Viral Man: The Making Of – Part 2

viralmanthemakingof

In the last post, I wrote about how our design team was formed and how we had spent two days brainstorming ideas for our first presentation the following Thursday. In this post, I want to tell you about how we arrived at the Viral Man idea.

One of the good things about writing about how Viral Man was formed is that over the course of the 5 weeks, I took some time to fill in a daily activity report. It gave a brief overview of what the team had done that day. It’s amazing how much information you can forget if you don’t write it down!

Fleshing out ideas

Having had a very short week the week before because we started on a Thursday, we had a lot to do before the coming Thursday. Although we had written down lots of great ideas, we still didn’t have an overall plan for how each of these ideas would be tied together. They didn’t have much of a theme running through them. In order to present something to the committee of people responsible for approving the project, I felt it was necessary to narrow the ideas down to three completely different campaigns. In order to do this, I decided to fall back on something which I swore I would never use again once I had finished university – an Initial Response Map (IRM).

A few more ideas.
A few more ideas.

An Initial Response Map as it suggests, is a designer’s initial ‘reply’ to the brief that they’ve been given. It shows that they understand what has been asked of them, that they have done initial research into the problem and ideally, show that they have enough information to present the client with three different ideas which can then be taken forward. There’s nothing stopping two ideas being mixed together, but presenting all three to a client is important so that they client can then choose how to proceed. An IRM shows the client that the designer is competent and on the same level.

I had grown to hate IRMs because I always felt that they weren’t as useful as promoted in university. I felt that there was too much emphasis on gathering research, rather than focusing on any ideas that I already had. Whether this is actually true or not, it’s how I felt at the time. However, with a presentation due in four days time, I decided to fall back on it.

Over the course of Monday, Hannah, Jerry, Will and myself sifted through the many ideas that we had and came up with three strong themes that had potential. They were:

  • Quarantine
  • Touching Man
  • Pick-up Lines

Quarantine: A brief overview

This campaign centred around inviting students to be a part of the campaign via social networking, a website and a print campaign. “Quarantine” focused on a fictional student diagnosed with Swine Flu, who had been locked in their room by their friends to prevent him from infecting everyone else. On a special flash-based website, visitors could see the trapped student via CCTV which his friends had installed to monitor his condition. Users would be able to click various things around the room and have the student interact with them.

This idea was influenced by the likes of Subservient Chicken, which allows users to type in a command and watch as a man in a chicken suit does as they ask.

In addition to the website, the campaign would be supported by a poster campaign, inviting users to visit the site and help the student escape. In addition to the poster campaign, special post-it notes would be stuck around campus with unique codes. When a user enters a code into the website, the student does something new. The post-it note idea came about via my own post-it note project which proved successful.

Touching Man: A brief overview

Touching Man centred around a real life characterisation of Swine Flu. By turning Swine Flu into a real, live person, it would give Swine Flu a voice and its own personality. Touching Man would take pleasure from infecting people with Swine Flu by simply touching them. The public would not be able to see him as he crept about, but would exhibit symptoms of Swine Flu right after Touching Man had touched them.

The campaign would be supported by a website and poster campaign, along with a social networking presence on Facebook.

This idea was influenced by The Wind, a fantastic film made for Epuron, a German energy company. It works because you instantly feel some sort of human connection with the character, even though the character is portraying something which has no human qualities.

Pick-Up Lines: A brief overview

This campaign was all about tongue-in-cheek innunendo and put the focus on getting students to use preventative measures against germs such as tissues and anti-bacterial gel. With phrases such as “She blew me!” and “He dumped me!” and with images of tissues, we felt that we could give a sexual connotation to something that had none at all and by doing so, create a cheeky campaign.

Supporting this campaign would be a website, designed in the style of a personals column, with adverts such as “I want you to blow me”, only for the user to click on the advert and be presented with a tissue. Additionally, this campaign called for short videos to be filmed where tissues and gels and other preventative measures would be interviewed, giving a voice to something which would otherwise not have one.

On Wednesday, the day before the presentation, I began to write up a small booklet that held all of our research so far, a brief overview of the above ideas and anything else that we felt was necessary to present to the committee. This included the provision to have some sort of themed student union bar night where students would be able to buy cheaper drinks if they came in clean or dirty fancy dress i.e. french maid for clean or binman or dirty.

Possible events for the bar
Possible events for the bar

On Thursday, all four of us attended a committee meeting at 8:30am. Most of the meeting was taken up by the committes responsibilities to the university but an hour into the meeting, we had a chance to discuss our ideas.

