To reach consumers, companies have to animate gadgets, turn buildings into monsters, or save the Olympic Games. "The Secret of the Firm" selected the five most striking advertising campaigns of 2013

Text: Anastasia Yakoreva

The most popular

“Our people won, it’s cloudy outside, Katya loves you, it’s half past seven,” says the animated smartphone performed by actor Sergei Svetlakov in an advertisement for mobile Internet from Beeline. He knits in line, bored in the absence of fast Internet, critically examines the hippopotamus symbolizing a “small presentation with sound,” etc. Of the advertising campaigns of the Big Three operators launched this year, VimpelCom’s videos turned out to be, according to the advertising community, the most noticeable. In total, Beeline released eight videos with Svetlakov, five of them received more than 1 million views on YouTube (however, the company used “pre-rolls,” that is, forced displays of advertising before the video that the user is about to watch). MTS and Megafon videos have no more than 150 thousand views.

The most tongue-in-cheek

“Mm... Ummm... Eaa... In...” - these are the sounds that passers-by in Moscow made when asked “Do you speak English?” (“Do you speak English?”). The Smetana agency “glued together” funny answers into a viral video for the online language school LinguaLeo, which gained 700 thousand views on YouTube in a few days. Another Smetana video, “Fight in the Museum. Grandma Killed the Tourists” (see SF N10/2013 ) generally scored a record 5 million views in a couple of days. Finally, in the third video, commissioned by LinguaLeo, the viewer sees a grandfather with an overgrown beard in a remote Russian village. The grandfather tells in impeccable English how in his youth he smoked weed and listened to the Rolling Stones, and then begins to chase a rooster around the yard, using purely Russian expressions. This video had more modest results - only 150 thousand views.

The fastest

The Shchusev Museum of Architecture is not the most popular in Moscow, but in the spring of 2013 it made waves on the Internet and in many Russian and world media. The new print advertising that Saatchi & Saatchi came up with helped. Advertisers depicted famous Moscow buildings - Moscow State University, the Bolshoi Theater, St. Basil's Cathedral. However, only a small part of them is visible above the ground, and several more tiers, columns and domes go underground. The caption read: "Get the full story." A month before the official launch of the campaign, the designers posted the prints on the professional resource Behance.com and received an unexpected effect: the advertisement was distributed around the world without any effort on the part of the customer. As a result, museum attendance increased by one and a half times.

Most interactive

“Girl, have you been to Amsterdam? No? Well, that’s right, you’re already talking to fish!” In the spring of 2013, an unusual stand appeared in the Greenwich shopping center in Yekaterinburg, on which a crucian carp was depicted. As soon as a passer-by paid attention to the fish, it turned its head and entered into a dialogue - the crucian carp was voiced remotely by a professional comedian. The idea was invented by the Voskhod agency for the manufacturer of fish and seafood dishes, Meridian. “Next year we are thinking of organizing a “tour” for the fish in other cities of Russia,” says Ekaterina Kulenko, head of marketing communications at Meridian. "Voskhod" compiled a video from hidden camera recordings of how people communicated with the "talking crucian carp." This video has received more than 300 thousand views on YouTube without any promotion.

The most resourceful

On October 6, 2013, the Olympic torch relay in Moscow was unexpectedly interrupted - the torch in the hands of athlete Shavarsh Karapetyan went out. However, the FSO officer standing nearby was not at a loss and set fire to the device with a lighter that resembled a Zippo. This shot spread all over the Internet, and the lighter manufacturer posted the picture as the cover on its official Facebook page with the caption “Zippo saves Olympics” (“Zippo saves the Olympics”). “Well done, we quickly found our bearings!” - this is how social network users commented on Zippo’s successful advertising find. The shot received 1 thousand “likes” and 4 thousand shares in two days. Only the organizing committee of the Olympic Games was dissatisfied. However, independent lawyers believe that there was no violation of the law.

Crucian carp, smartphone and Anglophobes