Tag: Hungry

Happy Holiday Videos 2013: Agency Stunts

Welcome back. Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Now for a great start to 2014.

Taking off from my last post, here are a series of holiday action videos created by agencies around the world in their lead up to Christmas 2013. By “holiday action videos” I mean greetings built around a single visible action or interaction, not a passive message.

Holiday greetings that behave like products

The mechanism across this set is simple. Use the “holiday card” moment as permission to ship a stunt, an installation, or an interactive video that people can experience rather than merely watch.

In global agency culture, holiday cards are a low-stakes sandbox for experimentation that teams can ship fast and share widely.

The real question is whether your greeting can demonstrate something people can experience, not just a sentiment you can post.

This format is worth copying because it turns a seasonal hello into proof of craft.

Why this format keeps working

These pieces earn attention because they trade greeting-card sentiment for an observable action. Put in a coin. Click a button. Gather people in front of a webcam. One clear trigger, one visible result.

Extractable takeaway: If you want something to travel during peak-season noise, design a one-step interaction that produces a visible payoff, and make the payoff easy for someone else to describe in a sentence.

Christmas Chocolate Coin Factory by W+K London

Wieden+Kennedy London turned their Hanbury Street office window into a Christmas installation. Passers-by who inserted a 1 pound coin into Dan & Dave’s Chocolate Coin Factory activated the machine on display which then dispensed a special gold Belgian chocolate coin at the other end. All the money collected from this coin factory was donated towards building a new playground for Millfields Community School in Hackney, East London.

Disrupted Christmas by Holler

Holler, an agency from Sydney, created a live interactive installation that gave the general public a chance to disrupt the agency as it worked throughout the day. Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS) units were hacked and hooked up to the Internet via IP cameras. Then key members of the agency were connected to the EMS units, and the Internet via a live stream. The public could then watch the agency staff online and instantaneously zap them at will with the click of a button.

For each disruption the agency donated $1 to The Factory, a local community centre with a long history of supporting socially and economically disadvantaged local residents.

The More the Merrier by Publicis Groupe

The Publicis Groupe was back again with another Maurice Lévy holiday video. This time they worked with DigitasLBi to create a video that uses your webcam to detect how many faces are watching together, and then adapts the video based on the number of viewers.

The Epic Christmas Split by Delov Digital

Delov Digital from Hungary used Chuck Norris to top Jean-Claude Van Damme’s epic Volvo split with the help of some serious digital enhancement.

A repeatable structure for next year’s greeting

  • Give the audience one trigger. A single action that anyone can explain and repeat.
  • Make the payoff visible. Something that changes on-screen or in the real world, immediately.
  • Design for retellability. If the idea cannot be summarized in one sentence, it will not spread.
  • Let craft do the selling. Use the holiday excuse to demonstrate what you can build, not just what you can say.

A few fast answers before you act

What makes “holiday action videos” different from normal holiday ads?

They are built around a visible action or interaction. The greeting is the excuse. The experience is the asset that people talk about and share.

Why do agencies use holiday cards as a playground for experimentation?

The stakes are lower and the audience is receptive. That creates room to try unusual formats, technical tricks, and interactive mechanics that would be harder to justify in a client campaign.

What is the common mechanism across the best ones?

One clear trigger and one clear payoff. Insert a coin and get a coin back. Click a button and something happens. Add more people and the video changes.

How do you choose a mechanic that people will actually try?

Pick a one-step trigger that feels effortless, then make the payoff obvious within seconds. If someone cannot explain both in one sentence, the interaction will not travel.

How do you keep it from feeling like a gimmick?

Anchor the interaction in a simple human reward. Delight, togetherness, surprise, or a small act of good. Then keep the mechanic effortless so the idea does not collapse under friction.

Deadlines vs Creativity: 10 Seconds 10 Minutes

A simple client lesson, told by school kids

Café Creative, a Hungarian ad agency, sets out to prove a point to deadline-setting clients. If you want good and original ideas to be born, you have to give them enough time.

So they ask school children to perform two tasks:

  1. Complete a drawing in ten seconds and
  2. Complete the same drawing in ten minutes.

The results are captured in the video below, described as having been shortlisted at the 2011 Golden Drum Advertising Festival.

The mechanic: one brief. Two clocks. One unavoidable comparison

The setup is intentionally unfair. Ten seconds forces instinct and shortcuts. Ten minutes gives space for choices, revisions, and detail. Because the brief stays constant, the difference you see is time, not talent.

In creative work, the quality gap usually comes from iteration time, meaning time to review, refine, and improve the same idea, rather than a “better idea” arriving fully formed.

In agency-client work, deadline debates are usually really debates about how many improvement cycles an idea gets before it is judged.

The real question is how much originality you destroy when you compress all iteration into almost no time.

Why it lands

It translates an abstract argument. “We need more time”. Into a visual contrast that clients can’t debate. The children’s drawings make the point without cynicism, and the experiment format keeps it watchable because the viewer wants to see how big the difference becomes. That works because a controlled comparison turns a subjective complaint about timing into proof a client can inspect.

Extractable takeaway: When you’re negotiating timelines, show a side-by-side outcome under two time constraints. A visible comparison wins faster than a rational explanation.

What to steal for your next client conversation

  • Use one brief and change one variable. It isolates the real driver of quality.
  • Make the output visual. Visual proof travels further than process arguments.
  • Keep it humane. A light format can carry a serious point without sounding defensive.
  • Frame time as iteration fuel. You’re not asking for delay. You’re buying cycles of improvement.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the “Deadlines vs Creativity” experiment?

It’s a short film where children draw the same subject twice. First in ten seconds, then in ten minutes, to show how time changes outcomes.

What does the ten-second version demonstrate?

It shows what happens under pressure. People default to the most obvious interpretation with minimal refinement.

What does the ten-minute version demonstrate?

It shows the value of iteration time. Details emerge, composition improves, and the work becomes more original and complete.

Why is this a useful argument for clients?

Because it replaces opinion with comparison. The viewer can see what time buys.

How do you apply this lesson without running your own experiment?

Use before-and-after examples from your own work. Show what changed between first draft and final, and tie each improvement to the time used to iterate.