A Faboolous Oreo Post

Oreo celebrated Halloween on Twitter and Vine by remaking scenes from classic horror films. Using Oreos, milk and minisets, the ads are way more adorable than scary, but faboolous nonetheless!

From PSFK,

Remember the blood elevator scene in “The Shining”? Well, Oreo replaced the gory blood with a river of milk, flooding down the hall.  Ad agency 360i developed the series of ads for the cookie company. With the Oreo cookie as the star of the show, the Vines have been uploaded onto Twitter.

Why I’m Curious

It doesn’t matter if you’re in beauty, toys or financial services – there’s a good chance a client has brought up that they want social content to be like Oreo. I think Oreo is one of the only brands that simple posts receive publicity, rather than videos or larger campaigns. While all their social executions do excite me and I’m always eager to see what they put out, I think the flexibility of the product to be connected to culture is what makes them a constant social media win.

What if telekinesis was real? How would you react?

Carrie is an upcoming supernatural horror film. It is the third film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1974 novel of the same name (1st Edition). The studio behind the new horror remake “Carrie” played mind games with customers at a West Village coffee shop with a hidden-camera stunt showing a woman suffering a supernatural flip out.

They are also inviting viewers to create a video on Vine or Instagram using #FlexLikeCarrie, showing their ability to flex like Carrie (click here for the official site).

Read more here.

Why I am Curious

It is nearly impossible to predict if a video will go viral (in particular, if there are no media dollars behind or a distribution strategy), although we keep seeing that there are common characteristics in branded viral videos: they must elicit emotions from viewers such as hilarity and/or surprise.

Honda’s Twitter/Vine Auction

As part of Project Drive-In, Honda hosted the first ever live Twitter Vine auction yesterday with proceeds going to preserving drive-in theaters. Famed film critic Leonard Maltin served as the auctioneer for the one-day event where available items/times were posted via Vine on Honda’s Twitter and users could bid via tweet and #DriveInAuction hashtag.

Why I’m Curious: We’ve seen everything from fashion shows to democratized with the help of digital and social media. Major auction houses like Sotheby’s or Christie’s could certainly learn from this initiative and open up their offering to a wider base.

An Integrated Campaign that Could Have Been

Two brands, two takes on acceleration.

In the first, Volkswagen goes the TV route:

 

In the second, Hyundai takes it to Vine:

Why I’m Curious?

Take the teams that hatched these ads, put them under one roof, and you’ve got a solid integrated team…Great examples of how different media can be used to their strengths to say essentially the same thing.

Airbnb launches crowdsourced ‘Hollywood & Vines’ project

Vacation rental site Airbnb has launched “Hollywood and Vines,” a campaign asking consumers to contribute six-second clips, the best of which will be included in a short film about travel and adventure.

From August 22 to August 25, Airbnb will deliver “shot instructions” via Twitter at @airbnb. Participants can pick a shot (eg. Fly a paper plane) and shoot a Vine, then share them via #AirbnbHV. The final Vines will be collected and the best ones will be edited into a longer film, to be aired on television on the Sundance Channel (among others). Those whose Vines appear in the film will get a $100 credit for an Airbnb stay. – via CreativityOnline

Why I’m Curious

This is a neat execution from Airbnb. The promotion speaks to millennial travelers and emphasizes Airbnb as a travel brand for adventurous people.  The concept is simple to understand and participate in, and while the incentive is not huge, it feels ‘just right’. While Vine is a great platform for ‘saying less with more’, more and more brands have been flocking to Instagram’ new video function instead of joining Vine.  Airbnb’s ‘short’ challenges, however, do seem better suited to Vine.

116 Vine videos you may want to watch (or not)

YouTube user Eric S (an anonymus user with +2K subscribers)  has gone and created a compilation video of the best Vines of 2013 so far (11:38′). For some reason (apparently, a copyright claim), his video gets deleted each time he uploads a new version.

Read more at Gizmodo.

(Interesting: +52K Facebook Likes, +500 comments, less than 400K video views)

Farmer’s Insurance Tips in 15 seconds or Less

 

 

Farmer’s insurance wants to remind people about the small things that could save them thousands of dollars. But who wants to read a list of tips that might seem like common sense? Instead, they made short and funny 15 second videos to illustrate their point. 

http://smart.farmers.com/

Created with RPA Santa Monica, The site is YouTube-like in that it shows a number of funny videos with limited additional content, such as more realistic tips below each video. Users can filter the content for advice about auto, home, or other. The videos play on common archetypes and varied video styles to keep the user engaged and entertained.

