the challenge
Connect 16 – 20 year old men to the Levi’s brand.
how?
As part of an integrated campaign for Levi’s called “Unbuttoned,” we developed two markedly different sites: Unbuttoned and Unbutton Your Beast. The latter was a microsite meant to be viral, inviting consumers to create customized messages which would be read by an animated character inside a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.
Users could select a pre-recorded message or record their own via a toll-free number. The user’s voice was stored as an mp3 and imported into the site upon playback, where Flash would detect volume levels of the message — and display what appeared to be the beast perfectly in sync with a user’s voice. This was accomplished by shooting video of the stop-motion characters in various mouth-open / mouth-closed states, and adding cuepoints to the video. Some cuepoints were connected to high volume, others to low. Flash would then use this data to play the video in sync with the voice.
We worked with two spectacular vendors on opposite coasts who helped us bring this vision to life: Laika, in Portland, Oregon, constructed and shot the “beast” sock puppets; call-in technology was provided by Oddcast in New York City.
public response and KPIs
Unbutton Your Beast soft-launched on October 1st 2008 (after a long night of last-minute programming); the site received 500,000 unique visits within 24 hours. Some critics wrote that the site was inappropriate, but the 30,000 beasts created over the few months of this site’s lifetime is testimony to the contrary. Jay Leno mentioned the site in his opening monologue on The Tonight Show in the midst of the controversy.
key technologies
Front-end built with Flash AS3. Backend built with PHP and MySQL. JavaScript for usage tracking and analysis.
team
- Stephen Goldblatt, Executive Creative Director
- Lauren Harwell, Creative Director
- Jaime Robinson, Copywriter
- Husani Oakley, Director of Technology
- Nick Mitrousis, Flash Programmer
- Brad Griffin, Flash Programmer
- Jason Jobe, Motion Designer
- Jamie Tompetrini, Producer
- Heather McKay, Account Manager
- Did I forget someone? Probably, and I’m sorry. Let me know.
