Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [100]
I mentioned that in Cannes, there seemed to be a blurring of categories. YouTube hits were winning in the traditional film category. Cyber and viral and integrated each had its own category, but in truth it seemed that most work could have won in any category.
“All interactive marketing is supposed to be viral,” said Lieu. “For instance, we’re also entered in the Titanium Lions category. Even after fifteen years, the landscape of cyberspace marketing is changing so fast that people have a hard time benchmarking and finding value in it.” Bonds added, “They’re still trying to fit it into conventional advertising categories and media buys.”
All of which sounds perfectly believable when you’re promoting a summer blockbuster or a long-awaited album by a notoriously progressive artist to an already rabid audience. What about a campaign for something considerably less sexy? Does a person really want to have a “totally immersive audience experience” that revolves around toilet paper, or pudding? What about a packaged good with a product demo, or the lowly retail ad? How does this process fare with more traditional clients?
“Fine,” Bonds said. “We just did something for Toyota Camry [iflookscouldkill.com] that is far from traditional but is for a traditional category. Whatever we do is a holistic approach to connecting with consumers through storytelling.”
At the time of our conversation in late June, 42 Entertainment was already fully engaged in the covert guerrilla campaign for the upcoming Batman film, The Dark Knight. I’d heard stories of secret cards being placed in hard-core comic book hangouts and the release of other cryptic online clues. I asked if, since they’d already bragged about having worked so closely with Christopher Nolan, they could tell me more about the campaign.
Lieu sat back and folded his arms. “Oh, we can’t talk about something that’s still in play.”
Bonds shook her head. “Got to respect the fourth wall.”
Elf Yourself
Toy New York
The Grand Lodge of the Royal Order of Masons is located at the end of the same Flatiron district street as the small specialist/generalist agency Toy New York. For those unfamiliar with the ways of the Freemason, according to American Heritage it is, among other things (depending on the location of the lodge and the political climate), an organization based on “spontaneous fellowship and sympathy among a number of people.”
I know this because I looked up the definition electronically while standing on the sidewalk between the two buildings, fifteen minutes early for my first visit to Toy, a company whose nontraditional approach to advertising seems to be based on a similar faith in the power of spontaneous fellowship and sympathy among a number of people—but in Toy’s case, the fellowship does not exclude women, and the number of people came primarily via the Internet.
I was visiting Toy’s new loftlike digs on West Twenty-third Street after lots of people told me they were worth checking out because of the pedigree of the founding principals as well as the breakthrough online holiday campaign they had done for the OfficeMax chain, particularly a strange, corny, yet enormously successful Web site called Elf Yourself.
My memory of my first Elf encounter from the previous holiday season is foggy. I vaguely remember having been invited to “Elf Myself” by a friend who also worked in advertising, for a digital agency. I vaguely remember the dancing elves and something to do with downloading a photo of myself onto an elf’s face. However, I distinctly remember abandoning the project midway through the download, urging my then-nine-year-old daughter to take over. Which she did,