Proximity BBDO

As promised: more Pub cover news.
Together with Pub Magazine, we launched a double scoop for Belgium. We’re the first agency that makes two consecutive Pub covers à-and.. this one is the first 3D magazine cover ever. Using Augmented Reality, we made a cover that offers readers the dazzling experience of holding a Cannes Lion by holding their Pub copy (or a printed version of it) in front of their web cam.
And Lion Fever seems to be spreading rather fast. Only after one day it reached Switserland, Mechelen and China. So check out the website, exercise your Lion Acceptance pose, take that pic and enter our Hall of Fame!

Summary:

6 real claw machines can be controlled and played on from your browser. Pepsi Max combines bytes and atoms. If you’re passionate about something, max it. That is what Pepsi Max is all about. That and gaming of course. And how do you go about maxing a game that everyone is passionate about? You think bytes (as in ‘internet’). You think atoms (as in ‘real world’). You grab a soldering iron and connect both.

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Full post:

MAX YOUR THOUGHTS
Take 6 real claw machines, hook ‘m up to the internet and start playing. Unique codes can be stripped from the Pepsi Max bottles and used to add up for extra gaming credits. The lucky ones can win some cool prizes or grab a ticket for the final during which one plays with an 8 meter tall claw machine containing really huge prizes! Each finalist will be able to grab a huge bear and possibly win sunjets.be trips to Malta or Tenerife, or take home 50″ plasma’s and other cool Panasonic stuff.

OLDSKOOL CAMPAIGNING
The campaign is kick-starts with traditional online media. Bannering and an enticing e-mail to a database of Pepsi Max aficionados

SOCIAL MEDIA CUM
Today, more than 2.1 million belgian citizens are an active member of Facebook. So we integrated the power of Facebook Connect to make the game easily portable over the users contact network. Everyone registering with Facebook credentials, receives give-away codes for friends. Everytime anyone plays or wins it shows up in their friends newsfeed. How’s that for viral?

Frankly, a huge amount of users can freely access the website but only 6 can play simultaneously. Of course these users don’t want to be sitting ducks while waiting for a claw machines to become available. Statistics are put up to check when the site is very busy, a concept we introduced with, and was essential to, the Internet Is Mine case. Also, the claw machines Twitter when one of the slots is available.

KICK-ASS DESIGN
Phase 1: First wireframes were made in Powerpoint. They served as a basic feature-spec for the full website.

Phase 2: After being loosely briefed on the campaign’s concept and features, several paper sketches were made to serve as a rough guide. The concept at this stage was “a carnival or arcade, but maxed out!”.

Phase 3: Taking the best sketches into Photoshop, we created a digital painting that would serve as a moodboard and colour guide. This piece was also shown to the client in order to get the go-ahead for the look-and-feel for the rest of the website. You’ll also notice the (not-so) subtle use of Pepsi’s 3 main colours, creating a symbolic link between the logo and the site.

Phase 4: Using photos of the real grabber machines as reference, 3d models of the six cabinets, as well as a large “hero”-crane – a reference to the real-life final phase of the competition. The models were created and rendered in 3ds max 2008.

Phase 5: After all 3d models were animated and rendered, all assets were composited in Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. The mist was painted by hand.

Phase 6: After the final compositing of the scene, everything was then taken into Adobe Flash, where it was animated and integrated with the rest of the UI, which was also designed in Photoshop.

SOME HARDCORE GEEKNESS
Basically the client, your pc at home, simply browses to the webpage loading the Flash application. Through the Flash application the Socket Server receives the data of the logged in user and pushes that info to an Application Server on the same layer. The Application Server is there just to check the user data. N00bs would refer to this step as “checking with the database”. Furthermore the Socket Server just relays feedback between the claw machine and the UI. To put it straight, the Socket Server is the connection between the client and the claw machines at our offices. If a connection is established then that triggers the Socket Server and extracts one credit. Whenever a client is logged and ready to play, the Socket Server checks whether the user still has available credits to play the game. Credits can be added by entering game-codes found on Pepsi Max bottles and cans.

So, the Application Server feedbacks on the user-request and talks back to the Socket Server. Finishing this simple cycle the Socket Server pings to one of the 6 computers hooked to a claw machine. Each one of these computers is linked to a claw machine through 6, USB interface, micro-controllers talking to one of 6, physical, claw machines.

The micro-controllers allow users to address the physical controls of the claw machines. The connection between the two buttons to navigate and the coin collector are intercepted and thus hijacked by the USB interface of the micro-controllers. The micro-controllers send the claw machines the same electrical signals normally send by the original connections of the physical buttons.

The bears in the claw machines are stuffed with an RFID-tag. If a user manages to catch and lift a bear, the bear is dropped into a slide passing an RFID-chip reader. Once the reader is triggered a signal is passed on back to the Socket Server. The Socket Server then checks that tag with the linked prize in the DB inside the Application Server. When the match is made the UI displays to the user what prize he, or she, has won.

By the way, Proximity BBDO is looking for more ambitious developers willing to enforce our team and start create more of these wicked web-apps and games. Anyone with an interest can apply here.

Check out more of our geekness at Adnerds.be and check the conversation at #pepsimax, #twapero and #proximitybbdo

This movie just popped up in my facebook feeds. It touched me. Watch it. It might do the same to you. But do it before reading on. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.

