This piece, written by Meg Foley, is from the White Horse Digital blog. 

Nivea's new interactive YouTube campaign A Date to Remember (below) has certainly caught my attention, but I'm not sure it was for the right reasons.

Its video–to promote its new 'stress protect' deodorant brand–lets you interfere with a couple's first date and, in effect, make it go horribly wrong by clicking on various objects in the restaurant. This then initiates a whole host of pre-scripted events that should increase the couple's stress levels.

The brand's aim was to produce an innovative piece of work that will help draw younger women to them. The campaign incorporated key ingredients that certainly had the potential to result in something successful:

Personality: Nivea wanted to take a new, innovative approach to promoting its products and I must credit its marketing team's efforts to make an entertaining video that includes some humour and character.

Consumer insight: The video focuses on customer engagement and interaction, which we all know are vital for marketing success. I have no doubt that some users will have found the link between the brand and the ability to maintain confidence in stressful situations persuasive.

But even though this ad has all the components of a successful product launch, for me and many others I spoke to about it, the storyline just didn't seem to work. There are several articles online that mock it efforts, including this one on Australian Creative, titled 'Silly has two meanings, Nivea', which I agreed with.

The video didn’t really encourage me to engage with the brand. In fact its female lead character didn’t depict the modern woman and nor did it reflect the reality of dating these days. Women are more empowered and certainly not out to impress men.

As much as I wasn't keen on this advert's storyline, we at White Horse believe that interactive TV/advertising is part of our future and we think we'll be seeing more of these types of ads.