Jayne Dodgson introduced the four of us to the rest of the committee and I handed out the booklet that I had produced with the ideas and research in, guiding them through each idea and their merits. Each idea got a few laughs and approval, with plenty of comments on each idea, which was great. It felt good to have come up with ideas that were being received well by those who would be approving it.

After discussing each idea, I asked if they could make a decision on which idea they wanted to move forward with and again, we went through the merits and disadvantages of each one. The Quarantine idea was rejected because although it was a great way to get students involved, the committee were fearful that it was too much work to take on within the timeframe. Additionally, they thought that the information may be too specific and at the time, thought that Swine Flu may change into something different in the coming months and anything that we filmed or designed might be too specific for the here and now.

The Pick-up Lines idea was received really well for its cheekyness, but partially rejected because the committee thought it may be a bit too risky, especially in the first few weeks of the new term. While the committee liked the idea, they were concerned that it might promote the wrong message about the university.

And so the strongest idea, Touching Man, was settled on. From the very start, we had been really focused on this idea. It just seemed to shout out to us and so we were quite pleased that it had been chosen by the committee. We left in a positive mood and spent the rest of the day looking around the various campuses to see if there was anything special we could do for the project in certain places.

Designing Touching Man

The next day, we set to work on coming up with ideas for what Touching Man should look like. It was very important that we get this right, because the character would literally be the face of the campaign. His appearance would tie all of the campaign’s assets together.

I already had an idea of what I wanted him to look like and the main thing was green. Green face, green clothes. Green. For me, there is no colour that better communicates “virus” than green. However, there were also other ideas to consider. These included Will’s idea of a character similar in appearance to the Angel character Lorne. A classy, well dressed character marred by green spikes coming through his suit and with a green face to go with them.

My idea built upon the use of spikes, but gave the character more of a bug-like personality, with a spike-covered shell on his back, stripy green top, green underwear on top of his skinny jeans and some antennae to go with it.

The third idea was courtesy of Hannah, who wanted him to be a very classy gentleman, wearing a tuxedo and bowler hat and a handlebar moustache.

Potential costumes for the character.
Potential costumes for the character.

The importance of green was emphasised by Will’s idea and my own, while the spikes in both of our ideas related back to what a Swine Flu molecule looks like. Because we didn’t have much of a budget to actually buy different costume parts, we decided that my idea was the easiest to accquire and still stay under budget.

And so by the end of the full first week of the project, we had now gotten to the stage where we had picked our campaign and how Touching Man should look. It had been a slow week getting to this stage, but now that were all focused on one idea, we could start to flesh out what we would be doing for it. Touching Man was taking shape.

In the next entry: Developing storyboards for a range of videos, a visit by the Archbishop of York and a trip to…a gardening store.

Viral Man: The Making Of – Part 1

viralmanthemakingof

Because of my unfortunate hard drive failure a few weeks ago, I lost a lot of the photos I had taken of everything that I had designed for the University of Chester last month. I had planned to upload everything to my portfolio on the same day that the campaign was launched at the University but because I didn’t have it all, I decided to hold off. Instead, I’m waiting for them to send me some of the assets that I designed so I can take more photos of them.

In the meantime however, I thought it might be a good idea to give you a walkthrough of how I, along with three other people came up with the campaign that is now on show to over 15,000 students over two main campuses and multiple university-owned premises. I plan to write about five of these “Making Of” posts in the run up to posting the work in my portfolio. It basically gives me a chance to source some photos of what I need, while keeping my blog updated.

So, in this first entry, I’d like to start by telling you how I became part of the project and what happened in the first week. I’ll try not to make it too long winded, but also interesting enough to read! The first part doesn’t have any nice visuals to go with it I’m afraid, but it at least gives you an idea of how the job came about.

Part 1 – The Making Of The Team

At the beginning of July, I wrote about how I went down to London to display my work at the D&AD’s New Blood event. It was a great experience although it could be argued that in terms of finding work via it, it wasn’t as useful. I don’t regret doing it, because it was a fantastic experience.

Prior to exhibiting, we had been told that it wouldn’t just be the graphic design department that would representing the University of Chester, but also the advertising department, who had been nominated for a D&AD award. It was a coincidence that two of the advertising students who were exhibiting happened to be staying at the same hotel as a few of us graphic designers, which allowed us to get to know each other a little better. In addition, Kate Sillitoe, one of my second year tutors was now responsible for teaching advertising and so again, there was a little bit of a crossover.

At the end of the three days of exhibiting, me and the other seven people who had also exhibited started to pack up. Kate pulled me and few others aside to tell us about a job opportunity at the university over summer. She said that the university was keen to get an early start on protecting and preventing people from getting Swine Flu and to do that, they were really interesting in hiring students to come up with a campaign that would appeal directly to students. The job would be full time for four weeks and would take place from the middle of July to the middle of August and would take place at the university’s second, smaller Warrington campus, rather than the larger, main campus at Chester.

