Mattt sent me this link a couple of weeks ago in which Jag Jeans creates a short but nice experience to promote their new denim line. Choose your favorite model and take pics while he/she wears the clothing (as in Sexy Subaru site). After that choose your better shots and make an album to resend a jeans catalog to your friends under the appearance of a photobook done by a famous photographer (you)... clever, i like it!

It's been a while since we've last seen a proper Heineken commercial. A shame, since their ads had been grown out to a real trademark over the years. But with the just released spot below, aimed at the Dutch market, they seem to be back on front.

Last October, Intel Brazil created probably one of the the most original screensavers ever, take this video as an example of what is it about:

Then, you were sent to this site where you had available making one of your own for your office. Although the site doesn't seem to be available anymore (or at least i can't access) i found some buzz about this searching at Technorati or Gizmodo.

Last summer my friends Pit and Efrain sent me a link describing a strange experiment from the group Pop Levi using videos from YouTube for their single "Semi Babe".

You had to open both videos (each one of them featuring members of the group, one playing keyboards, the other one playing guitar and singing) in different browser windows and then resizing these to make both videos appear as one.

I think when working in an agency everyone of us has faced that simple question that reads "what will we do for Christmas?". Although the main solution in the latest times has been uploading your face to customize some kind of animation i feel a bit tired of it, as only a few pieces have really succeeded (the famous Elf Yourself as one of the main examples)

So a few days ago i heard about this nice campaign called "Christmas lights"developed by Scholz&Volkmer; for Coke in Germany, in which you can use a mashup of Google Maps to zoom in until you find your friends' houses.

I'm a bit late with this, but the idea was nice, so I post about it anyway. Back in the beginning of December, to support Real Madrid in the challenge vs Barcelona, BWin, sponsor of the team, has put online an interesting activation action for the team supporters. Dubbed Metete Dentro (something like "put yourself inside") the site invites users to pick a Real Madrid player and then see themselves as the player exulting after a goal.

A part from the monster-like outcome (forget the screenshot below!), I think it's a nice idea, that works very well in generating buzz among the supporters of such a popular team.

The mechanism is the usual... upload a photo of yourself or simply turn on the webcam and the trick is done.
Unfortunately the action didn't bring much luck to Real Madrid as they lost the match...

If you enjoyed Barack Obama winning US elections or simply you enjoyed George W. Bush leaving being the President of the United States then you'll maybe like this site created by the people at Shackleton called "Bush ByeBye Party".

Simple and funny, it consists on what to do to celebrate this special farewell: an earth map to add your party, downloadable goodies for the parties (some of them hilarious, as for instance, Obama masks), a safe kit for the day after and some other stuff. It has been set 67 farewell parties so far, if you think you want to do it too don't miss this site, it's worth a while :)

The Big Brother online takes an unusual shape in the Heinz Ketchup action launched in Sweden. Talk to the Plant is an online experiment where users are encourage to talk to two tomatos plants to prove if a tomato plant grows better with human interaction.

The project is quite original and weird enough to get some attention, but in my opinions lacks in capability to make people come back and spread the word.

The interactivity is probably too poor and there is also an incredible contradiction in the "humanity" of the interaction as messages are not sent using the computer's mic, but are simply reproduced with a computer-synthesized voice.

The site for the product you don't expect to find promoted on the Web: dental braces. Yes, there is a Spanish dental braces manufacturer who decide to ride the "elf yourself" wave its own way...

Upload a picture, select the dental braces model you prefer and preview how you will look like.

I know I arrive a few days later than due, but I'd like to wish Merry Christmas to everybody sharing this amusing website created by Gringo for Coca-Cola Brazil.

The site allows you to send amusing animated Christmas cards wishing love, health, luck etc... to your relatives and friends. Video plays an important role in the mechanism, as you have an elf at your disposal to deliver your friends with a personalized message.

I know my opinion in this case doesn't count as I'm talking about a Nike project, but I really like what my Japanese colleagues have done to promote the Blazer shoe on NIKEiD.

Everything starts with a white city, represented in a drawing like the ones you find in kids books that they then have to color. You click, and the experience begins... three manga style characters start running across the screen bringing colors and life to the city.

The Christmas tree gets personal this year, with the original Vodafone Christmas Clones idea coming from Australia. The website allows you to create personalized Christmas papertoys with your face to be sendt to your friends as greeting card via email.

