Super M Live with The Parlotones

The idea behind the campaign was simple: Super M wanted to give away tickets to their Super M Live concert with The Parlotones, as well as give away R5000 a week.

We came back with the idea for a viral video that would go live on a mobisite and Youtube. Super M liked the concept enough to ask us to produce their TV ad as well, which took 7DKS into new territory. Obviously, we accepted, coming up with the characters Baz and Stretch who take a sip of a Super M and launch themselves off their couch and into a new world.

We ended up launching the video on Youtube before it hit TV screens. Really, we were experimenting with the nature of what makes something a TV ad instead of a viral video. If the video debuted online first, it would engage a whole different audience. In essence, when it moved on to TV, it would be graduating to another medium and a whole new audience.

If you take a closer look at InStream – Youtube’s video advertising service – you’ll find quite a few TV and TV-style advertisements clogging up the space before whatever video it is you’re really planning to watch. The effect they have on consumers is questionable because all they’re seeing is a regular old TV ad that’s on a service that was designed to advertise Youtube’s own channels and content.

As simple as it may seem, flipping the order of the video’s release around actually sends a new message to the audience.

Mike Scott from Cape Town handled animation on the project alongside a team of illustrators, and we created ‘The Milkshake Song’. We knew from the start that our video was aimed at the internet’s ADD generation so it had to be quick, punchy and entertaining.

Once it was out there, we had our first experience with flamers on Youtube.

We’d incorporated a lot of popular memes from the time – stuff like 9gag’s “Y U NO”, “Like A Sir”, as well as some local gags like an appearance by Riaan Cruywagen (a meme in his own right) – and that received an even more interesting reaction from viewers. Some users felt like memes didn’t belong in a commercialized world. This is interesting and indicative of an increasing sense of ownership people feel towards the brands they interact with. What we were seeing was that users needed the space to discuss the campaign in their own way. We let the discussion slide because we know that now more than ever, this kind of conversation between users is something brands need to allow for.

In the end we received over 100,000 entries for the competition, with consumers still drawn to the content and the R5000 weekly prize. The Super M TVC had about 190,000 views and the second video roped in about 16,000 views.

If you create something that starts a conversation, you’ve got a winner. Whether it’s positive or negative, brands need to learn to let it take place. And as much as there are some who dislike something, there are an equal number who like it. It’s even more interesting when you see the users themselves argue about the value of the content, and using Youtube as a means of engaging them provides them with that space.

This is a lesson we carried forward into our Tropika campaign. More on that soon.

[Originally Published at BizCommunity]