The evolution of augmented video

In a recent meeting with a creative agency about a big high street bank that are a client of mine, the agency presented their plans for the bank's enhanced Youtube page. The plans included something that they called 'augmented video'.

I've been familiar with Augmented Reality for a while as I have with stop motion or interactive video. The plans are kind of a mix of the two (but more of an evolution of stop motion video.) I'll be taking a look at this process of evolution in the CSM digital share Club on Friday but thought I'd pen this as a warm-up.

The first video of this kind that I saw was this one from tipp-ex about 2 years ago...

Brilliant. Interactive video that's fun and integrates the product seemlessly. It isn't, however a perfect user experience as it navigates away from Youtube to deliver the functionality but brilliant none-the-less. They also followed it up this year with this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQtai7HMbuQ

The next time I saw a similar kind of experience was this from Only (click through)

You can stop the video in motion, select the clothes that you like the look of and gain more info about them, as well as being able to click through and buy them, of course. There's also some great functionality in the video in which you are prompted to create some actions, like doing up someone's flies (naughty!) and aiding their get-away. This creates a genuinely interactive stop-motion video. Again, the products are integrated seemlessly and the video has enough production value and a tells a good enough story, to keep you watching to the end.The only problem is that it's hosted on a micro-site and isn't very social.

The next evolution was to build the above into Youtube. The first time that I saw this done was by Nike as part of their 'My Time Is Now' Campaign earlier this Summer. This is the online execution of their TVC that aired during Euro 2012. The video is a Digital Sports Marketers wet dream - ambassadors, a brilliant video, product integration, cross-sport promotion and stop-motion functionality to deliver additional content. The clip has delivered 143m views (click to view)

 

The final video that I saw this week, came from the always entertaining, Terry Crews - 'Mr Old Spice'. This video is great. You can interact with the video using your keyboard and they have backed it up with some campaign promotion on their Facebook page (see image below)

Old Spice Muscle Music from Terry Crews on Vimeo.

And so to our high street bank. The plan is to create a Nike-style stop motion video, but when the player or ambassador steps out of the video (as Pep does when clicked on in Nike's vid) further interactive elements will be delivered such as their Twitter feed, additional elements of our digital campaign and options to view archive video content of the player in action. All of this populates as the player addresses the viewer.Sounds awesome. Watch this space for the next phase in the evolution of augmented video...

Let me know if you've seen other cool examples of augmented or stop motion video that I've not mentioned.

Is Football at an Impasse with its Fans?

I caveat the following by stating that I am an Arsenal fan and as such my views are clouded by what has happened at Arsenal this summer and, it seems pretty much every summer for the past few years...

Angry Blackburn fan lugs his season ticket at Steve Kean

The Olympic Games were great this summer. They galvanized the nation, bringing us together through a shared passion and desire for gold. They showed us what can be achieved through hard work and dedication and that those at the top of their chosen field can show humility and be great role models. I never got as excited about The Games though, as I get about Football and the memory of super Saturday and the numerous life changing performances from Team GB that got us all cheering this summer were quickly forgotten when my thoughts turned to the start of the Premier League.

As an Arsenal fan, this summer has been one of mixed emotions. The enjoyment and anticipation of bringing in three exciting players was tempered by the sale of our captain and best player [insert name here] along with Alex Song, a promising young midfielder. It was actually the transfer of the latter that stuck in my throat and made me cough this blog up because he was a player that by all accounts began to explore other options available to him despite having recently signed a £55,000 a week contract to keep him at Arsenal until 2015.

£55,000 a week is more money than I could spend, it's more money that Song would ever need and for a lad from Cameroon that came to Arsenal as a fairly average 17year old and spent a season on loan at Charlton where he played ok at centre back, it seems an awful lot. Alas this wasn't enough to keep him at Arsenal where he had been turned into a very, very good midfielder. I don't begrudge any player a move to one of the World's best clubs but it's the manner in which these transfers continue to happen, and it's not just to Arsenal players.

In the early days of Abramavich's tenure at Chelsea, the club admirably invested in some domestic talent. The likes of Scott Parker, Sean Wright-Phillips, Glen Johnson, Joe Cole and Steve Sidwell. These players played precious little football and lost at least two years of their careers. All of these players left smaller clubs where they were idolized by the fans (often after just a few good performances) to take a punt at the big time and treble their wages at the same time. With the exception of Joe Cole who was arguably the most talented player of his generation, these players flopped. Fast forward to today and where then we read Chelsea, now read Man City and where we read Johnson, Sidwell, Wright-Phillips and Parker, now read Johnson A, Wright-Phillips, Bridge and, probably, Rodwell.

