussion and vote on the best online content. We call it Digital Jam and everyone is welcome.

Google's campaign to win the browser war has been hard fought in the past few months. Following up on their low-fi Rube Goldberg machines and, more recently, their speed tests comes Chrome Fastball. A decidedly more high tech campaign, Fastball combines various web services into an addictive game.

The game builds on the 'simple but speedy' ethos of Google's offering. The goal is to get the chrome ball to the end of the course, completing a series of challenges sandwiched between YouTube clips. Each challenge uses a different web service; guess the best method of transport (Google maps), complete the artist name (Last.fm), and find ever lower indexed search terms (Google search).

It's the fact that this game uses Google (and non-Google) services that makes it so interesting. It manages to create a clever and compelling campaign from exactly the sites that Chrome users will load up every day. But it also retains the over-arching campaign look and feel and key message; Chrome is both simple and fast.

Do you do 'viral'?

Saadya Gellens, a copywriter intern at the Wunderman UK office, shares his thoughts on viral marketing. 

It seems to be the rage these days. Clients want to see something 'interesting', something that 'stands out' and what we hear is 'make us a 30 second viral video'.

Here are some of Ad Age's most recent examples, my favourite being Wieden + Kennedy's 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like'.

So how do we do it? How, when the client is so specific about what words and images you can and can't use, can you make a video that really entertains and excites people?

But let's get even more basic. Why does it need to be a video? Why can't it be a graphic? A cartoon? A word?

Can you 'make' a viral?

I once asked my mentor about virals, and his response was, “'It's impossible. You can't just 'make' a viral video.” See, here's the thing that a lot of people don't seem to be getting about viral:

You don't make a viral.
A viral makes itself.

A viral doesn't come from a brief. When I see a viral, I don't say, 'Wow, what a perfect execution of an idea!' I usually say 'holy *$^@', because I've never seen anything like it, it engages/excites/interacts with me and then some part of my brain says, 'I should send this to my friends.'

That's what makes it viral. When I see something that not only interests me, but makes me want to send it to someone else, that's when it's viral. The only way something becomes viral is when it's out of a client or even an agency's hands.

Clients have the bug

The idea of viral is a daunting one. It both interests and intimidates clients. They're ecstatic at the idea of their brand being looked at by millions of people in a matter of minutes. But what scares many of them is the idea that they can't control it. They can't decide what markets it will go in and for how long. It also usually involves them going beyond what their comfortable with.

But then again, that's what makes a good client. Good clients want to be pushed beyond their comfort zone. They're willing to engage in open and honest conversations about their brand and don't let the idea of change alarm them.

And that's where Wunderman comes in.

Wunderman in the Press

Wunderman has had a busy month in the press in July. Both Campaign and New Media Age have covered the launch of the agency’s new social media operation Ninja, whilst a member of this new team Jonathan Lyon was asked for his thoughts on the growth of virtual currencies.

Most interestingly of all was Wunderman Chief Technology Officer’s thought piece in Campaign on the growing need for Creative Technologists – a follow up piece to this article can be found in the blog’s previous entry.

The Creative Technologist - A new role in an agency near you

I was recently featured in Campaign in an article on Creative Technologists. [“Where creativity meets technology” by Alasdair Reid - Edition of 2^nd July 2010 on page 26].

It got me thinking … Who are they? What characterizes them? And how do they fit in the ad agency environment?

Creative Technologists are a new type of breed. The Creative Geek (or “Creek” for short) has a very unique and mixed profile. It’s a profile where the left side of the brain meets the right side. Creeks are logical, rational, analytical and objective which are all qualities coming from their technical background and left side of the brain while equally they are random, intuitive, synthesizing and subjective which are all qualities coming from the right side and creative side of the brain. They have this unique blend that looks at the parts as well at the wholes.

[image taken from WIRED.com]

Daniel H. Pink said once “Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.” and while I like his views I find that in reality it is the merging of the logical and conceptual that produces the best experiences, and therefore giving us instead the "Experiential Age". The best illustration is the iPhone. It’s a work of art where incredible engineering mastery is equally met by amazing finesse and artistry which as a whole produce this unique ‘emotional’ bond that owners feel with it (just observe how people react when they drop the device on the floor).

