Will Knott

On Wednesday a group of bloggers arrived, by invitation to a PR company’s headquarters. There was, pizza, information and, naturally Budweiser for it was because of Bud we were there. (There was also coffee, for geeks need caffeine too).

There is also an Irish only contest linked to the advert, more information down below.

There we were shown the Ireland only Budweiser Lyrics advert which is tied in with to the first use of the Sky green button feature in Ireland. I’m slightly confused by the green button (and hoping to get comments on it). Depending on where you read, pressing the green button allows for content (usually a video) to be downloaded in the background and viewed at a later date, much like the XBox 360 live videos and trailers. (Indeed the first use of this was last week in the UK where it was used for the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince trailer). I’ve also read that it downloads the content to be viewed at a particular scheduled time. The “twice a day” bit is throwing me. Do you have only 2 times of the day to watch it, or do the downloads only happen between certain hours?

I’m wondering how, and how much this will be used. I can understand someone wanting to get the full (usually longer than 30 seconds) movie trailer or a music video advertised as part of an album, but I seriously wonder just how many people will download the “making off” of an advert once the novelty has worn off.

On a side note, Diageo, if you’re reading, given the iconic nature of the Guinness adverts, and your 250 anniversary celebration of showing the old adverts, put together a downloadable package for the differing advert histories you are collection. I can see that selling in the storehouse too.

Having said that, the creation of this advert is actually interesting. Filmed off the side of the elevated trains in Chicago it offers you an unusual view of the city, and creative interpretations of the lyrics of the Beatles song “All Together Now”. The timing involved is impressive, even more so when you learn that to re-shoot a scene involved the train having to loop around sections of the track.

And now for the advert…

As you can see, you sort of want to see it again to get all the lyrics.

I’m waiting for the spoofs.

But the contest may prevent those for a little while. You see, the makers,of the advert want you to enter your own versions. The advert above was put together using 30 different scenes, each one ties with a line of lyrics in “All Together Now”. The challenge is: create another version of a line of the song. Eventually (if there are enough clips of good quality) another, user generated version of the ad will be created and released on an unsuspecting world. Check out the alltogethernow.ie website, and pick a line from the song.
Tip: find out which are the least used lines, gives you a better chance of being picked.

The first 100 people to upload their clip to the site will win a case of Budweiser. The closing date for video entries is the 15th August 2009.

So get your cameras and renderers ready…

take care,
Will Knott

Full disclosure: I had 2 cups of coffee, about half a large pizza and a UBS stick with a copy of the advert and descriptions on it. And met a few interesting people too.