Tropika serves up Tracy McGregor on a Mechanical Bull

After the running success of last year’s My Celeb Slave Mobisite for Tropika Island of Treasure 3, 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke was approached by Stimulii to create a similar, and equally exciting mobile experience to go with this year’s Tropika Island of Treasure 4.

The thinking

7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke (7DKS) brainstormed some ideas and what came to mind was, perhaps users could interact with a celeb pet? They looked at toys like the Tamagotchi and games like Nintendogs, where players could interact with their own pets. 7DKS wanted fans to be able to have their “own” pet celebrities.

With that in mind, 7DKS wanted to create something that would work on any phone and would form part of a Mobisite. And that’s where Celeb Amigo (www.tropikaisland.mobi) came in.

The idea

Celeb Amigo allows people to log onto the Mobisite and interact with real-life celebs. Users could feed them hot Jalapeno peppers, have them dance in comical pink tutus and more. Think Tracy McGregor riding a mechanical bull or rapper Slikour in a poncho and you’ll get an idea of the kind of hilarity that kept TIOT4 users enthralled up to 15 minutes each.

Ryan Gandalf van Jaarsveld, MD 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke explains, “What if you could feed your celeb, dress your celeb, make your celeb dance, sing or ride a bull – wouldn’t that be cool. So instead of giving your celeb an instruction like last year, this year you could click a button – like say “Eat a chilli” – and then watch a video of your favourite celeb – say Tracy McGregor – eat a chilli and see fire come out of her mouth.”

The premise

7DKS shot real-life videos of celebs Joelle Kayembe, Slikour, Tracy McGregor, DJ Zinhle, Tshepo Mogale, Poppy Ntshongwana and Phila Mazibuko doing the most hilarious things, all for the Mobisite users’ enjoyment. In essence, the celeb would become the user’s “pet” where they could feed them, dress them up and make them do tricks.

Users would log onto the Mobisite using their phones. They would then choose a celeb from the list on the landing page. It would then take them to a page with a variety of buttons, and clicking on these buttons would play a video of the chosen celeb eating a jalapeno, riding a mechanical bull, drinking a Tropika and more. These buttons had multiple videos behind them, so that if they clicked through on the same button more than once they wouldn’t always get the same result.

Ryan explains, “Our video formatting technology ensures that 14,000 different handset models each have a unique experience due to screen size and orientation and dinosaur handsets could download if their phone didn’t support streaming.”

Neil Clarence, Creative Director at 7DKS continues, “Where else can you interact in such a personal way with your favourite celebs? The variety of content kept users engaged. Users like to be surprised by what they see – the design of the site ensured that each experience was unique.”

Watch Slikour in a tutu, Poppy on the red carpet, Tracy eating a super-hot chilli and Joelle smacking a piñata!  

7DKS named Media Game Changers!

The Smartest Event of the Year was today and it marked the release of The Annual 2011/2012, a collection of anything and anyone involved in branding, marketing and advertising.

The latest edition is an impressive 2kg (our creative director Neil even tried a couple of bicep curls with it).

The Annual named 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke Media Game Changers!

“In days gone past some would have referred to this as a creative hot shop, an idealistic bunch of dreamers with a couple of good ideas wanting to make a difference. While all of this is true, this actually is applying sound creative and strategic solutions for brands wanting to use the mobile space imaginatively and effectively. We were particularly impressed with a clever interactive gaming concept the agency developed for a leading fast food brand that pitted users against a sportsman with a prize as an incentive.”

Pretty amazing stuff. But then, that’s how we roll…

Movember 2011

The dashing men folk at 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke have been pretty successful with the growth of their ‘tashes.

Keep it up there, guys – we salute you!

Weetbix serves Lucas Radebe Over A Million Penalties

It’s no easy feat to take penalties against an international soccer star. Especially not when it’s over a million of them. But that’s exactly what Weetbix did when Stimulli approached 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke to bring an interactive experience to their campaign involving Lucas Radebe.

The Recession and Our Obsession with Superheroes

It’s become an increasing occurrence that every time we head to the cinema, there’s a bigger, better, more in-your-face superhero movie splashed across the Coming Soon posters. If it’s not Spider-Man, it’s Superman, and then it’s Spider-Man rebooted, or Superman remade (for the second or third time). Superhero movies are getting more and more popular, and with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars per film, you start to wonder what the big idea is when we’ve been in an economic recession since 2009.