Some people say that when it comes to advertising, if you can beat world news you’ve done good, but if you can beat sex, you’ve done great. You see, in an overexposed society, us simple humans only care about two things: what’s happening right now, and what we wish was happening now.
Christmas time is no different. We don’t care about it because it’s not happening yet, and when you think of Chadstone at 3am, you certainly don’t wish it were happening now. As for finding room for all those cards jammed into our mailbox? Well, it’s quite an effort. And we don’t especially care for the ones clogging up our email either (admittedly, I find ‘Elf Yourself’ is always good for a giggle, but that’s the only exception).
So that was our challenge for the DTDigital Christmas card in 2010; to make something that people care about and create enough intrigue to evade their trashcan. To do this, we couldn’t make a Christmas card; we had to make fun. That way, when the only thing happening in our client’s office is a metre high in-tray and some percolated coffee, we’re there with something better.
Enter The SELECTOR3000. A giant skill tester, constructed from little more than Lego and Gaffa tape, and controlled in real-time through the magic of the Internet. The aim of the game: select a present, pick it up, and drop it in the Christmas sack. Plus, every present in the sack equalled $20 in the bank for Vinnies.
Everyone must have had enough bad coffee for one day, as more than 300 people visited The SELECTOR3000 every hour. And on Twitter, it trended higher than #wikileaks and #dickileaks, to become the most talked about topic in Australia. That’s right, more people cared about our Christmas card than the world’s first full-blown Internet war and a sex scandal involving footballers and schoolgirls. Add that to the fact that a total of $5,680 was raised for those in need, and I guess we didn’t just do good, we did great.
And that’s a lot better than Nick Dal Santo’s luck with the ladies will be after those photos.
For the visual learner, our SELECTOR3000 video case study is below: