April 9, 2007 - by Katie Chatfield
Auto Innovation
Ford's new branded entertainment series has hit the web: Where are the Joneses.The synopsis is that Dawn has found out that she is the child of sperm donor and she now has the list of the other 27 siblings who are scattered across Europe. After contacting her new found brother Ian they begin the search with Jonti, the director filming their journey.
Besides being a funny (and interactive) show it is also a large marketing experiment sponsored by Ford that utilizes various web services and projects to deliver and process content. As the actors travel through Europe they write a blog that is a central "hub" for all the content. When new videos are available you can watch them on YouTube, photos are hosted on Flickr. They also use Twitter, MyBlogLog and many other web tools.
The whole project is interactive. Not only you can comment on the content but also you could influence the storyline and work on screenplay. This part of the project is hosted at wherearethejoneses.wikidot.com
Quite differently, in a sweetly dark and twisted effort, Scion has created an underworld for users to play in. Existing amidst the pages of a gnarly old pop-up book titled "Book of Deviants", users get to be a "Deviant" whose goal is to take back the world which is populated by "sheeple". The book flips through a series of chapters to reveal pop-up scenes, each with its own novel challenge.