Weed B Gon (Scotts Canada)

Prickly

To promote its Weed B Gon lawn-care product on pre-roll, Scotts Canada leveraged the platform's weakness by incorporating it into the spot. In a 30-second video starring Prickly, an annoying puppet dandelion, viewers were given the standard "skip" option at the five-second mark, with a twist: they could skip the ad or kill Prickly. If they chose kill, they skipped ahead to the point in the video where he is sprayed with Weed B Gon and quickly dispatched.

Rethink leveraged its partnership with Google to customize the annotation technology and allow viewers to navigate within pre-roll. Giving viewers the satisfaction of getting rid of an annoying weed led to a 98% completion rate for the video.