To what extent will an auto manufacturer go to promote a new vehicle? Scion will perform surgical procedures to transform human heads into small squares.
As part of the campaign to launch the 2008 xB, which is commonly referred to as a box on wheels, Scion has incorporated the box metaphor into a campaign that includes the video Surgery that takes place in a mental institution where subjects emerge with reconditioned box heads before a man with a normal head is subjected to the same “mind bending” experience.
The video is playing at www.want2Bsquare.com, the site developed by ATTIK/San Francisco, which includes social games and a total of 17 custom videos to promote the square concept. The video “celebrates the xB’s box shape,” said Simon Needham, co-founder and creative director of ATTIK. “It’s crazy and entertaining enough to make them want to know more about it.”
The :90 video plays online and a :60 version was used as a theatrical ad, which ended with the url that directs viewers to the website.
The video was shot in Romania in an old mental institution, which provided “fantastic dilapidated scenes of industrial decay, with everything faded and rundown,” said James Rouse, director from Outsider USA, the production company in Santa Monica, Calif. “The location offered everything we needed, including the cast and a certain quality of otherworldliness and mysticism that is attached to that area of the world and the language.”
A doctor, with a nurse’s assistance, injects his subjects before they emerge with their small boxy heads and the video concludes with a new subject yelling “Butcher” before his head is locked into a chamber to begin the procedure.
The most surprising element of the video is the images of the small boxhead figures. “We thought how weird it would look if the finished boxheads were much smaller than a human head,” Rouse said. “The solution was a mixture of prosthetic, blackscreen and CG. We shot the actors wearing a prosthetic square head that was too small for them, allowing their natural head to poke out the top, as well as have a large hole at the front for them to breathe through. We then painted out the natural head and replaced it with the real background taken from a plate shot. Facial features were added in postproduction, from the black screen elements we‘d filmed on set. They included artificially wide noses and mouths. The noses were CG, disproportionately flat, much flatter than real life.”
The boxy headed figures in a Romanian mental institution make for an intriguing video. “It’s weird and wonderful,” Needham said, ideal for the 18-25 year old target market for the xB. “We know they spend a lot of time on the web and we’re confident they don’t watch TV commercials, so our approach is to pull away from TV and focus more on the Web.”
The website and the Surgery video don’t directly sell the xB, but that’s not the point, according to Needham. “It’s all about discovery. We’re not trying to sell the car, but establish credibility for the brand. We’re trying to build a cool brand and if you have a cool brand, they’ll go and buy it.”
Surgery isn’t just a cool video, it’s chilling.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More