The brave new media world is getting a little braver, though obviously there’s ample room for more new ground to be broken and potential to be realized. As SHOOT looked to noted agency creatives this month to reflect on where we are today in terms of interactive and new means of meshing brands into our culture, there was a definite sense that progress has been made.
Consider the creative team of Patrick McKay and Feh Tarty, the lead art director and copywriter at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco (GS&P), for the last three California Milk Processor Board’s “got milk?” campaigns. The creative duo first came together at DDB Los Angeles where they scored impressively with the 2005 Super Bowl work for Ameriquest, including “Surprise Dinner” and “Mini Mart,” directed by Craig Gillespie of bicoastal/international MJZ.
The premise of that campaign–which advises us not to judge too quickly because things aren’t always what they seem–lent itself to McKay and Tarty shooting some test story material that couldn’t be shown on TV. The creative team wanted to deploy this content as part of an online interactive campaign.
“They almost went with it,” recalled Tarty. “But the problem at the time was that clients weren’t equipped to deal with other mediums…Interactive was an afterthought back then. It hadn’t been budgeted for.”
“We knew we wanted to do interactive and that it could have great value for clients,” noted McKay. “That’s long been what Feh and I have pursued. We haven’t changed in that regard at all. But thankfully now the times have changed and caught up to nontraditional forms where creative drives the media, where you create content that will find people–and that people will seek out.”
Tarty and McKay joined GS&P in ’05. “When we came here, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein asked us what we wanted to do,” related Tarty. “We told them that we wanted to explore interactive and new forms from the outset, to come up with ideas that can be carried out in different mediums.”
That integrated approach has been reflected in the currently running California Milk “Get The Glass” campaign in which commercials tell us of the Adachi family’s quest to get milk but to no avail. The spots drive viewers to a website (GetTheGlass.com) where they can play an elaborate, entertaining board game and join the Adachis in their pursuit, all the while showcasing the health benefits of milk.
Web traffic has been heavy, with one million-plus unique visits to the site in the first month alone. Just as, if not more importantly, visitors are spending 15 to 20 minutes on average at the site.
“Get The Glass” came on the heels of California Milk’s “Aliens/Cow Abduction” campaign, also based on an engaging, tongue-in-cheek premise in which aliens from outer space covet the milk elixir for its health-enhancing properties. Yet underscoring the educational process that has gone on in recent years to make “Get The Glass” and “Aliens/Cow Abduction” possible is their “predecessor” campaign spoofing the steroids controversy in big league baseball. The five TV commercials told the story of a star player who’s “juicing,” except that the juice is milk.
The humorous spots sparked some controversy. More significantly, they drove traffic to the California Milk Processor Board’s website. For a site accustomed to some 1,100 hits a day, the baseball campaign increased that daily tally to more than 18,000.
“That went a long way to opening the client up to doing more full fledged integrated, interactive work, paving the way for ‘Aliens/Cow Abduction’ and ‘Get The Glass,'” noted Tarty. “It shows we have come a long way in recent years. When you look back, you realize that we’ve turned a corner in terms of getting the chance to do meaningful integrated work.”
Up next for Tarty and McKay is a campaign for a new GS&P client, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. “We’ll be advertising to Australians only so it represents a fun, different opportunity,” said McKay. Though they were not yet at liberty to discuss specifics, Tarty and McKay envision an Aussie campaign idea that will be relevant across different media platforms, including interactive.
Happiness
The lauded, animated “Happiness Factory” spot for Coca-Cola–directed by Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick of Psyop, New York, for Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam–charmed the marketplace upon its debut in ’06 as well as its run during this year’s Super Bowl telecast. The commercial has since spawned a mini-documentary, New World of Coke, in which actual Coca-Cola workers were interviewed and their responses placed in the mouths of the animated characters from the original :90 ad. The six-and-a-half-minute docu piece is a featured attraction at The New World of Coca-Cola venue in Atlanta.
And last month (SHOOT, 8/31) marked the debut of Happiness Factory–The Movie, an online global premiere event in virtual world Second Life. Again helmed by Mueller and Matulick, the nearly three-and-a-half-minute animation film remains accessible on the Internet. The campaign promoting the movie included 30 and 60-second trailers, cinema-inspired poster ads and promotional packaging.