A rare shot of Steve Sidwell in a Chelsea shirt

I don't mean to focus on the players here because I don't see them as the cause of Football's impending crisis (in fact, sometimes they're the victims - see the case of Michael Johnson) It is just that a definitive shift in the behavior of players and their attitude towards fans lead me to write this blog. The quality of Premier League Football is undeniably brilliant and the entertainment unrivaled. The big issue is that Football and therefore Football players, are becoming so far removed from the fans, that the moment the level of entertainment drops below what we have now become used to, fans are bound to ask the question; " Why am I wasting my time and money on this?"

Money is a very real issue for fans now, more so than ever. Football provides escapism from fans' 'real life' worries, be they financial or otherwise. This wonderfully well written article by Martin Samuel is a personal account of the power that sport can have in providing us with this kind of escapism. And so when Footballers act in such a way that draws attention to the gap between the fans and their game, it frustrates us and rather than providing a distraction from everyday life, Football becomes one of our everyday frustrations.

Looking back on the Olympics and the Olympians that made it so great, it's clear that the gap between fans and those Athletes is far smaller in so many ways. My view of the majority of Athletes is that they are ordinary people that have achieved extraordinary things and as such they are aspirational rather than untouchable, which is what I believe Footballers have become.

When Jimmy Hill lead a revolution in the way in which players should be paid I very much doubt he foresaw the situation we are in today. This report explains how we got to this situation financially and how this fits (or otherwise) into the context of the UK economy.

I don't know the solution but I do know that I have a problem with my relationship with Football and it's protagonists and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Lots of Lovely Olympic stuff

Here's the digital stuff that I've loved from the London 2012 Olympics;

1) The BBC's coverage of The Games. This article from Think with Google nicely summarized how online coverage was going to 'Unpeeled the Olympics' so that we could all enjoy the tasty banana within. The coverage was unprecedented and boy did we lap-it-up. some highlights from the BBC's online figures;

• An average of 9.5m browsers to BBC Sport per day (previous record = 7.4m)
• Total of 55m browsers over The Games
• 106m requests for video views over The Games
• 9.2m mobile users requesting 12m videos

You can also see Alex Balfour, Head of new media for London 2012's report here

2) How much 'behind the scenes' content has been generated by the athletes. Here's a few examples that I really liked;

Bradley Wiggins Twitter commentary of his celebratory piss up at St Paul's...

The Mo-Bot being seen just about everywhere...

Life at the park with Bolty...

Speaking of the Bolt - I really loved this when he got his hands on a professional photographer's camera and the result was some super-charged Athlete generated content http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-19208480

3) A great use of Twitter to give a unique insight at some of the venues from LOCOG themselves

@L2012PoolCam

@L2012stadiumCam

And the rest @L2012BballCam, @2012TableCam, @2012GymCam & @L2012MatCam

4) Brands have taken the marketing of The Games to a whole new level showcasing the creativity, strategic planning and technical expertise that London's marketeers can offer. Some notable mentions go to Adidas for their #TakeTheStage campaign, Nike's ambush (ish) campaign #FindGreatness and P&G's sponsorship of Moms (despite the American spelling - every time I saw a MUM interviewed she was in a P&G t-shirt, plus their pre-games video must have evoked more tears than a podium full of Team GB athletes combined.)

But my favourite digital executions have come from British Airways. Firstly they were ballsy to tell everyone not to fly and to stay at home and make the #HomeAdvantage count. They created the (IMHO) best sponsor TV ad;

And they created an online version that allowed users to take the plane ride down their own street...

http://www.facebook.com/britishairways/app_388207294549278

BA have been brilliantly diligent in responding to all users that Tweet them. I tweeted them and they came straight back which is a great effort considering the volume of Tweets that they receive.

During the games they ran the hashtag #homeadvantage and used promoted tweets to support it. BA then used the data from when the hashtag was used most frequently, to plot the 'noise' around certain events during the games. They then turned that 'noise' into noise, thus creating the 'social symphony'.

