CorpComms Magazine

One of the most successful advertising campaigns in recent months featured a man dressed in a gorilla suit drumming along to In the air tonight by middle-of-the-road balladeer Phil Collins. Since its television premiere in August - during the finale of the eighth season of Big Brother - the £6.2 mn advertising campaign for Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate has been viewed over 1 mn times on YouTube and posted on countless blogs.

The camera starts on the gorilla's face, showing him twitching, taking deep breaths and opening and closing his eyes, before panning out to reveal he is playing the drums. As the 1980s hit reaches its climax, a picture of a Dairy Milk chocolate bar fills the screen.

There have been numerous spoofs of the advertisement, a process Cadbury's facilitated by making the video easy to download. In November, the most popular of these featured the gorilla beating its drums in time to Bonnie Tyler's Total eclipse of the heart; this parody has amassed around 300,000 views of its own on YouTube. Other spoofs keep the original soundtrack but record a new video.

People power

The Cadbury's advert shows that the impact of a marketing campaign can be greatly enhanced by handing creative control of that campaign to the audience. 'It's a great example of how to create an effective campaign,' says Tim Gibbon, founder and director of London media consultancy Elemental Communications. 'People have passed on the commercial in its raw form, made spoofs of the original and even created completely new versions. It's wonderful for a brand when the audience takes an idea and runs with it - the brand gets so much exposure.'

By getting the audience to participate in a project it has set up, a brand can pull users toward certain products or services. According to Scott Button, chief executive of Unruly Media, a leading distributor of branded content, technology is making it easier to block out traditional, interruptive forms of online advertising such as banner ads and pop-ups, so companies need to change tack. 'Consumers want to be in control of what they see,' he explains.

Universal Studios had this in mind when it marketed The Bourne Ultimatum this summer, the third instalment of its popular spy movie franchise based on the novels of Robert Ludlum. 'The current Bourne film put up, prior to its release, a 'mash-up' site on Metacafe, a video-sharing site similar to YouTube, where you can go and make your own trailer for the new film,' explains Yang-May Ooi, founder of ZenGuide, a business-to-business online media consultancy. 'Video clips from the two earlier Bourne films have been provided, along with a number of music tracks and special effects.'

This online editing suite makes it possible for anyone to get involved in the campaign, regardless of the level of his or her technical know-how.

Never too old

Interactive campaigns like the Cadbury's commercial and the Bourne Ultimatum 'mash-up' site have most impact on the youth market. There are two main reasons for this. First, as highlighted in the chart on page 43, young people are the biggest users of video-sharing websites. On YouTube and Metacafe, the number of unique visitors during October in the 15-24 age group easily outnumbers those in the 25-34 age group. Second, as Button points out, younger web users, unlike their parents, have fewer commitments and therefore the freedom to get involved in time-consuming projects.

If interactive campaigns are kept quick and simple, however, adults can also be targeted effectively. 'If you want to appeal to older web users as well as younger ones, things need to be kept simple,' comments Yang-May. 'A good example is the online marketing for Bob Dylan's new album.'

To publicise this album, a website has been set up on which users can send messages to each other by adapting the singer's famous Subterranean Homesick Blues video. Instead of Dylan displaying the song's lyrics, as he does in the original 1965 video, the singer holds up boards with a new message composed by the user, which arrives with a reminder that Dylan has a new album coming out. 'It is very easy to use and appeals to all age groups,' points out Yang-May.

Of course, there is a risk attached to handing over control of a campaign to its audience. The web is a 'creative, destructive' force, according to Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon who two years ago spent $580 mn buying MySpace, the social networking site. He was proved right last year when an interactive campaign by General Motors (GM) backfired spectacularly. 'Companies behind this type of campaign should be aware of the potential benefits of allowing the user to be creative - within reason,' says Gibbon. 'GM is a good example of how the process can sometimes go wrong.'

In a move similar to Universal Studios' Bourne Ultimatum, GM produced a site on which users could create commercials for its Chevy Tahoe sport utility vehicle. Members of the public were able to combine background scenes, text and music to create their own advert for the new car.

Dangerous liaisons

In recent years, however, the SUV has become a rallying point for those protesting against excessive car emissions - and the opportunity to hit back against a big player like GM was embraced with gusto. Unfortunately, GM did not help its cause by making a number of video clips available displaying the new Tahoe against backdrops of great natural beauty. In one clip the car comes to rest on top of a snow-capped mountain. Many 'protest' trailers were posted on GM's website. One offering ran the clips along with text reading: 'We paved the prairies, we deforested the hills, we strip-mined our mountains and sold ourselves for oil to bring you this beautiful machine so you can finally drive... and see what's left of our wilderness.'

GM was slow to pick up on the negative reaction, and adverts parodying its new product flooded the internet, although the site that enabled web users to make their own trailers is no longer available.

This occurrence doesn't seem to have put off anyone in the industry, however. 'You have to be open to the fact that you are going to lose some control, but it is a measured risk that can work for brands providing it is managed and nurtured correctly,' concludes Gibbon. 'There are some really good ads out there, but just serving up an ad on the net and expecting it to be an instant success is not engaging the audience. Creating digital content that is suitable for the online audience is paramount.'

Interactive advertising is spreading to the extent that brands are now spoofing each other. Wonderbra has produced its own version of the Cadbury's gorilla ad, in which the music remains the same but the gorilla has been replaced by an underwear-clad model who proceeds to play the drums very energetically. It seems brands can have as much fun as customers in the world of interactive campaigning.

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