Hoping to build buzz is like hoping to create a viral video. Everyone wants to do it. But it’s not something you can just do. A bus shelter, a TV spot, a newspaper ad: you can “just do” these things. But sparking a cultural movement, seeing your message spread on its own, getting people actually excited about spending time with your brand: these things take an equal dose of luck along with the skill you bring to the project. Regardless, we approached our latest campaign for CATCH, the Nova Seafood Festival, with exactly this lofty goal. Our ambitious client, bless her heart, wanted us to go beyond getting the word out, and do something that would build that elusive buzz.

Which meant we needed something truly unique; something that perfectly married traditional media with digital power.

And, for CATCH, we think we may have found that unique, buzz-building magic in Augmented Reality (AR). At its most basic, AR is “simply” a digital layer pasted over an image of real life in a way that the two can interact meaningfully. Still a technology very much in its infancy, especially in our leaner-budget part of the world, it has been used with varying success by a number of worldwide brands. We hoped to harness this visual wizardry in the simplest form we could. So we used it as the anchor of an instant-win contest linked to the CATCH festival.

We named the “Experience Seafood Like Never Before” Contest to speak to both the unbelievable experience of the AR, and the essence of the CATCH event. And rather than explain any further how the contest works, we’ll simply encourage you to try it. Visit us at our custom-built Facebook page, print the AR tag, and enter the contest. We’ll be here when you get back.

Five days into the 21-day contest, the results are already impressive. Our Facebook “likes”, contest “likes”, contest entries, contest shares, and CATCH site visits are up higher than we even expected. Stay tuned for final results once the contest and festival are passed.

In the meantime—we know you want to—go ahead and experience the contest once more. Who knows, you may even win the daily prize.

A graduate of both the Film & Television and Media Copywriting programs at Toronto's Humber College, and a multi-award-winning copywriter, Brad Dykema has worked at advertising agencies across the country and beyond. Brad's career has taken him on a journey from his native Toronto's Communique Group to Vancouver's high-profile PJDDB, to Amsterdam, where he joined the ground-breaking StrawberryFrog, and then back to Canada. Throughout, Brad's work has consistently been recognized for getting clients noticed and achieving their objectives. Since settling in Halifax, he has established himself as one of the region's most award-winning copywriters, collecting dozens of Ice Awards for work done at trampoline, Extreme and Colour. The extensive list of clients Brad has worked on includes notables such as Nova Scotia Tourism, New Brunswick Government, Microsoft, Sun-Rype, Alexander Keith's, McDonald's, Telus, Credit Suisse, Atlantic Lottery, EastLink, Workers' Compensation Board, and Aliant. His work has been recognized with an impressive list of awards from Marketing, Bessies, New York Festivals, ICE Awards, Extra Awards, Advertising and Design, London International Advertising Awards, Archive Magazine, Applied Arts and more.