BET’s “Follow the Leader” network identity campaign centers around a video from Harpoon Pictures/New York that follows the leader racing through the city to a comfortable living room where he can watch BET.
“Racing” isn’t really the word to use because the actor who plays the leader is Sébastien Foucan, who appeared in the James Bond film Casino Royale, and is the founder of parkour (free running), an extreme sport where participants move as fast as they can over and around any obstacle that comes in their way. To get to the TV, Foucan runs through crowds on a city street, strides across a ship in the harbor, leaps across roof tops and stops to raise his arms in triumph before he scales the face of a building to enter the apartment.
“Free running is not in the States yet, it’s the skateboarding of the future, the cutting edge before it breaks,” said Ola Kudu, BET’s vice president/creative director. Foucan’s opening chase scene in Casino Royale, a demonstration of parkour, “was one of the inspirations for the campaign and we pushed it further,” Kudu said.
The two-and-a-half-minute video began playing at Bet.com/onblast, the network’s video page, on Monday.
The video wasn’t easy to shoot because Foucan moved so fast. “The jumps were dangerous and risky, we had to shoot from three different angles for wide, close and mid shots,” said Michael Abt, Harpoon’s director. “He ran so fast on the difficult terrain, the only way to follow him was in a four wheel drive.”
The film looks like it was shot in an American city, but it was actually shot in Buenos Aires. It was shot there in April with Arriflex 435 cameras, Abt said.
The sound track is a hip hop song, Follow the Leader, by Eric B and Rakim, with echoing that repeats the title.
BET also plans to play the video with viral links at various locations, Kudu said. The long form video doesn’t play on TV, but shorter :30 and :60 second versions are playing on air along with network ids. Still images from the video are being used in print ads in the campaign that launched May 18.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More