An excellent Campaign dubbed ‘The Next Big Audi‘.

As a digital execution this site is massive, with more features than you can shake a stick at.

Many @FWA winning sites for cars brands of late seem to pioneer one aspect within the site and leave others lacking.

The A1 site feels like a mix of 4 award winning sites merged into one and at no stage is the advertising overt or distracting from the plot, the result is user immersion, and once I had blogged I found myself back on the site looking for the hidden videos and trying to crack login passwords on micro site.

The ‘film’ a 5-part journey starring Justin Timberlake & Dania Ramirez.

You begin as John (Justin Timberlake), a self professed ’suit’, addled with corporate brown nosing and the general hum drum of the rat race.

John is mysteriously thrown into a world of fast cars, borrowed film plots and dodgy moustaches, oh and of course a very slick looking red Audi A1.

The movie section of the site is excellent!

The  5-part video journey takes you from coffee show to an underground pit fight, all the way back to the Audi boffins. I won’t ruin the story but suffice it to say it is an entertaining few minutes as you move through each chapter.

As each chapter ends the scene freezes frame allowing the user to navigate within that scene to discover hidden items, including twitter feeds and micro sites for the characters.

This is a nice little spin and adds an extra layer of social media integrated within the story line, allowing for a continuation of the story or a method to re-communicate with users as the campaign continues.

Accompanying the film is a range of really cool car customisation and driving simulations, each website worthy in their own right.

The customisation offers a very nice clean rendered model of an A1 with excellent customisation, directly linked to

The attention to detail in the renders and  the overall site design is stunning, the sites audio is courtesy or Torpedo and suits the theme and tempo of the film.

The interactive test drive is a staple of any luxury car brochure site, but the as with the rest of the A1 site, this really raises the bar both from concept and execution standpoints.

Featuring fully rendered 3D environments, with some really nice features for viewing the interior of the car.

The style adviser helps you choose from internal and external customisations to the A1. Housed in a simple 3 option interface of Your Cityscape, Your Look & Your Activity, the user can explore the range in great detail from seat fabric to spoiler, body kit and paint finish options.

The site is also loaded with social media integration, including mailing lists and myriad other sharing options.

This site is well worth a look and is a fine example of the new emerging standard of high end digital creative, crossing over with film.

http://microsites.audi.com/a1onlinespecial/html/popup.html

The initial storyline is reminiscent of recent navigable video pieces appearing as fwa SOTD winners in the past few months.

The user wakes and is prompted to upload and image of their face or to connect via facebook.

One of the first things I noticed was a the ability to freelook around the FMV or Full Motion Video intros of the site.

Freelook within FMV sequences is a technique that emerged in first person shooters almost 2 decades ago and has been a common staple of most game intros and playable tutorials.

Unfortunately this technique and many others common to game intros are being redeployed in a quite lacklustre way in many of the sites featured on the fwa of late.

This technique is normally a way of adding an extra level of interaction to intros and game sequences, the dark ride version of this is quite poor with a very limited movement and depth of field.

That being said the site is highly stylised and the cars features and style are worked into each scene and shot, for example the choose your sound track section.

Throughout the piece I couldn’t help but feel like I was participating in an ad and I really think the moments when the ‘advertising’ was present really detracted from the engagement.

The first character you are introduced to is  Tony, your driver for the ‘mission’.

The man can only be described as a Git, and is too reminiscent of Danny Dyre for it to be a coincidence.

After a few scenes of car porn you are off on you ‘epic’ 12.5 minute journey to bring the new Lexus back to the boffins in the Lab.

The choices that appear throughout the site seem to have non linear outcomes, but I did not see any wild diversions as I navigated through the piece.

The story continues with a trip to a coffee shop, then a slight plot twist when Danny, sorry Tony, double crosses the Lexus team and allows the Die Hard 3 style bad guy to capture the new Model.

He then in true git style double crosses the  bad guys and you both escape to return to the Lexus Lab.

The experience ends, with a call to action to further explore the range, organise a test drive or share your video.

All in all I feel this is a good example of the new standard of FWA sites.

Much as I am a huge fan of the FWA and what they do, I feel this is one of the poorer SOTM choices, lacking the true creativity that I would associate with FWA winners of old.

Fingers crossed we will some more epic FWA sites of old in the coming months.

Nigel is the chief minimiser in the Weetabix Minis Min Factory.

He suffers a minimising accident as he is creating the Weetabix minis.