Starting on August 12, they also started rolling out Vine clips wit the hashtag #15secondsofsmart. 

Despite the quality of the content, the number of views is rather low. The action movie spoof earned 33K views in one week, but the other videos earned 300 views. 

 

Why I’m Curious

Even as consumers gravitate more and more to short-form content, quality content doesn’t always make the cut by itself. While it’s great to be playing in emergine media platforms, it’s still important to support these initiatives with more traditional efforts that can drive traffic to the content. I’m curious to see if the tweets and the hashtags will end up upping the traffic. 

#howto: GE asks Vine users to show off homemade science projects

General Electric is holding a “science fair” promotion through social media, asking fans to submit Vine videos of common experiments, such as mixing soap and food coloring to create a cool result. GE plans to select the best examples and share them through its blog and social channels. GE is promoting the campaign with advertisements on social sites including Facebook, Twitter, BuzzFeed and Tumblr.

#6secondscience

Read more here.

Why I am Curious

Even with the very recent debut of Instagram video, seven-month-old Vine seems to be continuing to gain steam among brands like GE.

In recent days, brands such as Tide, Volkswagen, McDonald’s and The Weather Channel have utilized the short videos to capitalize on Discovery’s popular Shark Week series.

Honda Answers Customers’ Tweets with Vine Videos

To promote its Summer Clearance Event, Honda took to social media on July 15th, using Twitter and Vine to encourage interaction with customers. Asking them to tweet why they are sick of their old cars, using the hashtag #wantnewcar, the company then responded to individual gripes with amusing Vine videos. The six second videos were personalized to each complaint and encouraged the user to get a new Honda at the sale event.

brandchannel reports:

The hashtag saw 6,895 Twitter mentions from 5,617 users with 14.8 million estimated Twitter impressions. The word “Honda” received an estimated 247 million impressions between July 14 and Tuesday morning.

Why I’m Curious: There are a lot of big companies that wrestle with how to use social media as a promotional platform. While Twitter and Facebook have been leverage well by a lot of brands, I love studying the different, more experimental ways brands use Instagram and Vine. Honda’s approach harnessed the brevity of Vine and used it in a fun way, interacting with younger customers both quickly and creatively.

Vine Talent Agency; Looking for Vine Talent

A creation of a new talent agency called Grape Story was created by Vaynerchuk, because he thought it took a very creative individual to have a serious following on Vine due to the fact that their needs to A) be a story- with a beginning, middle, and end, and B) it can only take over a span of 6 seconds. In the eyes of Vaynerchuk, for a Vine user to have a following of 314,000 people, is a series reflection of Vine Talent.

Via Fast Company

“Even though it’s six seconds, it still has to have a beginning, middle, and end whether it’s explicit or not,” Mancuso says. “So I think, okay, how can I deliver some kind of six-second progression with a bang that delivers something.… The fact that it loops actually gives a lot of flexibility for comedy.”

Why I’m Curious:

It amazes me how talent scouts are now even looking at Vine to track down and locate the social media entertainer experts. When Jenna Marbles became a YouTube sensation heads were turned- but now it’s even come to Vine Personalities. I wonder how the scope of famous internet personalities will turn out.

Vine Reacts to Instagram Video with a Promoted Tweet

https://twitter.com/vineapp/status/347136891281358849

Following (or right before) the announcement of Instagram’s new video feature, Vine promoted a tweet thanking users for all the videos they’ve created. It was a nice tactic to keep the original mini-video platform top-of-mind among the trending conversation about Insta-video. But the update seems to be inciting a social media battle of sorts.

We know that Vine is more popular on Twitter than Instagram (and rightfully so since it’s seamlessly incorporated), and we also know that Facebook owns Instagram. CNN seems to think that Facebook is a Twitter copycat.

Why I’m Curious

There used to be a much clearer distinction between different social media platforms. Facebook was for networking with fellow students, then friends, and now everyone. Twitter was strictly for 140 character posts. YouTube for video, Instagram for images, and so on. But the lines are getting blurred with each update. And social media platforms are competing with each other to keep their users engaged for longer.

