A Hunter Shoots a Bear

Why it works

A hunter faces a bear, refuses to pull the trigger, reaches out of the YouTube player into the banner beside it, grabs a Tipp-Ex Pocket Mouse correction tape and whites out the word 'shoots' in the video's own title, then invites viewers to type a verb of their own. Posted at the end of August 2010 for back-to-school, the campaign had 42 alternative scenes shot so that almost anything typed returned a filmed response. It is studied as the defining YouTube takeover: the product is demonstrated by using it on the interface itself, and the audience writes the ending. D&AD's archive records more than 46 million YouTube views, over a million Facebook shares, earned media worth €3.2 million and a 30% rise in European sales in September and October 2010. The work collected a string of Lions at Cannes in 2011 and was followed by sequels with the same hunter and bear.