The ad ends with a call to action to Find Nigel.

www.findnigel.com is a colourful quirky look inside the Weetabix Minis Factory as you travel around trying to Find Nigel.

The site integrates some really nice video and game play to make a really enjoyable and engaging online world.

The game play within the site is short and sweet with some really fun little mini games, excuse the pun.

The games take you through the factory in as you blast chocolate squares into the minis and back massage your way to Finding Nigel.

In the end you Find Nigel hidden in the Canteen and return him to his normal size.

The game play element is continued as you submit your initials and time to the leaderboard.

Unfortunately my score got a rousing “Your time puts you in position 23628 – sadly not enough for the Minis Hall of Fame. Why not try and better it?”

That said the 23K people who have submitted scores and spent approximately 3-5 minutes on the site, is a reflection of the early success of the campaign.

“After all if it’s not small and chocolaty its not a Weetabix Chocolate Mini”

Find Nigel was created by UK Digital Agency Skive.

The website focuses on lowering fuel consumption, cutting C02 emissions and saving money, under 4 headings; TSI, TDI, DSG and Blue Motion.

In a nut shell the cars are Efficient from gearbox to Engine. VW are endeavouring to make efficiency work for both the environment and your pocket, while keeping driving fun.

The site takes the form of a roller-coaster ride, this slick visual device transports the user around the VW space to learn more about the new technologies.

The site is full Flash hybrid video/3D render  with some excellent buffer/loading screens so that the sense of motion never stops.

The clean white visuals are soft and unintrusive allowing the user to glide for feature to feature within this changing landscape.

As you move along the tracks simple clear messages appear acting as a call to action to see more info on the respective feature.

The full flash site is also backed by a very nice html site to allow narrow band users find out more about the features in a more standard web layout.

I highly recommend this site for anyone with a few minutes to spare, load times can be long but the site is well worth the wait.

Check out the Full Flash VW Efficiency Site or the HTML version.

The site is stunningly simple, with each section showcasing excellent use of background video.

Working Element describe themselves as a ‘Creative Collective’, with their portfolio work showcasing some stunning photography work.

The portfolio mechanic is also very clever using transparencies within the video and photo wall.

I highly recommend visiting this site and checking out Working Element.

The site was created by Jam3media in association with the Canadian Film board.

The site is visually breath taking, melding video and sound to create an underwater feel, with ambient music by Sigur Ros, Brian Eno and Philip Glass.

The site showcases images in a stunning shifting visual wall, morphing to create shapes and signs.

Each shape is focused on a specific area affected by the pollution.

The narrative is compelling and engaging with each areas plight highlighted using audio, video and text with linkage to the external sites and other relevant resources.

I found myself engrossed in this site and really enjoyed the journey, check out Waterlife and see for yourself.

Instant Campaign is Gringo’s 20th FWA SOTD award and this site shows the companies quirky attitude and raw humour.

The site is hosted By Father Pop Up, within his tent you can discover the ‘perfect’ digital marketing campaign for you.

The Online Media Guru asks you to enter you digital marketing budget, to see what fabulous widgets await you.

After entering you budget Father Pop Up will contact the deities and shower you with digital treasures.

This tongue in cheek attitude to older random digital practices and a no nonsense approach is parodied here by this untrustworthy digital shyster.

Try entering 1 million plus and Father Pop Up will praise you and offer you a plethora of digital options, each comes with its own phoney digital strategy.

After choosing your campaign you can download your own spoof marketing campaign.

By far one of the funniest sites I have seen this year and with 20 FWA awards and Clients like Coke and Absolute, this digital agency are really pushing the bar when it comes to real viral online content.

Check  out Instant Campaign today and see what the Guru can do for you and don’t forget to get your Media Plan today.

We recently blogged the new Doritos ID3 Campaign, episode 2 of the online man hunt has just been launched, you can check it out on the Doritos UK site.

Also a congratulations to Initials Marketing for yesterdays SOTD award from the FWA.

The site is highly engrossing, excellent ambient sounds and grainy video create a dark and interesting visual.

The site itself is a mixture of ‘clickable’ video and some interesting video games, designed to test morality, memory, mental awareness and reaction skills.

The site pans through a dark warehouse with a series of 10 tests for you the would be recruit.

Once the 10 tests have been completed you will be given a synopsis of your performance and a detailed explanation of your strengths and weakness.

Check out this excellent site today and see if you have what it takes, we unfortunately did not.

www.rekryt.mil.se/recruitment2009/

www.louisvuittonjourneys.com