Category: Emerging Trends

Lacta: Love in Action

Following the grand success of Lacta’s interactive film in November 2009, Kraft Foods and OgilvyOne Athens set out to create yet another integrated campaign for Lacta, Greece’s leading chocolate brand. This time, instead of producing another love story themselves, they set out to create one with their audience.

Kraft Foods and OgilvyOne crowdsourced a 27-minute branded-entertainment film, involving the audience in everything from writing to casting and styling the actors. Some even popped up as extras in the finished film. During filming, audiences were kept updated through the campaign blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

Here is a 3 minute video case study on the same.

Then on Valentine’s Day the film was aired on Greece’s top TV channel and online, with great success.

What makes this more than “UGC”

The smart leap is that the audience is not just submitting stories. They are being pulled into the messy, high-signal parts of production. Decisions that normally sit behind closed doors. Casting, styling, and creative direction. That raises commitment, because participation shifts from “I sent something” to “I helped shape what shipped.”

In European FMCG branded entertainment, letting people influence production decisions can turn a single film into a sustained participation loop that runs for weeks, not minutes.

Why this lands

This works because it gives people a credible reason to keep coming back. Not to watch ads, but to follow progress, vote, debate, and see whether their influence makes the final cut. The film becomes the payoff, but the real engine is the journey. A public build, meaning a production process made visible as it develops, turns pre-release into its own entertainment.

Extractable takeaway: If you want long-lived attention, make the audience’s role structural, not decorative. Put participation into decisions that change the output, then publish visible progress so people feel their involvement has weight.

The commercial intent underneath

Lacta gets what a standard Valentine’s spot struggles to buy. Time, conversation, and emotional ownership at scale. The brand also stays relatively in the background, so the entertainment is allowed to carry the attention while the association builds quietly.

The real question is whether the audience is helping shape the asset or merely reacting to it.

What to borrow from participatory production

  • Open up real decisions. Voting on meaningful choices beats asking for comments.
  • Show progress publicly. Updates and behind-the-scenes keep momentum alive.
  • Let contributors appear in the output. Even small “extra” moments create powerful ownership.
  • Build a finale moment. A premiere date gives the whole participation arc a shared finish line.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Lacta “Love in Action”?

It is a crowdsourced branded-entertainment film initiative where audiences contributed to and influenced key parts of the production, from story and casting to styling.

What makes this different from a normal brand film?

The audience is involved before release and in decisions that shape the final output, so the build process becomes part of the entertainment.

Why run it across so many platforms?

Because production is a multi-week narrative. Different channels support different behaviours. Updates, voting, sharing, and behind-the-scenes participation.

Why is Valentine’s Day a strong launch moment?

The theme is culturally aligned with love stories, and the calendar creates a natural deadline and shared viewing moment.

What is the main risk when crowdsourcing content like this?

If participation feels cosmetic, people drop out. The audience needs visible proof that their input changes outcomes, and the process must be curated so quality stays high.

13th Street: Last Call Interactive Horror

Last year Lacta Chocolates came up with a web-based interactive love story called Love at first site. Now Jung von Matt and Film Deluxe take the same “viewer participation” impulse into a darker genre with an interactive horror experience designed for cinemas. Here, viewer participation means the audience can influence what happens on screen instead of only reacting to it.

The movie is called Last Call by 13th Street, and it is billed as the first interactive horror movie in the world.

How the film turns a screening into a live conversation

The core mechanic is simple and high-stakes. The audience can communicate with the protagonist through specially developed speech recognition that turns one participant’s answers, delivered via mobile phone, into on-screen instructions.

Instead of passively watching a character make bad decisions, one viewer gets pulled into the story and has to direct what happens next, under pressure, in front of a room full of people.

In European entertainment marketing, the strongest channel ideas are the ones that turn passive viewing into a shared physical experience.

Why it lands: it converts fear into responsibility

Horror is already interactive in your head. You are constantly thinking “don’t go in there” or “run”. Last Call makes that internal commentary explicit, then gives the viewer control at exactly the moment when tension is highest. That works because it turns private fear into public responsibility, which intensifies tension instead of interrupting it.

Extractable takeaway: If you want interactivity to feel meaningful, make the choice time-critical and socially visible. When a whole room watches one person decide, even simple branching choices feel heavier.

