With Facebook apparently driving the value of brands by €6 billion across Europe in 2011 its not hard to see why every brand under the sun is hell bent on boosting its tally of Likes.

However, there are still a sizeable number of brands out there that aren’t playing the social game as well as they could be. Out of Interbrand’s Top 50 Brands in 2011, 27 companies apparently failed to respond to a single customer comment on Facebook – which kind of defeats the point of the platform, surely?

FRUKT took a quick delve around amongst the f-commerce and fan gates to see which brands are turning social to their advantage:

Schweppes – Timeline time machine

Carbonated drinks brand Schweppes is among the early adopters of Facebook’s new timeline, jumping on the new lifestyle visualisation tool to deliver a highly personalised story.   The Unexpected Future app sees the brand utilizing a user’s Facebook data to make lofty predictions about how their life may pan out in a variety of areas – such as wealth, career, adventure, romance and fame – by posting faux future posts from their friends.

The concept of looking back to look forward highlights one of Schweppes core brand statements, that it is the oldest soft drink in the world (dating back to 1783). However, instead of pushing heritage here, the brand has opted to look towards the future with a simple, quirky app timed to fit in with New Year resolution fever and the uncertainty that surrounds the January months.

Durex – making sweet music together

This clever little campaign from the condom manufacturer seeks to bring Facebook users into closer proximity via a quirky social music challenge. The ‘How in-sync are you?’ Facebook game, part of a wider marketing campaign for Durex’s new Performax Intense range, is set to launch in the run up to Valentine’s Day.

The Facebook game is comprised of two turntables and a cross fader mechanism, along with a healthy dose of Marvin Gaye played at different speeds. Couples need to keep a selection of tracks in sync across two separate turntables – one male, one female – for 10 seconds to prove their “virtual connection” in order to proceed to the next level.

Using ‘Let’s Get It On’ may not be subtle, but the game itself is,  cleverly appealing to both sexes without pigeonholing either into any stereotypical roles. It’s also indicative of how music can be incorporated into social promotions to define an emotional connection with a product.

Sam Adams – Crowdsourced Facebook beer

Following an ongoing theme that sees consumers acting as creative collaborators alongside brands, crowdsourcing is an ever people trend across Facebook, giving the power of choice back to the people. Often these campaigns boil down to selecting a flavour from existing choices, whether it be crisps or chocolate bars (as evident in Kit Kat’s latest Facebook promo).

US beer brand Sam Adams, however, is letting fans get much more hands on with its brand, turning its Facebook fans into master brewers and letting them create a limited edition beverage through the social platform.

The ‘Crowd Craft’ project sees Facebook fans aided the brand by selecting the beer’s color, clarity, body, hops and malt, with the final product launching in a selection of bars during the SXSW festival Austin.

Mini – pyromaniac Facebook fans

Brands are going to increasingly creative lengths to drive up their Facebook page subscribers, offering up ever more ingenious incentives to click that tiny like button.

The two main drivers for consumers (if they aren’t already enamoured with a brand) are content and competitions, i.e. you either get something you can’t get elsewhere or you win something. Both, however, need a hefty dose of innovation in order to turn digital heads.

Mini’s ‘Fan the Flame’ Facebook competition is a good example of ingenuity in action. A brand new mini countryman hangs suspended from a rope. In turn the rope is suspended over a Bunsen burner. Every like generated through the brand’s app sparks a flame, and if your like triggers the rope to burn and releases the mini, you win it.

A really smart meld of digital with physical, letting Facebook fans effect tangible events.

Cadbury’s – giant chocolate Facebook thumb

Brands – and seemingly fans – love celebrating landmark Facebook milestones, especially when they notch up several million fans. These trophies of community building naturally become yet another way to drive likes as campaigns in their own right. Whether its Axe looking to create a flag to celebrate collecting 10 million fans or Heineken giving away 1 million hugs to match its Like target.

