Scott Bedford

With the economic climate in mind it didn’t feel right to waste money on a ‘look how clever we are’ Christmas concept.

Instead, the agency decided to raise money for charity and send our clients vodcasts of how we went about it. The whole affair really took off within the agency – one team posing nude for a calendar and another auctioning themselves off. We raised about £5000 and 12 charites benefitted.

A playful way to highlight a key benefit of Mercedes-Benz vans (they all come with ESP as standard).

I must say I still get a kick out of the interaction. It went on to win NMA’s Campaign of the Month in Jan 2008, even though it was a single banner, and it was also a Cannes Cyber Lions finalist.

Bend – expandable banner ›

To bring the Mazda 6 ‘Go your own way’ campaign to life online we created a microsite with an innovative 3D user interface that offered every user a unique experience.

The user was encouraged to explore different aspects of the car by clicking on labeled spheres. As each bubble was clicked it dropped down onto a map and built up a unique journey based on that users preferences. At anytime the user could click to watch a movie of the journey they had created – this was created on the fly by editing together a series of bespoke video clips.

This was a big production. It involved 3 days of shooting in Malaga and the development of a fairly complex Papervision driven microsite.

‘Go your own way’ – microsite ›imageimageimageimageimage

Online extension of a music and fitness themed campaign aimed at young men (a JWT Dusseldorf concept that was named as Campaign’s Turkey of the week).

Anyway, we employed a slightly different approach online. The banners made use of the CGI car and city we had created for the microsite – more of an executional piece than a big idea. However, it does look nice and it was a finalist at the New York Festivals.

Fantastic contributions from Jon Mackness and Jonnie Coffin (an exceptional film and video producer) made the difference.

Close-up – expandable skyscraper ›

The Mazda MX-5′s roof shuts in 12 seconds.

JWT Dusseldorf’s ‘Every drive’s a thriller’ campaign dramatised this by putting the car in well-known dangerous scenarios from the movies – the fast closing roof protecting the driver and saving the day each time.

We designed a microsite that allowed users to create their own ’12 second thriller’ by mixing movie genres with unusual characters (like a silent move featuring Neo from the Matrix). To achieve this we shot 16 movies over 3 says at Shepperton using a well known comedy director. Watch the showreel above to see the finished result. Read more »

There’s a lot of misconceptions about smart cars (and I should know as I drive one). We were asked to create an online campaign to put the record straight.

Our idea was the ‘How smart are you?’ quiz which playfully parodied online IQ tests (with unexpected twists) in order to educate the consumer. It was an IAB Creative Showcase runner-up.

‘How smart are you?’ – campaign ›Lizard – expandable bannerCamel – expandable bannerHow smart are you? – microsite

An expandable banner that uses some unexpected interaction to highlight the MX-5′s excellent handling around corners.

I’m really proud of this piece as due to resource issues I ended up coding it myself. The banner went on to pick up a bronze medal at the New York Festivals – which at that time was Syzygy’s first international creative award.

Cones – expandable skyscraper ›

A purposefully hard-hitting rich media banner campaign aimed at getting men to donate £2 per month.

This campaign did very well on the awards circuit – winning the IAB Creative Showcase Grand Prix, a One Show Interactive silver pencil and a New York Festivals bronze medal.

‘Help us stop it’ – campaign ›Scared – MPUPunchbag – Skyscraper