Choose among ten characters, upload your picture and then spread it around. No effort for you, it's up to your friend to print it out and fold it to transform it into a decoration for their tree.

The agency is Clemenger BBDO.

via.

This Christmas Tom Tom is trying to replace diamonds as the best gift to state your partner your love forever. From The Netherlands Black Magic Marker shares with us an amusing campaign were men promise neverending love to their girlfriends if they get them a Tom Tom for Xmas...

The message to the beloved person can be personalized by uploading a photo of the couple and images from an holiday in which you lost the way while travelling with your partner.

Yahoo!7 in Australia has launched the new Yahoo inbox as Think Outside The Inbox. It shows how easy it is to have your friends upfront and the rest - well elsewhere. As Australia is struggling with broadband this is cool to see a video ad that pushes them.

A cowboy tells you all about it in a video.

Creative and development by Three Drunk Monkeys.

I apologise, but I need again some space for self promotion...
I'm very proud to share with you Nike Goal, an application for the iPhone that we at Nike Italy developed together with the Italian agency H-Art. Nike Goal has launched only seven days ago, with no press release, no promotion at all, but it's already one of the most downloaded free applications on iTunes Apps Store Italia.

Nike Goal is an application that brings the world of Nikefootball.com live on your iPhone. It features live scores from the Serie A matches, highlighting the goals by Nike players and showing the boot they are wearing. On top of this, Nike Goal features also all the latest news about Nike products, players and stories. And this is just the beginning, we have a lot of ideas to make it richer, more interactive and fun to use!

Fanta (Coca-Cola Company) is about to launch a very innovative campaign on mobile across Europe at the end of January. Alongside the classic goodies (wallpapers, ringtones ...), and a game, the wap site will offer original applications too.

The most amazing one must be its virtual tennis. It is the world's first 3D augmented reality tennis game, in which two phones connect via bluetooth before playing a game of tennis, using a "court" printed from http://www.fanta.eu/. Players can then use their mobile devices as tennis racquets to hit a virtual ball whose movement is determined by the angle and position of the phone.

Tonight a bit of healthy self promotion... I'm very happy to share with you my first digital commerce project which launched today on NIKEiD. Nine Italian bloggers and an amazing illustrator got together to reinterpret some of Nike's most iconic shoes in a winter/xmas/gloomy mood. For each shoe designed by the bloggers (Air Max 90, the Cortez, the Dunk and the Blazer) Nicola Coin, a young artist from Padua, created an amazing drawing the matches the key characteristics of the shoe itself.

Below you can browse a slide show with all the shoes.

It's that time of the year again: agencies start releasing their creative Christmas wishes. And the first one I see immediately sets the standard. Simply a great piece of work by AKQA. If you come by any other great Christmas wishes, please leave them in the comments below.

What I like about Uniqlo is the fact that they have a lot of digital. Simple, even silly sometimes, but definitely able to generate some buzz in the online world. The Xmas _Grid is not as cool as the watch last year, but is still a nice way to make people interact with the brand.

This year again, it's an army of supposed terrorists that warn the Dutch people for the dangers of their traditional New Years Eve fireworks. The L.A.A.F. army now joined forces with neighbouring Belgium, since they provide the Dutch with illegal fireworks. Enough ingredients for a controversial campaign.

You've probably seen at least one of the Simon's cat video's - highly entertaining and successful animations about the oh so recognizable habits of a cat. The same creator has now been asked to help tackle pet obesity by creating a same style animation. I strongly believe in this kind of non-intrusive and relevant integration in existing online concepts. Will It Blend is another great example. But anyway, watch how Simon's sister's dog survives Christmas dinner.

Sometimes banks are able to do things differently. About one year ago I posted about ING's I need to go from Belgium, now it's time to fly to Brazil to discover I Can Bank It. The website, created by Gringo for Banco Itau tries to teach the youths how to save some money or, at least, to spend it in a better way.

Pick a character and begin the experience. How many minutes do you spend on your mobile every day? Do you know that reducing the costs of your calls could help you saving enough money to buy a laptop?

In the UK, Zero DB, a charity association against the use of music in torture has launched a website and online petition to drive awareness and claim attention around the issue. Even if the UN and the European Court of Human Rights have banned music torture, it seems that its use in secret prisons is getting more and more common.

