Interactive

Recent Ad campaign from Mercedes promoting their latest van passers by are encouraged to point their car keys at the electronic billboard.

Activating your keys opens the vans doors, with different people exiting from the vehicle.

A great example of using technology to change a non interactive medium into a engaging interactive creative.

Tesco "Express" (Train)

marketing

How do you penetrate a new market, one that has established brands and organisations who have years of local knowledge, a market that has limited opportunity for real estate expansion.

The answer is easy - virtual stores, in physical locations.

Positioning screens in subway stations across Korea Tesco customers use their mobile phones to scan QR codes of products to be delivered later to the customers home.

This is not only a great innovative creative piece, but also offers a realistic opportunity for retailers to seize on dwell time to trigger an action from commuters.

Every square inch....

Simply walking through a busy city centre in London or New York and you cannot help but notice the amount of advertising. Billboards, neon signs, the sides of buses, stairs - you name it, if it can take an advert - it will be sold for that very purpose.

It's a fact - space is a premium and even more so in central places such as Times Square or Piccadilly Circus, so what opportunities exist in this world of diminishing space?

Wallen Mphepo has come up with a concept of projecting images onto a polymer screen - a screen that when attached to a car window allows these images to be viewed from the outside, while allowing the driver to see through the window as normal.

article : http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028115.500-incar-projection-for-driveby-advertising.html

Outdoor - Relevance

Comparisons to the "Minority report" scene of targeted advertising have surfaced again with IBM's claim to be working on combining RFID technology and outdoor advertising.

The well quoted scene involves the star of the movie being prompted by offers and advertising based on his current mood and preferences - true relevance.

Three years ago a friend blogged of a trial in the US with Mini, using keyfobs which were encoded RFID tags this information was used to then display messages on interactive billboards as you drove around the city. This caught my eye as being a neat way of engaging with consumers, albeit in a limited fashion which was specific to the brand.

The rub

marketing

Identifying users is only part of the challenge - understanding their actual needs and desires at that particular point in time is a different matter all together. Quite how IBM proposes to accumulate the required data from each of us in order to fuel the decision engine that will eventually drive this advertising will be interesting.

RFID is being pushed on a number of fronts around contactless payments in credit cards with Barclaycard and Ericsson making statements that they are to incorporate the chips in future phones, so actual devices in the wild should be enough to make this viable in the near term.

marketing

So with these devices creating transaction information and history this is ready source of information that could be leveraged to drive such systems - but it this really viable?

Will we the consumer allow this valuable information to be used in such a public space to drive offers and advertising.

Or will we have to revert to completing profile's which would then be used to filter and drive such content - very tedious.....

So while we have to consider dwell times and exactly how to advertise to many people in close proximity, the challenge of profiling and exactly how and what data can be leveraged remains the key hurdle in all of this - not the ability to electronically detect a tag.

update : Electronic Outdoor Ads use cameras to determine gender and age of passer by.

Tree "Hugo"ger

Covent Garden

Hugo Boss jumping on the eco bandwagon here pledging to plant one tree for every bottle of promotional perfume sold. The campaign is supported by product codes on packaging, which when entered via the supporting website allows you to find the location of your 'tree',I assume in case you wish to visit, maybe send it a birthday card each year?

Making use of Google mashup (earth and maps) and this outdoor installation which features..... trees. One nice aspect is the combination of commissioned artists and the public's input in the actual design of the trees. This gives the campaign a feeling of "community" which helps divert some of the scepticism around such promotions as to there actual positive environmental impact.

Commisioned artists and the public's input on the tree designs.

X-Factor voting, who needs telephones?

stacey solomon : win or loose? - you "chews"

Chewing gum reduces stress, helps maintain healthy teeth and despite popular belief, you can chew the stuff in Singapore making this undoubtedly one of the most popular inventions of the 20th century.

marketing technology

Now it seems it has yet another use, a great way to to garner public opinion on who should win the UK edition of X-Factor.

Table Manners

A neat idea I came across in a London "greasy spoon" this week

marketing technology

Piano Stairs

Nice piece of outdoor ' interactive' from DDB in Stockholm

Wrapper

Neat use of a simple ' wrapper ' around this cross track projection promoting Nokia's new N97.

marketing technology

21st Century Wishing well

f
....wishing well in Covent Garden marketing.wishes displayed on screens inside

Spin-vox, the voice to text service has a great interactive / outdoor installation in London's Covent garden. The two story mirrored building is striking in both its position in the piazza outside the Royal opera house and it's exterior of mirrored walls, which are discreetly covered with letters from the alphabet giving little clue as to why it is there.

Closer inspection you are told to call a local telephone number, with your wish. A wish that will then be displayed on one of the many screens positioned inside in this 21st century wishing well.

I liked first and foremost the surprise of the mirrored wishing well in one of London's more famous busy shopping areas. It's not often that you take a second look or time out from your day to investigate what is essentially a piece of advertising. Secondly the whole execution encourages you to use the service, to interact to then see your wish displayed on the screens had everyone (including me) talking with a buzz.

After walking away it was only then I appreciated how robust the technology was, correctly interpreting (and subsequently displaying inside) my request for a big red Ferrari over a mobile phone in the middle of a busy shopping area was I have to admit, pretty impressive.

Now lets hope dreams do indeed come true.

The future of the underground

monster projector - MIA along with all the people

technology in marketing

In this short promotional video from CBS outdoor, they give us their insight into the future of advertising on the London Underground.

The most noticeable features in their view of the future - no people, escalators that all work and trains which will not leave you looking like you have been working on the coal face all morning.

On the advertising side of things, does not look too different from today with a large amount of static poster sites throughout. Possibly one small omission is the technology delivering the cross rail projection is conveniently missing from their video.....

Read all about it....

End of the sandwich board ?

marketing technology.

Interesting that the medium advertising the 'product' is capable of displaying news items that in theory would not be in the paper, therefore reducing the value of print even futher....

How about a print on demand version - with the latest news stories being run out as an additional insertion into the paper ?

marketing technology.

"The Great Outdoors"

marketing technology.

More great outdoor

Great Outdoor

While technology offers us exciting opportunities in advertising, lets not forget smart use of existing mediums can still make an impressive impact. Above are some shots of some impressive artwork from a recent trip to New York.

Old skool interactive

I am presently out in San Francisco where I saw this great piece of outdoor advertising for DHL. No technology, but a great example of interactive.