Have you ever wondered what a Chlamydia looks like? Curiosity. That is the basis of the campaign orchestrated for the Ministry of Health by Cartier Communication and their media partners: Vizéum and Espresso Media. Yannick Manuri from Espresso Media shares his insights on this daring campaign developed with Eyeblaster and ALT Productions.

Based on the theme ‘Quite often, there is nothing to see’ overall campaign efforts included posters, bus shelters, Internet, stands in several colleges, as well as tactical and viral events. As ‘nine people out of 10 don’t know that they have an STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease)’ the campaign wanted to remind youth that ‘because you look safe’ is not a valid argument for not using a condom.


The first part of the campaign execution was a video that is circulating on You Tube and various social media sites. The video stars an opera-theatre piece created and presented just before Valentine’s Day throughout eight colleges in Quebec. At the peak of lunch time, in the cafeteria, what seems to be the beginning of a couple’s fight regarding a STD becomes an entertaining musical comedy.





The viral scattering of this video just started and has already generated over 11 000 views on You Tube. The video segment was also integrated in the content portion of several popular sites such as: 33mag.ca, Bombe.tv, Ckoi.com, Cinoche.com, etc.


THE TARGET AND STRATEGY

Espresso Media handled the online portion of this campaign. To reach this highly coveted target audience (15-24 year olds), we needed to be creative in order to surprise them and captivate their attention.
We strongly believed that a standard ad banner would not effectively reach this audience. Actually, we think that one is very disconnected from today’s reality if they believe that a simple bigbox campaign on sites such as musiqueplus.com is efficient to reach the target.


The campaign was based on:
- Innovation in the choice of ad formats, betting on the ‘newness’ factor
- Creation of a new and impactful ad format
- Investment in interactive and engaging ad pieces
- Favour video utilization


The development process of the online portion of the campaign was one of the most intricate that we have done here at the agency. Actually it’s probably the most complex project of my career! As far as I know, you can count on a single hand the number of times that this type of ad format has been executed in Canada.


This took over 50 hours of work by our media team, without counting all the hours of development and programming done by our technological partners ALT Productions and Eyeblaster.


The execution was so elaborate for the team that at one point we even questioned the feasibility of the entire project. On several occasions we thought that our ideas were too ambitious, and that we would be better off finding a plan B. It is with a huge sigh of relief that we proudly share the details of this new execution that will, without a doubt, surprise more than one!


EXECUTION DETAILS

In order to attract the target’s attention, we opted for a wallpaper format, with a rather surprising creative, across several popular sites reaching the youth target. With the agreement of the sites’ editorial teams, we replaced the usual backgrounds of each site with a picture of a young man/woman wearing nothing but underwear. Once we had grabbed the user’s attention, it was hard to not be intrigued by the banner where the message was ‘Touch me and I will show you what a Chlamydia looks like’.


Once the banner was clicked, the entire site folded towards the bottom. The underwear of the young man/woman was also pulled down in synch with the content of the site. This made room for the message ‘Quite often, you can’t see Chlamydia. Condoms, 100% OK. Youhaveonelife.com.”
In order to make this execution believable, we had to reproduce a constantly updated replicate of the homepage (content and layout) and overlay it on the wallpaper background. We personalized this for each site, each homepage.

The reactions to this campaign are numerous in news & information media and daily talk TV shows.

Touch and see the results for yourself….

We are pleased to bring you an interview with Mario Sánchez del Real, General Creative Director of Netthink. Mario discusses the interactive campaign that netthink and Isobar recently launched for MINI. He shares how they took advantage of the opportunity to use a big impact format to come up with something more entertaining and a ‘deeper than usual’ banner. Read on to see why this campaign was chosen as The Spotlight Campaign in The Blast Newsletter by Eyeblaster.

What was the client brief for the MINI campaign? Do an impactful, big and interactive piece that everyone likes so we can be doing interviews after it. MINI is the perfect client to match to Netthink and Isobar’s way of creating time with users, and this case is a good example of that.

