Vo-5: VILLAGE YOUR HAIR

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: UNILEVER
Agency: HAVAS WORLDWIDE
Category: Products
Advertising campaign: VILLAGE YOUR HAIR
Creative Director: Eloise Smith (Havas Worldwide London)
ECD: Mick Mahoney (Havas Worldwide London)

Brief Explanation
VO5 Extreme Style wanted to be part of the hair styling conversation with 14-24 year old males. However, this audience's high use of smartphones, their low attention span and their embarrassment at openly discussing hair styling made this difficult.Knowing that our audience would never share serious hair styling advice, VO5 Extreme Style created 'Village Your Hair' - an iAd allowing users to take aphoto of themselves, superimpose an uncool, villagey hairstyle and thenTwitpic their new look. The experience allowed our audience to engage with the content and gave them something with social cache to share.In the first ever use of the camera function in an iAd, users could take aphoto of themselves. This was superimposed into a ridiculously rural,village setting. To make the image as believable as possible, users couldrotate and resize the image as well as adjust warmth and brightness.Users could then shake to choose between uncool, villagey hairstyles beforegetting the villagers' approval. The image could then be Twitpiced, inanother first for an iAd.Users could also try out cooler, more urban hairstyles on themselves andwatch village-themed style demos on how to get the look with the help ofVO5 Extreme Style products.Mobile banners asking users to 'give yourself village hair' were highlytargeted by iTunes data points, engaging a challenging audience bydelivering content directly to their handsets.This was one of the most successful iAds ever, with 1.3m uniquevisitors and 50,000 users interacting with the 'Village Your Hair' functionality.With an average dwell time of 70" and an average of 7 page views, it had a 57% higher engagement than the benchmark for an iAd campaign (Source: Apple).Info for the Jury: to view the iAd, please download iAd Gallery from the App Store and search for Unilever VO5 Extreme Style.