The campaign integrates loads of interactive and experiential elements, including a rich digital hub for all that’s hip and happening in the city, a delightfully intriguing iPhone app, and a chance each week for an entire year to Play Melbourne and win a spontaneous visit.

The campaign is self-supporting through Social, but we had to light the fuse somewhere – and light it we did, with a set of web ads springing from the Play Melbourne story. They’re an intriguing, interactive, upmarket and enticing bunch of rich and standard banners that drive tens of thousands of visitors to the site each time they run.

It was a pleasure and a real workout to be Digital CD on this job, and big thanks to everybody in the world who was involved in making this work: the inimitable JC and the indefatigable RI; Pete Bakacs for piccies; Brendan McMahon for engineering; Matt Houltham for early wrangling; Fracture for gorgeous Flash… oh, look, just… thanks, EVERYBODY.

Better web design delivers absolute clarity

While a set of truly excellent TV commercials did the impossible job of making Panasonic’s great TVs look amazing on other people’s rubbish TVs, we worked in the background to ensure Viera’s entire web presence – search and website – reflected the “Absolute Clarity” message. That meant reviewing everything: from a redesign to reflect the glossy, high-end feel of the TVs themselves, right through to staging the copy in deeper and deeper layers so the average visitor wasn’t scared away by jargon from the start. And the site’s structure and all that copy was designed in concert with the Search team to lure visitors in and drop them on the right page, depending on their search term, which depends on their stage in the buying process.

Result? From number three to number one in flatscreen TVs in six months, while a competitor even gave up and exited the market. That’s a pretty clear indication of success.