Opinion

Asia’s funniest advertising case study videos

Domino's pizza stillIn the spirit of the classic calamity romp America’s Funniest Home Videos, Mumbrella has come up with a list of advertising case study videos that are, in most cases for many reasons, comically ridiculous to anyone living the real world, but have a curious ability to impress awards juries.

Wacky ideas. Spectacular numbers. Media firsts. Stirring interviews with people (probably agency staff) whose lives they’ve changed. A production budget that could re-arm the Taliban. And more Facebook likes the fan page of Amitabh Bachchan. These tidily packaged ads for ads are how agencies win awards, and the quality of the case study video is now at least as important as the idea that it is selling.

Here are a bunch from Asia that we think would do well at The Caseys, an award show for case study videos that, while a parody dreamt up by an American creative agency recently, is probably a category that Cannes Lions is thinking hard about introducing next year.

And the winners are…

Park Avenue Beer Shampoo | Party for your hair

Casey Awards: Best Costumes, Best Defamation Of The Police

HitlekarMumbai’s nightlife has been wiped out by the moral police, we’re told in the video’s opening sequence, to the tune of migraine-inducing electro-beats and an alarming blood-red backdrop. Pubs, clubs, even houses have been raided by the cops. “Youngster were angry!” we’re told. But if you can’t party in the real world, what about a party for your hair – with beer shampoo?

The case study video reveals how a series of “viral films” featuring a menacing cop called Hitlekar, who is dressed suspiciously like a Nazi general, allow young Mumbaikars to vent their frustration at the party police on the brand’s Facebook page. Hitlekar was on hand to respond to their comments. “No more good time for you, and no more good time for your hairs!” Hitlekar shouts at a young man being interrogated in the film, before the inevitably impressive campaign results are revealed. Online purchases “soared tremendously”. Sure.

 

Avène | Selfie

Casey Awards: Best Use Of Topical Fad, Best Use Of ‘Science’

Analysis of the selfieIf there is an agency that has mastered the craft of the advertising case study video, it is probably the fashionable hotshop Fred & Farid. Sleek, elegant with a goose eggshell white backdrop, this case film from Fred & Farid Shanghai is like a business card that Patrick Bateman in American Psycho would be proud of.

What better idea to sit at the heart of your case video – sorry, ad campaign – than the trusty selfie. The plan for cosmetics brand Avène was to persuade Chinese women that it’s better to change the angle of their selfies, which a careful scientific analysis of millions of selfies from all over the world has revealed tend to be too samey, too “boring”, with the same pose used for each pic. In China, ladies tend to hold the camera at a 45-degree angle, chin pointed slightly downwards, eyes pointed upwards in a “duckface” pose, science has revealed. To break their selfie habits, Fred & Farid made a “viral video” that exposed the behaviour. They also created a widget that “surprised unwitting (spelt ‘unwilling’ in the case film copy – Freudian slip?) beauty and cosmetics KOLs [key opinion leaders]” with gifs made from their poses from their Weibo selfies. The end.

 

Centrum | The Centrum Alarm

Casey Award: Best Attempt To Make Numbers Sound Interesting

CentrumWorried that the judges will nod off during the numbers bit of your video? As is often the answer to such conundrums, the remedy is the medium of rap.

30,000 downloads, over one million screen views, 92 per cent users revisited, raps a Jay-Z wannabe voice-over about an app that reminds people when to take their vitamin supplements.

“What matters aren’t these numbers, but we’ve brought these families together. So that can stay healthy and feel loved,” intones our narrator about a smartphone alarm that enables people to send a video of their instructions to take Centrum to their loved ones. Aww.

And the lyrics? “But what if it’s not a smart phone? It works on all phones. So stop your moan.” Eminem eat your heart out.

 

StarHub | MySmartEye

Casey Award: Best Cinematography, Best Sympathy-Evoking Music, Best Repurposing Of Scientific Study

Swans in DDB Singapore film for StarHubSwans glide on a lake. The sun glints through the trees. Birds chirp. Soft piano. Is this the beginning of Gone with the Wind? No, it’s a case study film for an app for the blind, which launched just before the Cannes entries deadline last year. The MySmartEye app, created by DDB Singapore for telco StarHub, allows the blind to ‘see’ the things they take pictures of with their mobile phones from descriptions texted to them by a team of micro-volunteers.

