Ad:Tech: Best Digital Video Executions Of '12

• Comment
• Recommend
• Tweet
• 

Given the evolution of digital, one can say the most recent year will always be the best for digital advertising and creative -- both in spend, engagement and scope. At Ad:Tech NY on Wednesday, agency digital chiefs took a look at the best of the best this year.

One of them, Jeremiah Knight -- the group account director of digital at Team One who oversees digital ads for Lexus among other campaigns -- looks specifically at online video content, which today may almost seem old school. Knight offered the best of short- and long-form video that managed to engage and entertain and also drive viral perfusion. 

His filters: Does it push the industry forward, do we make conscious decisions in agencies and marketing to do it differently, and would one engage with the digital elements around the creative. "Today, we think more about would I share it, and is it easy to share." He also notes that the industry have grown away from custom full-episode players; there's a decline in the unique pod position in favor of standard :15's and :30's. "Short-form [any video content under 60 seconds] is increasingly an invitation to long-form shareable content. So we are no longer thinking of them as distinct, unique, separate experiences, but one as invitation to the other."

So for Knight, the honorable mention goes to AT&T, whose 17-second, amateur-looking  "blind" viral clip of an amazing football play where a player avoids a tackle by doing something like a double gainer over a defensive player. The amateur videographer responds with the exclamation "Hello!" The video directs people to a longer-form ad for AT&T 4G around that "hello" theme, where lots of people are watching the video on their smartphones. "I had thought this era of completely blind video leaked was completely done," said Knight. "But that short-form video garnered 800,000 views." 

The others:

1. Kia's five hours of Adriana Lima, an extension of its Super Bowl advertising, "Sandman," when a guy gets an overdose of sleep dust and has a racetrack dream complete with Mötley Crüe. Meanwhile, in social, there were literally five hours of slow-motion visuals of supermodel Lima waving a checkered flag. "You have an immediate instinct to share it," said Knight.

2. Triscuit Toppers Tantrum. "Here's a brand that when we think of them ,we don't think of them as funny." In fact, you don't think of them much at all. "They were trying to make it more human." The digital effort played on the notion that Triscuits taste great by themselves, with a link on Facebook where you could enter a complaint for a box of Triscuits. The company gave away 100,000 boxes. "And there was a huge uptick for the brand." 

3. The third was Lexus Hybrid -- which was not done, in this case, by Team One, but by Saatchi in Italy, in which the excitement of a Lexus hybrid sedan was demonstrated with video measuring people’s heart rates before hot laps in the hybrid -- and after. Knight notes that this ad could not be aired in the U.S. -- at least not officially, but that it garnered huge engagement numbers.

4. Wieden + Kennedy's James Bond-esque video narrative of a cool guy who can do it all, most recently involving a tie-in with the new James Bond "SkyFall" film.

• Comment
• Recommend
• Tweet
• 

Be the first to comment on "Ad:Tech: Best Digital Video Executions Of '12 "

Leave a Comment