ARG with a twist
The movie was quite unknown so we decided that making a pure blooded ARG wasn’t the right move. So we decided to make the game a little bit more pedagogic and aiming to reach players who would not usually play an ARG game.

Start
When you start the game you are faced with a dilemma: If you win 250.000 NOK will you keep it for yourself, or donate it? This divided the players into to two groups the good and the greedy ones. In fact 90% played on the greedy side.

Story
The storyline was equal for both groups. Looking for a stolen computer with sensitive business information and the person behind the theft. But the motivation for the two groups was different. The greedy ones who worked for a finance company called Sagen Finans needed to get the laptop because it contained sensitive data and could crush there company. That’s exactly why the good side wanted to get a hold of the PC because their goal was to crush Sagen Finans. During the storyline the players got to know and interact with characters from the movie. There were countless of hard puzzles on the way to the final.

Gameplay
The game is based on the same principles as an original ARG game, but we made a more pedagogical version. The players had to solve quests and report back to their Headquarters. Your assignments are purely based on  the ARG genre and you have to search the web for information, send mail to people, call people, chat with people, hack mail accounts, hack websites and interact online in all sorts of ways to find the answers in the mystery. Every solutions rewards you with a code. This code is brought back to your HQ and given to your boss for a positive or negative response depending on your performance.

Engagement
For about three weeks 16300 people played the game. There were lots of user generated pages  and forums around the web dedicated to either work together or trade game codes.  Also alot of talk and engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Nettby (a Norwegian social network) and different blogs created lots of buzz.

Read in depth case study (in Norwegian) here.

Pecha Kucha presentation by Hyperinteraktiv and Paradox:

its important to believe in what you make even if its advertising. believe that it makes a matter. it has to make you feel good making it. the best things out there is made with passion and love for what you are doing. laugh while making it and it probably will turn out good.

So what if you make a special communication for every single individual in your target audience? It seems like a heck of a lot work and it probably is if your audience is really big. But this seems like a small audience kind of thing. This is direct marketing just pin pointed.

We did a little test on this back at school. We wanted to put some colors in the streets of Oslo. That’s nice and everything but what if we gave the flowers to people? What if every single flower was planted because of one single persons request? That’s what we did. We went online asked people of Oslo were they wanted some color in the city. Then we just went out planted the flowers at the places people wanted and wrote a little message to the person who requested it. The response was overwhelming. Receivers stumbled upon their flowers on the street and was amazed and blogged about it. We was satisfied about the effect.

That was a small scale test. Our ant farm. This one thing we sure are gonna look more into. Power to the people!

xoxo

But what about the good “old” advertising? Is it dead?

It would be naive to say that a billboard or a TV commercial isn’t working. It is working damn well. I feel it myself. I want to run out of the coach to buy some of the stuff I see advertised on the TV screen. The question is: Is this the right way to communicate my message? What do I owe my consumers? Can I justify to make a crappy product and lure people to buy it because I’m screaming out the brands name?

The old media is a powerful medium. But it is an interrupting medium which don’t enhances the product sold but informs me of the product. The power of new media aka Internet if used in the right way is the ability to enhance the product and give it new abilities trough marketing (think of McDonalds The Lost Ring vs a McDonalds TV commercial). That’s powerful.

Use whats suites you.

What do you think?

Jacob Lachman

The first day at Taggen, as the natives call it, started with bad coffee, some fruit and a workshop by Jacob Lachman from Go Viral. The start was a little bit boring because we already had plenty of knowledge of the content he was telling us about. But after a while he really delivered. He gave us four generic steps for making a good viral, and it was a quite useful list and can be very handy if your client asks you to make a Viral.

1. Create an outstanding story
People still loves a good story. Here are some main subjects to build your work upon.

• Brand humor
• Amazing stories
• Cool demos
• Twist/Joke
• Social truths

2. Leverage pop-culture

• Celebrities
• Hook ( ex. Dynamite Surfing )
• Pop-culture references ( ex. Will it Blend)

3. Social Value

4. Building an ongoing narrative

Bastholm

After the workshop, we listened to Mr. Bastholm talking about the Social Storytelling.

As we didn’t get the whole speech, we only got to write down one page with notes. This is the list of four ways to make social storytelling.

