Two things that are being increasingly exploited on YouTube for entertainment and advertising purposes are annotations and using the number keys to jump to certain points in the video. The former has possibly been best showcased in the Time To Spy videos from McDonald’s, but also to a less impressive degree (but still very innovative at the time) by Samsung and the COI in an anti knife crime campaign.
However, campaigns using the numbers on your keyboard to control videos are far less impressive, as in the example from Audi above. In this, you control the driver using keys 1-9, which gets the driver to perform an action. Those thrilling actions include, turning left, turning right and even going through a chicane!!! From the top comments, looks like other users are about as amazed at this as I am.
Other examples have cropped up from Sprite and Lynx (the latter supposedly being NSFW), below:
Sprite Zero Skate ‘n’ Splash
Lynx – Hot news girl gets job done… (you need to hit 5 7 3 8 to get the “Lynx Effect” on this one)
Let me know if you think otherwise, but these just don’t work. The Lynx (or AXE for our non-UK friends) video is obviously intended to make it look like the girl is giving the guy a blowjob and that you can control this (sure teenage boys will be throwing away their porn for this right now). But instead you just get an earful of messed up audio and a few jerky motions. And the Sprite example, well, I challenge you to even crack a smile and try more than 3 tricks before you punch your monitor out of boredom.
This mechanic works will as a 1 minute time killer and has been used for a while on things like interactive YouTube keyboards and drums, and those have a ton of hits and a load of likes. But these aren’t representing a brand and trying to convey a message. They are made cheaply and quickly to show off a use of a YouTube feature that probably wasn’t planned. Trying to crowbar a brand into them simply doesn’t work, at least in these examples.
Sadly, this is a result of a problem far too common within the industry, which is “innovation” for innovation’s sake. Innovative campaigns only works if they still addresses a brand’s key aims and challenges. And even if you’re going to ignore that, which gives you a much wider scope for creativity, you had better at least produce something that people are going to like, engage with for more than 5 seconds and want to share.
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