Major Trends Identified During One Show Festival Week

The One Club's first ever "Creative Week NYC" which included the One Show Festival provided a major international spotlight on the advertising industry worldwide and offered a fascinating glimpse of the latest trends occurring in advertising around the world.

Four major trends emerged from The One Show Festival Week.

The Vast Expansion of the Use of Social Media
According to Mary Warlick, CEO of The One Club, there was a vast expansion of social media as it reached a new level of how it is now being used. "It became clear in reviewing all the work internationally that social media is more important than ever before to providing content to actually drive the campaigns forward. People are able to post material that becomes an integral part of the brands' campaign.

One of the prime examples of this was CumminsNitro/Brisbane for Queensland Tourism "Best Job in the World" integrated branding campaign which won top honors at The One Show for "Best of Show." The campaign promoted a contest where the winner receives $150,000 Australian dollars and a 6 month position as the island caretaker of Hamilton Island overlooking the Great Barrier Reef.

"The campaign generated a massive 2.3 million hits in the first two weeks," says Warlick. "The website crashed because there was so much traffic."

Two of the most significant examples of the growing sophistication of social media involved the Obama presidential campaign. First in "Obama for America," the website allowed people to log on and notify other people thereby extending social networking and turning it into a powerbase to promote the campaign. "It also brilliantly incorporated unprecedented use of Twitter, MySpace and YouTube," says Warlick. "It even contained advertising in video games. It used social networking and media to hit the youth of America and was one of the deciding factors in the election."

In the acclaimed "The Great Schep," comedian Sarah Silverman used her fame and popularity to tackle the controversial topic of Obama's name and even of longstanding prejudices. "This campaign was literally a call to action and used humor as a powerful tool to effect political and social change," says Warlick.

Perhaps the best example of the tremendous impact of social media on advertising seen this year is the hugely successful "Whopper Sacrifice." In the campaign, the theory was proposed that people loved their Whoppers more than they loved their friends. To prove their point, Burger King offered a national challenge in which a free Whooper would be given away for every ten friends an individual deleted off their Facebook pages. Over 200,000 people participated the first week threatening the very concept of Facebook and prompting the company to halt the promotion.

"In all this work, the creative teams took creative advertising and technology to drive the message. These were examples of the user driving content in new, fresh ways in politics, tourism and fast food. They really capitalized on the entertainment value and used it to lock in the massive online audience."



The Power of Commercial Broadcasts
Commercial broadcasts are still the best method of reaching a broad audience at one time.

Several good examples of effective use of commercial broadcasts include Nike's "Next Level." Film director Guy Ritchie used a visual perspective that was dizzying in its speed rushing forward with footage from the perspective of different participants. The creative concept was by 72 & Sunny.

"Nike has been doing good work for twenty years," says Warlick. "Their groundbreaking 'Just Do It' campaign was twenty years ago. The voyeuristic perspective utilized in 'Next Level' pushes the excitement level by employing different vantage points including the goalie."

Goodby's work for the NBA brand was an cooperative effort with network affiliates.

To promote the NBA playoffs, TNT, NBA TV and ESPN teamed together with the goal of producing a commercial which pushed the envelope pumping up the excitement and anticipation of the playoffs themselves. The ads use commercial broadcasting to hit the target television watching audience.

"The series of commercials have a great visual look to it as it takes different faces of superstar athletes in the playoffs in different cities and juxtaposes them in half so two faces show simultaneously from different teams in different cities," says Warlick. "It captures the incredible scope of the playoffs and the excitement that it generates in different cities throughout the country."

The thirty second broadcast commercial is alive and well as proven by several winning quick takes using humor to create brand identity. In Midas' "Chase," the 30 second spot takes on the look of a police surveillance tape. The simple tag line: "Is your car ready for winter?" drives home the message seen in the footage of the commercial itself.

Commercial broadcasts were also effectively tapped by consumer goods. In Crest's "Bulldozer," a simple slogan of "You can say anything with a smile" becomes a wildly imaginative and amusing series of vignettes.

