Sometimes, though, a little reminder that anyone can help is all we need to jog ourselves out of that comfort zone. So, we introduced the Auckland City Mission’s smallest ever fundraiser, starting with a wee movie…

…and then we sent him out onto the streets to become the embodiment of vulnerability and never-give-up-ness. I don’t want to write an epic about his epic journey; best you click through BestAds to see the case study. I reckon it’s worth it:

Kenneth, on a mission

The one thing I will say is that I will be forever disappointed that we couldn’t get the Arduino to work with the mobile shield to get people texting a donation to keep him moving to the Mission on that last day. That would’ve been awesome.

Taking the iconic-in-New-Zealand but globally tiny Steinlager Pure brand to the world was not going to be easy — especially with a budget that would barely get us one month on a Times Square billboard. We went back to the product truth and came up with a plan that would resonate with urban dwellers the world over.

That plan: When you buy a Steinlager Pure, you get a piece of pure New Zealand. There’s a great video of the result, here.

It took a while, but we worked with our client (the wonderful Ben Wheeler) to reserve 120 hectares of native New Zealand forest and wetland, in the name of Steinlager Pure drinkers in our launch markets. The deal: Buy one Steinlager Pure, enter your code, and you get a unique piece of this iconic part of New Zealand reserved in your name. Buy another, and you add a chance to visit your piece of land for real – courtesy of Steinlager.

Steinlager Pure was a niche brand launching into behemoth beer markets like the US, Canada and the UK, so we had to make sure the idea would cut through. Posters showed actual shots of the land, divided into unique portions. Coasters were cut from those poster images, each containing an innovative snap-to-open code. Buy the beer, get the coaster (already a unique piece), then enter your code via SMS, mobile site or on the App to get an instant reward right at the point of purchase.

Imagine a piece of the purest land in the world secured in your name – and the chance to see it for real.

Of course we added easy ways to spread the word through social networks, and ultimately we’re starting to build a database in each market for regular dialogue. But making the exchange feel very real for participants was key, and a standout element is the iPhone App with its goosebump-inducing motion-controlled panoramas – along with an Augmented Reality compass-based Pure finder that even shows you where and how far away your piece of purity is.

The Ice Mission robots in action, freeing $40,000

Watch the Ice Mission – full back story

The coverage we got through a live stream of our txt-able robots was immensely valuable for City Mission across winter, and immensely valuable for our team as we learned how hard we could push every envelope and pull every string to make it happen.

Thanks to Guy Denniston for the implausible idea, the entire Mojo team (including myself) for believing in it and pushing it through, and the incredible production team — including Rochelle Ivanson as Seemingly Unflappable Digital Producer Extraordinaire and Rob Isaac as Smart Guy Who Didn’t Once Lose His Temper. I’m delighted to have been involved with them all in this project; for social reasons as well as the fact that it was pretty frickin’ cool.

As the iconic underdog battler brand on the Australian mobile scene, Virgin Mobile had all the right in the world to leap into social marketing boots and all. Our team at Publicis Digital in Auckland – Andre, me, Jeremy and Rochelle – conceptualised and designed an approach designed to break through the corporate culture and treat Virgin Mobile “members” like, well, rock stars.

Based in a slick, ultra-fluid site built by our team in Australia, and driven via a Twitter feed packed with surprise gigs, topups, freebies, shoutouts and more, the Members’ Lounge leverages Virgin’s unique personality and familiar rock star personality to create what was at the time a completely new style of customer retention community, pushing highly customised content and offers to Virgin Mobile customers – or should we say, members. One of those wonderful projects when strategy, ideation, design, development, the web tools to make it happen and a fully engaged client results in something really cool. Me likey.

Our man will sort out your shambles of a mate...

Everyone has a mate who is a bit of a shambles in the morning.

We helped give them a bit of a wake up call – in the form of a personalised video from a no-nonsense character, who knows their name, mocks their morning mocha, and gives them a simple solution: wake up and drink Tararua Real Iced Coffee.

Every video was unique – triggered by an email, and seamlessly stitched together on the fly from more than 115 individual clips. During the 33,000 minutes of brand engagement we generated, over 50% of videos previewed were sent to a friend – and nine out of ten of those friends clicked through to be given a wake-up call they won’t forget.

A further innovation came as we looked to convert interest to trial. We made sure each shambles of a mate could book a perfectly timed, pre-personalised wake-up call to their mobile in the morning – complete with a txt coupon for the all new no-nonsense Tararua Real Iced Coffee at the nearest gas station.

The campaign not only gave thousands of kiwi blokes a bit of a wake up call; we proved that people engage with FMCG brands in the digital space – and we helped the product sell well over target: in the first eight weeks it sold twice what the benchmark product sells… in an entire year. And that’s a bit of a wake up call for the entire category.

Face to face with the Australian Cricket Team

We adapted the ground-breaking 2007 Weet-Bix All Blacks Face2Face campaign to create a site that let Australians face up to their cricket heroes via the web or mobile, to see which one they most resemble.

Highlights:
• Learning the background and hearing from the team about how exciting it was developing the All Blacks version of this with the irrepressible Daniel Lee reminded me of the reasons I chose to join Ogilvy in the first place.
• However. A relaxed bout of to-ing and fro-ing in the selling-in stages left us with the most insanely compressed timeline I have ever, ever seen (and I’ve seen a few)…
• …made worse by the Christmas break — and a freelancer who did “nothing” over a ten-day period. And by “nothing”, I mean “not a thing”.
• Without the incredible willpower, outright skill and incomprehensibly good humour of the lead team (Super Rupert, Farah the Invincible and freelance developer Oscar the Invisible), there is no way the agency would have survived this process.
• And many, many thanks to the rest of the team who kept their own balls in the air, while this project – supporting one of Australasia’s greatest brands and one of Australia’s greatest sports teams – was successfully managed to completion. You know who you are.