We’ve always done it, but today, as the Internet has become the nerve center of global culture and commerce, it’s become even more critical to clients.
We always remember that on the other side of all those computers and touchscreens are billions of living, breathing people. That’s why we believe in using technology to connect on a human level. Because when people choose whether or not to engage with your brand, making things that they love and not just “like” is the only way to succeed.
We continue our mission to humanize GE with documentary video and reveal all the ways GE products touch people’s lives with our newest piece.The Juice Train is a 41+ car freight train that hauls 550,000 gallons of Tropicana orange juice from Florida to Jersey City, 5x a week, on the CSXfreight line. The entire train is pulled by two GE Evolution locomotives. To illustrate the journey from Tropicana headquarters in Florida to Jersey City, we mounted two HD cameras in weather proof cases on the front-most locomotive, and captured video for the entire 32 hour trip. What you’re looking at is a video and data time-lapse that illustrates the train’s entire journey.
We used the Internet to introduce 70 million people to Pepsi’s newest cola.
Drive trial and buzz for the launch of Pepsi NEXT, a low calorie soda.
Consumers who want a lower calorie soda but don’t want to give up the great taste of regular cola. They resist both regular, full-sugar cola (too fattening) and diet colas (poor taste).
The Internet Taste Test—a digital way for for consumers to “try” Pepsi NEXT online.
People signed up for the Internet Taste Test at www.facebook.com/pepsinext, where they had a chance to watch themselves “taste” the new Pepsi NEXT, as performed by Funny or Die comedians.
The Funny or Die comedians drew on the Facebook profiles of those chosen to inform improv performances of that individual trying Pepsi NEXT for the first time. Fan-inspired videos were posted to the Pepsi NEXT Facebook wall, allowing the content to spread throughout the network.
The launch video starred Rob Riggle watching an improv version of himself tasting Pepsi NEXT. This demonstrated the concept and we seeded the page with several more improv performances drawing on the online personas of notable Internet personalities.
The campaign reached over 70 million people in just 8 weeks.
The Rob Riggle launch video has had more than 2 million views to date. In addition, 480 videos were uploaded for nearly 6 hours of fan-inspired content—resulting in the Pepsi Facebook community growing the fastest it has ever grown in Pepsi’s history.
Facebook | YouTube | Funny or Die | Pinterest | Buzzfeed
We humanized GE with documentary video, games, and visualizations to reach 32 million people.
Drive awareness of GE’s vast scope of products.
Investors and consumers who know the name GE, but don’t know its scope and scale.
The GE Show, an online channel devoted to showing how GE’s work touches everyday life.
The GE Show is an episodic portrayal of GE and how it’s working to solve real problems across industries. Each multi-module episode combines documentary video, online games, data visualizations and other interactive content to connect GE solutions to everyday life in meaningful ways. The idea emerged out of an in-depth client discovery process called the GE Adventure. We explored GE’s business units, sharing our observations in a blog, GE Adventure. A unifying theme emerged: everybody at GE works on problems that touch a lot of people but can be so large or abstract that they are difficult for individuals to comprehend. The first GE Show episode, Healthy Hospitals, used games, infographics, video and polls to help visitors explore the complexities of healthcare and hospitals. The game was so popular we turned it into an iPad and iPhone game which has more than 10,000 downloads. There are now more than 8 richly interactive episodes on topics that include solar power, aviation and dynamic breaking.
The GE Show has received more than 32 million unique earned impressions, with 1.4 million people visiting the site. On average, visitors spend almost 12 minutes exploring. Content has spread organically through social channels and blogs, bubbling up to the mainstream press thanks to all the earned attention.
Pre-Facebook, we created a million-strong community around healthy living.
Build a thriving community at Kashi.com around natural living, driving awareness and loyalty for the brand.
Consumers who embrace a naturally inclined lifestyle. They care about health and fitness, the environment, personal development, and sustainable living.
A goal-based health and wellness community, built from the ground up on Kashi.com.
Kashi.com was designed to offer rich, interactive content, including daily challenges, a tip-rich e-newsletter, healthy recipes and articles written by professional journalists on topics like protein and weight loss, seasonal eating and smart snacking. An editorial team monitored comments and created regular and campaign-specific content to drive engagement.
By joining the community, users could track their progress toward healthy living goals. New content was added daily, with social integration that enabled the most passionate fans to spread the word about healthy living and drive positive word-of-mouth for Kashi.
We built the CMS, maintained the site, managed the community and coordinated with a half dozen other agencies across dozens of campaigns.
We proved you could build a community around cereal.
In 3 years the community grew from 0 to over 1 million registered users, doubling every 6 months. Over the course of our relationship with Kashi the site became the best performing media channel for the brand. Users spent over 6 minutes on the site, and the site averaged 2.3 million page views and 370,000+ unique visitors per month, making it the by far biggest site in the Kellogg’s portfolio at the time.
We stopped speeders in their tracks.
Use shock value to educate people that 10 MPH is the difference between life and death.
Anybody who drives a car and has ever broken the speed limit in New York City. The Idea Turn speed signs into skeletons when drivers go too fast.
