David Carr

Head of Interactive

Chemistry Communications Group Plc

 Your inspiration best comes when:  When you’ve got a really rich problem to solve that will let you explore interactive media’s real potential – when you can move away from advertising into storytelling. When you’re challenged to create something useful, usable and delightful that engages people and helps them connect, either functionally or to show-off across real and digital spaces. When it’s about creating a useful embodiment of the brand that affects the real world, not a metaphor or a distraction, not a tool with a logo. Then you’ve got to turn-off the screens and get out in the real world with real people and the inspiration will hit you. Play more and this is the best job in the world.

• Your idea about the perfect working day:  When we have the space to break out of role silos and work together. When we can start forgetting who is a designer and who is a developer, who is a creative and who is a planner, and start nurturing a really rich idea that needs everyone’s help. When despite the last minute hiccups, amends, blue-screens of death and races against crazy deadlines you can go home at the end of the day and say “WE made that, and it’s bloody brilliant.” Oh and a lie-in would be nice.

Your favorite interactive campaign and why:  My favorite interactive campaign changes almost daily generally accompanied by the feeling of “I wish we’d done that” or “damn it, we were doing that, let’s start again”. But the campaign that is currently very much in the “I wish we’d done that” box is Barbarian Group’s CNN T-Shirt Headlines campaign.

CNN.com’s T-Shirt Headlines Project used small T-Shirt icons next to headlines to draw peoples’ attention to their improved video offer. Clicking on the icon would lead them to a custom t-shirt shop where they could purchase a t-shirt with the headline on it. The shirts were emblazoned with the “I just saw it on CNN.com” tagline, along with the date and time of the headline. People could choose shirts with headlines they liked, were appalled about, found surreal, or just whimsical by actually interacting with the videos. It also spread the wider word as people wore the shirts, gifted them to their friends or broadcasted their purchase on their Facebook News Feed.

Brand Reality Creative like this is organic not viral, it has more usage loops and can be used by people for self-representation. It nurtures and incentivises invites and it cares about the retention rate rather than chasing installs through brute force. It is not the archetypal one hit widget – the type that cluttered up your old Facebook Profile page, the Viral App that is essentially spam.

David also recently worked on the innovative Emirates campaign:  Emirates is the only long haul airline to fly from 6 UK airports. Despite this most people still associate mid and long haul flights for business or pleasure with Heathrow or Gatwick. Miles Better used geographic and behavioural targeting coupled with in-advertising mapping to encourage people to fly from their local airport. It demonstrated the ease of getting there by plotting a route and showed how quick the trip would be. The campaign was part of the 6 UK Airports strategy that combined brand led comms, direct response offers, and even brand utility applications to increase passenger numbers for Emirates flights at Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester.