Plenty of people are happy just sitting through a television show, zipping through its commercials via DVR, and soaking in the passive experience.

But plenty are looking to be a little more involved in their entertainment and AT&T is taking the first steps to get them there. The brand just launched an action-adventure drama entitled Daybreak as a tale told through five online films, two websites, and, of course, a smartphone app. And the company didn’t stint on the big names involved. Its creator is Tim Kring, whose latest hit on the small screen is Fox’s Touch with Kiefer Sutherland. The director of the first few episodes: Jon Cassar, who helmed Fox's previous TV series with Sutherland, a little drama you might have heard of called 24.Continue reading...

A Coke vending machine (above) was installed at the National University of Singapore with “Hug Me” written on it in Coke’s iconic font. The currency for a soda is a squeeze… a literal machine hug for a free Coke.

Gestural marketing, in this case brilliantly executed, iterates on Coca-Cola’s Open Happiness campaign, launched in 2010 at St. John’s University, and seen in this video.

It posed the metaphorical question, “Where will happiness strike next?” and millions of views later, as the campaign spread to other countries, tools and platforms were in place via global activation kits for custom spots from other cultures such as this one from Brazil. Continue reading...

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Television shows generally launch in one country and, if they find success, another country might license the shows from the get-go. Or it might even be totally rethought and remade the way The Office was after it was decided that the UK hit was too good to not have a version of it in the States, but needed an American setting.

Fox is planning on a whole new way of doing things when it launches the debut season of Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland, in March (with a sneak peek on Wednesday night). With the help of Unilever’s marketing dollars, Fox will launch the new show in more than one hundred countries.

Focused on a man and his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son, who happens to be able to predict world events, the show will feature scenes and characters from around the globe who will speak in their native languages, according to Marketing Week.

And while the show sounds like it will be a little unpredictable, there is one thing viewers can bank on: There will be commercials for Unilever products on the opening episodes. According to Marketing Week, Unilever is looking to have “one culturally relevant content platform” and Touch should serve that need worldwide.Continue reading...

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