The intent: make a channel brand feel like an event

This is not interactivity for its own sake. It is a positioning play. The real question is whether the interaction makes 13th Street feel like the only place this kind of horror experience could happen.

The phone call is the hook, but the real product is the shared story people retell afterwards: “someone in our screening got the call”.

What to steal for your own interactive storytelling

  • Choose one decisive moment: interactivity works best when it happens at a peak, not throughout.
  • Keep the command vocabulary tight: yes or no, left or right, stay or flee. Clarity beats cleverness.
  • Make the interaction legible to spectators: the audience should understand what the caller chose without needing explanation.
  • Design for group emotion: the collective tension and reaction is part of the value.
  • Build the “retellable” sentence: “the character called an audience member” is stronger than any tagline.

A few fast answers before you act

What makes Last Call “interactive”?

A participant receives a mobile phone call and speaks choices that are translated via speech recognition into commands, which trigger different follow-up scenes.

Why use a phone call instead of a web interface?

A phone call feels personal and urgent, which matches horror. It also keeps the participant’s hands free and the interaction fast enough for a live screening.

Is this a real branching film or a gimmick?

It works like a branching structure with pre-produced scenes, selected based on a small set of recognized commands. The novelty is the live calling mechanic in a cinema context.

What is the biggest risk when copying this format?

Latency and ambiguity. If recognition is slow or choices are unclear, tension collapses. The interaction has to feel instantaneous and unmissable.

What is the transferable principle beyond horror?

Put the audience in a single, decisive role at a high-emotion peak. One clear decision, delivered fast, can create a stronger memory than many shallow interactions.

Tostitos: And Then There Was Salsa

Frito-Lay teamed up with online video sharing site Vimeo to create a new advertising campaign for their Tostitos Salsa. The video began with some beautiful CG which then quickly swallowed the viewer’s browser to become a full-screen experience.

When the player becomes the canvas

The execution starts like a normal hosted film. Then the interface itself becomes part of the performance, as the visuals expand beyond the frame and turn the browser window into the stage.

The takeover mechanic in plain terms

The mechanism is a deliberate break of expectation. Here, the takeover mechanic means the film expands beyond the player so the browser window itself feels absorbed into the ad. The film uses high-polish CG to earn trust, then escalates into a page takeover that makes the viewer feel like they have crossed a boundary from “watching” into “being inside” the world of the spot.

In digital brand experiences, fullscreen takeovers work when the format shift is the message, not just a louder container for the same footage.

Why this lands

It delivers a physical sensation in a purely digital space. That moment of “wait, my browser is gone” creates surprise and attention, and it also flatters the viewer by treating the screen as a cinematic environment rather than a box with controls.

Extractable takeaway: If you want immersion, do not only add detail inside the frame. Change the frame itself in a way that reinforces the story you are telling.

What Frito-Lay is buying with the Vimeo partnership

The intent is to make a salsa film feel like an event. A takeover turns a standard online view into a shareable “you have to see this” moment, and it associates the product with craft, spectacle, and a bit of controlled chaos.

The real question is how to make a salsa ad feel bigger than a pre-roll without losing the viewer in empty spectacle.

What to steal for your next immersive video

  • Earn attention first, then escalate. Start simple, then make the environment change once the viewer is already hooked.
  • Make the format shift meaningful. The jump to full-screen should feel like part of the narrative, not a gimmick.
  • Design one unforgettable beat. The takeover moment is the memory. Everything else supports that single peak.
  • Pick the right host for the idea. A platform partnership matters most when the platform’s norms are part of the contrast you are exploiting.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “And Then There Was Salsa”?

It is a Tostitos Salsa online film distributed via a Vimeo partnership, designed to shift from a normal player view into a full-screen browser takeover for a more immersive effect.

What is the core mechanic that makes it feel different?

The experience changes the viewing container. It starts as a standard video, then expands beyond the player and takes over the browser window, so the interface becomes part of the execution.

Why does the Vimeo partnership matter here?

It matters because the idea depends on contrast. A familiar hosted-player environment makes the takeover feel more dramatic when the film suddenly breaks out of it.

When is a fullscreen takeover a smart choice?

When the goal is to create a memorable moment rather than maximize completion rates. It is especially useful when craft and spectacle are part of the brand story.

What should you be careful about with this pattern?

Overuse and irrelevance. If the takeover does not reinforce the idea, viewers experience it as interruption. Performance and compatibility also matter because the format depends on smooth playback.