October saw the release of Battlestar Galactica Season 4 on DVD and we were on hand to help Universal Playback engage and excite the core fan base with our video banner builder, a tool which essentially allows users to do our online marketing for us and create their own, personalised banners! We also built the online advertising creative, including this expandable leaderboard which makes excellent use of high action video before expanding out to showcase bios for the full cast. Likewise, the expandable MSN banner has the same scrolling character biography mechanic for users to familiarise themselves with the cast. We are happy to announce that in its first week of release, the DVD sales smashed the client’s sales targets. Excellent news all round!
We have recently begun working closely with lovely agency Frank PR, and have just completed our first creative build, a campaign site for Cancer Research UK’s Run 10k. The site was built mainly in html and to a ‘AA W3C’ Accessibility Standard to ensure that it is usable by as many people as possible. On it you can take a quiz which cleverly estimates how long it would take you to complete the 10k run based on your vital statistics and lifestyle, challenge a friend to do the run with you or simply sign up yourself. It’s for a good cause…
Harnessing the power of online fan communities is a given when marketing products with a hardcore fan base so we have devised a fan site competition for 505 Games’ launch of Supreme Commander. Launched from a bespoke campaign website, users can download all the tools and assets needed to create the ultimate fan site and then submit their completed site for judging. Prizes on offer include a brand spanking new Xbox elite and copies of the game signed by the developer – a must have for any fan.
Today I’m Doing… is our first foray into designing, building and developing a Facebook application from scratch. The app allows users to customise their virtual self and dress them in a variety of clothes, shoes and accessories, changing colours, fabrics and patterns as they go. One for the laydeeees.
Ever since Heroes hit our screens it has become something of a cult phenomenon, so we focused our creative campaign for the release of the Season 2 box set on engaging the fans and giving them content to share. Firstly, we created a widget which plays to host to an exclusive clip. The hook? The more people who embed the widget, the more of the clip they are able to see. We also created a snaggable video MPU which allows the users to grab it as a widget and place on their own social network profile or blog, along with a standard leaderboard and wide sky to be used on the Film channel on The Sun website. Finally, we built an expandable video banner for MSN Messenger which has been used to target the audience demographic and reach out to Heroes fans.
As featured on this here blog recently, our Carrie’s MacBook content piece for the Sex and the City movie has not only done phenomenally well in terms of visits and user interaction, it has also won us a few awards! We received e-creative’s Website of the Day on 21st May and Design Licks Site of the Day on 31st May, as well as 1st Runner Up in the IAB Creative Showcase for May 2008. Last, but by no means least, it was also crowned New Media Age’s Campaign of the Month. Grab a copy of NMA this week to see the feature, and a lovely photograph of our Head of Strategy, Mr Christian Edwards. Alternatively, you can click here to download a PDF scan of the pages. Congratulations us!
As reported back in December, we’ve spent the last 6 months working on a viral for the theatrical release of the Sex and the City movie. Now hosted on the official movie website is ‘Carrie’s MacBook’. This cleverly designed flash interface gives users ‘access’ to Carrie Bradshaw’s personal desktop where they can snoop around her calendar, emails, pictures, musings and more. Challenges are set through a series of ‘chats’ with other SATC characters and once all have been completed, the user can unlock access to exclusive content in the hard drive. The campaign is currently getting lots of press and blog coverage. We also created a lovely SATC expandable MPU, take a look at it here…
We have recently been working closely with Vodafone to help push their mobile advertising services. Using Flash Lite, a mobile enabled version of Adobe Flash, we created an application for the Nokia N95 phone and a CD Rom which showcases Vodafone’s mobile advertising opportunities and case studies. You can see an online demo of the CD Rom presentation here (bear in mind the graphics were produced to run off a CD ROM and not off the web… could be a bit slow to load and the animation may be a bit jerky for you).