DDB claimed earlier this year year that the idea had been exported overseas. Not so. Mumbrella checked with the client. In fact, the idea – which bears a remarkable likeness to a study by the University of Rochester from 2011 that featured in New Scientist – has struggled to get far beyond an awards podium. Not enough people use the app, there aren’t enough volunteers, and they’ve been numerous technical glitches. The campaign has taken so much flack from industry watchers for being awards-driven that it’s no wonder DDB has said it’s working on revamping and relaunching the app so that it actually works. We patiently await MySmartEye 2.0…

Ironically enough it was DDB’s Dusseldorf office that came up with the idea of Case Film Bullshit Bingo, an iPhone app that enables the viewer to filter out the guff from case study films.

 

City of Las Pinas | Pocket fire extinguishers

Casey Award: Best Random Client, Best Use Of Graphic Stock Images

Pocket fire extinguishersDDB DM9 JaymeSyfu, the agency behind the Philippines first-ever Cannes Grand Prix for a campaign to relieve school children of the burden of their heavy books by replacing them with text messages, is quite the hero. This time, a year later, and just before the Cannes entries deadline, the agency is rescuing slum-dwellers from fires with a product it says it has invented – the miniature fire extinguisher. The case film tells the story, using disturbing images of burning slums, of how a sachet made of vinegar and baking soda that costs less than $1 will help the poor in the City of Las Pinas. Sadly, no grand prix this time, but the idea was shortlisted in the Product Design Lions at Cannes and in the innovation category at Spikes.

 

Cebu Pacific | It’s sunny in the Philippines

Casey Awards: Best Use Of Water, Best Idea That’ll Never Work

It's sunny in the PhilippinesHow to get Hongkongers to fly to the Philippines during the rainy season when the usual method of discounted fares screaming from billboards isn’t creative enough? How about messages only visible in the rain? That’ll work.

Using water resistant spray, Geometry Global placed messages on roads and pedestrian areas that spelled out the words “It’s sunny in the Philippines” on the ground when it was raining. Pedestrians were expected to stand in the monsoon rain to take a picture of a QR code to get a discount on a flight. In the month of April, there were 12 days of rain in Hong Kong, most with less than 5mm in rainfall per day. Still, the campaign, we’re told, led to a 37 per cent increase in online bookings for Cebu Pacific. Although we’re not told over what time period. Hmm.

 

Domino’s Pizza’s | Water drop ads

Casey Award: Best Big Numbers, Best Use Of Water (runner-up)

Plans for the bicycleWater drop ads. Media first? Must be. All you need is water, a bicycle, a smiling man with a baseball cap, a trailer with a cleverly perforated bottom, and no chance of rain.

The result? A promotional message for discounted pizza made from a watery stain left on the road. The results? A 750 per cent increase in take-out sales, apparently. Though the campaign won a bronze at Cannes, it was thrown out by the media jury at Spikes a few months later because the jury chairman was not convinced by the claimed ROI numbers.

 

Cheil | Save the lions

Casey Awards: Best Non-Conservation Campaign, Best Improbable Target Group

Where is the lion?What if all the lions disappeared when the Cannes Lions Festival was on? No, not the trophies. Real lions. In this bizarre case film made ahead of this year’s festival in France, a message was sent to the world’s creatives to think about the real lions that are dwindling in number in the wild, while they stagger about in the Gutter Bar at five in the morning, probably not thinking about an endangered species of cat.

Cheil created trophies that were exactly the same colour, size and weight of an actual Cannes Lion, with one subtle difference. The lion from the trophy was removed. They then asked a bunch of Lion-winning creatives to takes selfies with their heads where the lion would have been, and post the results in social media. Curiously, there’s no payment mechanism for donations to the charity. Sure, advertising creatives are the best people to be targeting for this conservation effort, not, say, environment ministers, wildlife poachers, policymakers or the people in the world who might actually care?

 

Coca-Cola | Coke Drones

Casey Awards: Best Use Of Fashionable Gadget, Best Piggybacking Of Serious Social Issue

Happiness from the skiesBecause what Singapore’s migrant workers really need is not fair pay, a day off occasionally or to see their families, it’s a can of sugary fizz delivered from the sky by a flying robot. Coke brought “happiness from the skies” with airlifted bottles and messages of support that showed that Singaporeans “care about the migrant workers in their midst” who have built their country, we’re told by someone interviewed in the film. Could this be rodeo PR? So what. It was a media first. Coke was the first brand in Asia to use a drone in a marketing stunt.

It would be unfair to pick on the world’s most famous brand about piggybacking serious issues too much, so its case study videos selling an attempt to end conflict between India and Pakistan with a vending machine and bottle top operated phone boxes for migrant workers in Dubai have been spared from this list.

 

Seen sillier? Let us know and we’ll add them to this list.

Perhaps use this, The Caseys case study video, as your helpful guide.

Robin Hicks

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