Cadbury’s decided to create a Facebook promo that put its product front and centre in a big way with its ‘Thanks a million’ celebration, creating a massive thumbs up sign out of bars of chocolate (3 tonnes worth). The brand even invited along one Facebook Superfan to the construction party.

Not only does this celebration generate a great piece of video content – with the focus more on the process than the end result – but it also highlights how brands should look towards integrating both their product and real fans into the heart of any milestone event.

The most pivotal point in the US ad industry calendar is almost upon us, and as the players take up their positions on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for Super Bowl XLVI brands will once again be out in force with a raft of ads hoping to ingrain themselves on the public’s retinas.

With a 70,00 strong crowd and a TV audience in the region of 111 million there is a lot more at stake here than whether the new England Patriots or the New York Giants triumph. This is a battle for the hearts and minds – and increasing the social media soul – of the US consumer.

Naturally big audiences demand a big upfront financial cost, and with ads rising from $2.1M per 30 seconds in 2003 to a whopping $3.5M in 2012 putting all your eggs in one basket is an increasingly big gamble for brands.

The power of a great ad is undeniable, however, it’s still only the tip of a yearlong marketing iceberg that spans digital, social media and experiential activity. Here’s a few stats that indicate the pre and post event potential of a smart ad campaign:

57% – pay attention to ads prior to the game

25% – seek ads out based on favouring the brand

19% – seek out ads due to celebrity involvement

36% – of viewers will share ads via social media

87% – of which will share via Facebook

20% – will ‘like’ a brand’s Facebook page if they deliver a favourable Super Bowl ad

27% – will talk about the ad in a physical social setting post event

All great touch points, but what happens as the status updates disappear and those water cooler moments shift to other conversations – the conversion is ultimately as important as the touch down.

Take the automotive sector for example. With eight brands all vying for attention this year – and consumers finding it harder to distinguish between them – going beyond the ad is an essential

Pre event digital buzz is something auto brands are increasingly getting better at, with Kia opting to drive engagement by releasing its ad trailer in cinemas, VW netting over 8 million views of its trailer via YouTube and Chevrolet scoring 32 million views of its pre event ad competition (latching on to a concept utilised by Doritos). However, post event activity, which pushes the entertainment agenda into wider experiential activity is often remiss.

Super bowl ads give brands the opportunity to create an emotional bookmark in consumer’s minds. Ensuring they engage with the rest of the story requires a robust entertainment strategy that follows through the line, joining up the dots and delivering a consistent brand story in the downtime between these vast ad opportunities.

As the first month of 2012 draws to a close the predictions of self proclaimed media futurists and trend analysts are still rattling round our head. The trends that tend to stick though are the ones that have been around a while, but still haven’t really come to fruition. Personalisation and making consumers’ lives easier are two things that will never go away…

So say hello to Experia’s ‘Smart Tags‘, another example of these two wider trends in action. Providing a slight twist and advancement of Near Field Communication (NFC) these small key ring compatible tags combine and systemize functions by environment. Check the video below to see these clever little tags in action.

It’s undeniably cool. However, considering that QR codes still have haven’t really entered the public consciousness and that location / content services such as Repudo are still in their infancy – mainstream penetration feels a way off yet. That said, maybe the future success of Smart Tags will be driven by a less clunky user experience, as frequently experienced with its scanable QR cousin.

For marketers this new technology provides all sorts of opportunities. Personalised product and service offerings focused around key lifestyle moments (from the day to day, to travel, finance, keeping fit) and smart ad and content exchanges based on location. Creating campaigns based around special events and moments (think football World Cup, Valentines or similar). For example, see your favourite band play at your favourite venue and by default receive band content direct to your phone just by walking through the door.

One thing is for sure though – we’re going to see more of this and mainstream consumer uptake is only a matter of time as we all become smart phone users and technology allows us to interact with such offerings, seamlessly and stress free, turning it into part of our day to day life.

