Unbutton Your Beast: Levi's Lets it Out

There's a beast in my jeans and it wants to talk to you! Yeah, that's the basic premise behind Levi's new "Unbutton Your Beast" viral campaign. Unbutton Your Beast is simple, bold, funny and exposes you (pun intended) to the brand and the product being pitched in an unmistakable way. I give Levi's a big thumb's up for stepping up, and "going there" with this viral campaign.

Tricked Out Mouse: Adobe Site of the Day for 1/15/08

Wow... what a week! We got the news last night that Tricked Out Mouse was selected as the Adobe Site of the Day for January 15. Adobe reviews and filters hundreds of submissions every day and picks just one site per day to be featured in the Adobe Showcase.

With designers and agencies the world over vying for attention from the undisputed leader in creativity software, this recognition is a serious honor. Score one for Singularity!

Tricking out a brand

There are few things that are as much fun as breathing fire and creativity into an established brand. We had an opportunity to do this recently and I have to say that the end result is pretty damn cool!

Singularity Design recently launched Tricked Out Mouse, an interactive promotional microsite for Kensington Computer Products Group. The site lets visitors "trick out" a boring, beige, two-button computer mouse as if it was a wild hot rod. They can pick a paint job, wheels, headlights, ground fx, roof accessories and various other customizations. From there, they can pick a backdrop, and a set of tunes to play and then name and save their creation to display to the world.

To make this a more compelling marketing vehicle, we tied in a prize giveaway featuring Kensington products. The key here (and to really effective online branding) is to really tie the concept, message, execution and supporting details to the brand identity and business objectives. I like to think of it as a layering process. The more layers you add that reinforce the brand identity (carefully blended), the more clearly that identity will transfer to the minds of the consumers.

The site launched in December, and it has received visitors from over 75 countries (all of whom are now more familiar with Kensington's brand), received great feedback from end users and industry experts alike, and been featured on industry sites like Ads Of The World and NewsToday.

Visit the site at http://www.TrickedOutMouse.com/

Bob Dylan: Master of Viral Marketing?

Bob Dylan has always been a pioneer, a messenger with messages to deliver and a true gift for musical communication. Now, with the help of a UK design firm, he is part of the new era of viral marketing.

Dylan Messaging, a very cool microsite promoting the upcoming release of his greatest hits compilation, allows visitors to send out a custom message to their friends in a very unique way. Your message, chopped into 10 small pieces, is superimposed on the stack of posters revealed one by one by a very young Bob Dylan in the famous opening scene of the documentary "Don't Look Back" (the popular INXS video for "Mediate" was an homage to this same scene).

In addition to being very well implemented, this viral marketing vehicle helps demonstrate a winning formula:

(cultural phenomenon)
+ (personalization)
+ (activity focused on broadcast) = viral marketing success

This same formula was immensely successful for the online marketing efforts for the movie "Snakes on a Plane", featuring customized voicemail messages from Samuel L. Jackson. While Dylan Messaging may not have the same broad audience appeal, I'm sure it will be a big hit among its target demographic of Bob Dylan fans.

A Tale of Two Burgers: PetMoustache.com vs Gofbot.com

Throughout the history of modern marketing, there have been some truly legendary rivalries. One of the biggest has been between the Clown and the King. In other words, McDonald's vs. Burger King. This rivalry has been going for a long time and certainly shows no signs of slowing. At the same time, there has certainly been a shift in the balance of power in the marketing to the adult demographic in recent years. The current balance (in favor of Burger King, in my opinion) is obvious by looking at new campaigns from both camps that debuted in recent days: "Gofbot.com" from McDonalds and the Western Whopper mustached campaign (featuring PetMoustache.com) from Burger King.

PetMoustache.com
I'll lead off with Burger King. Ever since they revived their mascot, in the form of a regally dressed, slightly creepy king with a permanent plastic smile, their marketing has been interesting, innovative and eye-catching. In this campaign, they are touting the limited-time-only Western Whopper by giving this sandwich the supernatural power of growing a western cowboy moustache on anyone who eats it. In the TV commercials, we see various types of consumers happily savoring the Western Whopper with a big bushy moustache growing on their face, whether they are teens, old ladies playing cards, or even a lucky basset hound that gets to finish his owner's burger. All of this is interspersed with western music and shots of The King doing a bit of an old-west jig.

The commercials themselves are attention-grabbing, but in keeping with Burger King's commitment to online marketing (which goes all the way back to Subservient Chicken) they don't stop with just the commercials. At the end of each commercial, they show the URL for PetMoustache.com. This microsite lets visitors upload a photo of their own face from their computer (of course, I'm sure you could use a friend's face instead) and grow, trim and style a moustache on top of it.

Burger King really brings together an all-star collection of viral marketing and interactive branding features in PetMoustache.com. They give visitors to PetMoustache.com the ability to send customized, singing telegram emails to their friends. They also provide several incentives for visitors to register (

GofBot.com
McDonald's new commercial promoting the venerable Big Mac focuses on a startup "dot com" company that claims its forthcoming website will be "bigger than the Big Mac". This creates tons of buzz and hype (obviously suggesting that anything bigger than the Big Mac must be the end-all-be-all). When the site finally launches at the end of the commercial, the "visitors" counter rings up a grand total of three visits. A delivery guy (eating a Big Mac) says "I guess it wasn't bigger than the Big Mac".

It's an okay commercial, but nothing particularly memorable. At the same time, the name of this fictional company, GofBot.com, is repeated many, many times through the commercial. This creates a great opportunity for McDonald's to take a few more cheap shots at dotcom mania and build up more brand exposure for the Big Mac. McDonald's has squandered this opportunity. All that exists at GofBot.com is a single, poorly prepared page, that is only slightly humorous. It does link across to the main McDonald's website, but to a fairly uninspiring "burgers" subpage.

The Winner
A visit to Alexa shows that both website have been getting traffic, a clear indication that the mere mention or presence of these URLS in the tv commercials are driving consumers to check them out. From the perspective of branding, Burger King is embracing this traffic, and McDonald's is wasting it. In this head-to-head, we're declaring the King is still the King.