The most popular viral videos all have one thing in common – they all become fairly unwatchable after a relatively short period of time. A viral video half-life if you like, over which time the popularity of a video fades, to be replaced by another ‘must see’ clip.

The use of recognisable characters in advertising is a well known technique, and has proven to be a very successful way to connect with an audience. We all remember the charismatic Marlboro Cowboy, Tony the Tiger, or the Michelin Man. They were engaging and iconic; yet, by virtue of the medium and the era they were born in, they were often one dimensional. They failed to establish real relationships with people as they weren’t necessarily able to break out of the TV ad.

But the opportunities created by the new media world means that a whole new generation of advertising characters is emerging, developing stronger, truly interactive relationships with consumers. Today's characters can live beyond the TV spot and enable brands to really harness the possibilities and benefits of social media.

This character created by Old Spice, inventively named ‘Old Spice Guy’, became incredibly popular in a very short period of time. After just a few days of the launch of his first advert, almost everyone in the US had heard or talked about "The man your man could smell like".

The commercial went viral and was a hit on video sharing websites, but what made him stand out and shoot him directly to stardom, was the fact that he began interacting with his audience in real time, in real life. To everyone’s surprise and amusement "The man your man could smell like", started to post videos responding directly to questions from fans and celebrities.

The social response campaign managed to raise sales by 107%, and the original TV spot has been seen more than 31,000,000 times on YouTube… and he provided new inspiration for hundreds for last year's Halloween costumes.

Old Spice Social Case Study from Digital Buzz on Vimeo.

  

 

Aleksandr Orlov – Compare the Market

Aleksandr Orlov is the founder of Comparethemeerkat.com, a website that allows visitors to compare meerkats; and which receives more than 2 million hits per month.

The character is extremely popular, and so is his life outside the TV screen. He has more than 22,000 followers on Twitter, and 700,000 facebook fans. In October 2010 Orlov's "autobiography" was released, to become a bestseller, and Aleksandr had his first television interview on the ITV show, Daybreak. Recent adverts feature other members of the Orlov family and the town of Meerkovo, and a detailed explanation about his life and family can be found on Wikipedia.

Overall sales have more than doubled year on year as a result of the meerkat campaign.

 

 

The Hilfigers

For the latest fall-winter season, Tommy Hilfiger developed an innovative campaign, ‘Meet the Hilfigers’, featuring 15 members of this very fashionable and good-looking family.

Starting with the name, this campaign screams social media and consumer interaction. This multi-channel, multi-disciplinary marketing campaign was developed to engage consumers in the lives of fictional characters; and the biography of each member of the family can be found on the company's website. People will immediately identify with one character, and try to copy their style, which can easily be done by clicking through the characters on the website, and choosing to buy what they are wearing.

Social media has been tackled in a number of ways, some of the characters have their own facebook and twitter pages, whiles others are part of online features such as ‘Chloe's closet’, ‘Morgan’s Must-Haves’, and ‘Bernard’s Books’.

 

 

30 days to win Julia back – Hotmail

Last September Hotmail Spain launched a new marketing campaign to communicate the changes implemented in the new Hotmail accounts.

The message of the campaign "we change so that you like us better" was brought to life by two characters, Alejandro and Julia, a real couple with real problems in their relationship. Alejandro decided to change to win Julia back, and with the help of the audience and Hotmail, that is exactly what he did.

For 30 days, Alejandro brought to life the ideas that hundreds of fans posted him on facebook, twitter, and of course, via e-mail. The development of the whole story could be followed on his blog, where he posted videos of the various actions that he carried out, including a video of the final kiss at the end of the campaign.

Hotmail knew that interaction between the brand and the audience was good, but they realised that what people really wanted were real people with real stories behind them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacques D’azur – Stella Artois

In support of their sponsorship of the Cannes Film Festival, Stella Artois reprised their character Jacques D’Azur, who first appeared online last year.

This time around Stella gave drinkers the opportunity to take his place in a very real sense by offering the chance to play the role of Jacques in a biographical film, and to appear on the red carpet at the prestigious festival.

Drinkers submitted audition tapes online, and after selecting a short list of 200 finalists via both online voting results (top 100 favorite submissions) and a distinguished panel of judges (100 finalists based on creativity and acting skills), Gustavo Alvarez, from Buenos Aires, was selected for the role.

After filming his part in the Jacques d’Azur biopic, Gustavo will travel to the French Riviera to attend the short film's May 20 premiere, to be followed by a party at ‘Chez Jacques’ – Stella Artois’ sophisticated, invitation-only lounge at the Carlton Hotel’s exclusive beachfront property in Cannes.

 

Advertising will always use characters to help consumers engage with their brand – they are emotive and provide a relevant connection for millions.  And it’s these successful characters outlined above that provide great examples of how characters are now much more than our favourite TV characters.  New technologies, new media channels and creative marketers mean that we have many more inventive ad characters to look forward to.

By Robin Lauffer, Head of Planning, The Bank

Listeners to BBC Radio 4, or anybody with a passing interest in popular physics have probably heard of Schrodinger's cat. For the uninitiated, Erwin Schrödinger is one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, which is a very strange branch of physics that deals with the interaction of matter and energy at a particle level. 

Quantum mechanics is a strange and complex area of science, and in an attempt to illustrate just how ridiculous quantum mechanics is when applied to the real world, Schrödinger devised the gloriously absurd paradox, "Schrödinger's Cat". 