How did you decide on the concept of an interactive video with a therapist? The campaign is part of an integrated MINI campaign whose theme is MINI – Better than Therapy; the issue is how you make a good offline concept turn more interesting online. Involving the brand with user interaction is a way of having a better brand communication. The perception of it becomes rather different than just an ad.

What role did Eyeblaster play in the campaign? We have been working with Eyeblaster for a long time, and it’s been always a perfect platform for every rich media format we create to become real and to work perfectly.

What was the client’s reaction to the campaign? What feedback have they received?
The Client has been an enthusiastic part of all of this from the beginning, and I want to thank MINI for the trust in us to do this kind of work. The feedback is a big smile!

Your idea of the perfect work day? No phone calls, the cellular inside a glass of water, no mail in the box, good music on the headphones, some weird words from a client: “This is perfect, let’s not touch anything, not even the copy”… and many more impossible but simple things.

Now the serious answer: Probably the time to see the results of the campaigns, and that those are working out far better than you thought keeps you up and awake for the next project to run.

When does your muse visit you? If there is a place and a time, please let me know!!

We are pleased to bring you an interview with Massimo Guerci and Victor Spang Arthurrson, the creators of the wild homepage takeover ad in Italy for ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.’ Massimo Guerci, senior art director, and Victor Spang Arthursson, interactive account manager senior, responsible PM for the project, work in digital at the agency SPQR Network, part of the group Flumen Communications Companies.

The 3D trailer was created by the agency as part of the campaign to launch the film “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (Piovono Polpette) in Italy. The success was immediate, with a video played rate of 36%.



What was the initial client brief for the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs campaign?

Victor: Apart from the necessity to launch the film, to create curiosity, awareness and to stress the premiere date we were asked by the client, Sony Pictures Releasing Italia, to emphasize the fact that the film was made in 3D and would deliver an extraordinary experience. So the 3D aspect was fundamental and has in one or another way been present in each asset delivered during the campaign for the film.

How did you decide on the full screen format?

Victor+Massimo:
The full screen format in this case was absolutely necessary to create a strong impression. Since the “3D” objects needed to enter and exit the video in a convincing way, and the objective was to make everything as natural as possible, we saw no other possible solution.

What we wanted to achieve was an increasing effect of surprise, and not using the full screen format would have resulted in a “fake” effect, which obviously needed to be avoided.

Other solutions were of course discussed and rejected together with Joseph from Eyeblaster Italia, who has been of invaluable help to us during this project. We are extremely satisfied with the final result, which was very good indeed.

What was the client’s reaction/feedback?
Victor: In this project, as normally with this client, we had a very open work process, where the client has the possibility of being a part of the project already from the start, and storyboards were presented, updated and approved and intermediary rough versions were presented for approval throughout work process. This minimized the final feedback and is fundamental in a multidisciplinary project to avoid delays and to stay within budget.

The final result thus was highly appreciated and we have so far only received appreciatiivecomments on our work.

Your idea about the perfect working day:

Massimo+Victor: On this question we agree surprisingly well. In the morning an update online, and some general searching for inspiration. Then lunch outdoors, during a sunny spring day in Rome. In the afternoon, work on a stimulating and exciting campaign and then, after work, a beer with our colleagues.

Your muse best comes when:

Massimo: In the morning, when I take the shower. 90% of the ideas that I develop during the
day come to me just after awakening, when the brain is still shut down. The rest of the
day I work on developing these ideas, whereas in the evening I try to relax as much as possible.

Victor: In the evening, just after I’ve entered the bed and am about to fall asleep. Unfortunately, some of my great, world changing ideas gets lost during the night, but fortunately I don’t work as a creative.

