Replay, Nightmare, the Gift m & Food Revolution

Five well crafted pieces of subtly branded content that makes a good effort to provide a engaging experience instead of jamming another ad down our throats.

Replay Documentary Series: A documentary that re-unites an old highschool rivalry. Well produced and interesting story to develop the Gatorade brand.

Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution: The Nake Chef & ABC pair with Giant Foods to change unhealthy eating behavior

The Gift - A bad ass short strategically placed in a Phillips TV frame.


Nightmares Never Sleep: Nike's branded interactive online game that tests your focus, agility and balance.

















Devo Song Study: Listen to samples of the songs from Devo's new album and select 12 of the 16 you want them to include in their new release.

Engaging Your Audience & Learning From Simulated Mistakes

People use the term interactive pretty loosely and so I've been wondering what it takes to be truly engaging. I recently had a discussion with the creative director of the site World Without Oil and think this kind of interactivity experience has a lot to offer.

About the game: "WORLD WITHOUT OIL simulated the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis. It established a citizen “nerve center”to track events and share solutions. Anybody could play by creating a personal story – an email or phone call, or for advanced users a blog post, video, photo, podcast, twitter, whatever – that chronicled the imagined reality of their life in the crisis. The WWO site at worldwithoutoil.org links to all these stories. The game encouraged excellence with daily awards and recognition for authentic and intriguing stories."

Understanding behavior. The game sought to uncover solutions to a problem before it actually occurred. The implications are tremendous because we've learned that it's very difficult to change human behavior, and exponentially more difficult when it's on a large scale.

"WWO didn’t only “raise awareness” about oil dependence. By creating a simple nonpartisan framework that focused thousands of people from all walks of life upon this common issue, WWO sparked peer learning and inquiry-based exploration of the roots, outcomes, and prevention of an oil crisis. By “rousing our democratic imagination,” WWO fostered deep engagement and changed people’s lives. Via a game, players made themselves better citizens."

Most often we have to learn from our mistakes before we can change, well what if we could simulate mistakes so we didn't have to suffer the pain of experience real mistakes. An interactive experience like WWO has this kind of potential. "WORLD WITHOUT OIL is a serious game for the public good. WWO invited people from all walks of life to contribute “collective imagination” to confront a real-world issue: the risk our unbridled thirst for oil poses to our economy, climate and quality of life. It’s a milestone in the quest to use games as democratic, collaborative platforms for exploring possible futures and sparking future-changing action. WWO set the model for using a hot net-native storytelling method (‘alternate reality’) to meet civic and educational goals. Best of all, it was compellingly fun."

It seems to me that there's a opportunity to create more simulated interactive experiences that truly engage people; to learn, to brand, to understand.

Augmented Reality

GE's new Smart Grid campaign produced by Sosia over at Goodby is moving interactive creative in the right direction. You interact with the branded content by printing out a "key" that is used to activate a 3D world that is produced in your webcam. You can blow into your microphone to engage the wind turbines.

Ultimately it's a fancy gimmick (as opposed to an interactive learning experience) that creates brand engagement, but I applaud the effort. It's great to see creatives moving the interactive space in the right direction. I'm still surprised that new episodes of online TV shows like LOST and The Office (if you haven't seen Stress Relief, watch it now; the first 15 minutes are ridiculous) are still using :30 spots. They're missing a huge opportunity to engage viewers with their brand by implementing interactive content. Hopefully ad shops are still playing catch-up and we'll start to see new content start to emerge.

Telling a great story

We all love pretty pictures and it's the reason why interactive media is so successful. Here's a great model created by New York Times to illustrate and explain how US Airways Flight 1549 went down and was rescued. This news model packs a powerful punch. It's informative, visually stimulating and an efficient system for delivering content.

California experiences a Quake measuring 7.8

What have you done to prepare for an earthquake? If you live in California it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when? We may not be able to hide but at least we can be prepared. Aftershock is an interactive earthquake simulation that will play out over the next few weeks. Participants react to various events that occur during and after a quake. It's an interesting large scale initiative to prepare residents for the real thing.

change is damn right!

Awesome - our country is already moving in the right direction! I'm impressed with the web 2.0 execution Obama has undertaken to talk to his constituents. This is how government should be run. Change.gov went up the day he was elected and he already has a strong online presence. He has committed to posting a weekly video summarizing what the administration is working on and created a blog to discuss issues. I'm waiting for the interactive component with a system for feedback, blog responses and other ways to get the public involved - brilliant!

