Key ‘The Sartorialist’ into YouTube when you’ve got 7 minutes and 11 seconds spare. It’s a mesmerising film about a blogger who has 70,000 readers a day. This is part of Amsterdam Worldwide’s latest campaign for Intel’s Visual Life (www.intel.com/visuallife). With well over 500,000 views in just a few weeks, it’s far more engaging and informative than most 30 second spots, press ads or poster campaigns.
This new style of content-based advertising will feature more and more over the coming months and years. Seeding is key but this is very clever because the guy has already got a very large and eager fanbase all waiting to tune in.
The result is a well made short that entertains and informs. The fascinating bit about these high profile bloggers is that you wouldn’t recognise them in the street – so it raises their profiles too. Everybody wins.
Scott Schumann, aka blogger ‘The Sartorialist’, is very honest about his lack of professional training as a photographer but sees himself as a true documenter of life and fashion in the current age. He refers to the Internet as a ‘Digital Park Bench’ where you get to listen and interact with interesting people, hear new stuff and enjoy filling your time with visual stimuli.
Intel’s link is ‘Through visual experiences, we define who we are.’ They provide the powerful processors that run our PCs and Macs, thereby ensuring we get the best experience when we watch online or via moving image formats. It all fits nicely and doesn’t feel like a stretch too far. You can even share your own experiences – not that I will. I heard statistics that 1 per cent of people contribute, 5 per cent comment and the rest (of us) just watch. Hey, I apply myself elsewhere (though my wife would probably have something to say about that…)
There are lots more of these films planned. I, for one, will certainly tune in.
Chris Catchpole is a creative consultant chris@chriscatchpole.com
