Saturday, February 3, 2007

Imagination


Check out General Electric’s ‘Imagination Theatre’ - a series of three live action and animated short films conceived by BBDO New York, including a beautiful manga-esque cartoon entitled Samurai. The films are available as Video on Demand and debuted in November and December on Time Warner’s Digital Cable’s ‘Movie Trailers on Demand’ channel. The films have gathered momentum supported by teaser adverts on TV as well as wild postings in New York and spoof film posters in ‘Entertainment Weekly’.

All the ads drive viewers to the GE site www.ge.com/imaginationtheater where the films can be viewed online, although they are also available on YouTube.

The project was conceived by BBDO as a way of allowing consumers to become more engaged and involved with the brand, choosing when they view content rather than having it pushed upon them. It also works well against the TIVO trend of FFWding commercials.

I think it's a great usage of all of the new ways to reach people now, as well as something creative and surprising.

Budweiser is doing something similar as well. They've developed a series of animated humorous shorts for Bud Select. The shorts reflect the antics of the Bud Select logo, now broken down into five little characters. They’re racking up hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube and are surprisingly yet refreshingly irreverent.

All the clips are also hosted online at a bespoke site, www.crowntown.tv ‘Hot Tub’ is my favourite.

Whether this is an indicator of the kind of original content we’ll be able to expect from forthcoming online entertainment hub bud.tv is still unclear, but it’s not a bad start.

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