Saturday, February 08, 2014

Why Are There No Great Digital Campaigns?

Ok so looking around there seems to be very few great campaigns that are actually based on digital insight.

Whoa there! Before you get your digital underwear in a twist; sure many use digital channels to deliver on more traditional insights. But those are in the majority. And there are some truly amazing ones. Pick any cyber Cannes winner.

But what I am after is amazing work that has come from a uniquely digital behaviour. What goes into the brief from a planner rather than what comes out from a creative.

For an example of the difference; BK Subservient Chicken was amazing creative use of digital to drive a benefit; BK Whopper Sacrifice was based on an understanding of how people behave on Facebook.

- The Philips Cannes radio was based on the insight (gathered by social media listening) that mums talked about spying on their kids with the camera baby monitor.

- McDonalds changed the name of their free wifi to advertise their meal deals because they knew people jumped on their wifi from neighbouring restaurants.

- People tweet boring stuff - you know who you are - so Expedia travelled the tweets to different parts of the world to show how travel makes them more interesting.

- People use their Phones as alarm clocks and teenage boys  dream about waking up next to a beautiful women so Axe made the Wake-Up Service

It's a little blurry and plenty cases could be argued either way but there seem to be very few of the latter.