The city is a place teaming with activity – as my Tube journey to work this morning is unfortunately testament to. More people globally are now living in cities than the country for the first time in history; there are now 21 ‘megacities’  (with inhabitants of 10 million or more) and experts estimate that this number will double over the next 10 to 20 years.

These vast concrete jungles, with their strong work aesthetic and overtly grey exterior, are in many ways the perfect backdrop for brand activations that can side step the ingrained, heads-down, commuter culture with a light-hearted dose of play.

Here we look at a clutch of recent activities and installations that subvert our view of the city.

Brightening people’s day

Arts collective Greyworld developed a slice of summer in the middle of winter (echoing previous pop-up work from Corona), by installing a temporary sun right in the heart of a bustling London. The ‘Trafalgar Sun’ installation is part of the juice brand’s ‘Brighter Mornings’ campaign and this vast structure with its 60,000 light bulbs of heat and light brought something quite literally otherworldly to the urban landscape. Not only does this jolt people out of their normal routine, but it also provides a deeper emotional connection with the brand.

Urban escapism through art

Here’s a brilliant use of art to subvert our established view of the city we think we know so well. Deconstructing Ways is a new installation piece in Sydney by the artist Isidro Blasco, which places vibrant street imagery onto walls to create pathways you never knew existed – gateways to other, more inviting, worlds. What is interesting about this particular art piece is how it presents the viewer with a place that feels more real than were they are currently standing, a parallel world that delivers a visual moment of escapism from their grey surroundings.

Shifting your view of the city

This clever mirrored art installation in Paris, part of the perceptions exhibit, is yet another great example of how visual tricks can change the way people see their urban environment. The artist Leandro Erlich has developed a unique optical illusion which sees people lying down on an image of a building which is then reflected above to look like a real tower block facade, enabling them to experience the feeling of climbing and reclining on walls and windows. Again it’s the perception shift effect here that puts ‘play’ suddenly on the agenda of passers by – letting out the inner child for a fleeting moment of physical expression and breaking the monotony of the trudge across the city.

Building quirky cultural landmarks

Juxtaposition is a key part of any marketer’s toolbox. Taking something from one scenario and placing it somewhere that it really shouldn’t exist. A key example of this is evident in ‘A Room For London’ an innovative architectural project in London, which has seen a small one room apartment, shaped like a boat, appear on the top of a building by the Thames. People can rent the room for a day to experience an entirely unique view of their city, and the structure is also set to play host to series of musical, artistic and cultural podcasts. Again, this is an unbranded installation, but there is plenty of opportunity fro a brand to build something similar – a living, cultural, interactive billboard set apart from its surroundings.

The last few years have seen a rapid influx in the number of pop-up stores and experiences as marketers seek to package up the essence of their brand into everything from shipping crates to cardboard boxes. However, with pop-ups becoming increasingly ubiquitous the race is now on to utilise these fleeting appearances in bolder and more considered ways.

The real value in the pop-up promotion is in building brand awareness by disturbing the traditional flow of people’s daily routines. It’s all about juxtaposition, bringing a little taster of somewhere else, a moment of escapism or disruption. However, the mistake often made here is in setting up a Narnian wardrobe experience only to then fill it full of clothes as opposed to an engaging brand journey. Sampling and sales are naturally important, but not at the expense of a deeper, more engaging and entertaining story.

Putting your pop-up in a shipping container, somewhat ironically, requires you to think outside the box.

Here FRUKT takes a look at 5 smart pop-up activations…

Ikea – Metro pop up

Kicking off our list is a simple yet affective guerrilla-marketing stunt from everyone’s favourite Swedish furniture chain, Ikea. The flat packed furniture retailer took its traditional in-store room setting displays and put them in a decidedly not so traditional location, setting up a pop up apartment in the Paris underground.

