Outfoxing the competition
With
less than 48 hours notice to be on a plane to San Francisco to collect
his prize in an Internet competition, Andrew Green was glad he had a
valid passport.
"My father lives overseas, so thankfully I’d only recently renewed it," he said.
Green, a final year Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) student, and his sister Emily took out third place and won a US$2500 computer for their Internet advertisement for the web browser, Firefox.
A fan of the company, Green clicked on a link to the Firefox Flicks competition at the bottom of the Firefox home page.
"Within 15 minutes I’d fired off an email to my little sister, who has a degree in media, with an idea," said Green, who learned "how to edit, shoot and pretty much everything else" through a sub-major in film and video production.
The 30-second ad has a David Attenborough-esque narrator describing the antics of Firefox as she fends off natural predators: spyware, viruses, pop-ups and even a "hapless" Explorer.
"I thought the idea of a girl running around with what is very obviously an elastic-attached papier-mâché snout would be amusing," Green said.
He and Emily recruited the last of their friends and colleagues to play the various roles with only 45 minutes to spare before filming. And they may have unwittingly created an Internet star in their female lead, Jenny Cox, who it seems has attracted an "Internet nerd" cult following.
Green said he belongs to what he calls the "No Logo" school of marketing and subscribed to AdBusters for a time.
"It’s an unusual background for someone contemplating a career in advertising," he said, adding his ultimate goal is probably filmmaking.
"But this kind of Internet advertising is pretty cutting edge. Viral marketing and user-generated campaigns can earn you anything from US$1000 to US$50,000 per ad and there are Internet TV stations in the US," he said. "I met some of those people in San Francisco and I’ll be keeping in touch with them."
The ad can be viewed online at www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/index.php?id=21146&c=false