In the theoritical experiment, a cat is placed inside a box together with a radioactive device containing some poison. One of the theories of quantum mechanics states that the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead at the same time. This is of course ridiculous - which is exactly the point that Schrödinger was trying to make, but this is the kind of problem that keeps physicists awake in bed a night. 

Fortunately for media journalists, Schrödinger's cat provides another useful analogy for the seemingly never-ending death of television. 

With budgets being tightened and with marketers seemingly obsessed by the supposed accountability of digital media, the future of TV should theoretically be rather bleak. If you believe all the data, we are spending more time playing games, using social networks, surfing the internet on our smartphone and yet TV is still managing to bringing record audiences.

There are several discussions to be had around the effectiveness and future of the medium. There are few evangelists left that seriously believe that digital media spells the end of the box, but the TV model is changing massively, as is the way in which we view, measure and interrogate the medium.

In the first of series of articles, Richard Welsh from Bigballs Filmsdiscusses the percieved never-ending end of television from a content producer's point of view.

No cats were harmed in the making of this series. Read the first installment here. 

 

 Dancing is the new cool. Ballroom dancing, street dance, tap, tango and ballet - doesn't matter what it is, but right now dancing is where it's at - you only have to look at the explosion of dance themed TV shows and movies that have surfaced in the last few years. So it was only a matter of time before brands popped on their dancing shoes and cut a few shapes on the dance floor.

The States have had the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD) for a while - and I have to admit, when the press release arrived in my inbox I was a little sceptical. LXD was described to me as "Heroes" meets "Step Up" - and frankly after 12 years in PR and journalism, I was too cynical to give it the time of day.

However, sometimes I am proven wrong. At the end of the day I was the guy who said Facebook would never take off, so I decided to give LXD a shot and head along to the premier screening at BAFTA last night. 

I don't want to give too much away at this point, apart from to say the description of "Heroes meets Step Up" is about as accurate a description as anyone having seen LXD is ever likely to give. More importantly for Cream is what the LXD series represents in what is possible in the realms of branded content. 

In terms of production values, this is a significant step forward for the BC medium. Other brands have produced slick movie-style works before - remember that BMW movie with Madonna? Or (my personal favourite bit of BC ever) the Mercedes thriller with Dannii Minogue? More recently, Cream reported on a stunning piece of work from Ararat cognac, but these were all "adult brands" aimed at the higher end of the market. The production budget for LXD must have been huge, and every single penny has been put on screen. 

The series is soon to be launched in the UK and Europe acoss the Joost network by Adconion, so soon fans will be able to enjoy the series of 10-minute episodes and track the story of the dancers as they begin their quest. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, and yesterday morning I would have agreed with you!

Of course it remains to be seen if an online video series (there are 10 episodes in the first series) can not only sustain interest for the complete individual episodes, but also if it can continue to keep it's audience interested over the duration of the series. Current completion stats from the US suggest that it stands a good chance. Paramount (who make the show) have finished the second series already, and a third is in the planning stages. 

Cream will be covering more of this exciting project, and the implications for the brands involved very soon. In the meantime, there's more interesting examples of online video (here) and branded content (here) on the Cream site.

This is kind of clever, even if it is to plug a brainless summer blockbuster staring Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Ludgren, Jason Statham etc. I'm guessing it's not a costume drama full of intrigue and romance. 

Nevertheless, it's nice to see the YouTube platform being put to more use. Hopefully this will spur others who use the channel purely for advertising purposes to be a little more creative in their thinking. 

If you're looking to inject some testosterone into your day, you can watch the full clip here.  

If on the other hand you would prefer to see a video of the Muppets covering Bohemian Rhapsody. . . who am I to argue. 

The latest instalment of our No Apples love-in comes from Amsterdam Worldwide. The agency has replicated Da Vinci's epic Mural "The Last Supper", with Brian Elliott as Jesus.

Note the reaction of the apostles following Jesus' announcement that one of them would betray him, ranging from anger to shock (and in some cases an uncharacteristic bemusement):

 

Now compare it to Brian Elliott and his team assembled around the table:

They seem to have an odd fashion sense in The Netherlands....

Check out the rest of our No Apples crew here, including CURB, Naked and BBDO Argentina

It's round 2 in the fight against the volcano. Our CEO Charlie Crowe highlights how you can get to Valencia - there will be a prize for the most innovatove method of travel demonstrated by a delegate.

 

You may have come across a fascinating little project this year called The3six5, it's a year-long blog stream written by a different person each day. The aim being to capture a 365 degree snapshot of regular peoples' lives written and framed for delectation and posterity.

 

I wrote about it on this blog back in Feb, partly because it is interesting and worth following and partly because I was asked to write one of the 365 posts.

My day duly arrrived yesterday and I made the following post. Slightly shmaltzy perhaps but heartfelt nonetheless.

Len and Dan, the founders and ringmasters of the 3six5 have created something rather special. Alicia Kan's  touching post was just awarded the Think Tank Blog Post of the Month. 

You can read some interviews with Len and Dan recenly about the project here, here and here. 

Anyway, if you like what you read please sign up as a follower and share the links, follow @the3six5 on Twitter here or do whatever you can to add to the momentum this lovely project is creating.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the remaining 264 days...