Another Interactive Mercedes-Benz film - "Drive & Seek"

Mercedes have just launched another interactive film on their website to showcase the C-Class coupe. Much like the interactive film they did for the new SLK, users have the opportunity to engage with the various feature available for the car, as well as giving Mercedes an opportunity for lead generation.
The interactive version can be found by clicking here.

There's also a more "traditional" version of the film on Mercedes' official YouTube channel.

High production value as well as being outrageously over the top, but interesting to see this form of interactive film being utilised by Mercedes in such quick succession after the SLK effort.

Via - Autoblog

Augmented Reality Film

The Witness claims to be the first film to take place on the "outernet", blending drama with real life interactivity through a specially designed iPhone app, where participants either inadvertently saves the day or becomes the villain of the story as a result of a series of decisions they make along the way.


In order to participate, German viewers would apply online, where "winners" got to enter a real-life version of the movie in which they play a role, using their phones to watch snippets of the film that play out like a virtual layer over the physical environment they are in.

Via - YouTube

Future Of Mobility & BMW

BMW is about to release series of four films about the future of mobility, where it could lead and how it could be shaped.

Each documentary will be released once a week online,and features interviews with trend-setters, designers, engineers, scientists and pioneers.

Below is a trailer that has already been released - and looks set to be very interesting as a series.

Via - BMW Activate The Future

First Chevrolet Volt Available For Purchase

As a bit of added PR for the Chevrolet Volt that has entered into the production phase, GM has decided to auction off the first Volt off the production line via an online auction, with all the proceeds going to to the Detroit Public Schools Foundation, supporting Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths education initiatives in the Detroit Public Schools.

The auction started at $50000 and bidding has already reached $180000. With the winner to be announced on the 14th of December, it looks like the initiative might raise a sizeable sum to further educate tomorrow's thinkers.

GM has also shared a video on some behind the scenes on the making of the Chevrolet Volt.

Via - GM

Levi’s: Back To The Future

New York based adverting agency Wielden & Kennedy has created a digital game that aims to link the past with the future. This game blends real and virtual worlds as the player goes on the ultimate treasure hunt across America.

The games narrative revolves around a historic character named Grayson Ozias IV who left message recordings in the 1890’s and the aim of the game is to hunt these messages and can ultimately win the $ 100,000 fortune Ozias buried. This campaign entrenched the heritage of the brand and celebrates the brands roots.

via:brandwise.com

Beck's "Music Inspired Art"

Becks has launched an interesting interactive initiative in promotion of their campaign, dubbed "Music Inspired Art".

The beer brand has installed interactive billboards all around London that invite passers-by to plug in their MP3 players and view their selected tracks in the form of visual displays. The interactive poster generates a graphic display from the music that is being played on the iPod. Once the track is over a still is taken of the display and uploaded to becks.co.uk/flickr.

Uploaded pictures are tagged to the various posters sites, which completes the interactive circle for participants.

Via - Talking Retail

Shop On Skype

A recently launched online shopping experiences, called Trunk Club, is about to change the way many men feel about clothes shopping.

The Trunk Club gives men their own live personal shopping assistant via Skype video sessions who try to figure out what kind of clothes they wear, what is lacking in their wardrobe, and what kind of clothes they might be willing to try.

Thereafter, the assistants assemble about nine different pieces of apparel which is couriered to the customer. Once the customer gets his selection, another Skype session is set up with the personal assistant. The customer only pays for what he decides to buy is made, with the rest returned to Trunk Club.

Via - Tech Crunch

Lexus Shows You How To Live A Little

Lexus USA has recently launched the new IS Convertible. Apart from the campaign microsite, which is highly interactive with a lot of interesting content highlighting all of the new car's advancements, the Japanese marquee has also combined online with a lifestyle publication called Urban Daddy - dedicated to "everything you need to know" - in order to fully deliver on the brand's promise to let owners "Live a Little".

The Urban Daddy portal equally interactive and allows users a high level of personalisation, allowing users to find exactly the right solution according to their own entertainment needs.


Once you have chosen your city and what you're looking to do and with whom you'll be partaking in the activities, the site offers various suggestions on where you can go and how to get there.

There's also an iPhone version of the site, allowing those interested to access entertainment and lifestyle information on the go.

Via - Lexus/Live a Little

Samsung Netbook Viral

Samsung's latest netbook offering, the N310 contains a unique rubberised exterior which allows the new product to visually differentiate itself from competitors. According to independent research, the new-look casing has been a hit with consumers.

However, it's their latest viral effort that caught my attention, and definitely worth a watch.