Not only that but in order to further promote the notion that even the tiniest of spaces can be made both beautiful and more habitable through convenient uses of storage, the brand had five people live in the 581 square feet of underground apartment for five days.

It’s a smart use of location, guaranteeing plenty of press coverage whilst also showcasing a vast catalogue of Ikea product – amplifying the underground billboard concept into something far more tangible and interactive.

Reebok – Pop up Gym

Struggling to keep up you New Year Gym resolution, even though its only mere weeks into 2012? Maybe Reebok can help as they bring the gym directly to you courtesy of a pop-up experiential activity surrounding their latest global brand strategy.

A new focus on fitness will see the brand creating gyms within innocuous shipping crates and distributing them across a variety of key locations worldwide, including London Bridge and the Empire State building.

The interesting angle here is how Reebok is focusing its fitness agenda on social sharing, emphasising the community, competition and camaraderie of sport (as opposed to the usual competiveness focus) through this experiential activation which touches down in the UK in March.

Naver – App Square

Naver, the South Korean search engine, developed a highly tactile take on the packaged pop up, creating a walk through experience (designed to emulate an opened cardboard box) in order to bring its app search platform to the streets.

The temporary kiosk housed a series of stations inside dedicated to some of the brand’s most popular search terms, bringing them to life and highlighting the fact that search is no longer a static, deskbound function. For example, the music search area was fitted with giant cardboard speakers enabling visitors to discover new music and listen to it from within the structure.

It’s a smart promotion that turns the fairly mundane process of search into a shared experience, bringing it to life in a highly personable way.

Evian – Alpine Experience

The bottled water brand packaged up an evocative slice of the Alpine lifestyle into a custom built shipping crate for Londoners to sample as part of latest pop up promotion. The bright pink ski lodge experience saw the brand inviting participants to sign up for a 45-minute sensory experience on London’s South Bank, complete with log fire, blasts of mountain air and cocktails and canapés (including liquid nitrogen nibbles).

What is particularly notable with this pop up is how it is integrated into social media, giving fans of the brand creative control. Fans get to sign up for the Alpine excursion via the brand’s Facebook page and also get to choose what activities take place inside, what scenery is on display and choose surprise guests.

Corona Extra – Summer in Winter

Corona brought a splash of summer to the winter months in December in London, offering a respite from the pre-Xmas shopping chaos by delivering an out of season pop up experience.

The Corona ‘Extra Summer’ pop-up beer garden was housed inside a specially heated dome (similar in style to Cornwall’s Eden Project), giving passers by the opportunity to fast forward to next summer and sample Corona in a tropical setting complete with DJs and palm trees.

Again the key here is in using pop-ups as a way of transporting participants not only to new places, but also through time from one season to the next.

As we tentatively step into 2012, we find ourselves on the threshold of a bumper year when it comes to entertainment and cultural activity.

If it’s all a bit too much to take in with an expanded post Xmas waistline and a head that still pounds from New Year, let us guide you through a quick fire snapshot of the key themes and opportunities to watch out for…

SPORT

This year will undoubtedly be dominated by sport. Quite simply you won’t be able to get away from people running, jumping and generally chucking and kicking balls at each other. The triple threat of the Superbowl, the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship and the small matter of the London Olympic Games see vast opportunities for brands to develop broad activities in and around these events. Although pumping budget into sponsorships and Superbowl ad expenditure has its place, it’s more about how a brand evokes the underlying passion that surrounds these iconic sporting platforms – both experientially and digitally – that will reap the most rewards here. Whether it’s the opening Olympic ceremony or the half time Superbowl performances, entertainment is at the heart of the celebration. Where sporting preferences can often segment an audience, entertainment unites.

Key themes: community, inclusivity, play, participation, shared passion

FILM

The big movies that will be looking to put bums on seats in 2012 are primarily centred on ‘Nostalgia’ and ‘Heroes. ‘Naturally there is the usual glut of teen book adaptations (War Horse, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, and yet more of the Twilight saga), not to mention the always box office pleasing superhero franchises (The Amazing Spiderman, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises). However this is also twinned with a hefty dose of historic nostalgia (The Great Gatsby, Anna Karina) plus a big push on 80’s remakes (Total Recall, 21 Jump Street, Red Dawn).