"These commercials prove that television is still the best method to reach the largest audience," says Warlick.

Skittles "Pinata" was another strong example of a food brand using sophisticated humor to attract attention for its brand.



Green Pencil
One of the most striking trends to come out of The One Show Festival was a marked increase in eco-awareness. Recognizing this trend, The One Club introduced the first-ever Green Pencil Award honoring excellence in the field of environmentally conscious advertising, which was presented by famed hip hop superstar and Hollywood film star Chris "Ludacris" Bridges to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners/San Francisco for the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bees integrated branding campaign. The award was presented at the 34th Annual One Show May 6 at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Most prominent in the green campaigns was the "Help the Honey Bees" campaign for Haagen-Dazs which centered around the dwindling honey bee population and its integral role in the pollination of key ice cream ingredients. The campaign also won two gold pencils for Best Integrated Branding and new Best Innovative category, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners initiated the creation of a brand-new Vanilla Honey Bee flavor, for which all proceeds are donated to fund honey bee research and developed a one-of a kind fully integrated marketing campaign.

"The campaign had several components including a paper insert in magazines what was embedded with seeds for planting, two viral dance videos in addition to the television commercials and a website dedicated to promoting the cause," says Warlick.

Leading the pack was the campaign for Clorox's Green Works, a line of natural cleaning products. For "Reverse Graffiti Project," the client commissioned well known graffiti artist Paul "Moose" Curtis and had him use the product on existing grime in San Francisco's Broadway Tunnel and through imaginative stenciling, use the product to produce graffiti featuring trees. Directed by Doug Pray, the ad is evocative and mysterious. Only when the viewer gets close and studies the wall does it become apparent that the background for the trees are made out of the grime of the walls themselves. "The ad clearly defines the product as something that can have a reverse effect on our environment and add beauty to the urban landscape," says Warlick.

Another excellent example is Fiat's "eco-Drive," where a computer application is employed which analyzes a person's driving. There is a step by step tutorial which reduces their carbon footprint by improving the efficiency of their driving.

Perhaps the most compelling was "Thirsty Boy" in Brussels. The campaign was designed to help Unicef get funds to bring clean water to some of the most impoverished countries in the world. In the ad, a young boy rushes onto live television shows and drinks the anchor person's glass of water surprising and in some cases startling the reporter and his guests. "The ad received a great deal of interest from bloggers around the world," says Warlick. "It was almost a performance piece." It also generated interest on YouTube. "There is a hip counter-culture feel to it."



Media Companies are moving to a new level as they become more savvy at promoting themselves
"There has been a prevalent mindset that TV ads are dying but this is not true," says Warlick. "This past year saw the media companies using high end creative to promote their own product."

In addition, Neilsen ratings reported that viewership has increased by 2% during the last year.

In the Discovery Channel's "I Love the World," people from different walks of life are seen and heard singing the same song in a deeply moving collage of humanity. The ad was run in cinemas nationwide and the result was a major influx in viewership for the network.

On the flip side, Hulu's campaign for Huluworld employs wit and celebrity flash with Alec Baldwin skewering television with an erstwhile pitch to use T.V. to help soften the brain of viewers.

MTV, in stark contrast, needed to produce something serious and dramatic in order to promote its Exit Foundation which raises awareness and increase prevention of exploitation and trafficking. "Different Lives" juxtaposed children on a split screen. On the left side, American children were in school and on the other side, exploited children were seen working in severe conditions in a sweatshop making shoes. MTV teamed with Radiohead for the campaign. The end result was that half a billion people watched the ads.

"It was a great example of a network using its own channels to promote the message of their charity," says Warlick.

HBO's decision to use an actual wall installation to promote their series "Big Love" was a particularly innovative example of participatory advertising. The network had a large wall installation featuring full sized figures of the stars of the show. Next to their bodies were headsets where the passerby could hear a variety of over 60 secrets that the characters from the show had from each other. "It brought the promotion to street level and the response was tremendous," says Warlick.

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