In 2003, the founders made a decision to wean the company from traditional work. They borrowed against their own houses and shifted the company away from straightforward advertising projects—projects that were paying them good, consistent money—and toward what Wahlquist calls, "a new direction that was more digital." As soon as this new version of the company was successful, Wahlquist wanted to open a New York office, which he did in 2007.
Work followed quickly, and B-Reel began making its mark in the United States. In 2008, the company was hired by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to co-produce Hotel 626, an online project meant to help Doritos revive two discontinued flavors for a limited run that coincided with Halloween. Hotel 626 appeared on the Internet one day, like The Wilderness Downtown, with little explanation.
You went to a microsite set up for the occasion, registered, and granted permission for the site to use your webcam and microphone. You were even asked to enter your cell-phone number, not because it would be used for marketing purposes, but because it—like the sound and images captured by your computer—would come into play later in the film/game that subsequently played out on your screen.
Ariel Fashion Shoot
A detergent maker was the client for this installation in Stockholm's Central Station. It contained a "gun" that fired jam, ketchup, and chocolate sauce at sparkling white clothing that passed by on a line. The trick: The gun was robotic and operated by Facebook users in five European countries. In the case of a direct hit, the garment was washed on-site, packaged, and mailed to the shooter.
The basic idea was that you—the perspective is first-person POV—wake up in a hotel that is a teeming hell-house of psychos and ghouls. (In a nice touch, the site was accessible only at night, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. People who were desperate to play the game during the day would change the clock on their computers.) To find your way out of the hotel, you need to complete a series of challenges that include figuring out the code to unlock a cell you share with a psychotic killer before he snaps and kills you, and singing a demon baby to sleep—also before he snaps and kills you.
At one point, you see your own photo hanging from a line in the dimly lit room of a serial killer, and the only way out of the game is to wait for a call to your phone that will provide a few final clues. Hotel 626 was like nothing before on the Web: It was an ad campaign in the form of a hybrid movie/game that you, the user, actually starred in. Your actions had an impact on the story.
Hotel 626 became a minor pop-culture phenomenon that spawned fan sites and YouTube videos. It was played—or experienced or whatever—by more than three million people in 188 countries in its first year, and for two full years after the campaign ended, people were still playing it.
Finally, this January, it was shut down. (This extended life is common of B-Reel projects. Paul Sundue of DDB New York told me that a B-Reel-executed State Farm campaign called Chaos in Your Town finished at the end of 2011, but that its site now gets more traffic each month—on the order of one million visits—than it did in the entirety of 2011.)
Beyond traditional advertising
As is the case with The Wilderness Downtown, it is hard to characterize exactly what Hotel 626 was. Obviously, it was paying work for a brand. But it was also entertaining enough that people sought it out, spent hours of their free time on it, and came back to it again and again.
The industry has since labeled hybrid projects like this "branded entertainment," and, increasingly, thanks to the work of engineers like those at B-Reel, the first word is nearly vanishing into the second. Corn chips were neither shown nor mentioned in Hotel 626. But Doritos moved two million bags of those chips and sold out the entire run in three weeks.
The advertising industry, as Wahlquist says, "is normally made out of geniuses." David Droga would be the most recent successful example of a single visionary who founded an agency around his own brand. Before him, there was Donny Deutsch, and before him, David Ogilvy. B-Reel is built on a different model. "We are more like a network," Wahlquist says. "There are so many nodes that are strong in themselves. If one is quitting, the system is still working."
Today, B-Reel is as American as it is Swedish (or British), but its Scandinavian roots aren't just a colorful biographical detail. Wahlquist often refers to the company as a "collective," and it is difficult to ascertain exactly who among its 100-plus employees is a standout. This isn't just a sly way to protect talent (though it is that, for sure); it's a product of coming from a quasi-socialist country where to brag or stand out is frowned upon. "We only credit B-Reel," Nilsson says. "We don't credit people." (Interestingly, the company most often cited as B-Reel's rival, North Kingdom, is also Swedish. Swedes play a disproportionately huge role in digital creativity, to the extent that, according to Nick Parish of the trade magazine Contagious, the running ad-industry joke is, "How do we get more Swedes?")