I didn’t have any other responsibilities lined up after the exhibition and so I was keen to find out more information about the job, as was one of my classmates, Hannah Bradshaw and the two guys from advertising, Jerry Clark and Will Bollen. I gave Kate my contact details and she said that she’d be in touch.

Getting the job

After a few emails back and forward from Kate, I was told that I would be called by communications director of the university, Jayne Dodgson. I waited eagerly for the phonecall. At the same time, I was speaking to Hannah who was also waiting for the same call. We didn’t quite know how many people had shown interest in the job or what sort of questions we’d be asked.

When the phonecall did come, I was told that I was on speakerphone to two people.  Over the course of 20 minutes, they asked what I could bring to the team and what sort of things I thought could be pushed forward to deliver a successful campaign. As I said, I didn’t quite know what questions were going to be asked so I did feel like I was put on the spot for a number of them, but at the same time, felt confident in my answers. At the end of twenty minutes, they thanked me for my time and said they’d be in touch. A few minutes later, Hannah got the same call and again, they said they’d be in touch. It wasn’t until the next day that we were told that we had successfully got the job and that we started a few days later.

First day

My first day was a Thursday and I had to be there for 9am. Kate said that she would be meeting us and that we’d be attending a Swine Flu briefing. I had only ever been to Warrington twice before and both times were from Chester, rather than Liverpool. I had spent the night before finding out train times and realising that it would take me 90 minutes to get there and indeed 90 minutes back as well. A long time, but I thought it’d be worthwhile as I’d still be paid more than I was spending and perhaps moreso, I would have an excellent piece of work to add to my portfolio.

Hannah and I met each other at the campus and then made our way to where we were meeting. It was there that we met Jerry, Will and Kate. After some quick introductions, we headed over to the Swine Flu briefing where we met everyone else, including Jayne Dodgson who we would be reporting to over the next few weeks. The next hour was spent taking notes from Gay Rabie, the university’s senior health advisor. All four of us made lots of notes on her presentation in the hopes that it would help our project further down the line.

After that and for the rest of the day, me, Hannah, Jerry and Will took some time to get to know each other and get a feeling for what skills we could bring to the team and we started jotting down all of the potential ideas we had each been cooking up by ourselves over the previous week. Many of the ideas, naturally, included pigs in some way or another, but we all dismissed anything pig-related fairly early on because it would send the wrong message. Still, it was important to get those ideas out on paper to see how they could possibly be modified to work.

How many pigs can you think of?
How many pigs can you think of?
A few ideas
A few ideas

Some of the more interesting ideas that we came up with were the use of ‘Pick up lines’ such as “I want to blow you” and “He dumped me!”, both referring to the use of tissues. We thought these were cheeky enough to be appealing to students, while not being too offensive to use throughout the campuses. Another idea which I had was to use a poster campaign of people looking like they’re having an orgasm, but it’s actually a sneeze. There were some great ideas very early on from all four of us.

Swine Flu under a microscope.
Swine Flu under a microscope.
An illustrative look at Swine Flu. Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28889807@N05/3689142069/
An illustrative look at Swine Flu. Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28889807@N05/3689142069/

On Friday, we continued with further research into what the virus actually looks like to see if we could incorporate that into anything. We found that the virus was quite spikey in nature when looked at from an illustrative point of view. With this in mind, we thought it’d be a fantastic idea to incorporate this shape into some sort of physical spikey ball that could then be given to all students as an induction gift.

Our first two days of working on the project had proved to be quite productive, as we were putting together some good ideas after just two days.

In the next entry: Choosing our final ideas and presenting them

The power of advertising

This is an article I originally wrote January 16th, 2006, but I think it’s inclusion in this blog is quite relevant.

Today I want to talk about TV adverts. While most people probably don’t pay that much attention to them, they are the most important thing you’ll ever see on TV aside from the programs themselves (although some would argue that). They’re big business and businesses will do anything to make sure their advert and their product is directly in front of you and that you’re taking note.

I’m going to talk about three ads from three different companies; Honda, Audi and Sony. These ads in particular have made me sit up and pay attention and therefore remember what the advert and brand was. Most definitely a good thing for these companies.

Honda

“The Power of Dreams” is Honda’s slogan and with the kind of adverts that they’ve been producing for the last few years (or rather Wieden+Kennedy, the creative agency behind them), they really stand out.

