It is rare that videos on the internet take advantage of the fact that a story can be made interactive and non-linear. Too often we watch a story that has been shot in a traditional way that fails to take advantage of the fact that if it is on the internet then the creators can get the viewer to interact and change something. Marketers are starting to become aware of the power that this has as the viewer becomes engaged.
In this campaign for the Central Office of Information, each video has the option to change what happens next, as a colleague of mine once described it – ‘it’s like one those books that you read as a kid where at the bottom of the page you had the option to …. turn to P54 to fight the wizard or turn to P17 to run and hide’. As you progress through the videos the viewer experiences the effect that each experience has on the main character. The implementation is a little clumsy but then this campaign was designed to run on YouTube rather than a dedicated site to maximise accessibility.Of course – there has to be a payoff – the COI is not selling knives, I can’t click to buy anything but there is a reward at the end of the story. Naturally I can’t spoil it for you – you’ll have to discover the right way through the video maze.
In a previous post I talked about a recruitment campaign for the army that works on a similar line – for this campaign 30 minutes of video was shot specifically for the web experience whereas only a small portion of that was for the TV campaign, this turns the usual ratio on it’s head and is a sign of things to come.
