Tuesday at the iMedia Brand Summit, creative minds from TEQUILA/ shared their strategy for innovating, and presented implementation of big ideas.
As the number of consumer touchpoints expands exponentially, creative teams are feeling pressure like never before. Not only do they have to take risks to engage elusive consumers, but they must also streamline creative elements across various platforms.
More and more, interactive departments are being asked to deliver the "big idea" for a brand. These ideas are created with a new marketing formula.
In Tuesday's Topic Forum: Creative, Nathan Hackstock, creative director, TEQUILA/, and Jason Kuperman, director, interactive and entertainment practice, TEQUILA/, defined that formula and presented examples of their strategy.
Hackstock and Kuperman described three types of creative: adaptive, expansive and inventive.
Adaptive, they explained, is when you take something from one medium and adapt it to fit as closely as possible in another medium. This strategy is most often employed when a project is limited on time and/or budget.
Expansive creative takes an idea already in play and expands it for another medium.
Inventive creative is the most ambitious-- creating an entirely new idea, sometimes across media.
The outcome will be a result of the process: If you use an adaptive strategy, you'll have an adaptive solution, and so on.
An example of adaptive creative that Hackstock and Kuperman shared was online advertising for the Nissan Xterra. In this particular case, the "think" had already been done at TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, TEQUILA/'s partner agency. The overall campaign idea was "tough gear that helps you attack life."
Since the TEQUILA/ partners didn't have the time or budget to create new assets, they sought out what was being done on the traditional side. They incorporated the gritty look and feel of the print ads into a banner and paired that with assets from the TV spots. The result was ads that carried the same look and feel throughout all media, providing information and showing the vehicle in action.
Another campaign for the Xterra, "Show Us Your X," was an example of expansion creative. The core idea was to get people more involved with the brand. Outdoor and print ads showed people involved with extreme sports, brandishing an X poster. TEQUILA/ found video footage and displayed it on the web, but not as an ad-as an attention-getter. A coordinated-looking ad ran next to it that included a link to a site designed to allow people to upload their own X moments.
Moving onto inventive creative, the TEQUILA/ reps showed the audience creative developed for Sony PlayStation's NBA 06 product. The Big Idea: control your character's decisions on and off the court.
For the campaign, TEQUILA/ created fictitious NBA rejects. Video "documentaries," shot in collaboration with Chiat, highlighted their brushes with NBA, and a microsite --dontbethenext.com -- not only ran these and other videos, but also contained detailed profiles of the rejects, blogs, merchandise for sale and, of course, details on the Sony PlayStation game. TV, print and banners all drove traffic to microsite.
The characters became so popular that their stories were referenced all over the web, one fan created a MySpace page assuming the identity of one of them, and the NBA asked them to appear at the NBA All Star Game.
A campaign for another PlayStation game, SOCOM III, took the inventive strategy in another direction. In this case, there was a great print idea, but the online element went in a different direction. "Integration doesn't mean matching luggage," said Kuperman. "Rather, it means you're strategically on target, connecting with people appropriately for the medium they're in."
Because the biggest selling point of the game is its realism, the creative team filmed a reality series, putting volunteers through actual Navy Seal training. The series only launched online, so the team was able to use an interactive video unit to shoot the video for a fraction of the cost of going through a traditional agency.
The clients were so pleased with the campaign, they have bought on to the series for two or more seasons.
A final inventive campaign TEQUILA/ shared was one created for another Sony PlayStation game, Shadow of Colossus. Again, this campaign already had a general print idea out there, but employed a different strategy online.
Because this is an adventure game, the agency created an adventure for consumers to participate in-- chasing giants. Rather than doing a traditional media buy, TEQUILA/ seeded the net in a viral strategy.
The hub of the campaign was a blog chronicled by a giantologist, but it kicked off with a seeded video sent around the world virally. The hoax was carried out through print, blogs, podcasts-- even international phone numbers.
The campaign was so successful, the client exceeded one year projected sales in six weeks (and the fictitious characters involved have been offered book deals!).
In conclusion, Kuperman and Hackstock shared some wisdom:
First ask: Do we have the time, do we have the budget to invent? If no, adapt. If there is some budget and time, expand. Once the core idea is fleshed out, the time frame and strategy will become clear.
Above all, engage the consumer. If they aren't engaged, they will move on.
Dawn Anfuso is senior editor, iMedia Connection. Read full bio.
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