To demonstrate live creativity – the theme of Leo Burnett’s Wildfire Seminar at the Cannes International Advertising Festival – the agency created David on Demand – a social media experiment that made the phrase "living vicariously" a reality. The challenge – with top brands like Facebook, Microsoft and Unilever attending Cannes, how can an ad agency break through the clutter to drive attendance to its seminar?Through David on Demand, Leo Burnett changed the way people experienced Cannes. David – a Leo Burnett creative recruiter – attended Cannes wearing web-enabled glasses and broadcasting his experiences live on www.davidondemand.com. What’s more, everything he did was requested by his Twitter followers. Simply put, if you tweeted David a request, you watched him do it…live.

An aggressive media relations campaign drove awareness and participation in David on Demand. The campaign earned over 100 million international media impressions and the site received one million views from 132 countries. More than 3.5 million tweets came through @DavidOnDemand. David was also the most talked about man at Cannes according to Porter Novelli’s "Conversations @ Cannes" study, (45.3% of buzz) beating Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Gatorade. As for the Wildfire Seminar, through David on Demand, tens of thousands of people attended.

To launch the campaign, Leo Burnett’s PR team identified reporters who were social media advocates in their professional and personal lives and media trendsetters, one of which was CNN’s John Sutter.

An exclusive CNN story ran Friday before the launch. The result? Thousands of Twitter followers and online chatter well before David even touched French soil.Next, the team secured a steady stream of global stories including coverage on ABC.com, Mashable, Sydney Morning Herald, CNET, MSNBC, BBC and ABC World News. Celebrities were also a buzz over David’s antics. Alyssa Milano and Ben Stiller joined the Twitter conversation championing the campaign to 3 million of their own followers.Due to the vast number of news stories and social media chatter, word of David on Demand spread fast. Within a week, David conquered over 20,000 requests…one of which was to get a Twitter Fail Whale tattooed on his shoulder.

An aggressive and targeted media relations campaign drove interest and participation in David on Demand. The campaign earned more than 100 million international media impressions from media outlets like CNN, ABC.com, Mashable, AdAge, Adweek, CNET, MSNBC and BBC just to name a few. The David on Demand website also received one million views from 132 countries. More than 3.5 million Tweets came through using the handle @DavidOnDemand. And, David completed 20,000 Twitter requests. He was also the most talked about man at Cannes according to Porter Novelli’s “Conversations @ Cannes” study, (45.3 percent of Cannes buzz) beating our Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Gatorade.