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By Sherief Younis. Feel-good footwear. Shoe brand Kickers, together with digital agency Holler, is creating a series of animated videos for its MySpace page and for syndication across the Net.
The content, Random Bandits, will be produced in the style of Channel 4 show Modern Toss, with Kickers branding and shoes featured in the animations. As well as the MySpace microsite, the online campaign uses social-networking sites such as Bebo and Twitter to support the series, with additional Kickers promos running on NME.com and FHM.com.
Planned as a series of six videos, the video campaign uses fresh Modern Toss characters, as well as regulars from the show, around pairs of Kickers shoes. “The first episode has a brand new character called Dave Beeline, there’s The Flies talking on the shoe, there’s a running story about a character buying a pair of shoes… it’s nice and self-deprecating,” explains James Kirkham, director at Holler.
“The idea was born out of making cute stories using little characters based around the shoes using incidental, nonsensical things they could enjoy,” he adds. “Kickers has often been about a sense of feel-good and this what we were trying to capture by using a little bit of self-deprecation. Using animations, it’s snack-sized content that’s easily delivered in digestible chunks. It’s simple and it’s easy to engage with.”
Kirkham believes the combination of social media and immediate content is key to regenerating interest in the brand. “We wanted to create content that we knew would engage an audience,” he says. “We wanted quick-hit content that was watchable in two or three minutes and might make them laugh, and encourage them to share it with other people.
Kickers’ sweet-spot demographic is 19-to-20 year-old males and females, and they have struggled to engage this audience, and it didn’t necessarily sing out and have currency in 2009, so we thought we’d make some content that would engage them and get them involved with the brand again.”
Kirkham also talks about the need to generate noise around the online campaign, utilising blogging and syndication across other social-networking sites to generate more traffic. “Working with MySpace helps us build on the original chapters,” he explains, “then as the traffic increases that enables us to create much bigger partnerships. We’re working with other social networking sites like Facebook and we’re getting films out to bloggers to establish credibility.”
He also outlines the importance of not disrupting users’ online routines. “MySpace and Bebo have both been really good at showcasing new content because they have their own productions, their own video and naturally house content for a teenage audience,” he says. “It’s really natural because we’re not telling them to go elsewhere to access the content, and we’re not dragging them out of their environment.”
“What we’re trying to do now is keep it relevant to 2009.  Whether you’re a streetwise teenager or a little bit older, the idea is that everyone can see the videos, find them funny, and develop an affinity with the brand.”
brand-e.biz: Like the look and feel of the site, the animation, the shoes. But that could just be us and our soft spot for red.