Case Study: Dante’s Inferno

Last year at this time, Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and studio Visceral Games released the epic video game Dante’s Inferno(TM). By meticulous design, the game’s extended marketing campaign also garnered a great deal of attention: Adweek’s Dave Griner reported that its $200,000 guerrilla budget yielded 47 million impressions. While this adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s world famous “Divine Comedy” neither broke sales records nor earned a great deal of critical acclaim, considering the scale, breadth and resourcefulness of the marketing efforts, I thought you might be interested in checking out the detailed recap from Griner, and a few other news stories linked below. For further reading: Read more

Play games, get lucky in Canada

At this very moment, and running on through Jan. 23, executives from Toyota Canada are hosting thousands of visitors at their impressive displays at this year’s Montreal International Auto Show. There, fans are simultaneously playing the Scion Canada Augmented Reality (AR) Racing Game developed for Scion by global creative agency ATTIK and its project partner, North Kingdom. In the addictive, award-winning game, fans virtually “take the wheel” of a Scion and navigate it through a menacing cityscape, for fun, bragging rights among their peers, and more importantly, a chance to win a 2011 Scion tC Urban Sports Coupe.

Promotions for the game will continue at shows in Toronto, Calgary, Québec City, Vancouver and Edmonton over the weeks to come, elsewhere at various lifestyle events across the country, and inside Scion’s 45 Canadian dealerships. For more specifics, please visit
Scion Canada’s official Events Calendar.

Meanwhile, for those Canadians who are snowed in or otherwise unable to catch these location-based promotions before the contest ends on April 25, the game is fully accessible online.

Read more

Scion ATTIK North Kingdom FWA!

Scion and ATTIK have combined to score their fourth FWA Site of the Day award, this time for their Take On the Machine Augmented Reality game honored today. ATTIK’s news release and artwork galleries are available here.

Simon Needham: “Our goal was to engage people with the bold and aggressive new Scion tC, and earning an FWA Award is a great measure of our success.”

Electric Proms 2010

BBC Radio 2′s Electric Proms is an annual series of concerts dedicated to creating new moments in music. This year’s performances from Elton John, Robert Plant, Neil Diamond and their respective special guests took place on 28-30 October at the Roundhouse in London.

To promote the event, production company and design studio Brand New School London designed and directed the :30 promo above, along with additional visual content, for advertising agency Fallon’s cross-media campaign. In collaboration with Fallon’s executive creative director Augusto Sola, art director Gary Anderson and copy writer Tony Miller, the innovative stop-motion trailer directed by BNS’s Jonathan Notaro and Mario Stipinovich has drawn international attention to this year’s spectacular Electric Proms events.

For a limited time, Neil Diamond’s BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms concert can be experienced online. To check it out, please click here and explore the various videos available. Further information on Brand New School is available online at www.brandnewschool.com.

Sharing secrets: Ford’s Scott Monty

Back in September, new media industry thought leader and author Brian Solis launched (R)evolution, a new series of video interviews presenting the people, trends, and ideas defining the future of business, marketing, and media. Last week, he released this very informative video where he interviewed Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media. To learn more about Brian and check out more of his growing treasury of must-know content, please visit www.BrianSolis.com.

Spinifex Group and GPJ for Nissan

Working in close collaboration with creatives from experience marketing agency George P. Johnson (GPJ), Spinifex Group has built an extensive track record in creating quality branded content for Nissan which has been distributed worldwide and used in countless ways. In October, 2008, the release of the new Nissan 370Z coincided with the launch of “Need for Speed” from EA Games. Building the release campaign around “Need for Speed,” Spinifex joined efforts with executives from EA Games in Canada to create a reveal video, which Nissan later distributed as a sensational cinema trailer. For more information, please visit Nissan 370Z Brand Film from Spinifex Group.

Nathan Love reveals more character

This summer’s successful collaboration between world-class animation studio Nathan Love and advertising agency 22squared recently brought two new animated broadcast spots to life for Baskin-Robbins’ nationwide ad campaign. For August, the campaign welcomed two new characters: Barry Baaa, a long-faced sheep that loves blowing bubbles with Baskin-Robbins’ August Flavor of the Month, Pink Bubblegum ice cream, and Olive Ostrich, a playful bird who’s ecstatic about Baskin-Robbins’ birthday cakes. For each character, Nathan Love’s art department created genuinely unique looks and personalities, and the animators added the life and soul, creating adorably personable creatures.

Barry Baaa debuted widely on U.S. television and cable media outlets on August 3; on August 8, it was declared the top ad for all demographics for the first week of August by Ace Metrix(TM), the industry standard in television advertising analytics.

More information on the campaign is available here.

Case Study: Scion + ATTIK – “United By Individuality”

In 2008, global creative agency ATTIK and Scion launched the “United By Individuality” branding campaign. The agency recently produced this case study encapsulation above. Links to additional campaign information appear below.

. Scion United case study on ATTIK.com
. Scion Samples case study on ATTIK.com
. United By Individuality campaign news release and materials
. United By Individuality campaign website wins “Site of the Day” from the Favourite Website Awards
. United By Individuality “Samples” campaign news release and materials

Brilliant directors: Shilo’s Evan Dennis

Director Evan Dennis and his fellow filmmakers from U.S. creative production company Shilo recently detailed their artistry in creating this engaging new broadcast/web spot for Mountain Dew’s new Green Label Art Shop Series campaign. For this all-star project, Evan worked in close collaboration with creative director David Hohman, art director Campbell Hooper and their colleagues from integrated marketing agency TracyLocke to create compelling content authentically supporting Mountain Dew’s innovative campaign and the phenomenal talents assembled. Read more

NYC, where will you watch the World Cup?

With soccer (er, football) now reigning as our planet’s most popular sport, beginning tomorrow, the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa will take center stage as its most prominent sports event. According to Jeremy Hollister at creative ideas studio We Are Plus, as a tribute to New York City’s vibrant international diversity, World Cup fever is greater there than nearly anywhere else in America.

We Are Plus is applying the power of social networking software to tap into this native enthusiasm with its World Cup Game Finder, a free mobile app — now available at iTunes — that helps NYC-based fans find local venues screening games featuring their favorite teams, and offering the easiest way to find the best spot in the city to join your fellow fans and support your favorite team. For more information, please visit www.nycgamefinder.com, and please help spread the word!