The V Motion Project
Frucor Beverages
Issue 25 | December 2012
Agency
Colenso BBDO
Creative Team
Creative Chairman: Nick Worthington Creative Director: Aaron Turk Art Director: Lachlan Palmer-Hubbard Copywriter: Graeme Clarke.
Production Team
Agency Executive Producer: Paul Courtney Agency Producer: Rob Linkhorn Group Account Director: Tim Ellis Account Director: Samantha Parsons.
Other Credits
Client: Cormac Van Den Hoofdakker (Senior Brand Manager), Directors: Jonny Kofoed, Matt Von Trott (Assembly) Director: Zoe McIntosh (Thick As Thieves) Art Director: Jae Morrison (Thick As Thieves) Lead Developer: Paul Sanderson (Fugitive Ltd) Lead Developer: Jeff Nusz (Assembly) Sound Design: James Hayday (Images & Sound) Music - Artist/Title: Joel Little (Golden Age Studio / Level Two Music Ltd)
Date
July 2012
Background
V Energy is a strong number one in the New Zealand energy drink market. Recently, the market exploded with hungry, brash brands like Mother, Monster, and Rockstar, determined to attack V.
In this competitive environment, the task was to grow sales by 4%.
Idea
V assembled a team of technology developers, audio engineers, visual artists, dancers, musicians and New Zealand music producer Joel Little, then gave them a challenge: to create a piece of music using only the body’s movement. The V Motion Project was born.
By hacking kinect motion tracking software and combining it with audio production software, a piece of technology emerged that transformed the body’s movements into sound. Over 16 weeks the process was documented and released as a series of online webisodes on the ‘V’ YouTube channel, brand website and Facebook page. This sparked conversation and gave the public a behind-the-scenes look at the team’s journey.
On June 16th, The V Motion Project showcased the new technology with an unexpected live performance in downtown Auckland. This was covered live by music television, talked about on radio, witnessed by thousands of spectators and uploaded to social channels and blogs around the world.
Results
The project led to a series of webisodes, TVC’s and a music video which, after just two months, reached more than 1.8 million hits across YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook. Earned media was estimated to have been worth $1.7m.
When released on iTunes, the music track reached No.1 on the iTune electronic music charts and No.1 on the New Zealand singles charts.?It remained in the Top 10 for five weeks.
There was a 13% increase in sales.
V was invited to talk to Warner Brother Records CA about licensing the technology.
Our Thoughts
I have a theory that there are seven different engagement strategies in creating branded content. I call them the seven E’s. And there are three of them in this great piece.
Entertainment – music and dance have been brought together in a series of videos which V showcase on their own YouTube channel.
Event – create a live performance which thousands can see as it happens and share online afterwards with hundreds of thousands.
Engross – get people playing games, trying to do it themselves.
It’s brilliantly engaging and the great part of it is that it could more than pay for itself if the technology does get sold.
See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YERtJ-5wlhM