The site features a silent protest by a series of celebrities (like actress Julie Christie) and common people who decided to join the project.

If you love cheese as much as I do, here is a website with which you will fall in love at first sight. It's called Cheese Cupid (!?) and it takes you through a discovery experience of the cheese world.

Basically it's a guide that helps you discovering the best cheese you can eat with each category (and sub-category) of drink (beer, white wine, red wine and liquor).

Launched by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board the website is simple but well developed and, most of all, extremely useful. Since they started with the idea of Cupid and Love for Cheese, I think they could have dared doing something more, especially in the introduction to the experience.

In the UK BBC and Perfect Fools have launched an interactive version of the popular TV series Survivors.

As explained on Brand Republic, the advergame "mirrors each episode and extends the entertainment experience for viewers while aiming to attract new viewers. It also provides a multi-linear storytelling space that builds directly on the central characters and themes presented in the series".

The Energy Drink brand is famous for its original way to communicate, delivering a lot of content around massive original events (Air Race, Flugtag, etc...). I am not gonna enumerate all the advergames developped by the Austrian company, that would be too long, but you can find some on their site. Red bull also proves to be innovative by always being among the first to test new media plateforms, like Joost at the time.

This time, Red Bull is the first advertiser in the Playstation Home, the Sony metaverse on PS3, which has just been launched yesterday. They built their own tropical island, which features an aeroplane racing game, which is based on their real world Red Bull Air Race series.

Note that Diesel, with a campaign developed by my agency (Mindshare), Ligne Roset, and Paramount Pictures are also among the first brands to advertise in Home.

There 's a French common proverb (arrogant of course...) saying "In France we don't have oil, but we have ideas".
And this new website is a cool idea. Nice and simple.

It offers you to buy a special hat (bonnet). First you can customize it (shape/colours/material) and then choose the granny who is going to knit it. At the end, the site is nice but incomplete, but who cares, let's say it is part of the home-made concept! It plays on contemporary trends like customization, and humanization of the trade.
My Xmas list just got extended !

Merci Flo

It has been days I've been hesitating to post on this ...

It might be seen as pointless, and could have remained a funny local video.
Except it has reached 1,200,000 views in one week on Dailymotion, and 900,000 on Youtube, making it one of the top 5 videos of last week worldwide.
Figures that lots of agencies and brands would kill for.
And yet, it is not marketed and no brand is behind it. By no brand I mean Nintendo.
But still ... even it is far from the family/social image the Japanese company is communicating on (I mean, who is this French punk showing bad example on road safety ...), I let you imagine the huge and free exposure it means for them.

Who said you can't buy a Xmas present at IKEA? Maybe you won't get something fancy, but if you lack money and ideas I think you should still have a look at the shopping guide they launched in Sweden.

Even if won't find a present, at least you'll discover a simple but well done product presentation.

Karl Lagerfeld is back with a new fragrance and a new website. I think I already told how I feel fascinated by personality of the German fashion designer, so I can't help spending a few admired words for the Kapsule by Karl website (be aware I'm not totally objective).

When you first hit the site you are immediately welcomed by a kind of psychedelic music and a series of inspiring quotes (The best things I've ever done in my life come from my dreams / I don't celebrate the past, I like the present and tomorrow) that appear in the background, leaving the main scene to the perfumes. If you browse around you'll discover some interesting content like, for example, the backstage of the catwalk organized to present the fragrance.

I don't know how i didn't heard of this campaign before but thanks to my good friends Jesus and Ferran I've seen the light because I think it's fantastic. ZUJI is an online travel company who wanted to be positioned as a company that helps holidays happen. And they did this to make it possible:

You can read the whole case study about this campaign (done by The Hallway and Happy Soldiers) here.

I found very interesting this way of getting information in this site done by Your Majesty for the New York Times called NY Times Conversations.

A nice and simple navigation to see interesting videos of people like John Leguizamo or Isaac Mizrahi talking about their passions and relationship with NY Times while a news feed is fed by real time news related to the subject of the video being played (i suppose based on tags).

Don't worry, this is post is not to announce the end of Adverblog! I just couldn't find a better title to present you with a book and a photo collection on Flickr dedicated to opening and closing titles in the movies.

The book is called Uncredited Graphic Design and Opening Titles and it showcases the work of designers and typographic artists in the first frames of the most successful movies.

On Flickr instead, you can find a collection of almost 150 closing titles.

None of the two links I've shared is very interactive, but I believe they both could fit the random creative inspiration section ;-)

From Brazil, a website that talks too much, but is amusing to explore. I must admit I didn't understand much a part from the fact that it promotes Sprite, but I can tell you I really like the design that mixes illustrations and paper cuts.

Click, have fun, and try to resist on the site for at least 900 seconds (like I did), but bear in mind you can't take your loudspeakers off ;-)

What happens when a TV show meets a sport like curling? Easily find the answer checking out this amusing advergame launched in Canada by CBC.

Choose your player among the cast of "little mosque on the prairie" and have fun playing by yourself or against a friend. The game is very well developed and difficult enough to waste at least ten minutes of your working day ;-)

To promote its website on its last and highly longed-for fashion show, Victoria's Secret put a massive and rich widget forward.
Loyal to the site it represents (fully developped in flash, with tons of materials), it offers a lot of content with videos, pictures and news feed.

I am convinced widgets could be a very good opportunity for brands, but they are too often used as shallow gadgets, with no marketing purpose, or just as an excuse to show your brand is up-to-date ...
Even if this one from Victoria's Secret offers nothing innovative, it is well designed, and it can rely on the aspirational strength of the brand.

Christmas is coming, and you might want to offer something special to your relatives or friends, but of course going shopping in the crowded shops is a chore. Why not getting the limited edition of the Fiat 500 by Diesel ?
Only 10,000 units of this car designed by Fiat and the fashion label Diesel, are being made available worldwide.
You can configure and order it exclusively on the English website here.

This cool e-marketing association would have certainly deserved more content and online materials.
Nevertheless, I suggest we launch a subscription to offer one to Martina !

A very nice TV spot for Rexona.

Advertiser: Unilever
Brand: Rexona
Advertising Agency: VegaOlmosPonce, Buenos Aries
Director: Nico & Martin
Production Company: Primo, Buenos Aires
Post Production: Bitt Animation / Che Revolution Post
DoP: Cristian Cottet
Editor: Patricio Pena

I didn't find any Rexona website on this soap campaign. Tell us if you find any.
By looking for it, I came on the Argentine Rexona website for deodorant, and it proves to be very creative as well.

Via

Wowow, a Japanese Tv station gives you the opportunity to direct a video of a Radiohead live track on a dedicated page.

You can choose from 12 different angles to edit your video of 15 Step, played live during last band's japanese tour. Each camera is represented by a colour, so your finalized video could be represented by a rainbow, which is all the concept/title of their last album.

Over the years we've seen a lot of great interactive cases come by on Adverblog. But the case I'm about to show you is definitely the best one ever. It's entertaining and interactive in many ways, it's got a very natural flow and it even touches your emotions while engaging. And this is just the 1.0 version; imagine the possibilities when developed further and further.

Looks like it's time to start posting about Xmas stories. The first one I'd like to share comes from Muji, a Japanese brand I'm simply addicted to. To promote the range of small Christmas gifts they are selling they have created a very simple website of just two pages.

Every week from now to the end of the year you can download a Xmas song for free. Also you can get yourself a wide range of wallpapers all featuring the toys and the gadgets of the Muji Christmas collection.

From New Zealand a basic yet quite nice advergame to keep youth away from smoking (and smokers). The insight is strong and simple: do you really feel like kissing a smoker? As said, don't expect anything fancy, I just feel they are using the right inside to highlight the problem and in social campaigns, this is the key to raise awareness.

More than other banks Societe Generale went through difficult times during the last year or so. To regain credibility after the Jerome Kerviel affair, they decided to launch an online campaign to show the faces and tell the stories of the people that make Societe Generale a reliable bank.

They created a website, called Bankers Stories where a dozen of employees from around the world explain their vision of their work and how it contributes to the economic growth of the country or simply of the context they work in.

Althought the concept of the campaign isn't particularly innovative, I'm impressed by the quality of the videos, that makes the whole project interesting and worth being discovered also by those (like me) who couldn't care less about Societe Generale.

via

The Christmas ads have started and in Australia they have a website where you can purchase extreme gifts. I thought this ad was a good parody and a good laugh. Take a look.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives