And when I say "we" I mean those of us who cultivate an Internet culture that revels in the absurd and celebrates the weird. In the pre-Internet world that creative well was plumbed and topped-up by a yearly dose of bizarro TV spots that pushed benchmarks and re-inked creative boundaries. Timewarp to Super Bowl 50 where my OTA HD feed of US ads felt -for the most part- like a boring parade of mundane. What happened? When did everything become so safe?
A couple of years ago Heinz closed its manufacturing plants in Southern Ontario and moved operations to the US. This didn't sit well with local farmers and many Canadian ketchup lovers. It also opened up an opportunity for French's to move in and sweep the leg. No word where this new all-Canadian ketchup product will be sold but we're already impressed with the product. Add the fact that 10% of all sales will be donated to local foodbanks and you have a product with conscience, and good taste.
For far too long, ad agencies have avoided the analytics business. Instead, they’re interested in creativity and enamored with winning awards. As Farmer puts it, “agencies continue to cling to the notion that clients want creativity and service, but what [clients] really want is shareholder value. Agency executives have been completely deaf to the economics.”
This is an excellent example of what can be done by a creative team that actually understands how technology works. We have a theory on how they achieved the effect... but at this point it's a guess.
We figure there's an open API that let's you choose particular keyframes that get used as playhead scrubber preview images. So, they simply edited single frames of the alternate (playhead "video") scene into the main video. And voila, anyone who fast forwards along the playhead sees the alternate... or primary message. Don't drive fast.