Sparked by Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, there is also a rush on strong female heroines in 2012, from female warrior led Pixar animation Brave to survival expert and arrow slinger Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (pictured). Scarlett Johansson and Anne Hathaway will be donning their Superhero garb, while Kristen Stewart dumps Bella and comes out fighting in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Key themes: nostalgia, decadence, fantasy, everyday heroes, escapism, strong female heroines

FASHION

Apparently ‘Tangerine Tango’ is the pantone colour of Spring 2012 – “sophisticated, but at the same time dramatic and seductive,” according to Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. Envisaged as an energy boost, an adrenalin rush amid the ongoing recession, the hue of the moment has plenty to say about the marketing agenda for fashion focused promotions. Subtlety is so 2011.

London Fashion Week, with its unique Stella McCartney collection and the unveiling of new Alexander McQueen label, McQ will be a pivotal opportunity in February as will Fashion’s Night Out in September in the U.S., which delivers plenty of experiential fare in and around the periphery of the event itself. We’re promised Hawaiian florals, luxury sportswear and oversized animal prints, with all apparel routes seemingly leading to a surge of invigorated confidence.

Key themes: retro future (classics re-envisaged), everyday luxury, bright, bold, confident

MUSIC

With sport dominating the agenda and with no Glastonbury this year, you’d be forgiven for thinking music is taking a back seat in 2012. However with hundreds of festivals on offer from the other big players and an ever expanding selection of niche events, brands will once again be out in force across the UK, Europe and the US, as they look to align with vast audiences of impassioned music fans.

As we saw last year, 2012 is once again set to be dominated by female stars, with Lady Gaga’s new album and tour set to coincide with a re-emergence of the Queen of pop herself, Madonna, not to mention younger upstarts snapping at their heels in the form of Azealia Banks and Lana Del Rey. Reunions are also big again, with the Rolling Stones turning 50 and the Beach Boys and the Stone Roses regrouping to tour. As ever there are a host of new names being touted as ones to watch, including Frank Ocean, Fun, Iggy Azalea, Dev, Walk the Moon and A$AP Rocky.

Key themes: niche festivals (offering music+), nostalgic reunions, empowered female artists

2012: The Great Escape…

In summary 2012 is all about escapism and nostalgia, with consumers still eager to utilise entertainment as a gateway to a place that delivers a bold alternative to their decidedly uncertain financial future. Whether that means cheering on your sporting heroes, dressing in bright orange, jumping up and down in a muddy field or watching Abraham Lincoln take on a horde of vampires at your local cineplex, brands need to set the stage for a year of escapism in 2012.

Following a trend across 2011, brands will continue to push forward with promotions that enable consumers to personalise their experience of a brand and its products as they look to drive deeper engagement.

Whether it’s Bacardi turning over experiential event curation to its Facebook fans, the Kaiser Chiefs inviting fans to create personalised versions of their album, or Coca Cola offering up bespoke named drinks cans, the ability to tailor content, services, rewards and brand experiences is a key differentiator between the brand that pushes messages and those that enable the customer to be the pivotal point of a campaign.

We’ve spotted a fair few early instigators of the 2012 personalisation push already. Toyota is encouraging fans of its latest music led promotion to develop bespoke pop videos featuring the animated stars of is ATL campaign, airline KLM is letting its customers chose who sits next to them based on their social media compatibility and Heineken is putting QR codes to effective use on the music festival scene, helping music fans showcase their individuality and meet new people.

With the concept of the ‘average shopper’ or consumers that fit into neat segmented demographics rapidly being resigned to history, the drive is on to create an individual-level understanding of the consumer in 2012 – what they are passionate about and how they ultimately want to shape, mould and interact with the world around them.