Via - Scary Ideas

Smooth Orginals

As part of Stella Artois' campaign promoting a new 4% strength beer, the brand has created a series of short films satirising contemporary and popular US TV shows and movies.


The Stella Artois 4% Smooth Originals website features titles such as "8 Kilometres", "Dial Hard" and "24 Hours", bringing to viewers the "true original" stories, before they were tainted by Hollywood. Nice supporting elements such as the original movie posters and other downloads are also available on the site.


Each spot directs users to the Stella Artois website where they can watch extended versions of the clips. Contagious Magazine also reports that the campaign will extend to takeovers of popular web portals such as MSN and GQ.

The campaign illustrates how content can be best used to attract consumers to interact with your brand - and how entertainment and a sense of value-add for the end user is so much more important than taking your brand too seriously.

Via: Contagious Magazine

Lower Insurance Premiums By Gaming

An insurance company call Allstate has begun making use of a rather different sort of method in order to determine clients and potential clients' insurance premiums.


The company launched an es online video game tests to identify safe older drivers. The program named InSight uses simple games that measure brain fitness. Allstate is hoping that gaming proficiency will indicate aptitude with the same skills in real life. One of the games, Jewel Diver: Divided Attention tests subjects ability to track multiple objects at a time. The InSight program plans to offer insurance discounts to drivers over 50 who successfully pass the online tests.

Seeing as various forms of video games have been utilised for decades by the likes of the military and the aviation industry, the latest effort by Allstate comes as little surprise.

Via:PSFK

Doritos Challenges Consumers To Beat The Pros

Ever watched a terrible ad on TV or seen some other irrelevant advertising communications and wondered who came up with it? Ever thought that you could do better? Now Doritos USA is allowing you to do just that.

In truth, Doritos has been harnessing user-generated adverts for their yearly Super Bowl spots since 2007. The interesting bit is that for the 2009 initiative, added incentives for calls to entry has been included in the campaign.

In addition to airing one fan's self-made Doritos ad to a captive audience of millions, Doritos will give that talented winner $1 million if their :30 spot takes down "the big guys" and becomes the first-ever consumer-created commercial to claim the No. 1 ranking in USA TODAY's annual Ad Meter.

Five finalists will be selected and announced in January next year. The winner will be determined by fans' popular online vote. Each of the five finalists will receive a cash prize of US$25000, as well as a trip to the Super Bowl itself.

Via: Earth Times

US Police Serve By Twittering

It amazes me how a seemingly simple tool like Twitter can be utilised in so many different, interesting and useful ways.

It seems the Arizona Police force in the town of Scottsdale are pioneering the use of the micro-blogging service to better serve the public. They are currently using Twitter to send out alerts on pertinent town information such as road closings, traffic problems, power outages and severe weather warnings.


PSFK says: "Although Twitter’s track record of periodically not working isn’t a good fit for disseminating critical information, more communities looking to get the word out may see Twitter as an easy to use broadcast system."

Perhaps if we applied our minds to some of the challenges we face in this country daily - ranging from traffic congestions to resource management - we can also pioneer creative ways to solve problems.

Forget Facebook For Marketing, Try Facecard

Teens are, to many marketers, the perfect target market. With comparatively quite a bit of disposable income, an insatiable need for the latest and coolest, as well as the ability for quick word of mouth marketing, it's little wonder that so many marketers try to court them.

Unfortunately, this group is probably even more media savvy than the media strategists who try and reach them. Raised with constant connectivity through cellphones, internet and emial, these techno-addicts will ignore anything that they deem irrelevant.


Edo Interactive, a Nashville-based firm that deals with Web 2.0 technology, is trying to change all of this. After spending a year studying young consumers, they developed Facecard, a prepaid credit card aimed squarely at millennials and the businesses that court them.

Launching imminently in the US, Edo's application works somewhat like Facebook with a financial twist. Applicants need to create profiles on Facecard.com, after which they will receive a card in the mail that allows them to borrow, lend, or give away money to their peers electronically.

For a fee, marketers can also send them "prewards," small denominations of instant store credit, based on their age, location, and personal interests.

Nokia Promotes N-Gage With FIFA

EA Sports' perennial top-seller is its FIFA franchised game. Based on real teams and realistic looking players, it's easy to see why the game has many addicted. The annoying bit, however, is that the game gets updated with the latest off-season transfers and improved game play every year around this time, prompting fans to keep up and buy the new version.

Previously, EA Games has waited a year or two before re-releasing an older version of the game in their attempt to further cash in on each version. The interesting development for last year's version, FIFA 08, is the recently announced tie-in with Nokia which sees the mobile brand give away 120,000 FIFA 08 licences as an added incentive to promote its N-Gage mobile gaming service to UK-based owners of the device.

