The Campaign

From a branded content perspective, New Zealand definitely lags behind larger international markets. Truly unique content created for the benefit of media partnerships and brands is still in its infancy. In NZ the cost of “bought media” is considerably cheaper due to economies of scale, and the popularity of “owned digital media” is increasing, while the cost of producing branded content remains fairly high. Most New Zealand clients, with limited budgets, would therefore prefer to revert to a more traditional advertising media model to reach their consumers. As a consequence there are few rules or restrictions regarding branded content, with the only stipulation from media owners being that it should be clear to the audience that the content is bought to them by a brand. Pretty simple really. What that does mean is that the media owners are very open to new ideas to ensure they’re connecting brands with their audience in more engaging and relevant ways.

Results

In April 2012, V Energy assembled a team of technology developers, audio engineers, visual artists, musicians and a leading music producer, and gave them a challenge – to create a piece of music using only the body’s movement. We called this the V Motion Project. The team hacked Microsoft’s Kinect motion tracking software combining it with audio software Abelton, to create an instrument that transforms the body’s movement into sounds. That data was also captured to create bespoke live visuals to demonstrate that the technology was real and actually being played live. The music producer, audio engineers and motion artist then worked out what sort of music they could make with this new piece of technology. It needed to be commercially friendly, current, and resonate with our fickle young target market. The project, completed in just 16 weeks, was documented and released as a series of online webisodes on the ‘V’ YouTube channel, brand website and Facebook page allowing consumers to come on the journey with us as we created something amazing. Leading youth TV channel U-Live and radio stations George FM and The Edge followed the project from start to finish distributing the content we created as well as creating their own. On June 16th, The V Motion Project showcased its new technology with an unexpected live performance in downtown Auckland. The motion artist played the full track with his movements projected onto a 12x30m wall as mind-blowing animations, as the music boomed through huge speaker stacks. The event was covered live on national TV and radio, witnessed & recorded by hundreds of spectators, and uploaded to YouTube and Facebook. We filmed this experience and used the content in TVCs, digital media, additional digital content and finally in a full-length music video.

In New Zealand there are only three media companies capable of creating and airing branded content. We partnered with the two largest – MediaWorks and TVNZ. We utilizing the strengths of each to target our 18-24yr consumer – MediaWorks two leading youth radio stations The Edge and George FM and TVNZ’s leading youth TV channel U-Live. Both partnerships used the content we created to air on their networks as well as creating their own bespoke content. We also maximized the reach of V Energy’s owned media channels – V’s YouTube channel, Facebook page and website – distributing the content to our fan base.

As per our objectives, The V Motion Project delivered significant lifts in consumer engagement and sales. - Website visits increased by 1000% - All content was viewed more than 1.8 million times - Facebook Likes grew 12% - The music track (Can’t Help Myself) reached #1 in the New Zealand Singles Charts, and #1 on the iTunes Electronic Music charts. - Significant earned media with PR return on investment of 400% - While V Energy sales increase in measured channels by 13%. The project has also received huge international attention from some of the world’s most creative companies including TED, the Discovery Channel, Microsoft, Warner Bros Music, Disney, PepsiCo and Google. The Huffington Post described the project as “the future of dance music”, while the Daily What referred to it as “a prototype for Skrillex’s inevitable 2017 Super Bowl half-time show.”