So what’s the benefit of using all Facebook products instead of Twitter? Will people start sticking to one platform for all their social media needs? I’m curious to see how the Instagram update (and more to come in the future) will effect how we use social media.

First Vine World Record

Mashable used their love of Vine for a good cause this week. The site teamed up with (RED) to raise awareness for the fight against AIDS and share participation on social media.

From Mashable,

You can help set the first ever Vine world record by creating a Vine right now! Mashable is teaming up with (RED) to set the record for most Vine videos sent for a single cause and drive awareness to the fight against AIDS.

Being a part of the Vine world record is simple. All you need to do is create a Vine video and share it with the hashtag #REDworldrecord.

Red is heart. Red is blood. Red is vibrant. Red is strong. Red is live. #REDWorldRecord https://t.co/GtTtEBdMEx

— Pinot W. Ichwandardi (@pinot) June 5, 2013

Why I’m Curious

Vine hit the hallways of mb this week, and it didn’t stop there. As I continued to watch #mcb24 Vines on Twitter, my addiction grew and was curious if there are any other stunt campaigns happening. I thought this was a very simple execution and unique awareness play. It really allowed participants to decide their level of creativity, but still get the warm and fuzzies from participating in a greater cause.

Lowe’s Embraces Six-Second Vine Videos For Spring Campaign

Plenty of marketers are experimenting with Vine, but few have made the 6-second video platform truly useful for consumers. Lowe’s may be on its way to cracking the code. The home improvement retailer has launched a dozen Vine videos featuring home improvement tips like how to remove a stripped screw, get rust off of knives and use pillowcases to organize sheets. Those tips had existed in text form, but Vine provided the “perfect vehicle to bring them to life and make them shareable and fun to watch” according to the brand.

Stripped screw? No problem, just use a rubber band. #lowesfixinsix #howto https://t.co/zNdoiIvFOi

— Lowe's (@Lowes) April 21, 2013

Historically the category can be thought of as incredibly complicated. We sell products but those products are components to a project, and a consumer needs all the information on how to complete the project,” said Tom Lamb, chief marketing officer at Lowe’s. “What consumer behavior is forcing us to do is learn to be incredibly concise. We’re making an effort to demonstrate that we know a little bit, so [consumers think] it’s worth seeing what else we know on our site and in store.”

Lowe’s tapped an expert to help with its Vine debut. Meagan Cignoli, a photographer and established Vine user, worked with BBDO on the videos, which were shot in the agency’s New York office. Ms. Cignoli was also a finalist with two entries in the inaugural #6secfilms Vine contest at the Tribeca Film Festival. “We shot them all on an iPhone in our closet-sized studio. [Meagan] brought a lot of talent and a nice feel for how to bring these things to life in a quirky way,” Mr. Boudreau said. “She had embraced stop-motion photography and used it in a way that made us smile and felt right for the brand.”

Any sticker peels right off when you use a hair dryer. #lowesfixinsix #tip #stopmotion https://t.co/FpFvJSbgMv

— Lowe's (@Lowes) April 24, 2013

Why Am I Curious?

I really appreciate this because it is not using a platform just because it is shiny and new but also trying to make it their own. In addition, I do love the style of the videos, as I believe it gives a new dimension to the brand and what they stand for. It is neat that they are being mindful of the platform they are on and really adjusting their creative to stand out and be relevant to a newer audience on a new stage.

Urban Outfitters and Converse Want to See #yourchucks

These Chucks went on a date: http://t.co/sc8y6pd2TV Where do #yourchucks go? Show us on Vine! @Converse

— Urban Outfitters (@UrbanOutfitters) April 24, 2013

In what may be the second brand contest on Vine, Urban Outfitters and Converse are asking hipsters everywhere to show off their Chuck Taylors. To enter, create a six-second video of a day in the life of your sneakers and post to Vine using #yourchucks.

The winning video receives a trip to San Francisco AND Brooklyn, Urban Outfitters gift cards, and 10 pairs of chucks. (More at Mashable)

Why I’m Curious

Vine has been around since January, but brands have been taking their time figured out the best way to leverage this new platform. We’ve seen a couple examples of brands using Vine to share content, but Urban Outfitters and Converse are really the first set out on a larger scale to get content from their fans. Overall, the contest seems like a great fit for the brands and their super-hip followers, and Vine definitely adds a layer that other social platforms lack. I’m curious to see how the contest pans out – we all know how difficult it can be to get UGC (especially good UGC), but maybe Vine will be different?

 

MLB 13: The Show Hits It Out of the Park with Vine

Meet the new #Brewers heavy hitter, @Haudricourt. He's a pitcher's worst nightmare. https://t.co/6mvS4c5tmy #MLB13

— MLB The Show (@MLBTheShow) April 18, 2013

– David Geller

For Playstation’s MLB 13: The Show video game the company has used Vine to try to reinvent the baseball card.  They have taken the faces (as they appear in their Twitter profiles) of sports bloggers, baseball stars and well-known fans and put them into a digital baseball card for their favorite team.  They’ve made about 30 so far. (more at BusinessInsider)

Why I’m Curious

Vine is another one of those uber-buzzed about social networks that we in the industry are still trying to figure out what to do with. Playstation had to:

• Get an artist to turn the subject’s Twitter avatar into a player in the game.
• Play the game…a lot.  Like, long enough to get all kinds of highlight-reel worthy footage of strike outs and grand slams.
• Then, since you can’t import video into Vine, they had to shoot it off of a monitor w an iPhone.

How to use Vine, pt. II

Film studio, FilmDistrict is experimenting with Vine for the promotion of its new film, Olympus Has Fallen. The studio has held a number of free advance screenings of the film, and is encouraging viewers to post their six-second reviews to Vine with the hashtag #OlympusHasFallen. User submitted Vines are then collected, presumably curated in some way, and posted to a campaign microsite.

Why I’m Curious?

It’s fun experimenting with new platforms…And it of course takes time to identify the best ways to use them.

I see this campaign smartly capitalizing upon the eagerness of early-adopters to find any way to make use of the platform, as well as making the “ask” (i.e. tape yourself talking about the movie) simple and straightforward (contrast this with an ask that might require a bit more creativity/effort on behalf of users).

While both of these factors might add up to a lot of submissions, if it’s the intent to have people actually engage with the content…it better be interesting. And it’s not. At the end of the day, do I really care what someone who is neither my friend nor a critic has to say about a movie?

How to use Vine

Will Sasso, it is said, is an actor. If you were to, say, look for all of his Vines, you would also discover that this is the only man in the entire universe to use the medium correctly and, what’s more, you will laugh all day long at his tiny, tiny videos.

Why I’m Curious

Vine is one of those social mediums that keeps people scratching their heads. People who use it, love it. But what’s the right way to use to channel and how are we going to see brands starting to jump on board?

Comics and Movies Released on Vine

This week, a film distribution company and digital agency used short video clips on Vine to tell a larger story. Oscilloscope Labs released their latest feature film, It’s a Disaster as a long series of six-second video clips. While UK digital agency CodeComputerLove, created an online comic called The Last Drop that play through panels of video with one click of the play button.

While the two releases are quite different, they’re both evidence of how the app can be used to engage audiences – not only because the technology is still new (and exciting), but also because Vine offers a new way to tell a story digitally.

Oscilloscope’s “Minister of Informative Updates” Bruce Farnsworth said “From the moment it launched just three short weeks ago, it was so clear to us that six-second loops of video, edited in-phone, and posted in real time was and will be the future of film distribution. While we still endeavor to release films via some other methods, we didn’t want to be left out in the cold and we are proud to be an early adopter of tomorrow, early.”

Why I’m Curious

Sometimes adopting a new platform as quickly as possible is the best way to get some pick up from the digital world. Oscilloscope released the trailer for It’s a Disaster on YouTube and the film will also go for a limited run in theaters…but that’s what every other film distributor does.  Same goes for CodeComputerLove – they jumped on the opportunity to use Vine to tell a 42-second story and put it online.

I’m curious to see how future usage of Vine can change how we approach video content. The comic panel approach would be create for instructional content, product reveal or sharing clues. We already seen plenty of studies that tell us that shorter is better when it comes to engaging users with social video, so shifting gears toward an app like Vine might be the right solution.