Creative Agency: JWT
The site is focused around Colin Padden, a fictional university student who is in a battle against an epidemic of boredom. Accompanying Colin's bio and background on the site is an in-depth blog describing his trials and tribulations as he traverses the U.S. in his new Ford Escape, in search of a cure for automotive malaise.
There is also an "Evidence of Boredom" portion of the site, where the voyeuristic interest of viewers is piqued as they are invited to read other internet users' humorous confessions of boredom. In conjunction with YouTube, there is also a video portion that shows people doing strange things in order to fight boredom, like a person who tapes her nose to her forehead on camera.
The audience is drawn to the site because they can actively participate in fighting boredom, but while there, they are given the opportunity to explore 10 basic features of the new Ford Escape including safety, navigation and design. Offering a 360-degree view that can be manipulated, users can familiarize themselves with the car, as well as locate a dealer in their vicinity.
-- Brittany Lawson, editorial intern, iMedia Communications
Colin's blog is well written, and kind of boring, although he's got great text links that lead to YouTube, Wikipedia and other places. His own videos are boring, but that's to be expected, I suppose, from a PhD candidate in environmental engineering at Oregon A&M University. Even Colin's face is boring, until Colin discovers the cure for boredom: The Ford Escape. Colin actually becomes pretty animated here, playing air guitar and air drums for us as he shows off the Escape's sound system. He's whipped his ennui, and he's eager to show you how you can, too.
The tie-ins to YouTube here are great, and the clues that this website is not pretending to be real are easily detected (e.g., there is no Oregon A&M). It's just client and agency presenting a new campaign in the way we've come to expect for new campaigns: online, with viral potential, lots of Flash and plenty of video. The inclusion of the cured Colin in the Ford Escape series of videos highlighting the vehicle's features is worth the price of watching Colin fall asleep on the exam table. Each one is a mini-commercial, well conceived, well written and well acted.
Everything about this campaign was planned beautifully, and the website's fluidity and easy navigation is welcome in this era of "find our hidden links" Flash websites. I was very glad not to find Colin ringtones, Colin screensavers or Colin wallpaper. I was especially glad that JWT took the honest approach: using the silly concept of curing boredom and incorporating user-submitted video, but not trying to pretend all the while that Colin is a real person.
-- Dave Wilkie, creative director, Dexterity Media and advertising blogger at Where's My Jetpack?
I like fighting. I like cars. I like to fight things with cars. I like the Fight Boredom campaign by Ford. Collin, the affable face of boredom incarnate, while not built Ford tough, has a lot going for him. The loosely scripted, user-generated production feel of his videos lands somewhere between entertaining and educational, and his blog, while laden with marketing, goes a level deeper for the consumer interested in Collin's misadventures in the land of the bored.
The videos that promote the car fall a little flat being that, if I want to know more about '08 Escapes flexible cargo space and 3,500lbs of towing power, I probably don't need a kid who looks like he doesn't pump his own gas making half-jokes about his childhood. BUT, the videos, photos and confessionals are a great addition. I like that the campaign doesn't try to entice people who are bored to upload content as part of a contest or sweepstakes (probably because Ford knows that people who get bored have no drive to win anything), but rather, the site links to YouTube with a suggestive nod that viewers of this campaign follow the millions of would-be producers out there, already making videos of themselves at the lowest levels of boredom.
We'll done Ford, keep fighting the good fight...
-- Bradley Werner, director, The Fifth Network