I just added the blog to my bookmarks for daily reading and it was a pretty good feeling.

http://change.gov/newsroom/blog/

Changing Behavior

"If you want to change the future, play with it first." World Without Oil recently won a webby for best game in 2007. It's a game that is a powerful educational resource and interesting tool for facilitating large scale behavior changes.

I like this idea b/c there's so much truth to the fact that people won't start resolving an issue until they're confronted with a reality. It's a great way to break our habit of procrastination and start solving problems before we're already two feet in the hole.

From a planning perspective this is a great brainstorming tool. It has the potential to facilitate large scale changes in behavior. We are used to media like movies or television. The Inconvenient Truth created healthy discussion, but World Without Oil is more comprehensive. It's a great use of new media because it encourages interactivity and takes engagement with an issue to the next level. Everyone involved has the potential to collaborate and although the results technically exist in an "alternate reality" it is an exercise that produces real solutions.

I think there are at least two important things going on here:

1. When people participate in a game like WWO they become engaged in a community, it increases their level of understanding and they become more willing to change. This is a powerful tool because it enables people to anticipate a problem and change before the problem becomes a reality.

2. Ideas come from ideas. This kind of immersive role playing environment let's people create solutions for a future problem. Creating a frame of mind makes an alternate reality tangible and that is a great stepping off point for resolving an issue before it manifests.

Sound of Color

We expect more from brands these days. Our generation has evolved into a culture of Free Love where we want experiences to function on different levels and expect a full bodied experience where things are given to us for Free. Companies have raised the bar and we've come to expect more than just a product or service, we expect a full experience from a brand.

The Sound of Color is a great example of just this. We think of color and we associate the artistic and entertaining experience with which we are engaged with the company who produced it. Experience THE SOUND OF COLOR for yourself. One of the biggest flaws is it's not made to be viral; but does it resonate with you? Watch the 'making of' on their site for a brief 3 minute explanation.

The Great Whale Hunt

The Great Whale Hunt is a truly amazing interactive experience. It's a new way to take pictures and a fantastic way of telling a story. It is extremely technologically saavy and a captivating way to document an experience online. It will take you on a pretty amazing experience recorded with great and carefully organized. The website allows you to experience a whale hunt as if you were on the expedition as it occurred over 9 days hunting with Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow Alaska. 3,214 photos were taken.

One of the techniques Jason Harris (the creator) used enables the rate of photographs taken to match the excitment of the photographer so the experience can be accurately portrayed to the viewer; "the photographs were taken at five-minute intervals, even while sleeping (using a chronometer), establishing a constant “photographic heartbeat”. In moments of high adrenaline, this photographic heartbeat would quicken (to a maximum rate of 37 pictures in five minutes while the first whale was being cut up), mimicking the changing pace of my own heartbeat."

Harris described one of the objectives of this adventure "as a way to subject himself to the same sort of incessant automated data collection process that he usually writes computer programs to conduct (in previous projects like We Feel Fine, Lovelines, Universe, 10x10, and Phylotaxis). Much effort is spent making computers understand what it’s like to be human (through data mining and artificial intelligence), but rarely do humans try to see things from a computer’s perspective. He was interested in reaching some degree of empathy with the computer, a constant thankless helper in my work."

The photos and the way you interact with them are certainly worth a look.

Predictions for 2008

Here are my top 5 predictions for 2008. Alright, they're probably not all going to happen next year, but they're coming.

1. Cell phone users will finally make use of the technology they have and allow users to view one another as they talk to each other.

2. Chevron will buy GM & Exxon will buy Ford - they will give their cars away for free, you will pay for the gas. Gas will be so expensive that people will choose the Tango and other alternatives.

3. Healthcare companies will start requiring the $1000 DNA test at birth to evaluate & assess customers healthcare fees. FDA will require restaurants to put calories on menus

4. Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us & Facebook become overrun by Mandarin, Chinese & Japanese leaving the US / English speakers realizing who's really running the world.

5. Record Labels try to buy and destroy the Internet in a last ditch effort to save themselves. MP3's On Demand puts the power and money back into artist's hands.

A new music experience

Arcade Fire recently released their new album Neon Bible and they've created an interactive music video that is a refreshing and creative online experience. Although they're only scratching the surface, it's surprising that we haven't seen more musicians look online to create ways to engage their fans. They're using the internet the way it should be used.
http://www.beonlineb.com/click_around.html