• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 7, 2011

Sharpie took over the YouTube home page with an interactive mosaic ad created from user-generated art. The campaign, designed and produced by ad agency Draftfcb in Chicago, produced more than 62 million impressions in one day.

The YouTube mosaic interactive ad, which had the same effect as some Salvador Dali pieces, took between eight and 10 weeks to build. The piece is one of several comprising the "Start with Sharpie" campaign that pulled together a Web site relaunch, print, TV, cinema and social media on Twitter and Facebook. The campaign began on July 5 and continues to run.

Salvador Dali, the 20th-century artist, created a picture of a woman looking at the Mediterranean Sea through a window, which transforms into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln at a distance.

Sally Grimes, vice president of global marketing at Sharpie, said the YouTube takeover ad focused on fans and the inspiring way that consumers use Sharpies. It features an interactive mosaic created by user-generated images. The artists uploaded the pieces to YouTube. Draftfcb collected the entries to generate the mosaic.

"Digital is about one-fourth of our total ad budget, but expanding," Grimes said.

Draftfcb Group Management Director Jennifer Rowland took the lead on the campaign account, working with Creative Director Gigi Carroll, and Associate Media Director Sydney Caine.

Ads on Hulu, Facebook, MTV, AOL, and Alloy drove consumers to Sharpie. com and YouTube home page. The average display time for the YouTube ad measured 21.91 seconds, compared with the industry average of 21.10 seconds; interaction time, 9.31 seconds; and clicks recorded came in at 124,923.

The ad racked up 62 million impressions, compared with the industry average of 50 million for YouTube's home page.

For those who expanded the masthead unit, the average interaction time was one minute. About 52,000 users were added to the remarketing list.

On the day the YouTube takeover ad ran, Sharpie.com experienced 72,000 visits, roughly seven times more than typical campaign traffic. More than 400 new artworks were uploaded during the course of the weekend. The company's Facebook page also quickly reached and exceeded 2 million Facebook Fans on the day after the takeover ad ran. The Facebook Fan page had 11,508 new "Likes" -- the highest in one day for Sharpie.