And? Did you like it? I did. So I watched it again. And I’m pretty sure now it in fact is a sublime/subliminal 12-minute commercial. Hell yeah, been in advertising too long, I suppose. But wouldn’t it be fantastic if more ads were like this one: entertaining, funny, nicely told, touching stories? Wouldn’t it be great if we could ‘touch’ our audience instead of trying to convince them? Let’s make them fall in love, ok?

Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter from his iPhone. Thirty-four minutes after Janis posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV as a witness (see video below). News coverage at Google. Live video at Fox News. TV reports suggest that everyone survived the crash.

via AlleyInsider

A Twitter search shows that Tweets and Retweets massively increased just minutes after the first Tweet was out… Like wildfire half of the western society Twitterusers were retweeting the event — imagin what a succesfull hoax it could have been ;)

Today it’s all about viral, to make things worse VIRAL has become a buzz word. The buzz amongst marketeers has gone viral, it spread from their words to their mouths. Those who do and don’t understand, even, what “the buzz” or “being viral” actually is, or rather how to be “viral“. So, up untill now there is no definition the echo keeps telling me, well ok and can maybe kinda try to agree BUT still…

Viral Valerie explains viral video for dummies and scrolling down will unravel to you a hyperlink that will show you some 50 or so viral images, and to hype it all a lil’ here’s a small excerpt of Adam Singers (Adam Singer is Director of Digital Strategy for Pierson Grant Public Relations in Fort Lauderdale, Florida) thought on virality.

Viral videos are ubiquitous – they have spread into both mainstream pop culture and corporate America. Everyone talks about developing viral videos, and there are plenty of techniques you can use to give your video the best chance of success.

But, something not talked about as frequently are viral images.

Viral images predate viral videos, and have been around since the AOL and Prodigy days when there wasn’t enough bandwidth available for the everyday user to access video. Images can be spread on the web through several means, and they criss-cross back and forth between:

* Message-boards and forums
* Blogs
* Emails (inter-office, personal and mass emails to all your friends)
* Social networks
* Basic HTML Web sites
* Company intranets

Viral images have held on tightly and are as much a part of “Web 2.0” as they were for Web 1.0. They are popular amongst all web users for good reasons. Strong images:

* Prove a point quickly
* Give people a story to spread
* Can create deep emotional connections
* Are easily consumable, perfect for a medium that moves fast
* Are entertaining, hilarious or compelling
* Are easy to share

Oh and guys,
a real (read: working/good/native) viral, don’t need no intensive “seeding”…

Ook genoeg van kleffe kerstkaarten en interactieve nieuwjaarswensen?
Mooi, Zatte Vrienden heeft nu een leuke splash die jou de kans geeft je vrienden toch een eindejaarskaart te sturen die echt lachen is.

Je kleine boodschap zal je vrienden deugd doen. Stuur jouw vrienden warme eindejaarswensen via Jouw naam in de sneeuw

Wij lachten ons alvast een breuk bij de conceptcreatie, presentatie en productie ervan, fijne en kleffe eindejaarswensen van ons team bij ProximityBBDO

Hoe Proximity BBDO in luttele uren tijd echt viraal ging met een president, een paar schoenen en een idee.

Het event: een Iraakse journalist slingert zijn schoenen richting smoelwerk van uittredend president Bush tijdens een persconferentie. Het idee: die mens was zo malcontent met die schoenen onder de kerstboom dat hij ze ‘t liefst van al weggooit. De payoff: hij had ze beter op E-bay gezet, hij had er tenminste nog geld voor gekregen.

Dat was in een notedop het wild ideetje van een creatief team toen ze het Bush filmpje hadden gezien. Een telefoontje naar E-bay Europe later hadden we een go van de klant. Wij boksen het in geen tijd in mekaar en posten het op onze YouTube account. Enkele creatieven posten het meteen op hun FaceBook pagina. Een paar uur later vraagt de klant ons het filmpje weer offline te zetten omwille van een probleem met auteursrechten. We halen het filmpje offline terwijl we achter de rechten gaan.

We clearen de rechten met AP en zetten het filmpje terug online. Een weekend later is het filmpje goed voor meer dan 10 000 views en 8 blogposts op Technorati. Opmerkelijk hieraan: door de perikelen met de rechten hadden wij — op de Facebook posts na — niets gedaan om het filmpje te verspreiden. Read my lips: no seeding.

Of hoe Proximity BBDO echt viraal ging. In geen tijd, voor een budget waarmee je bij Prada hooguit met een paar schoendozen de winkel buitenststapt.

UPDATE: Speel nu al ‘Sock And Awe‘ — een té gek spel waar ook jij met je slof Bush kunt bekogelen.

De Iraakse journalist (Muntadar al-Zaidi) mag Bush dan al op een haar na gemist hebben bij zijn gooi met schoenen, hij deed een flinke gooi naar een YouTube tophit. Mijn buzz aggregator stond stijf van de footage die het gebeuren documenteert. In minder dan een dag haalde de movie wel zo’n 7-tal plaatsen in de top 10 van “YouTube’s most visited” lijstje. Alles samen goed voor zo’n dik 2 miljoen views – in 1 dag – and counting…

Het hele: Bush krijgt een schoen naar de kop gebeuren staat netjes uitgeschreven op BBC, zo moet ik het niet meer doen.
Klik hier om verder te lezen (wel in het engels)

Dodge Dare Days
Wins a silver award at Eurobest
Category Sales Promotion

Internet is mine (Belgacom)
Wins 2 silver awards at Eurobest
Categories Mixed Media and Products & Services