New media turns to old media techniques for realistic advertising

New media professionals are increasingly combining old creative techniques to meet the needs of advertisers. Although computer-animated commercials are a mainstay on TV - polar bears and penguins share sodas in the arctic, lizards weigh-in on insurance rates - creators are foregoing animation to deliver more reality-based images. "It's not like people are coming out with things that are so new and never been done before. It's really about combining existing techniques, software and designs and coming up with something that's new," Ryan Honey, creative director at LA-based Buck, tells Canadian New Media. So when LA-based Buck approached the 2009 Toyota Corolla campaign, they borrowed from the past. Buck showcased the innovative advertisement at last month's Flash in the Can (FITC) festival in Toronto. Using miniatures, full-tilt photography and a combination of animation techniques, the advertisement features the Corolla conquering mountain curves, treacherous terrains and navigating congested city highways. "Miniatures have been done forever. But have they done miniatures and brought those plates into 3D and then put 3D cars on top of them for a car commercial? No," says Honey. "I think it's not necessarily about creating something entirely new, but taking things from the past and present and making them feel fresh." Pitched in September 2007 and completed three months later, variations of the ads have been airing world-wide for the past three months. For example, David Eriksson, creative director at Sweden-based North Kingdom, said to create an interactive online for Coke Zero coinciding with the 2008 European Soccer Championship, "We looked to the Max Payne games, Quentin Tarantino movies and comics such as Sin City," for animation and design styles. As a result, the game employs a mix of actors, animation and design procedures to create an end product that is both realistic in terms of look and movements, and fresh in design. Launched last February in Germany, the site had over one million hits in its first five weeks. While commercial works presented at FITC by Buck, North Kingdom, Group 94 and other creative agencies were impressive, there was a sense that they fell flat in terms of groundbreaking innovations. To find work that genuinely coincided with this year's FITC theme of "Break it", one had to turn to more artistic, albeit less commercial, installations. Joel Baumann, founder of London UK-based Tomato Interactive and a professor at Kassel University in Germany, showcased the work of some of his art and design students. "Pirate Party" is a game that combines the rules of musical chairs and drawing straws with mobile devices and blue tooth technology. The phones communicate with one another via Bluetooth while the game randomly assigns each phone a pirate character engaged in a drinking game. Each player picks a phone out of a pile hoping their pirate can out-drink his contemporaries. An innovative take on tradition and technology, but Baumann concedes, "The game isn't commercially viable." Zachary Liebermann, the artist behind Drawn believes marketers should be looking to artists for inspiration. "Advertisers can definitely learn something from interactive art." "These types of projects are new and they represent almost a new language of communication that hasn't been seen before," he adds. "When people experience them, they not only have a good time, but they really become engaged. I think there's a great commercial potential for them." Architectural advertising is already transcending the billboards of yesteryear. Tomato's multi-faceted campaign for Japan's TV Asahi consists of several elements, most notably, a "living and breathing" video wall. A large television screen is hanged prominently in the city's core. As pedestrians and motorists make noise, the company's trademark 3D rectangle dances across the screen in a unique pattern, never repeating its exact movements. The campaign has been so successful that the channel has incorporated the trademark design into actual furnishings. "Art isn't just about beauty anymore. It was to shift just as everything else shifts," Baumann explains. It appears new media art and advertising may soon be moving from computer screens to the streets.

New media turns to old media techniques for realistic advertising

Broadcast | May 5, 2008

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