Most brand and company websites have one: a too-long, copy-heavy, extremely boring “About Us” page. Beck’s deserved something which stood out and reflected its young, fresh Different by choice attitude.

We filmed Steven while he turns the “most beautiful Beck’s PowerPoint” ever – with Beck’s facts and figures – and turns it into an interactive quiz. You can then play the interactive presentation online – and download it, remix it and share it!

Shot in a self-made webcam style, the interactive video game was also made available using YouTube Annotations, so that it could be enjoyed more widely and be spread through Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon. The Powerpoint was also made available on P2P networks and SlideShare.

You can visit the web page here./ Beck’s “About Us”
The YouTube interactive video./  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZyXKawz0dU

Concept development, Art Direction & Design

The Powerpoint

Powerpoint usually means bad design, low technology and a high-rating cringe factor. We took the challenge and made the best looking Powerpoint ever. The powerpoint is interactive, with 8 questions and 48 slides. All images were either taken by us from the photo or video sessions, or sought and shared through Creative Commons.

You can play the game and download the Powerpoint here.
The Powerpoint is also released under Creative commons, so anyone can remix it.

Video overview

Watch a summary of the project, as it has been presented to award shows.

The Website

Steven presents all the questions using his laptop with the Powerpoint as the interface.

Q&A on YouTube

We took advantage of YouTube’s annotation tool which allowed us to turn the raw footage into an interactive YouTube game. This help us spread the action virally, as YouTube has a great following – and the clips can then be embedded anywhere on the web.

Questions and Answers about Beck’s on YouTube

… and then?

We released both modules (on Beck’s website and on YouTube) without any seeding, to monitor and learn how things spread on YouTube and the social networks when unaided. There was no reason to communicate this action other than it was a different way of doing an ‘about us’ page, but we are very happy with the results.

A note about the process

Months before the shoot took place we tested our ‘do-it-yourself’ theory to work out how a hand-held webcam would influence the script. Below left, Niels (my creative partner and copywriter). On the right, actor Steven performing the final shoot.