Kick it with Dita, get thirsty
Behold Dita Von Teese — renowned burlesque dancer, international sex-symbol, ex-wife of Marilyn Manson and the matron of ceremonies at the Perrier Mansion, and online experience created by Nestle to promote its sparkling water brand. Paying the mansion a visit takes under ten minutes and involves being led through it’s halls by the fair-skinned seductress, who addresses the viewer directly the entire time, and completing a series of interactive games. The games are not competitive and have no real objective — and at the end the whole thing proves to be nothing more than an aesthetic smorgasbord of an advertisement, an experience for experience’s sake.
Interactive online advertisements differ from traditional banner or video advertisements in that they encourage viewers to ‘play along’ with the presented scenario, in doing so allow them to voluntarily prolong the advertising message. They utilize the technologies of new media as a platform for creating these mini-environments wherein their product can be promoted. They are also highly aesthetified, self-contained, and not only interact with the user but also the internet in a unique way.
The article Professor Deseriis posted on The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media, concerns itself with the evolving nature of advertising on the internet, from it I decided that focusing in on interactive advertisements would be a good way to examine the issue. As compared to the rest of the interent the advertisements are not groundbreaking from a technical standpoint, however they use technology and combine it with a stylized interface to present advertisements that themselves are sort of new media — seeing as they couldn’t conceivably exist anywhere but on the internet.
In exploring these advertisements, I want to also touch upon how they reach viewers. Aside from being themselves advertised, I think that the way a lot of them gain circulation mirrors that of viral videos and other internet phenoms. The mashable article talks about the power of the online word of mouth and how on the internet the people using it become themselves advertisements. For my travelogue, I would also like to look into this sort of thing as it relates to interactive advertisements, and touch on the processes of on- and offline word-of-mouth. Personally, the way I found out about the Dita thing (as well as most of the other interactive ads I’ve come across) was through a marketing blog, and I’m led to believe that sites like that factor in a great deal into this phenomenon. I want to ask around and maybe interview a few people in regards to their habits of sharing information regarding online items with the people around them, as well a gauge their reactions to this new media.