Al Moseley, executive creative director at W+K, Amsterdam, characterized the “Happiness Factory” commercial as being “the start of a bigger franchise for Coke,” reflecting the branding prowess of entertainment. Underscoring that, he noted, is the primetime Emmy nomination that the original “Happiness Factory” earned this summer.
“Entertainment is the way forward for the brand and the [Emmy] nomination is recognition of ‘Happiness Factory’ as entertainment…The nomination affirms that we are on the right path for the future,” related Moseley. “We need to make pieces of valued entertainment, particularly with people choosing not to watch commercials via TiVo and with other choices out there. Maybe in the not-too-distant future, we will be making branded entertainment that people will actually pay to see.”
Voyeurism
As chronicled in SHOOT’s iSpot (7/18), the HBOvoyeur campaign from BBDO New York is most ambitious, encompassing a building-sized “peep show” in Manhattan, content online at hbovoyeur.com, mobile fare and a film titled The Watcher appearing on HBO On Demand.
The building projection is the image of an apartment building, in which we see Manhattan residents moving about in their dwellings, allowing viewers to be voyeurs into their private lives.
BBDO New York senior creative director/copywriter Mike Smith observed that the campaign brings a new dimension to branding. Rather than an outdoor billboard proclaiming that HBO tells good stories, you can see stories unfold on the projected film along the side of a building on New York’s Lower East Side.
Online you can peer further into these people’s living spaces and lives, with a video featuring 30 actors in a dozen apartments. Delving deeper you see that some of these lives and goings on in the apartments are connected to one another. You can even select from different pieces of original music tracks to set the tone and discover how sound affects what you’re watching.
BBDO executive creative director/art director Greg Hahn said that with all the alternatives, there is more than two hours worth of content on the website, with viewers opting to watch as much or as little as they like. “But the key is that they are interacting with the stories that unfold.”
And, noted BBDO senior creative director/art director David Carter, “Every story has a conclusion and they can often be connected to each other.”
Putting viewers in the position of accessing and in some respects being able to orchestrate stories that aren’t part of HBO network programming is indeed a progressive way to brand HBO as a special place for storytelling.
While viewers are the voyeurs, the HBO On Demand film The Watcher introduces us to the master “voyeur” and tells us his story.
The main components of HBOvoyeur were directed by Jake Scott of bicoastal/international RSA, with additional online material helmed by RSA’s Chris Nelson. The campaign has generated viewer buzz and blogs and exemplifies what David Lubars, chief creative officer of BBDO North America has long been a proponent of–namely creating compelling content that people will seek out, regardless of form.
Director Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Dreams (Sex Love)” Wins Top Prize At The Berlin Film Festival
A Norwegian film about love, desire and self-discovery won top honors at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday.
A jury headed by American director Todd Haynes awarded the Golden Bear trophy to "Dreams (Sex Love)" by director Dag Johan Haugerud.
Haynes called it a "meditation on love" that "cuts you to the quick with its keen intelligence."
The film focuses on a teenager played by Ella Øverbyer, infatuated with her female French teacher, and the reactions of her mother and grandmother when they discover her private writings. It's the third part of a trilogy Haugerud has completed in the past year. "Sex" premiered at Berlin in 2024, and "Love" was screened at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
The runner-up Silver Bear prize went to Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro's dystopian drama "The Blue Trail." Argentine director Ivan Fund's rural saga "The Message" won the third-place Jury Prize.
The best director prize went to Huo Meng for "Living the Land," set in fast-changing 1990s China.
Rose Byrne was named best performer for her role as an overwhelmed mother in the Mary Bronstein-directed "If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You." Andrew Scott won the supporting performer trophy for playing composer Richard Rodgers in Richard Linklater's "Blue Moon."
The climax of the festival known as the Berlinale came on the eve of Germany's parliamentary elections after a campaign dominated by migration and the economy.
The national election is being held seven months early, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz's governing coalition collapsed in a dispute about how to revitalize the country's economy.
Efforts to curb migration have emerged as a central issue in the campaign — along with the question of how to handle the... Read More