SPIKES: Leo Burnett and Contagious on Wildfire Stories

This year’s theme at Wildfire, a seminar series conceived by Leo Burnett in conjunction with Contagious, is Wildfire Stories.

Mark Tutssel, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett Worldwide; Jarek Ziebinski, president
, Leo Burnett and Arc Asia-Pacific; and Paul Kemp-Robertson, editorial director, co-founder, 
Contagious, took turns on stage to narrate and illustrate with case studies seven successful integrated campaigns that have 'caught fire' online from using the seven basic plots; namely:

1. Comedy, mined by comparethemarket.com with the cheeky comparethemeerkat.com starring Aleksandr Orlov, the meerkat.

2. Tragedy, a tricky plotline for brands, yet used successfully to promote ‘The Dark Knight’.

3. Overcoming the monster, a resurrection of the slow dance promoted by Doritos to help Argentine youths get closer to their object of desire.

4. Voyage and Return, a marathon journey by a real couple in a long-distance relationship brought together by the world’s thinnest condom.

5. Quest, a chalkbot engineered and built to write chalk messages received from the public onto the road to raise awareness for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

6. Rags to Riches, a call to James Ready drinkers to keep the price of the beer to a buck, with the reward of getting to appear on billboards.

7. Rebirth, forcing the public to reappraise their use of Yellow through a campaign to build a restaurant ten metres high in a tree with the help of businesses listed in Yellow.

Tutssel ended with the thought that ‘brands with the best brand stories are like good news that travel fast.’ Just like the result of the voting for the brand with the best brand story: of the five finalists announced at the start - Sony, Tata, Uniqlo, Petronas, Red Bull and Uniqlo - the audience voted via SMS for Uniqlo.

Follow all the action of Spikes Asia on Twitter using hashtag #spikes09 - posts featuring that tag will appear on www.media.asia.

Also, Media is opening up its online Spikes photo gallery to readers. Send your Spikes pictures to [email protected] to include them.

Spikes Asia is organised in conjunction with Haymarket Media. The full programme can be found at www.spikes.asia.