Another seven days have whizzed past in a flurry of activity over at FRUKT’s London offices. Notable marketing promotions that have grabbed our attention this week include, the creation of multi-language promotional music tracks, taggable retail sound installations, projection map block parties and websites built out of paint.

Coca-Cola shakes up musical language barriers

Natasha Bedingfield has been drafted in to put her unique spin on the title song for Coca Cola’s new Christmas 2011 advertising campaign.

Natasha has reworked the Coca-Cola anthem ‘Shake Up Christmas’, previously recorded by the group Train as part of the brand’s 2010 holiday promotion, recording unique versions of the track in six languages – including Spanish, French, Swahili, Filipino and Ukrainian.

The promotion, which forms part of Coca-Cola’s global ‘Open Happiness’ marketing campaign, will roll out across 90 countries and include new TV spots and extensive digital and mobile activity.

The single is available now on iTunes, while a unique “mega-mix” incorporating all six language versions of the song in one track will be given away via Coca-Cola’s Facebook page.

Calvin Klein’s in store sound installation

Here’s an interesting move from Calvin Klein, which builds on our recent article looking at how brands can enhance their retail music activity.

The iconic apparel brand has joined forces with music recognition service Shazam on an interactive sound installation. The retail display units let customers listen to a specially created song for the brand’s Holiday campaign, with Shazam delivering additional exclusive content, including in store sales promotions, wallpapers, and a free download of the song itself.

It’s a simple, yet effective use of music to drive users to additional content that lives beyond the retail unit. Shazam previously helped Old Navy promote its Old Navy Records music promotion earlier in the year, enabling viewers to shop clothes directly from the ads.

Nokia’s 4D block party

FRUKT headed down to the banks of the River Thames earlier this week to catch a glimpse of everyone’s favourite mouse-headed DJ as Nokia lit up the London skyline with a massive musical projection map promotion.

The fairly epic production, billed as a 4D spectacle, saw the mobile manufacturer teaming up with super producer Deadmau5 as they turned the Millbank Tower into a constantly morphing visual light show.  Deadmau5, naturally, brought the house down (quite literally, as the Millbank Tower was made to appear to crumble), with an especially created set of exclusive remixes for the one night only event.

As with all projection map campaigns, the post event video really doesn’t do it justice at all. And in many ways that is the point here. These events are meant to be experienced first hand.

Toyota builds a live outdoor art experience into its website creation

Innovative campaigns that turn the ubiquitous branded micro site into something more engaging always manage to turn our head’s here at FRUKT. Especially those that manage to join the dots between the digital world and the more tangible and emotive physical world.

Toyota’s latest promotion for its new FT-86 I Concept sports car is a great example of how experiential activity can be built around the creation of a micro site. The brand enlisted a host of artist to work collaboratively on a giant outdoor canvas, with the resulting artwork then becoming a fully functioning website.

What is interesting here is how the brand has turned a mundane backroom element of the promotion into the focus. We saw a similar effort this summer from Strongbow on the music festival circuit, as they recruited Facebook fans to build the brand’s on site activation, a self-build pub. Beer brand Sagres also opted for a similar tact to Toyota by recruiting a master chocolatier to craft their website out of chocolate.

Ever wanted to be in two places at the same time? Well now you can, with a little technological help.

Recently, talk in the FRUKT offices turned to the 10^th anniversary of Gorillaz. We’ve been avidly following Damon Albarn’s innovative music project since its inception a decade ago, consistently engaged by a steady stream of campaigns that have championed emerging technology. However, what intrigued us most about the concept were the opportunities that a fully functioning animated band could bring to the table for brands.

One of the most exciting aspects of the Gorillaz phenomenon was the idea that the band could potential play in a number of places at the same time – something that until then had only resided in the wishful thinking of band managers the world over.

