Ad of the Week: Miller 64 Custom Homepage Takeover

Cheers! Let's raise our sweaty bottles of the sudsy stuff in a toast to one of the richest of rich media executions ever to grace the Yahoo! homepage.

Just ahead of Memorial Day, the Yahoo! homepage featured a concert of sorts---multiple display ad formats executing in concert to render an intimate, interactive concert of revelers getting ready for the three-day weekend with a cooler-full of Miller 64, a beer so light and refreshing, it's named after the calorie count.

The party starts with the live page content swishing aside to reveal a beer-bearing guitarist raising his bottle to you and inviting you to verify your age. After playing bouncer, he takes up his pick and strums a tune to Miller 64 while the rec room fills around him with weekend warriors dressed in their casual summer best. The set list, a clickable dropdown on the upper left, features an eclectic selection of accoustic paeans to 64.

Along the bottom of the video screen you'll find a handy-dandy tabbed manual of sorts providing instructions on how to holiday the right way. You'll find everything here from grilling tips and beach party essentials to crowd games and snack recipes. And just to be sure your lifestyle is as perfectly balanced as their summer tan bottled brew, the right-most tab offers a selection of workout music courtesy of Pandora. ("Add a workout to your cookout"). Social buttons and a link to the Miller 64 site round out the interaction.

Upon closing the curtain, the front-page live content returns with the ad split into three formats: rich gutters to either side, a 970 x 60 north sliver, and a 300 x 250 right-hand pane. The latter two units provide triggers to replay the experience.

Miller 64's Memorial Day party ad is rich media at its richest, funnest, and finest. With the guitarist as your host, the ad literally invites you into the event that's both social (only friends here) and social (click through to mingle with the ad online via social media). The user is free to explore and interact at their own pace in a way only possible in the digital space.

Click here to toast Miller 64.

-- Thomas T. Lady