1. Hijacked Story

• fan fiction
• (ex. @don_draper, we are Sterling Cooper)

2. Responsive Story

• Respond to your audience
• (ex. EA sport, Tiger Woods walking on water, response to a glitch in the game.)

3. Travelling Story

• Nike Photo ID (viral shoes)

4. Interactive Story

• (ex. The Lost Ring (ARG) by McDonalds.)

Yoni Kish

One of the best presentations was delivered by Yoni Kish from McCann Digital in Israel. He had some nice slides, with big texts in Helvetica, only a couple words on each slide.

He also was a good speaker, talking about the importance of delivering value to the receivers.

These are the seven (nine? WTF) Ps

1. Price

2. Product Innovation

3. Practical

• Time saving
• Energy saving
• Drop dead simple

4. Popular

• Personalization Interaction
• Personalized product

5. Pleasure

• To use
• To view
• In conversation

6. Play

7. Participation

• Win-win
• Crowd filtering
• Collective intelligence

8. Purpose

• Larger meaning
• Define an agenda
• ex. Jedi

9. Platform

• Building an ecosystem
• ex. Nike +, Fiat eco drive

Modern advertising = ADDING VALUE

• Add value at every state of the advertising.

Then there was Microsoft, and we considered that to be a bit boring and soulless. No notes were taken during this presentation. Graphics, numbers…Microsoft this, and Microsoft that.

Gerry McGovern

And then Gerry McGovern came a long with his funny tie and enthusiasm talking about “The Long Neck”. It was a thrilling talk about removing pages from websites, instead of adding new ones. “Every time you add something, you add complexity.” This sentence kind of sum up his presentation, but I sure was a good one.

Day two

After a restless night, because an overloaded brain, we were ready for the second day at the conference. Johannes and Martin jumped on a bus, ready to get more knowledge. This day started with better coffee and great conversations with other listeners. First to go was Chris Anderson, from Wired Magazine. He was talking about “giving things away for free”. And we couldn’t agree more.

Here are some of our notes:

Youtube is wasting videos, in search of better videos.

21st century Bits Economy

Free :

1. A Marketing Trick

(ex. Gillette, Cellphones)

2. Ad supported

• ex. Radio, tv etc
• eventually you pay for the lunch ( the products that is marketed on TV gets more expensive.

3. Freemium

• Time limited
• Ex. Flickr premium, ning

4. Gift Economy

• ex. Wikipedia

If something is almost free, give it away for free and sell something else.

Five free lessons from games:

People will pay for:

• Saving time
• Lower risk
• Things they love
• Status
• Make them (Once they are hooked)

The hard way (Free) – The easy way (Pay for it)

There is absolute nothing wrong with music, there is something wrong in selling plastic discs.

Jack Myers

Next to speak was Jack Myers. He gave us emerging principles of advertising.

1. Establish relevance
2. Define differentiation
3. Conform to patterns and ritals
4. Establish and maintain trust
5. Engender passion

Follow the content, not technology!

Now we were warmed up, and ready for a break. NRK P2 wanted to do a interview with a couple of students on the situation in Norway, and why the digital marketing is so much better in Sweden. We talked to the guy from P2 and headed back to our seats, for more wisdom and a peek into the future.

Mike Walsh

8 ideas for tomorrow:

1. Naturals

• People born after 1994 are not aware of a world without Internet. Talking to them in old media terms are no use.
• Post 80s generation of China do not watch television.

2. Mobile

• Anywhere, anytime, anything
• In Korea everybody use mobile televisions
• Dennis Mendiolas Chikka ( sms twitter for celebrities)
• Mobagetown mobile ( cola co-promotion)
• Memorial QR codes: Youtuve video of the dead persons life.

3. Discovery

• We will watch what other people tell us to watch.
• Crow sourced advertising Sam Flemming, CIC media.
• Brand recommendations, will come from people in your network.

4. Crowd

• Tuango: groups in Japan demanding a discount.
• Sharon Stones comment on Tibet.

5. Where

Where is the new when?

• placeengine.com: Wifi location tagging. Isolates the days that are special based on your movement and create albums.
• Sekar Camera by Takahito Iguchi: Tag the real world with iPhone. ( Ex. Go to a restaurant, and use your iPhone on a meal and watch comments on it.)

• Yoku Paike citizan video

Location awareness will be the core of social media.

6. Play

• Virtual currency

• Net addiction

7. Overlay

• Wearable pc prototypes. Rekimoto labs.
• babak

The world will be the new net.

8. Mediajack

• You can not stop music.
• China: Red Cliff online distribution.

The only way to win the game, is to change it.

Kjell A. Nordströms

Then a funky professor entered the stage. He was a stand up comedian with a message. The twitter messages onscreen on Kjell A. Nordströms performance, all said the same thing: They loved the professor.

The talk was mainly about how to survive the new age that is coming.

• Capitalism don’t have a problem, General Motors does.
• Karaoke capitalism: The media landscape is a karaoke machine. You sing along, sing along and sing along.
• Go for the temporary monopoly. (ex. Ikea, iPhone)
• Forget about technology. (Necessary, but not sufficient.)
• Only ability to change is rewarded in nature. (Survival of the fittest)
• Survival of the sexiest; either sexy nor fit.

Please enjoy capitalism. It really seems to work.

Seth Godin

Then Seth Godin talked to us, live from New York.

• He told us that Internet was a radio for ideas.
• How to spread your idea? Give it away for free.
• Why do you want to post good stuff on Twitter? You have to earn permission.
• How to market a product people want to talk about?
• We don’t buy the product, but style, how we feel and story.
• If you want people to talk about something, you better give them something to talk about.

Is that all you are going to do during a revolution? Make some pop-up banners?

• Everyone is a restaurant critic
• You need to multiply sites so that people can find you
• Reach the right people
• Story makes it easy to spread your word.

If I go on twitter, I wouldn’t do anything else. I would sit there like a monkey.

• There are no boring products. All products make cool stuff.
• Every medium was designed for advertising (Tv, Newspapers)
• Internet doesn’t care. It doesn’t need advertising.
• If it doesn’t spread, you need a new idea.
• The movie becomes the marketing. ( The movie is free, selling souvenirs and other stuff)
• Marketing is about leadership. Leading tribes.

Is it worth doing? If its worth it: Do it.

Lead us. We will follow you.

In this project, we tested how effective it was to concentrate on separated individuals, in order to reach out to a larger group. We bought pansies, because flowers are associated with the act of giving. We posted a request on a forum, asking people to give us suggestions on where they wanted us to plant a flower, within the boarders of Oslo. We planted it, and dedicated it to the person who had recommended a place. This was an excellent way to reach out to women.

Stay Calm Iphone App
An application gives you tools to achieve total relaxation. Here you can get tips about yoga, meditation techniques or calm music that you can listen to while you are drinking your cup of tea.

Stay Calm Website

Schedule Tea break:
On the website you will be able to set the time, so that relaxing music will be played whenever you find the need for a break. On the schedule we have programmed pauses, and your screen will turn to white and remind you that it´s time to relax.

Start Tea break:
If you need to take a break, you can start the pause yourself, by pressing the “Start-Tea-Break”-button.

Stay Calm on the Streets
In hectic streets, Yogi Tea gives you an installation, where you can sit down and rebuild your harmony. A sound shower gives you sounds from the nature, while blocking stressful noises from the surroundings.

Stay Calm Banners
Yogi Tea buys all the banners that are placed on newspapers on net, and gives the receiver a break in a chaotic landscape. The banners will lead you to the tea break site.

Get a closer relationship to your car-renting activities, as we empty the GPS for information. How many miles did you leave behind on your last vacation to Portugal? How about sharing your roadtrip in the states with your friends? Log in to your personal AVIS-site.

Client:
AVIS

Task:
To get people to hire their rental car, five days in advance.

Insight 1: The AVIS cars are equipped with a GPS.

Insight 2: People like to document their own traveling activity.

When you hire a car from AVIS, an interactive world map, will be established. From the moment you turn your car key, the GPS sends information to your personal site. This makes you able to log into your profile, and watch your tracks afterwards.

You will also be able to read how many miles you have driven, get information about your rental car and all kinds of relevant information.

A bonus system, not unlike the one some air companies use, gives the client the possibility of getting some advantages, based on how far they have driven.