In an agency you will find Creeks in various team whether in Creative, Technical, Planning and Account team. Creeks have also various level of seniority. It’s actually an interesting dilemma, how do you judge the level of seniority of a Creeks. Is this someone who’s more creative than technical ? Is it the opposite ? Is it the one that’s been doing the role the longest ? The most awarded ? Also where does the Creek really fit in an agency. I quite like the idea of being the third member of the creative team (Art Director, Copywriter and the Creek). But practically does it work ? However to be a good Creek you’ve got to keep up with the latest innovation (well the best Creek not only keep up with innovation, they innovate themselves) so this means working very closely with the technical developers.

The reality is that there’s no strong rule on where the Creeks should sit. If they sit in a creative team they have to work very closely with the developers and if they sit in a technical team they have to work very closely with the creative team. It’s also critical for the team leads to leave the ego at the door. CTOs and ECDs must pair and form the most senior creative team in the agency and lead by example. The best agencies have understood this a long time ago. The most successful ones have not only those teams located physically near each other, they also have processes that take technical input earlier in the project lifecycle and more importantly they create a culture where technology is as much celebrated as creative thinking.

Obviously the best work doesn’t always co-depend on technology. A great tagline is still a very effective advertising technique. Having said that one can argue that it is in fact completely co-dependent as the alphabet is one of the best technology the human race has ever created.

Mobile Digest #07# - Location, Location, Location

David Murphy, editor of Mobile Marketing Magazine, muses on the changes location awareness is bringing to the mobile world.

I’ve been thinking about location-based services lately, and the more I think about them, the more I think their time may finally have come. If you’ve seen the sci-fi movie Minority Report, you may recall the scene in which Tom Cruise enters a shopping arcade and is bombarded with personalised offers, with sensors in the arcade identifying him by his iris, as I recall. Interestingly enough, by the time the film was released in 2002, it was already two years since a company called ZagMe had tried to do something similar in the real world at the Bluewater shopping centre, though in this deployment, the medium was text and the messages didn’t come quite so thick and fast.

ZagMe never quite caught on, but ever since, companies have been trying to tap into the fact that people usually have their phone with them, and that to a certain degree at least, you can identify where they are, with reference to their nearest mobile network cell site. In fact, with more people now owning GPS-enabled smartphones, brands can target people much more accurately, to within a few metres if they wish.

Foursquare rewards

This is playing out in several ways. If you’re a foursquare enthusiast, you will know that you can earn rewards by visiting places and telling foursquare that you are there by “checking in” on your mobile. Slowly but surely, brands are waking up to the potential of this idea. It’s hardly a hotbed of activity just now, but in the UK, for example, each Wednesday, Dominos Pizza is offering the “Mayor” of each of its outlets (that’s the person with the most checkins there in the past week), a free small pizza, while any foursquare user who checks in and spends over £10 gets a free garlic pizza bread. Dominos doesn’t even have seats; it’s a takeaway-only business, so the firm is using the foursquare tie-up to drive its collections business.

There’s also some interesting stuff happening on mobile. Geocast sells location-based advertising inventory for a number of publishers on their mobile properties. As an advertiser, you can say you only want your ads to be seen by people when they come within a certain distance, that you can specify, of one of your stores, or indeed, of one of your competitor’s stores. The firm currently has around 10,000 advertisers, and while many are small businesses, it says it expects bigger brands to come on board as the agencies that advise them get their heads round the idea of using mobile advertising to drive footfall into stores, rather than just driving traffic to their mobile internet sites.

Another company, Vouchercloud, launched an iPhone app in February, offering localised money-off vouchers. The app has so far been downloaded almost 600,000 times, and users have downloaded 250,000 coupons. Because the company behind Vouchercloud has some previous, distributing large, print-based voucher books in cities up and down the UK, it has managed to get some big brands, including Pizza Hut, Carluccio’s and Prezzo on board. It quotes redemption rates for one Pizza Hut 2-for-1 offer of 9 per cent.

Perfect storm

It seems to me like a perfect storm: more consumers now have GPS-enabled smartphones and are comfortable with the idea of downloading apps on their phone and browsing the mobile web – 16m of us did so in December. We’ve also, in these cash-strapped times, become a nation of voucher-junkies. And while it’s fair to say that the majority of brands still don’t get the potential of location-based services, it’s my belief that that’s all going to change before the year is out.