Regular updates from this year's Media 360 event which is taking place from the 14 - 18 May at the Celtic Manor Hotel in South Wales.
The keynote from Jonathan Mildenhall, vice president global advertising and creative excellence at Coca-Cola, followed by a casebook on Cadbury’s much-spoofed gorilla campaign kicked off Thursday’s proceedings at Media 360.Mildenhall’s explanation of Coca-Cola’s transmedia storytelling approach, the “art of extending an ad or piece of entertainment across multiple platforms” provided an insightful opening to the conference.
The company is looking at how the media campaign can itself become revenue generating and alongside Coca-Cola’s Happiness Factory campaign, Mildenhall drew on examples including Burger King’s ‘The King’ character which has fronted video games and will soon be featuring in a Hollywood production.
His excellent presentation was followed by a panel including Lucy Evans, brand manager of Dairy Milk, Laurence Green, chairman of Fallon, and Howard Watson, group account director at Starcom, looking at the 2007 campaign of the year, the drumming gorilla.
Green explained how the brief from Cadbury, ‘to get the love back’ into Dairy Milk and to look at how the creative could provide a similar moment of joy to that experienced when enjoying the chocolate provided the inspiration for the gorilla ad.
A video compiling just a few of the many spoofs that have been created and shared on sites such as YouTube demonstrated just how much buzz the ad created, and the perpetuating nature of the simple creation.
Watson’s description of the media plan, focussing initially on anticipation – ‘He’s been waiting for this moment for all his life’ – gave some background to how the buzz was created. A press campaign flagging a scheduled TV slot before the first show of the returning Big Brother provided the lift off, and subsequent TV slots around the England Rugby World Cup adventure led to the ad achieving an unprecedented and prolonged amount of coverage.
