Beach Shower Cam

Sorry. Just trying new ways to increase Friday Thing/k’s Click Through Rates.
(Kidding again. There is a Beach Shower Cam today, but it’s further ahead)

Hi all. Hope you had a good week.

We’ll start today in the Netherlands, where Skoda wanted to promote its new Octavia model to Dutch consumers.
The brief was challenging. They wanted a campaign that will rise above the blandness of car specifications and will enter into the realm of entertainment.

Skoda came up with the idea of a remote controlled car. An Octavia car was parked in various locations around the Netherlands.
There is a camera inside the car and one outside the car filming the outside of the vehicle.

Both of the feeds are sent to a website (Jolieke, what are they saying there?...can you help?...)
From what I read, visitors to the website could not only select which camera view they wanted to watch, but also interact with the car and watch the reactions of passers by.
Once users arrive at the live feed, they can see a number on their screen which represents a countdown of the number of people who have a turn to do something to the car before it is their turn.
Once their turn arrives, they have one minute to remotely manipulate a number of the car’s features.

(And here comes the Beach Shower Cam. You may have seen it.)

A similar idea of ‘live’ webcam was done virally 2 years ago by Unilever for one of its deodorant brands, Axe.
A video microsite created  to look like an actual webcam mounted near a beach shower, so the viewer could change the temperature of the water and view the results.
The site is off now - but here’s a screenshot that I found. I remember playing with that (Research, Research). It didn’t deliver the response you expect…

Two things before saying goodbye.

One, if you haven’t seen this YouTube yet, check what Chloe sent me. NFL.com Fantasy League. Too easy.

Second, I went yesterday to Leonard Cohen’s concert. One of his most beautiful songs goes like that:
There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. Might be a good motto for 2009.