We’ve just launched an international site for Square Enix for the launch of DS game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, part of the hugely popular Final Fantasy franchise. The site is build in flash and with international localization being facilitated through xml files. Learn about the characters, magical abilities and immerse yourself in the fairytale world of Final Fantasy here…
Set to be one of the biggest releases this year, we have been beavering away on the international new media toolkit for the latest Marvel movie, Iron Man. To reach out to the core fans we created an iGoogle skin and Google gadget, as well as a video clip banner builder which lets users create their own personalised embeddable banner. For the mainstream, movie going audience the advertising toolkit focuses on highlighting the all star cast and video clips. Take a look…
Play our treacherous river raft game and see if you can reach the centre of the earth without hitting the rocks or being attacked by the sea dwelling monsters! You may also notice that we have widgetised the game so that users can grab it and place it on their blog or social network profile to play and share with others – the perfect way to create a natural viral spread online. This was created for New Line Cinema (RIP) to help promote their forthcoming release, Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Back in 2006 we created the UK’s first magazine ‘website as a blog’ for stylish men’s mag Arena. This month, we have given the blog a bit of an overhaul, refreshed the design and improved the usability, both from a content producer and reader perspective. Take a look at the new stylings here: http://www.arenamagazine.co.uk/
Continuing our foray into the world of fashion, we recently completed our first piece of work for trendy label Boxfresh. We have created the You vs. Boxfresh website and blog which features a year long t-shirt design competition. Users can create their own designs, either using their own tools or our on-site design tool, and upload them to the online gallery. Each month, the best of the bunch is selected and the designer wins themselves £250. The overall winner at the end of the year wins £1,000 plus the chance to design their very own 6-piece Boxfresh t-shirt collection for the brand.
As Lord Chesterfield once said, “If you are not in fashion, you are a nobody”…
…but enough about me, let’s talk about our creative work. Last year we built a microsite for a fantastic little piece of personal recording kit – the Edirol R09. This year, may we present the R09HR; a sleeker, sexier, beefed up version of the original device.
Take a look at the upgraded site we have created for the R09HR, which is a whole lot sexier with more content to boot, and has been used to showcase the new product at international trade fair Muskimesse Frankfurt this month. Oh, and we knocked up a neat skyscraper while we were at it.
Lovely client and cunning media agency Quantum have been providing us with a steady stream of work recently, including the chance to work with Dominos Pizza. With a lovely MySpace promotion, we’re challenging pizza fans to devise the best and most innovative ways to recycle their old Dominos Pizza boxes. Users who submit their videos through our branded MySpace page are in with a chance to win a brand new i-Mac.
In the words of pizza scoffing legend Homer Simpson… “mmmm…. Pizza”.
We are currently in the throes of a project for our US friends New Line Cinema for what is set to be the biggest chick flick of 2008…Sex And The City. It’s all a bit hush hush at the moment, but keep your eyes peeled in the coming months. To whet your appetite you can check out the official US website and production blog for all things SATC related.
The end of November saw the DVD release of Shrek The Third and, therefore, all of our online activity went live. We took over the CITV site, which included tons of creative advertising formats, a treasure hunt and watermarked character background. We also had characters integrated into Toonattik and advertising throughout the AOL Entertainment section. There was also over 40 Shrek-related competitions dotted around the web all combining to make a huge swampy splash for the release in the run up to Xmas.
Making waves on the fashion scene now, New Media Maze are pleased to announce the start of a beautiful friendship with premium men’s clothing brand Clerk & Teller. Recently, we launched a travel blog for them, on which they will be charting their exploits (complete with photographic evidence) from a series of quirky trips around the world. The first few posts are already up and feature tales from 5 star hotels and hedonistic clubs of the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
The Christmas season is almost upon us so it’s about time we stepped up with the festive cheer. Our friends at Universal Playback are releasing a set of Complete Collection boxsets for their most popular titles, with some seriously cool packaging. We designed and built them a sexy little microsite to show off each boxset with images and trailers included.
EA are sponsoring this years British Academy Children’s Awards so to help them find the UK’s favourite kids film, we launched the BAFTA Kids’ Vote site. Here, users can also download wallpapers and badges for each nominated film, watch trailers and vote for which film they think should be crowned the winner, as well as win themselves prizes!
Our money’s on Harry Potter…