Mention “Cog ad” to anyone who watches TV or uses the Internet and I’m sure they’ll know instantly what ad you mean. Now one of the most famous adverts around the world (even though it only aired on TV in the UK) thanks to viral marketing, Honda has managed to create free advertising for itself, simply by creating a good advert – which it was going to do anyway. Honda had to pay a few million pounds to get this 2 minute long masterpiece created and then splash out on actually paying for it to air on TV. However, since the cog ad is now a worldwide success online, Honda have easily made up their money in free advertising. But anyway, it’s not the cog advert I want to talk about, it’s Honda’s latest offering.

When I first saw it, I was sitting on the floor, playing with my cat when I heard Garrison Keillor, the voice of Honda simply say “This is what it feels like to be a Honda”. I immediatly paid attention. See last paragraph for reasons why.

What follows is a two minute symphony of sounds created by a chorus of ‘singers’. For example, in one part of the advert, the singers tap on their teeth repeatedly to describe the tyres of Honda’s new Civic rolling over gravel with a depiction of a car actually doing it. There is no music, there is no narration, just these unusual – and yet familiar – sounds that the chorus of singers are making to imitate a car. I sat mesmerised, watching and listening happily for the two minutes that the advert was on and felt truly happy that I’d had the opportunity to watch it because it was so impressive in such a subtle way.

And that’s how adverts should be.

Of course, Honda, being the kind people they are, are offering everyone the chance to watch this advert over at their site, so please do go and watch it. You won’t be disappointed.

Audi

If Honda relies on simplicity and subtlety, Audi is the opposite with it’s recent “in your face” closeups of an Audi driving towards the viewer and stopping just a few metres away.

This ad caught my attention not for the visuals, but for the choice of sounds the people at Bartle Bogle Hagerty (the creative agency behind the ad) had chosen; Just a few simple notes played on a violin was all it took to get my attention. At the time, I was in the kitchen, but the arrangement of the notes was enough to make me come into the living room and see what it was.

My first thought was that it reminded me of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when Shelob, the giant spider stalks Frodo. It has exactly the same kind of atmosphere only instead of her prey being anything with two legs, it is instead four wheels, as you see cars hanging from the ceiling with masses of cobwebs. While the advert only lasts for around 30 seconds, the atmosphere has been created well enough that you can immerse yourself in what could easily be a scene straight out of a movie and to that end, you even get the aforementioned giant spider scuttling towards you, only to change into an Audi RS4 Quattro by the time it’s up close and personal. It’s impressive. In addition, the words “Vorsprung Durch Technik” are spelt out in cobwebs at the very end of the advert in such a way that it adds a second punch to the minor shock you’ve just gotten from seeing a giant spider coming towards you.

It’s a very well made piece of advertising. If you’d like to view it, visit4info.com has a copy of it.

Sony

Lastly, but my no means least is Sony’s impressive advert for Bravia, the new LCD TV that’s “like no other”, which takes a leaf out of Honda’s book and goes for the subtle approach.

Launching 250,000 bouncing balls down a street in L.A. has to be one of the most ludicrous ideas ever. To actually watch a quarter of a million bouncing balls bouncing down a street is amazing.

Using a piece of beautiful music by José Gonzaléz entitled “Heartbeats”, Fallon London (The creative agency behind the ad) have created something really special. There really is colour “like no other” – at least in this advert. It’s truly mesmerising seeing a multicoloured tidal wave of balls bouncing down a street. Like the two adverts I’ve mentioned already, I instantly felt that I had been shown something well worth watching and something worth watching more than once. Sony Bravia as a product may or may not be any good, but the quality of this advert instantly makes it a lot more famous that it would probably ever be without it. Personally, I feel that Sony aren’t particularly famous when it comes to creating memorable adverts, but they’ve really achieved it with this one.

Furthermore, unlike most impressive adverts that have sites attached to them, Sony’s bravia-advert.com [link no longer works] has an adequate amount of information relating to the advert itself, including the edited version of it, the uncut version of it (both available in HD format too) and even behind the scenes clips and photos. They’ve even bothered to offer some high resolution wallpapers which impressed me, along with a Flickr album. By far the best website I’ve seen regarding an advert for a while.

Three adverts, all different, but all have something in common – they kept me watching. And if they keep you watching and you actually enjoy watching them, then at what point does an advert become more like a program? That is to say, if adverts can look this good and some adverts can last for two or three minutes, what makes a program more important than an advert?

If an advert is produced so well, who’s to say that you can’t sit down in front of the TV specifically to watch some great ads? You get to be entertained for a few minutes and the companies get their marketing. I’d say that was a fair deal and I hope that in the future, more companies begin to see that investing heavily in their advertising to make it entertaining rather than simply informative works so well.