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.