“The white space simplicity is pleasing. It’s also totally appropriate and generates the spontaneous response a banner ad requires, and it never tries to do more than it should.”—juror Deb Koch

“So simple, clean and beautiful. In a world of blinking banners, the subtle elegance of this viral ad campaign is sure to momentarily take users away from their hectic lives.” —juror Craig Swann

Overview: An invitation to explore HP technologies is disguised by the friendly act of sending flowers to a friend through this interactive banner. It’s a positive approach to showcasing a wide range of real-world applications and how HP customers apply them.

• E-mail feature allows bouquet to be sent to friends
• Base file is 25k, additional 30k to load flowers
• 2–3 months, 5 people

Comments by Peter Albores:
“The HP interactive bouquet idea wasn’t exactly a stroke of genius. HP…FTD… flowers. Voilà interactive flower bouquet. It just seemed right as a symbol of the HP + FTD partnership. The morning after getting briefed, a couple of us came into the office with the same roughly sketched idea.

 “The bouquet banner was one of a series of concepts that prompted the user to interact and change the advertising space in some form. In this instance, to create a virtual bouquet to send to people.

 “Much of the credit for the banner should go to HP for allowing it to happen in the first place. They’ve always viewed the interactive space as a critical part of their marketing mix, and have been strong proponents of expanding the perception of what online advertising should and can be.

“It was a fun project that took a lot of tinkering. We wanted to make sure that there would be a variety of bouquets that could be created, so we first settled on a number of flowers. Working with Erik Natzke, we reviewed flower colors, shapes and animations—for weeks—finally settling (after endless revisions) on the ones that appear in the banner.

“It was a true team effort, at the end of which, we were able to send bouquets to each other.”