Article
Fourth Screen Awards honor content innovation
Content strategy was the primary focus at Las Vegas gathering.
March 4, 2007 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance
Alchemy International's campaign for Smirnoff Vodka, which tied in with the release of the James Bond film Casino Royale, won the "Best of the Best" award for creative and original content at the inaugural Fourth Screen Awards. The animated clip shows a secret agent pulling a cocktail shaker from a silver briefcase, then goes on to give the recipe for the perfect Bond martini. The spots were developed to air on the in-store network managed by premium beverage company Diageo.
Other big winners included the Nike Retail Network, a series of brief spots for the Toyota Yaris, and Selling Machine Partners' interactive store window for Polo Ralph Lauren.
The award winners were selected by a panel of industry experts, advertising and creative houses. (Read the full list of winners.)
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Content and its many forms
The Awards were part of the two-day Content Strategies Summit, held Feb. 21-22 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and hosted by New York-based Strategy Institute. The Summit featured heavy-hitters from the worlds of advertising, retail, and technology, and although their messages were different on the surface, they all echoed the same underlying principle: content is more important than anything else in the entire digital signage pipeline.
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The "Best of the best" entry, developed by Alchemy International for Smirnoff |
"Content is the working class, the meat and potatoes — not the king," he said. "It is always the content that is doing the work."
Gerba's talk began in the territory of a relatively new phenomenon, user-generated content (UGC). Driven by the tidal wave that is YouTube, UGC is now a concept on every ad agency's mind, especially since companies like Doritos handed over some of their precious ad time during the Super Bowl to homemade commercials. (The Doritos ad that aired cost about $12 to make, and was completed in four days.)
He went on to discuss Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and the fact that all three of them have their eyes on the out-of-home advertising market. "Search engine giants are in an unusual position right now," he said, "they have the ability to measure and watch trends and consumer interests."
Christopher Hume, vice president of production services for MGM Mirage Advertising, gave a behind-the-scenes view of how a high-level production company manages to turn out world-class creative work while keeping an eye on the budget: an artful balance of in-house capabilities and relentless outsourcing. "If you rely solely on in-house staff, you can fall into a creative rut where everything looks the same," he said.
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Alex Richardson (right) of Selling Machine Partners, receiving the award for the Polo Ralph Lauren interactive window |
He also emphasized the importance of giving creative people the right tools to do their job, and not cutting corners here. "That could be as simple as giving them a big monitor," he said.
Day two began with Jason Press, president of New York-based design house G2, discussing how to turn shoppers into buyers; it continued with agency Met Hodder talking about creative work for the Meijer grocery chain, and went on to include Selling Machine Partners' Alex Richardson explaining his company's high-profile interactive window for Polo Ralph Lauren.
While the seminar hall was largely focused on content and creative thinking, the adjoining room was home to the technology aspect of the business. Companies such as Scala, Wireless Ronin, Aerva Interactive Presence and Arbitron Out-Of-Home were on hand to share tools and technologies for delivering the brand messages that were being dissected next door.
The next Strategy Institute digital signage event is the third-annual Canadian Out-Of-Home Digital Media Summit, scheduled for April 24-27 at Hilton Toronto Airport in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, visit the Digital Signage Today Event Calendar.
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