Web Watch: Love distance v hair crisis

Dwayne Serjeant
Creative Director
Wwwins Consulting Hong Kong

Love Distance

http://www.lovedistance.jp

Hot (rating 4 out of 5)

A billion millimetres separate us. A month before Christmas this site started unveiling a dialogue between two seemingly star-crossed lovers who had separated over an argument and had retired to their home towns at opposite ends of Japan. The audience was now able to watch the slow repair and, hopefully, the reconciliation. Using real-time nightly chat sessions, with questions from viewers being answered, YouTube channels, daily blog updates and surveys, the campaign pulled in a pretty good audience. They also plotted GPRS locations and footage as they crossed Japan to an eventual meeting in Tokyo. In typical Japanese fashion, it was beautifully shot and accompanied by some wonderfully melancholy music. The client wasn't actually unveiled until the end of the one month long campaign - Sagami condoms. For a company that usually advertises it's ‘thinness' (0.02mm) this was a beautiful extension of the distance metaphor that ‘even love needs distance'.

Axe Hair Crisis Relief

http://www.axehaircrisisrelief.org/100girls/

Not (rating 2 out of 5)

This URL made its way round our creative team very quickly, along with mutterings of ‘is it real...?'. While not as intriguing as some of the other Axe creative we've seen, it seemed to have potential. The basic premise is that ‘hot girls like dudes with cool hair...' - having lost mine, I tried not to be offended by that! The scene is set with 100 ‘live' girls milling around a stage divided into 2 halves - ‘No' and ‘Yes' sections. Images of ‘dudes' with not-so-cool hair are flashed up and the girls vote, accompanied by a pretty inane host. Visitors can upload their own pictures and get voted on and share the site with friends while interstitials promote various Axe hair products. And that's about the sum of it: a lame video version of ‘Am I Hot Or Not?'. Judging from the host's repetitious comments, the site isn't actually live, but even if it was, the engagement factor dies after about 5 minutes - it's that shallow. They could learn a lot by watching the Diesels' ‘Heidis' campaign from last year.