Air New Zealand are on a "viral" video binge with two new videos released this week. First we have Richard Simmons for an in-flight video

and Snoop hooking up with Rico their muppet for a new song.

Rico's first outing late last year did quite well for Air NZ with the Happy Hour video reaching 380,000 views

Just last year they did a NZ Rugby team safety video which earned them 800,000 views.

These come 2 years after 5 million+ views to their safety video with the body painted staff

You can imagine the other airline marketing departments asking their agencies "we want to be like Air NZ" as they lust after the Youtube view counts and press generated from these endeavours.

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 11:18 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Interesting Promotions

Mark Webber celebrates about the impending Children's Pageants coming to Australia. Original Qantas banner here https://adsfac.info/ads/QAN355/198799.0.0.swf

Posted by Ashley Ringrose at 11:21 AM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Media Gaffes

The biggest topic in sports right now here in the States is March Madness, the annual College Basketball Tournament that decides the best school in the nation. Allstate Insurance, with help from Leo Burnett Chicago is capitalizing on that hype with an interesting social experiment, BFF Brackets:

BFF Brackets is exactly like the college basketball tourney. Except instead of 64 college hoop teams facing off, it's your 64 best facebook friends. The game determines who your "best friends" are on facebook using a custom algorithm. The BFF tournament begins on March 17th, but people can join until March 24th.

This is a nice little campaign that plays off some real tension in social media culture. Who are your real friends and who's just a username on a screen? It'll be interesting to see if Facebook lets this play out, or if it yanks it like Whopper Sacrifice.

Posted by pete at 3:10 PM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Campaigns

Banner+aid helps the online community to give their paid banner advertising a temporary makeover and help spread the word for charities to give to those in need.

It's a webpage process that enables flash banners to be labeled with a special corner that expands to reveal messages for charity. It's a way for worthy causes to piggyback on paid for media without cost. It's a way for business and media buying companies to show support for people in need.

The cause of the moment is Red Cross helping those in need through Japanese quake and Pacific Tsunami.

The additional layer does not affect the existing messaging, animation, click through or interaction within the original banner that was uploaded in most cases. The total extra file weight of the processed banner is around 6kb.

Formats supported are all standard IAB sizes (300x250 MREC, 160x600 Widesky, 120x600 Sky, 468x60 standard banner and 420x600 Monster).

Anybody advertising online can upload and process a banner to contain the added layer by visiting https://banneraid.net , and use the updated outputted banner to replace existing trafficked banner ads OR as a final step before trafficking a new banner.

Banner+Aid is a not for profit messaging tool which allocates it's messages to a current and visible cause, by offering a direct link through to a donation page or other relevant information areas from within existing online display banners.

Help spread the word guys.
tcx

Posted by tobie at 9:05 AM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Technology

Find out more details here:
https://www.richmediagallery.com/html5-challenge

Take the HTML5 Challenge and win a YouTube Masthead for the day

Overview of Competition
HTML5 enables you to take advantage of multimedia content and allows you to stretch your creative skills. The HTML5 challenge is an opportunity to show how you can combine creativity and innovation; design a YouTube Masthead using DoubleClick Rich Media Studio & HTML5 and win a chance to have your mast head on YouTube for a day.

Creative Guidelines

• Creative should represent innovative execution of HTML5.
• Creative agency logo or signature should be included but should not dominate the creative execution
• Creative for clients are not eligible for submission
• Creative must be developed and uploaded using your DoubleClick Rich Media Account
• Creative should be a YouTube Masthead and follow the technical specs listed here

Prize

• Winners will be selected at the country level UK, FR, DE & IT
• Agency providing the winning creative in UK, FR, DE, IT will be flown to an award ceremony in London in June (max 3 team members per agency)
• Masthead element of the winning campaign will be run on the the You Tube home page for the respective country at a date at the discretion of the YouTube team

Eligibility

• Open to all, creative agency and freelancers in UK, FR, DE & IT.
• Must have a Double Click Studio Account - sign up here

Timescales
Expression of Interest : March 1 - March 31

• Sign up to express interest you will then be contacted when submission window opens

Submission of Entries : 1st April - 23rd May

• Submit details of entry via website
• Submit creative via Double Click Studio

Judging : 23rd May - 1st June

• Panel: D&AD, Andy Berndt VP Creative Lab Google, Emily Hare Contagious, Scott Harmes Creative Consultant Double Click Rich Media

Award: June

• Award cermony at Google Jam

Posted by ryan at 10:24 AM | Link to this Article | Comments
Archived in: Interesting Promotions