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Lenovo Update: Sydney Activation
Lenovo Update:
A few months ago, Big Kahuna crafted the suped-up motorbike of PLAY Communication and Lenovo’s dreams for “The Dream Realisation Project”— a new marketing campaign built around the idea of DO-ing what you’ve always dreamt of, in conjunction with Lenovo’s global brand re-launch “Lenovo, For Those Who Do”.
Debuting in Melbourne Airport, the Lenovo DO Machines are set for Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland domestic Virgin terminals. We’ve recently received some fantastic pictures of the Sydney activation that we wanted to share!
This is just a few, for more click here…
Read about the making of the bikes…
DO-ing the Lenovo DO Machine
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The Lenovo DO Machine was realised in the Big Kahuna workshop.
Much of the TVC was filmed in and around our workshop in Rozelle, NSW.
Client: Lenovo (in partnership with Intel)
Agency: Play Communication
Brief: Bring to fruition the suped-up motorbike of Play and Lenovo’s dreams for “The Dream Realisation Project”
Successive winner of experiential marketing awards Play Communication and their client, tech-giant Lenovo (in partnership with Intel) imagined a new marketing campaign built around the idea of DO-ing what you’ve always dreamt of, in conjunction with Lenovo’s global brand re-launch “Lenovo, For Those Who Do”.
They carefully cast the handsome, chiselled pract-ocrat to be the face of the Lenovo campaign. He was to build the motorbike of his dreams — cue Big Kahuna Imagineering: as both the builders of the motorbike and the DO-er’s workshop — backdrop of the campaign (becoming the fifth time we’ve proudly had our workshop used in a campaign as the set and environment!).
With brief in hand, Big Kahuna set to work transforming two heavy, old, powerful bikes into “dream machines” — monster motorbikes with not one but six, fully-functioning Lenovo computers built-in. We stripped them down, scrubbed them clean and blasted them with a new coat of menacing, militaria-like dusky-grey primer akin to an “Air fix” scale model.
- Motorbike with sidecar before a dose of the Big Kahuna brand magic…
- Primed and ready
The all over dusky-grey colour was implemented tactically during WWII, rendering assistance to discreet messenger runs by reducing the enemy’s retinal contrast ratio detection ability, at dusk, when colour perception to distant objects by the cones in the foveal or focusing vision became impaired with the onset of nightfall, yet there was just enough light for a rider to negotiate a route without a headlamp.
Once fresh and clean, we caked on the fake mud and smearing fabricated bugs across the front to give the impression they have survived the rigors of driving all over Australia while cradling Lenovo’s precious cargo.
The “Dream” of the “Dream Realisation project” really took root here (visually) with Play’s art direction. Thereafter, Lenovo’s cache of new display models with superior PC features like impact-tolerant TFT screens and their fully-flat opening laptop hinge could take its XM stage.
- Final realisation
As a brand display, the wicked set of computing tools sell themselves on the blanched, yet magnetic construct of the bikes — a case study of just ONE man’s dream!! Surely the punters can’t deny themselves the demonstrated offer that implies a Lenovo DO thingy* will help deliver their DO-able dreams too! *Albeit, a Giga-whiz-tech-bit, supported by Intel’s latest and greatest tiptotanium-coated, über-splankiferous, critico-nerd squishing technology.
Technology – it’s all in the application. Everyone computes. Lenovo effects, for the DO-ing kind. “Do you DO?”, this activation posits. Experiential prop designs usually involve exaggerating the distinctive features or wholes of what’s for sale in the stores, so the ‘shelf-pick’ is compelled – easy. This below-the-line campaign piece is brilliantly personal at its core. Very pervasive, yet subversively persuasive.
Currently greeting domestic travelers disembarking in Melbourne, the Lenovo DO Machine will soon be found in Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland domestic Virgin terminals.
More pictures of the making of Lenovo’s DO Machines…
Similar installations and promotional devices propelled by the Big Kahuna brand…
What is experiential marketing?
I recently answered a LinkedIn discussion asking “What is experiential marketing?” and thought I’d share my thoughts here…
– Will Colhoun, Founder & Managing Director of Big Kahuna Imagineering
Anyone remember when experiential marketing used to be called “industrial theatre”? Increasingly more big brand multimedia campaigns are relying on live activations. The brands which confidently stride out into the public sector with experiential marketing and other minimalist audience collateral are SETTING jaws wagging! It’s like social networking. Who’d have thought that it would take off galactically?? Well, it did. And brand managers are well aware that positive encounters of the BTL (“Below The Line”) kind are “true” monitors of sentiment and great ignitors of passion for a brand.
No longer does a desperate dweeb, swaying awkwardly at the end of your unsuspecting, prey-like progress down one side of a huge shopping centre, offer you twin syllables which evoke your pity with an utterly uninspiring call-to-action/participate, before, semi-politely and knowingly rejected, the said assailant mutters “No worries, lady. Sorry,” as you escape his privacy-invasive, 3-page questionnaire.
Today, tremendous expense goes into stimulating BTL engagement often camouflaged within ATL (“Above The Line”) TVC’s like when hot-bodied, cooler-than-cool guys and gals get hurtled out the spout of a giant Coke bottle device. The personalisation of experiencing an intriguing, daring, radical moment is being offered as “BROUGHT TO YOU BY BRAND X”.
However, even smaller brands are cutting off improved market share by relatively cost-effective experiences that showcase a latest product in a dramatic theatrical style – which gets tongues wagging. Surely, still the ‘best’ advertising.
So, no longer is a brand’s object for sale the focal element to describe. Rather it’s the human reaction to the brand’s experiential marketing gifting that is supposed to sway the target’s hand toward the product on the shelf. The true leaders of experiential marketing (XM) are the ones at the cutting edge and they are there because they propagate the belief that XM has to occur based on cultural ROE (“Return On Experience”) prediction, on gut feeling of what’s cool/hip/funky/adventurous now. Those are the people with the campaigns that are pulling the awards and the brands that stick in the consumer’s valuable memory (whether they love them or hate them).
More and more XM co-requires online data entry media which engages people in anticipation of arriving at a given shopping centre and frequently during the experiential session and more often than not, follows up with results in a snappy fashion via online postings of results, names and pictures (the younger demographic in particular are exulted by seeing their own name up in lights as it were in the modern global community). Like Twitter is making anyone a micro-reporter/micro-blogger, Brand X’s experiential strategy aims to make stars of every common buyer. Perhaps in line with the impulse to buy, marketers are recognising that the attention span of the buyer is also limited.
All too often the technical pro’s and con’s of a physical product are spruiked at the discerning consumer whereas it’s (the products) emotive capacity is being sold to enormous effect for brands when delivered in an inspirational setting or tale.
Our clients conjure up these tales and often just point their creatives in some direction then companies like Big Kahuna help complete the picture that make consumers want to stop and engage/participate with the brand. We furnish that dweeb with the engaging collateral that turns him into a brand ambassador that passersby want to talk to. Click here to see some of our past projects…
- Big Kahuna’s role in designing and constructing the props and costumes for the 2008 Sensodyne Chill Test campaign certainly made these tooth fairies/ brand ambassadors very popular! Click here for more photos…
Will Colhoun, Managing Director and Founder of Big Kahuna Imagineering. And please feel free to comment below!
Click here to connect with Will on LinkedIn…
And find the original LinkedIn discussion here…