For the first time in over fifty years, the iconic Chiquita banana brand is changing their label. The little blue stickers that have been their product’s differentiating trademark will be redesigned. What is interesting about this campaign is that they are calling upon their consumers to design new stickers. The contest started earlier this summer and the brand received hundreds of consumer-generated images that were eventually narrowed down to fifty finalists. The banana giant then encouraged the public to vote for the winning design. Today, after collecting thousands of public votes on a great variety of different directions including monkeys, smiley faces, robots, beach combing bananas, and oddly, lucha libre masks, eighteen winners were announced. These lucky designers will soon see their own design grace the iconic Chiquita bananas in grocery stores nation-wide this November.
This design contest is part of a growing trend where brands will incorporate their customer base into the branding of the product, implying ownership and creating an emotional connection with the brand. Also, by allowing social media connectivity linking to facebook, it allows users to run their own mini campaigns for their design focused on the Chiquita brand. For a product as generic as bananas, Chiquita has done an exceptional job.
Leading up to their newest release “The Last Exorcism”, a film by the brilliant Eli Roth about a young girl possessed by an evil spirit, Lions Gate Entertainment ran a great viral campaign on the webcam driven social site Chatroulette. If you are unfamiliar, Chatroulette is a site that allows users to randomly connect with others via webcam. Usually, Chatroulette would be considered one of the worst places to effectively reach and engage your audience; the visitors are typically teenage guys (and old men) who are there to try to either harass girls, expose themselves, or simply be as offensive as possible. In a brilliant move, this viral campaign perfectly engages and shocks this particularly tough demographic. It grabs the viewer’s attention by starting out as a seemingly normal Chatroulette encounter with an attractive and promiscuous girl who appears to be getting ready to undress. After a couple seconds and the audience is completely engrossed, the “conversation” takes an unexpected terrifying turn. Without ruining the surprise, I will simply say the campaign is brilliant, shocking, and fits the space exceptionally well. The video contains language NSFW.
Besides the Chatroulette campaign, they have also created a fictional site for the movie’s priest character with other viral videos to provide a rich backstory leading up to the movie.
Frito Lay’s Cheetos have launched an ambitious new online campaign that is surprisingly very effective. It is entertaining, engaging, and very impressive considering it is a viral game centered around cheese flavored snack products.
In their campaign titled “Battle of the Cheetos” users pick a side; crunchy or puffy and do battle with other users online. It is a strategy war game where animated Cheetos fight with cheese-powered weapons to determine the superior type of Cheeto. As players win more battles they are rewarded with upgrades and more Cheeto warriors for your regiment.
The animated battlefields spring from partnered websites from which the viral game is accessed, including Mashable, Gawker, BoingBoing.net, Gizmodo, and many others. Statistics can be tracked via Facebook to determine which users are the most skilled generals for both the puffy and crunchy armies. The gameplay is simple yet engaging and like all great online multiplayer games, it allows users to taunt their opponents and trash talk via their computer’s microphone. This imaginative campaign may seem like a very strange way to promote and sell Cheetos but it is already doing an excellent job if you consider the content and depth of the game. Consumers spend an average of 12 minutes playing branded games, much longer than they would with any traditional form of advertising, also consider the Facebook connectivity and the fact that this branded game is actually quite fun to play; the Battle of the Cheetos is an impressive campaign that manages to entertain players centered entirely around the Cheetos brand. It is easily the best branded online game I have experienced and will hopefully set the tone for all branded game content that will follow.
Over the past seven years it has become increasing common and expected to see product and service commercials in the theater before the movie. This month AT&T has taken the next step in creating the first cinematic 3D spot intended for theaters with detailed animation, impressive visuals, and an original score for its new “Rethink Possible” campaign. The spot is available in other mediums but was produced with movie theater audiences in mind. It is currently being shown to the handful of people watching the 3D coverage of the World Cup and will be shown soon in theaters. This is interesting because it is an innovative step towards the new wave of inevitable 3D commercials that uses the new technology mainly for entertainment. It doesn’t allude to phone services at all when it shows a small fish chasing after an orange ball. Eventually bigger fish come and take the ball away then the small fish breaks away only to the surface to find an endless forest of trees that produce the orange balls and copy urging audiences to “Rethink What’s Possible”. It will be cool to see what other commercials are released in the near future made specifically in 3D for theater audiences.
“And Then There Was Salsa”is the new viral video from Frito Lay hosted on Vimeo. The video starts out as a normal web video then slowly expands out of the video frame and takes over the entire window giving the video a 3D look. Although similar viral videos with 3D elements have been done before, they haven’t looked this good. This new viral video is already creating buzz and is a good example of where the future of online advertisements and viral videos can go.
The Vitamin Water brand continues to amaze me; not only do they have a wide range of flavors that are all very good, they also have some of the funniest and clever marketing campaigns in the beverage industry that have been remarkably successful. Since partnering with rapper 50 Cent back in 2004, the company has been using a mix of celebrity endorsements, intelligent social media marketing, and entertaining advertisements to reach new customers and build a very strong brand. In 2007, Coca Cola bought the company for $4.1 billion and has increased its availability world wide allowing it to quickly take market share from soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, and juice drinks alike. They have launched hilarious ads featuring the NBA star and self-proclaimed “Canadian Celebrity” Steve Nash that are truly the funniest ads on TV right now. Their newest ads featuring Nash spoof the successful Dos Equis “most interesting man in the world” ads with Nash as “the most ridiculous man in the world”. Previous ads featuring Nash have spoofed infomercials where he portrays a Billy Mays type of spokesperson praising Vitamin Water with a priceless cameo by 50 Cent. They have also just wrapped a successful social media campaign on Facebook that culminates with the launch of a customer-created flavor available next month. Their latest ad, celebrating the Winter Olympics, transforms bus stops in downtown Vancouver BC into a ski lift with Vitamin Water signage. Taking bus stop ads, which seem to be a dated medium that hasn’t experienced much change or innovation and turning them into a spot for photo opportunities centered around the Vitamin Water brand is a great idea. With Olympic fever and increased tourism pouring into Vancouver these ads are sure to receive a lot of attention. As they continue their media blitz with effective inspired ads across a range of different mediums, Vitamin Water is definitely a company to watch.
Although YouTube is still top dog for viewing online video Facebook continues to innovate and get results. By constantly adding new tools while increasing users they are living up to the hype. A recent cnet report based on Nielsen Video Census statistics has reported that facebook is now the third most popular place to view videos online behind YouTube and Hulu. With the popularity of viewing videos online grows along side social networking facebook has successfully merged the two innovative concepts and evolved into a one stop media portal.
In related news Chado has posted videos from past campaigns and they are available for viewing on Chado’s facebook fan page. To visit Chado’s fan page and view the newly uploaded videos click here.