All of this on top of their use of ambassadors and outdoor advertising has created a genuinely integrated campaign that really captured the spirit of the games.

5) Fan Generated Content I haven't forgot about the fans. Despite the threats from LOCOG about not being able to take photos or images, the volume and quality of content shared on social media has been like no other event has ever seen. The brand that cracks harnessing this will be the winner in sporting events to come but it looks like Team GB are planning to create a crowdsourced scrapbook of fan's memories, which sounds great. Watch this space to see how they pull it off. If the games is anything to go by, it will be the best yet.

Before Smart Phones

Before smart phones, what did we do?

Ahh what was his name? We didn't have a clue.

Pub quizes were fair, just me versus you.

Before smart phones, what did we do?

We checked Football scores on text 302.

Our location was secret, know only to you.

 Before smart phones, what did we do?

No Twitter, no blippar, no instant review.

When a trip to the loo, meant just doing a pooh.

Before smart phones, what did we do?

You know what I'm thinking, this is just my view.

Before we had smart phones, I preferred most of you.

Texaco FC comes to an end

I've been working on a project for Fast Track client Texaco called Texaco Fan Central (FC) The idea was simple, connect football fans with the brand by creating content that they can't get anywhere else. Texaco is seen (by most people, me included) as old fashioned, over priced and located in places that you don't normally need petrol. Sponsoring lower league football was never going to reduce the cost of a litre at the pump or mean you don't have to drive 15miles out of your way to fill up at the big red star but it kind of makes sense - traveling fans, clubs that are slightly off the beaten track, connecting the emotional journey with the physical journey, etc. etc.

So we created Texaco Fan Central - a Facebook hub where fans can talk about their team and the league. We employed Soccer AM's John 'Fenners' Fendley along with a couple of predators (producers and editors) also of Soccer AM fame - Neil Smyth and Robbie Knox to do the filming and production. The great thing about these guys is that they have experience of creating social media friendly content and they have worked in football and therefore know both the audience and some of the players and the players know (or recognise) them. So what then...?

We started filming. The format was thus; 2 players and a manager at every club, the players are interviewed by Fenners for either Car-e-oke (Cars & Music - you see what we did there?) or Away Days (stories about team away trips) and the gaffer would be asked questions sourced from fans through Twitter for As the Boss - one of the other good things about working with football semi-celbs is that they have big Twitter followings. It started slowly as we got in to the swing of seeding the content with the clubs and club bloggers, regional media etc and the guys worked the format out so that we got the most from the players. The first few clubs, Portsmouth, Bristol City, Barnsley, Reading, all got reasonable coverage and some good content helped. This one is our first Car-E-oke which gave us something that the fans would really talk about...

A lot depended on what came up in the interview and the mood the players were in on the day and the mood that Fenners was in too. On balance Car-E-oke worked better than Away Days did because it allowed more margin for behaviour like Karacan's and as we'll see, it lead to some outrageous events down the line. Away Days always tended to be a more straightforward interview with the odd funny anecdote like George Friend's bus behaviour...

I liked Ask the Boss simply because the agenda was set entirely by the fans and fans don't often get the opportunity to talk to the club manager, even if we rarely asked about football...

It also meant that I got to meet the nicest man in football, Nigel Adkins, you'll have to visit www.youtube.com/TexacoUKFC to see part 2! Splitting the content in 2 also worked well for us as we progressed with the campaign because we usually had 6mins of footage that we wanted to keep but didn't want to seed 6min clips as viewers tend to drop off after 2/3mins. By splitting the videos in half we effectively doubled the number of views which helped when reporting to a client who was counting every view, like and follower.

The campaign was a great success for many reasons, but here's a few of the key ones;

• Fans like to see their players/manager in a different type of interview. Fans also like to comment on these interviews, even if it is just to slag their rival's manager off.
• Players like to talk about something other than football and if they can relax/be put at ease, they'll give you some content worth talking about.
• When you get some content worth talking about, shout about it. Cue Craig Noone...

This was picked up by the fans who sang 'Mysterious Girl' to Nooney up at the Riverside and the Mirror posted it as their video of the day as well as plenty of blogger and regional media coverage. Craig Noone is a legend.

Finally, we decided that it was only fair to let Robbie in front of the camera (not you Neil) to say goodbye and it actually worked really well. We probably should have done it sooner!