Missed this while I was on vacation. Digitas got some love from Communication Arts off their Site of the Week feature. Well, it's no "viral video"—but we'll take it. :)
From Design Interact:
American Express 15-Second Clips Competition
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 This site brought the American Express “My life. My card.” ad campaign online in the form of a unique competition.
Sponsored by American Express and the Tribeca Film Festival, site
visitors were given the opportunity to submit a fifteen-second video
clip addressing one of the thirteen questions posed by the popular ad
campaign.
We have to disclose that we’re suckers for all incarnations of American
Express advertising. It’s great creative. All of it. And, this site is
no exception.
And, although we can’t give the creative team credit for the content,
we can give them props for creating an interface that makes the
submissions shine. The competition has been closed for some time—the
winner was announced at this year’s festival in May—but the 100
finalists in the Gallery are still the stars of the site.
The visual approach and the interface are refined and understated, and
never pretend to be the entertainment element. The spare graphics on a
white background exist simply for the purpose of creating a stage for
the film-like content. The global navigation is a divided cube with
each section (Gallery, Awards, Judging, Submit) represented by a single
quadrant. Although it changes position with each click, it never loses
its functionality. Supplemented by a tab-based navigation for “less
essential” links and a series of thumbnails in the Gallery, it’s a
clean, clear architecture that effectively serves content—rather than
requiring visitors to retrieve it.
The development team successfully targeted their audience and kept the
content focused. Ultimately, it’s the lack of superfluous content that
makes the site so efficient and engaging—although the high-quality,
user-generated clips certainly don’t hurt it any. This site moves
quickly and competently between sections and between clips. While that
may not sound like a big deal, it is when you’re trying to look at 100
of them. We’d be remiss if we ended our review without mentioning the
application for applying for an American Express card. While most
online applications are met with a heavy sigh, the one on the other end
of this Apply Now button is skillfully done. Game-like in its approach,
it’s the coolest application interface that we’ve seen in a long
time—possibly ever.
During the 3-week-long submission period, the site received 350,000 visitors and 1,800 submissions.
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Lincoln Bjorkman, executive creative director
Kenan Aktulun, creative director
Henry Min/Ooonie Chase, associate creative directors
Grace Cham/Radis Jensethawat/Jeff Kurek, art directors
Whitney Hess, interaction designer
Min Chung/Benny Bianco/James Sol/Teresa Lagerman/Eric Trinidad/Kathy Chou, Flash designers
Erin Stitzel/Gail Thupvong/Lane Mitchell, writers
Christine Beardsell/Venessa Ramos Velasquez, video
Digitas, site design and development
Web site: clips.mylifemycard.com
Web site: www.digitas.com
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