News: Mekanism Creates Integrated Experience for Tostitos NOLAF Campaign

(April 22, 2008) Mekanism continues their run of high-quality, hilarious integrated solutions with their latest project for Tostitos. The fully-interactive campaign housed at NOLAF.ORG incorporates a significant amount of live action into an integrated media campaign for viral syndication, as well as woven into the story-based interactive microsite.

The full-screen video site showcases the fictional organization NOLAF's (National Organization for Legislation Against Fun) crusade against Tostitos. The shorts include Q&A sessions with seven hopeful NOLAF members, meetings, and demonstrations that reveal how and why to fight fun, while subtlety alluding to the fight against one of their chief antagonists, the pleasure involved with eating Tostitos. In addition to handling all the live action and web production, Mekanism worked closely with Element 79 to develop the initial concept and content syndication strategy.

All the live action was shot by Mekanism's award-winning director Tommy Means, whose credits include Microsoft's Clearification, a recent integrated Axe campaign starring David Spade, and an upcoming integrated series for Toyota. Means adds, "As a director, the idea of shooting a comedic full-screen video site is pretty exciting. Full-screen video sites require all of the skills of shooting high production-value comedy but you have to constantly be thinking about how the user is going to interact with the video. I feel that full screen video sites like this are a much more rewarding experience for the audience than just watching a viral video on YouTube."

According to Pete Caban, Mekanism's CEO and head of digital, shooting a full screen video site required close collaboration between Mekanism's live-action and digital production teams. "I think Mekanism's true value is the ability to bring together an Internet savvy director with some of the most talented flash designers and programmers on the set of a shoot. Tommy and the digital team worked closely to set up shots that ultimately became the interface of the site. It's as if they were shooting the website. The result of that collaboration is a technically sophisticated video site with killer production values and solid comedy."

The other major benefit to creating a site full of comedic video is the ability to extract each video for a major content syndication strategy. The NOLAF.org site is essentially 30 viral videos architected together into a full-screen video site. Mekanism's post production team re-generated each video into stand alone viral videos that could live on any video sharing site.

Mekanism's in-house content syndication team will flight over 30 NOLAF virals to video site channels, social network influencers, and blog networks. "It's an incredible value to the Tostitos client when you think they are getting an immersive video site, over two dozen stand alone virals, and a comprehensive and measurable syndication program. We feel like this added value is how Mekanism is truly breaking new ground as a production company," added Means."

Mekanism President Jason Harris continues to look to the studio's future, adding, "Tostitos was a great fit for us, showcasing our ability to deliver fully-integrated live action and web campaigns for really unique microsites that tell an innovative brand story. In addition, as we take on larger projects and expand our client relationships, and with several major projects on the horizon, we are constantly looking for directors who share our vision of challenging storytelling conventions for both traditional broadcast live action and integrated web distribution." The Tostitos project leveraged the studio's ability to unite conceptual creativity and technical talent to seamlessly integrate mixed media, also seen in their long line of recent and award-winning projects for brands such as Microsoft, PG&E, EA's RockBand, BoostUP.org, Sega, British Petroleum, and AXE.

COMPANY CREDITS

Agency: Element 79
Copywriter: Kevin Mulroy
Art Director: Mike Lyons
Group Creative Director, Interactive: Todd Crisman
Executive Creative Director: Dennis Ryan
Creative Director/AD: Max Stinson
Creative Director/CW: Jim Paul
Producer: Katie Juras
Head of Production: John Noble
VP, Management Director: Lisa Groot
Account Director: Jill Holmstrom

Production Co: Mekanism
Director: Tommy Means
Creative Director: Peter Rhoads
Exec Producer: Velvy Appleton
Producer: Lindsay Fa
Director of Photography: Andy Lilien
Art Director: David Daugherty
Wardrobe Stylist: Chris Aysta
Editors: Mike Cavanaugh, TM Faversham, and Caitlin Parker
Design/Graphics: Richard Krolewicz, Emmett Feldman
Interactive Producer: Jeremy Leeds
Technology Developers: Jamal Berkeley, Dave Cole
Interactive Designer: Marcelo Viana
Color Correction: Spy Post
Sound Design/Mix: Jeremiah Moore

ABOUT MEKANISM
San Francisco-based Mekanism is a collective of film, animation & interactive content creators telling brand-related stories across emerging media platforms. They entertain and inspire measurable brand loyalty by imparting a unique passion and zest for creative storytelling to commercials, branded entertainment, features & integrated campaigns.

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