Burt's Bees Taps Vine for Novel Campaign to (What Else?) Create Buzz

Talk about a novel twist on social marketing and branded content. Burt's Bees is going classic with Vine videos that riff on literary works to promote their seven core "classics" products. The brand created animated "adaptations" in a campaign designed by ad agency Baldwin& that carries the implicit message that the time-tested nature of Burt’s Bees products is equal to the classics.

Beeswax Lip Balm, Coconut Foot Cream, Shea Butter Hand Repair Cream, Hand Salve, Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream, Almond Milk Beeswax Hand Cream and Res-Q Ointment will be reinterpreted with "6-Second Classics"—stop motion animated Vine adaptations of Little Women, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Metamorphosis, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Each Vine video, staged by animator Jethro Ames, takes about four hours to create. "Shooting these videos was a challenge—essentially, you shoot and publish. There's no post-production," Melissa Sowry, Digital Content and Social Media Manager, Burt’s Bees, told ClickZ, adding the Vines are a "test and learn approach for us."

Promoted with the hashtag #6SecondClassics on the Clorox-owned personal care brand's Twitter feed, it's all part of a broader campaign that includes Instagram and Facebook content such as reclusive brand namesake Burt Shavitz sharing his 'backwoods doings' in "Burt on Instagram," which premiered a week before the Vines.