There were some notable attempts at live Gorillaz shows – the collaboration with Madonna in 2005 at the MTV awards for example -  but production costs simply didn’t merit the band continuing down this route. Ultimately, in 2010, the band came out from behind their cartoon avatars to tour as a physical band.

More recently, thanks to holographic innovation, it is brands themselves that are now leveraging their music ambassadors simultaneously in more than one location or country, as they attempt to multiple the traction of their artist partnerships.

Back in 2009 we saw early signs of how this new holographic technology could be utilised when Universal teamed up with mobile brand Orange on the ‘Orange Monkey Hologram Gigs’, a series of pop up holographic projections in shopping centres, featuring the likes of N-Dubz and Pixie Lott.  It was a live tour, but it didn’t need the artists to actually be there. A novel and potentially lucrative concept.

There have been other attempts to utilise holographic technology, most notably the creation of Hatsune Miku, a completely virtual Japanese pop star, who has turned the tables by offering herself up as a brand ambassador, working with Toyota on a campaign in the US.

However, it is the recent campaign by Deutsche Telekom that has potentially opened the floodgates for the bi-locational artist. The promotion saw Mariah Carey emerging from a giant gift-wrapped box in order to perform live (or seemingly so) in front of massive crowds in Germany, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Poland simultaneously.

It’s a brilliantly executed piece of experiential music marketing, that turns a piece of branded video content into a ‘had to be there’ music experience that can potentially traverse the globe. Furthermore, the action is all ultimately controlled by the brand, ensuring the experience is tailored to their requirements, effectively limiting human error.

With projection mapping the big marketing gimmick of 2010/11, a resurgence in interest in holographic ambassadors could be the one to watch in 2012/13.

The music video landscape has been getting a financial leg up from brands for a number of years now, and the use of video as a platform for companies to showcase their products in front of  an artist’s lucrative fan base shows no sign of abating any time soon.

Recent reports have highlighted the ancillary revenue that these deals are providing for artists before a single download or physical sale has occurred.  Britney Spears allegedly netted $500,000 for plugging Sony electronics and dating website Plenty of Fish in the video for ‘Hold It Against Me’ (not to mention plenty of free on-screen time for her new perfume line). There is also some evidence to prove the associated benefits for brands, with Plenty Of Fish achieving a 20% uplift in traffic the day after the video premiered.

In-video product promos are continuing at quite a pace. Just this week we’ve seen JLS teaming up with Volvo to insert the automotive company’s vehicles into the boyband’s new video, echoing a well-documented placement by Fiat in a Jlo video last month.

Now product placements are all well and good, but there is another way to engage with music video culture that we believe offers both deeper traction and a more credible fit with both artists and fans.

Having made a name for themselves with a string of clever viral videos, the LA–based band OkGo has worked in tandem with brands – from State Farm and Samsung, through to Yahoo and Range Rover – to develop innovative and engaging video content, often fusing cutting edge digital technology with fan interaction.

The group’s latest video partnership took place at the close of last week, with the band joining forces with Cuervo Cold Tequila on a promotion that enabled fans to insert their Facebook and Twitter avatars into a new music video. The resulting production – which utilises an emerging technology called ShotCast – gave fans the ability to self-brand a pixel within the 8-bit styled video (similar in concept to the Million Dollar Homepage idea). A clever bit of UGC creative, powered by the Cuervo brand.

Olivia Solon, a friend of FRUKT over at Wired, recently interviewed lead vocalist Damian Kulash and he had this to say about building an effective brand/artist partnership: “The smart brands know that it matters more for them to be a part of the things that people love, rather than to just plaster logos and slogans everywhere”.

As brands continue to leverage the universal appeal of music, the focus has to now be on delivering credible, creative and honest collaborations with artists. Therein lies the difference between product placement and smart entertainment; one is focused on netting eyeballs, the other aims more directly for the heart – striking a deeper emotional connection, both with music and fans.