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The hilarious Rabbids takeover of the GamesRadar site was recently highlighted in Eyeblaster’s monthly Blast Newsletter as the Spotlight campaign. Rhoda Bueno Ushijima, Director of Sales Development at publisher FutureUS, shared her insights on the campaign, which had a CTR more than double GameRadar’s average.


What was the client brief for the Rabbids Go Home campaign? The client approached GamesRadar to assist in marketing ‘Rabbids Go Home’ to be part of the top 5 Action/Adventure titles for Nintendo platforms in Q409. They also wanted to establish a long term brand identity for the franchise. They wanted the final execution to show an evolvement to communicate Rabbids’ entry into the Adventure game genre.

How did you decide on the concept? The concept was the outcome of a brainstorming session where we all sat around deciding how to best play off of the Rabbid’s nature of collecting items to create a pile high enough to reach the moon. The idea was to incorporate this game concept and deliver it in a way that would resonate well with our readers. Using GamesRadar’s irreverent editorial and humor, we married the two thoughts and the result was this incredible full rich media takeover showcasing the Rabbid stealing the ‘r’ from the GamesRadar logo, and flushing the ‘r’ along with the rest of the homepage down the toilet to reveal a force play trailer.

What role did Eyeblaster play in the campaign? GamesRadar had less than 2 weeks to concept, create and test this online unit. Our creative team worked closely with Eyeblaster to test this unit and ensure it was a success from launch.

What was the client’s reaction to the campaign?
The client was thrilled that this unit successfully penetrated through the clutter and spoke to our site’s audience. Click through was more than double our site’s average and we are still receiving positive feedback and rave reviews from this particular execution.

Your idea of the perfect work day? Each day is vastly different, which is why I love what I do. The perfect day for me would consist of a few creative brainstorming sessions, managing multiple custom projects across Future’s print, online, and on console properties, and interspersed, of course, with some witty office banter and a soothing cup of green tea. I work with an incredibly talented and creative lot, which is why there is never a dull moment, never a dull day.

When does your muse visit you? The creative juices are constantly flowing here at Future, so I would say there is no specific time of day or situation when a great idea is generated. We feed off of each other’s perpetual energy and we can recognize a solid concept when it comes to us, and we run with it.

As part of our Favorite Brand Experience series, we’re pleased to bring you an interview with Alex Brunori, Executive Creative Director at MRM Worldwide, Italy. MRM recently worked with Eyeblaster and MSN to launch the first Sidekick format in Italy for Samsung.

Your idea about the perfect working day:

You get in the agency at 11:30am and open an email from a pitched client that informs you that they are more than happy to choose yours as their agency of records and that, to testify their esteem, they have decided to double the account too. Then you have some presentation meetings with the creative teams that come up with ideas so clever that, once executed, will result in pure gold in all the pivotal global advertising awards. Lunch break with the agency’s top client that says they are so satisfied by the utmost care you put in working on their brands that they want the agency to work for them globally with a lifelong contract. After lunch, a couple of hours of very interesting and educated discussions with the colleagues about art, philosophy, politics, music and religion and, finally, you leave the office at 5pm for a(nother) glorious and glamourous social evening/night.

Then you wake up from the weird dream you were having, generated by continuous sleep deprivation, and start the REAL working day.

Your muse best comes when:

In our industry you have to be “creative” round the clock, and you really cannot wait for the muse to come… Actually it’s more like chasing her round the office all of the time, kicking her butt whenever she stops. Having said that, extremes always work: late nights / very early mornings, or solitude moments / crowded team meetings.

How did you start working in digital advertising?

Me and technology, it’s a love story since I was a child. I have been doing R&D, experimenting with the endless creative possibilities, as soon as the digital age started dawning on advertising. Before MRM, when I was in JWT (and that agency didn’t even have a digital unit), I came up with a web-based, cross-channel campaign for Kraft that won many awards in Italy and abroad. That was a turning point, but the road was taken long before that.

What was the initial Client Brief for the Nuovo Samsung Omnia II Campaign?
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