Spooktacular creative

Each month, the Creative Hub of the Brand Activation Council seeks out inspiring work, to share with you, here, on the DMA Blog. To do this, we ask creative teams and individuals from member companies to put forward new, standout work that they’ve spotted, from anywhere in the world, that involves at least one brand activation element. This might be: ambient, digital, direct mail, experiential, PR theatre, shopper marketing or social network activity.

For our creative showcase, we’re not necessarily looking for joined-up, strategic, multi-channel brand activation – simply something that creatively brings a brand to life and encourages positive physical or digital participation.

For October, members of the creative team at N2O were challenged with sharing their favourite brand activation pieces; with the added criteria of a spoonful of spookiness just for Halloween.

Here are my top five frights from their terrifyingly long list; four fresh from 2013 and one dragged up, screaming, from the vault:

Date spotted: 2013-10-11
Client: BuzzFeedCampaign / Brand: ‘Pricehound’ controversy spoof
Agency/ies: BuzzFeed UK writer, Tom Phillips
Image: Included
Spotter: Lucas Owen, copywriting

Luke says: BuzzFeed, as I’m sure you know, creates highly-shareable curated and funny content lists, such as ‘8 dogs who just can’t handle it right now’ and the like. Brand Activation for digital brands like BuzzFeed are difficult, and I was really impressed with one they did earlier this month. On Friday, they published an article entitled The 29 Stages of a Twitterstorm, which drove massive amounts of traffic to their site.

Buzzfeed staffers created an elaborate fake “Twitter controversy”, in which a fictitious internet retailer (‘Pricehound’) puts a children’s costume on sale which they knew would cause offence. The article details how controversial statements by companies or celebrities can gain a lot of attention on Twitter, by showing ‘screengrabs’ of supposed responses from Twitter users in a well-observed timeline. Each fictitious tweet is a tiny work of satirical genius.

Buzzfeed also created dozens of fake Twitter accounts to make it seem real, including: @PricehoundUK (supposedly the retailer) and @Pricehound (supposedly an unrelated account belonging to a birdwatcher named Mr Price-Hound). A fictitious website for the retailer was also created (and redirected people to the article on Buzzfeed).

Twitter users believed that the retailer and costume were genuine (failing to spot that all of the tweets were dated in the future) and sent messages to both the @PricehoundUK and @Pricehound accounts criticising the non-existent costume. The article became a self-fulfilling prophecy: BuzzFeed created a Twitterstorm among those who didn’t realise it was a spoof, and everyone clever enough to spot the joke felt very satisfied and was impressed by BuzzFeed’s self-awareness. The story was a trending topic in both camps.

HD comment: A clever piece of digital, social and PR activation work for Buzzfeed, themselves. Should we smile, knowingly, at all the Twitter users who fell for this spoof, March Of The Zombies’-style? Or… What do you think?

Date spotted: 2013-10-03

Client: NikeCampaign / Brand: Nike Hypervenom ‘House of Deadly’
Agency/ies: BBH Asia Pacific
Image: Included
Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhGGZcG7tgc
Spotter: Renato Lopes, digital design

Renato says: Nike created a real, physical ‘virtual’ stadium football-playing experience in Bangkok, encouraging trial of the new Nike Hypervenom football boot. The four-day experiential activation pulled together gaming, physical sport, motion detection, interactive projection mapping and 3D effects. Just about anything you can think of! Around 400 people tried the game out in three days and Nike say that thousands saw it in action. Players received a digital and physical personalised memento, showing their agility and accuracy score, at the end of the experience.

HD comment: The ambition and spend of this part of the brand activation is impressive; but the number of hits on the various online video uploads really isn’t. You have to assume that there was no strategy for extending the reach via video. What’s next? Well, BBH Asia Pacific say that they’re planning to package the experience and take it to several other markets. So watch out for the resurrection of ‘House of Deadly’ near you. Which would scare you more: the snakes or working out the ROI for this brand experience?

Date spotted: 2013-10-16
Client: Kellogg’sCampaign / Brand: Rice Krispies Scares
Agency/ies: Fail Safe Films
Image: Included
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ihFG25EXNI
Spotter: Bianca Padurean, design

Bianca says: If you go down to Dublin Institute of Technology Student Union today, you’d better beware. There’s a scary comedian (Marcus Olaoire) inside a vending machine for Kellogg’s Krispies Scares ready to grab your hand when students try to use it! The stunt’s been featured on a few websites – but the plan’s for a video release in time for Halloween. Will it be successful for the brand? Hmm.It’s not the best Halloween stunt I’ve seen so far this year (that’s the Carrie coffee shop takeover! – but that’s already featured everywhere!) – it’s still a shocker, though. First spotted via ramblerandgambler at Reddit.

HD comment: Night of the Living Vend” or “Invasion of the Hand Snatchers”? Can a spoiler truly be a spoiler in our everything-everywhere online shared environment? We knew about the ghost in the machine over a week before the brand uploaded their video and did the PR piece. Is that the graveyard stench of something deliberately leaking?

Date spotted: 2013-10-11

Client: UNICEFCampaign / Brand: Escape ends here
Agency/ies: Stockholm PR agency Deportivo
Image: Included
Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKeIPVkWO1M
Spotter: Heather Devany, creative direction

What do I say? This is a truly haunting campaign, for all the right reasons. UNICEF always seems to inspire agencies to create really interesting campaigns for their causes. In Stockholm, UNICEF has been projecting ghost-like moving images of child refugees around the city at night, to highlight how they live in the shadows in Swedish society.

According to UNICEF, thousands of child refugees flee from persecution, oppression, war, poverty, violence and abuse to Sweden every year. Once in Sweden, many of these children still get their rights violated, but people there see or hear nothing. This eerie campaign is part of a UNICEF campaign activation to bring to mind the plight of these children and encourage people to sign a petition to make the UN convention on the rights of children a Swedish law.

Date spotted: 2011-09-07

Client: Warner Bros. Pictures CanadaCampaign / Brand: Contagion
Agency/ies: Lowe Roche
Image: Included
Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LppK4ZtsDdM
Spotter: Creative team

The team says: Here’s an award-winning classic scare campaign from Canada. A genuinely innovative use of ambient media promoted this sci-fi movie, with time-reveal, living bacteria ‘posters’, hazmat-suited BAs, a city centre quarantine scene and interactive decontamination chambers.
HD comment: Our pick for this month’s Mouldy Oldie.

By DMA guest blogger Heather Devany, Creative Director at N2O Limited and member of the DMA Brand Activation Council