In support of the giveaway, Nokia has launched a series of virals videos, showing addicted gamers in semi-embarrassing situations. Rather entertaining and certainly worth a watch as a Friday wind-down.

Who Are These People?!

According to the result of a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 49% of internet users made use of a search engine on a daily basis. How do these people get by?

Email was the most popular use of the internet with checking news and weather coming in third and fourth.

There's also an interesting relationship unveiled through the study between the level of education, as well as other social factors such as wealth, and search engine use. Apparently two thirds of all university graduates who use the internet every day use a search engine, in comparison with 32 per cent who ended their education after high school.

Of those who earn more than $75,000 a year, 62 per cent search the web every day, whereas only 36 per cent of those who earn less than $30,000 do.

Via: PSFK

Facebook To The Rescue Of Thousands of Africans

There are countless Facebook groups calling for positive change in the world. From fights against poverty and HIV/Aids, "click here to feed a hungry child" schemes to anti-animal cruelty leagues, i often wondered whether I was wasting time by paying too much attention to these groups. After all, are there any corporate brands who have the financial muscle to make these positive changes even listening?

Evidently, some are.

Coca-Cola executives recently responded to a Facebook-based call for humanitarian action, and showed a new opportunity for dialogue between consumers and corporations.


Incensed by the irony that remote African communities had limitless access to bottles of Coca-Cola, but no infrastructure to get medicines to sick children, innovator Simon Berry decided to speak up and ask Coca-Cola to dedicate a fraction of its distribution network to carry medicines for simple, widespread and life-threatening ailments like diarrhea. At first, Berry's ideas fell on deaf ears; after all he was the only recruit in a one-man army.


Now, a modest Facebook publicity campaign has catapulted Berry's message into the Coca-Cola boardroom. Salvatore Gabola, global head of stakeholder relations for the beverage giant, took notice of the social networking momentum and has invited Berry to Coca-Cola's European headquarters to discuss his idea.

By pleasing these typically marketing-wary Facebook users, Coca-Cola stands to gain enormously as a brand, as well as altering perceptions of the brand in the eyes of a tough market segment.

Via: World Changing

Crowdsourced Sneaker Design

A new business based in Portland USA is attempting to build a new sneaker brand, based on the creativity and crowd participation.

The brand, called Ryz, lets users submit graphic designs for a high-top sneaker model. Members vote for their favourite designs, and the sneakers that get the most votes are taken into production. Designers receive a one-time payment of USD 1,000 plus one dollar for each pair sold. Shoes are priced at USD 90, and are produced in limited runs.

The company's founder, Rob Langstaff, has plenty of industry experience—before starting Ryz, he ran Adidas' operations in North America and Japan. As quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Langstaff believes Ryz will generate revenues of USD 40 million by 2012.

Via: Springwise

Chemical Brothers' Album Launch With Google Earth

The British group Chemical Brothers have challenged fans to produce a short film or photography based on the theme 'Midnight Madness' that will become part of a music video to accompany the single of the same name.

Joining forces with Google and the search-giant's Google Earth application for this user-generated content promotion for their "best of" album, the winning participants wull have their work edited by producers Nexus, as well as having their entry made into a music video and premiered on The Chemical Brothers website and YouTube as an exclusive in the same week 'Midnight Madness' is released, August 18. Entrants will upload their work onto Google Earth via The Chemical Brothers' website, where they can tag its exact location.

The work can be submitted as a film that is anywhere from 2 to 20 seconds long, which is inspired by the midnight theme and related to a specific point of origin.

Given that not all of their fans will be budding filmmakers, The Chemical Brothers are also allowing fans to tag and then launch their favourite track from their location on Google Earth.

This will enable anyone using Google Earth to click on a location and discover which Chemical Brothers' track a fan has chosen as their favourite.

Via: BrandRepublic

Choose Your Own Online Adventure

Wally has already been brought up to date to the 21st century, thanks to Canadian artist Melanie Coles and Google Earth. Now, another piece of childhood memory has been modernised with the proliferation of the internet in most parts of the world.

Youtube user SMPfilms’ video series has made an online version of "Choose your own adventure". The adventure utilises the video response system in YouTube to make online video into a game of sorts. Users watch the first clip and then make their choice on what should happen next in the story, in exactly the same vein as the book version.

Below is the first in an adventure about someone trying to find his cat. In order to participate in the story, you'll need to watch the clip on YouTube. Perhaps not the most exciting premise for a story, but still an interesting idea to increase the level with interactivity for brands utilising such channels.

Via: PSFK, Fallon Planning