The sign’s onboard radar detects the speed of passing cars. When a car is breaking the speed limit, the pedestrian changes to a skeleton, with “SLOW DOWN” in giant letters.
Working within the constraints of a simple 48×27 pixel grid and 2K of memory to hold both states (without any animation), we iteratively designed and tested the signage until it worked creating a simple dot-matrix message with lit or non-lit pixels.
The initial coverage generated 70 millions impressions.
The New York Times, New York Post, CBS, CNN, and Time magazine were among mainstream media outlets that covered the signs, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg was outspoken in his support of this novel, creative way to communicate the message.
We unified hundreds of global content streams into a single, user-friendly destination.
Unify Red Bull’s 900+ web properties by creating a hub for the brand’s outstanding content that could be updated by local marketing groups around the world.
Media-immersed, young, primarily urban males interested in risk taking such as extreme sports and challenging recreational activities.
A single entertainment channel that consolidated the outstanding content Red Bull created around the world.
We took Red Bull’s 900+ different properties from across the globe, housed them within one awesome CMS and on a content-driven site—providing a single, user-friendly, searchable platform for everything Red Bull does. A “Holy Shit” button for video let users automatically rewind 20 seconds to see amazing stunts again.
Users could see the sports car Red Bull invented, its helicopter that does back flips, the biggest world wide breakdance competition (sponsored by Red Bull) and more—manifesting the brand proposition Red Bull Gives You Wings.
The hundreds of companies within Red Bull, across 150 countries, have different owners, objectives and perspectives, so we made the entire site customizable via CSS to preserve all their different properties and still exist within the RedBull.com platform.
RedBull.com was built in HTML, instead of Flash, which had been used for earlier sites—making it search friendly, easily shareable and trackable. Plus, the homepage was designed to be modular to highlight the best of the best with a feed that was sortable by media type.
Site traffic increased by 30% and time spent on the site doubled within 3 months.
We used an entirely social game to get consumers excited about the Series 7.
We needed to raise awareness and drive consideration for Samsung laptops which was a relatively small player in the computer market. We wanted to accomplish this by building buzz in social networks around the Series 7 and growing their social media audience.
Samsung wanted to catch the eye of traveling professionals who appreciate style and substance.
Boosted!: Samsung and Intel will give consumer a boost to their lives.
The project lived on a campaign microsite, but the promotion itself played out almost entirely on Twitter and Facebook. Based on a strategy to introduce Samsung as the computing brand that’s truly a part of the Internet age and gets Internet culture, Boosted! is a series of fun engagements that reward consumers with a boost (just like the Intel Core i5 Processors with Turbo Boost Technology found in Samsung Laptops).
In addition to Tweetcracker, we also developed and released:
Built a community of 25,000 fans with a reach of 6 million
Established a brand voice that distinguished Samsung laptops from other manufacturers’ “bigger, faster, cheaper” mentality.
Earned PR buzz “Viral masterpiece”
80% of consumers reported their purchase intention increased after engaging with Boosted!
Subservient Chicken: The pioneer of viral advertising.
Launch the Tender Crisp chicken sandwich in an unconventional way, while staying true to the brand promise “Have it Your Way.”
The bull’s-eye target was the 18 to 45-year-old guy, who was just starting to spend a lot of time on the Internet.
Control the chicken and “Have it Your Way.” It was 2004, the internet was just becoming a place for brands to experiment. But we knew that a web campaign, with its guaranteed interactivity, unlike print or TV, was a logical place to explore the “Have it Your Way” strategy. Interactive media was the medium that most closely resembles what BK was trying to offer in store.
We thought up 400 commands and filmed an actor in a chicken suit acting them out, and then programmed them into the Web site to allow anything viewers typed in to get a response. We managed all the front-end production, created the database of search terms and developed all of the technology on the back-end to enable it to work seamlessly. It was so creepy, weird and well-executed that many people who visited the site thought that they were actually controlling this person in a chicken suit in real life.
The minisite was launched three days in advance of the late night running of some broadcast spots and sent to our industry friends, hoping to get some early buzz before the spots ran. In the next 48 hours, before the spots even had a chance to air, the little viral site that could had already bombarded the poor XServe in Crispin’s internal data center with 25 million hits. Within days, a cultural phenomenon was spawned.
Quite possibly one of the most successful viral websites of all time. Upwards of a half a billion hits. Twenty million unique visitors. Sales of Burger King’s chicken sandwiches increased in a matter of weeks. It was the One Club’s campaign of the year. But maybe Adweek said it best in its cover story about the chicken: “Did it work? The answer? A resounding yes.” It proved that you can “talk to” the Internet populace. You can take risks with your message. You can get the word out without necessarily blowing a lot of money. And that you can utilize the relationships—electronic and personal—between people and groups to spread ideas and messages, and it can still work even if the message is, at its core, commercial in nature. It got everyone to understand the power of the Internet as an advertising medium. And yes, yes, it sold a lot of freaking chicken sandwiches.
When we can’t find a way to do something on or with the Internet, we’re not afraid to design and build it ourselves. Here’s the proof.
A powerful framework for programming graphics, audio, video and computational geometry
The most awesome Instagram-driven screen saver, ever
Fullscreen kiosk-style presentation content viewer
