Billboard yourself

Some nice real-world-diginess. Thanks Piero via Adverblog

Billboard Magazine video instalation from Marcos Kotlhar on Vimeo.

Wow stuff...

Been busy/lazy for much posting this week, but here are two things that made me go Wow recently...

Nokia's geolocating, Ovimaps interactive billboard (thanks @damjanov for the link to the vid)



And, the totally cool, all-in-one soccer ball, portable generator, community builder and global health tool... Soccket (Cheers Springwise)

Over 1.5 billion people—one quarter of the world’s population—live in areas with no access to electricity, according to a recent UN report. Capitalizing on a sport's global appeal to address this problem, a group of Harvard University students developed sOccket, a soccer ball that turns energy from a kick into electricity.

The portable energy-harvesting device captures the impact energy normally dissipated when the ball is kicked, storing it to charge lights, cell phones and batteries. It works with inductive coil technology, similar to that found in flashlights that power up when shaken. For each 15 minutes of play, it can store enough energy to power a small LED light for three hours. sOccket could eventually help ease the reliance on toxic kerosene lamps in developing nations, thereby reducing the associated health risks.

Currently in the prototyping stages, sOccket has been successfully piloted in Durban, South Africa, and the development team has plans to market a commercial version of the sOccket in Western countries as a high-end tech toy, possibly using a "buy one-give one" model, to subsidize the cost of distributing sOccket in developing nations. Being an all-in-one soccer ball, portable generator, community builder and global health tool, sOccket is another shining example of the functionall trend covered in our sister site’s latest briefing. sOccket has attracted several development funding grants and is now in the process of developing production and distribution partnerships. One to partner with or otherwise get involved in? (Related: Hippo water roller — Single-use toilet bag turns human waste into fertilizer.)

Website: www.soccket.com
Contact: soccket@ideatranslationlab.org

Awesome - advertising banners carried by flies

Flyvertising? Wonder what the average CTR is?

Facial recognition software

Couple interesting posts about how this cool as hell (and rather scary) technology is making its creepy, but probably bloody effective, way into advertising.

First this one about Smile recognition from Switched

Smile-Measuring Device Knows How Happy or Sad You Are
by Evan Shamoon, posted Oct 12th 2007 at 9:17AM

Facial-recognition specialist OMRON has unveiled its latest catalyst in bringing about the impending marketing and focus-group apocalypse. It's a "smile detector" -- essentially a piece of software capable of objectively measuring the smiles of humans (and eventually humanoids, we presume), and attributing to them a percentage rating. Enjoying that television show/site/"adult film"? Pretty soon "They" will know, down to the nearest self-loathing grimace.

The system -- which was shown at the Japanese consumer electronics show CEATEC last week -- analyzes faces using a 3D model-fitting technique; it's able to tell identity people, estimate age and gender, and track pupil or eyelid movements. The company claims the OKAO, as the recognition-system is called, is also an "unbiased piece of software, capable of measuring the facial features of all ethnicities." Even Michael Jackson.

We tried out the age-recognition feature last week in Tokyo and were disappointed to see it get our age wrong by 10 years (that said, we were flattered, because OKAO thought we were a decade younger).

Of course, there are other, somewhat less apocalyptic uses for the technology as well, including identity theft prevention, building-entry management, driver monitoring systems in cars (to make sure you don't fall asleep and what not), access control for age-restricted content, and cameras that ensure everyone in the frame is smiling before the picture is taken.
Say (String) Cheese(TM).
From Gizmag

------------------
And this from PSFK - Ads That Watch Their Audience
February 2, 2009

TruMedia Technologies and Studio IMC have developed technology that enables electronic advertisements to evaluate the age and gender of their audiences and track how long individuals are watching these ads. The technology utilizes small sensors or cameras that are embedded in or around video screens in combination with facial recognition software that manufacturers claim can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time. Age is more difficult to predict and for the time being at least, falls into broader categorizations - child, teen, adult, senior - with a higher margin of error.

While the industry is still in its infancy, advertisers are starting to catch on, lured by the ability to measure the effectiveness of their ads in reaching a target demographic. The further applications of this technology allow advertisers a means of creating a tailored ad experience that can seemingly be changed on the fly depending on the person watching. Imagine a cosmetics commercial cutting to the latest brand of power tool as an adult male steps in front of the monitor and our Sci-Fi futures are being realized as we speak.

This worries some privacy advocates who feel this new technology smacks of Big Brother pervasiveness and for good reason, considering that most viewers won’t even be aware that they’re being watched. The makers, however, insist the technology is innocuous and assure that none of the information being gathered is stored for longer than the amount of time necessary to properly assess the audience. And while it remains to be seen how widely this service will be adopted, it’s a good reminder of our relationship to the advertisements that follow us throughout our daily lives. If they’re going to be observing us then perhaps we need to be holding them a little more accountable for what exactly it is they’re trying to sell us.

Digital technologies that will change how you market

By Matthew Klein thanks to iMediaConnection for helpful listings on tomorrow's technologies.

We know that tomorrow's media will be digitally integrated, but what will that media entail? Get the inside view on the next wave of digital media opportunities.

Steve Ballmer predicts that in 2015, there will be no media that is not IP-enabled. In other words, 10 years down the road, there will be no distinction between "traditional" and "digital" when it comes to media.

In this future world, I predict that much of the planning of media will remain the same. There will still be a human side to the equation of planning and negotiation. It is the stewardship that will evolve beyond the tear sheet reporting of traditional media and into the action and behavior tracking of the digital media today.

Print goes digital

Many people in the media believe they are currently witnessing the swan song of the newspaper industry. However, the combination of the advancements in e-paper and the proliferation of ubiquitous Wi-Fi leads me to believe that the newspaper industry will experience a resurgence -- once the term "paper" is redefined through electronics, that is.

Consider that major companies such as LG Phillips, Bridgestone (QR-LPD), Fujitsu (Clerk Browser and Fabric PC), Siemens (color flexible displays for packaging), Samsung (carbon nanotube based e-paper) and even Hearst (FirstPaper) are all moving rapidly towards the development of thin, LCD screens that will one day be flexible enough to roll into one's back pocket. While on the morning commute, people will consume news from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times or the The Chicago Tribune with the click of a button, all wirelessly transmitted via ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks.

Outdoors gets more interactive

The future of outdoor advertising will also be digital, and thus interactive, according to a presentation, which profiles technology from a company called Catchyoo. Catchyoo is in the "interactive out of home" space, like Reactrix and Bubbloo. It provides not only outdoor interactivity products, but back-office scheduling and remote management software that allows for mass distribution to multiple locations simultaneously. This creates a new media business model for outdoor advertising akin to the way we distribute ads on the web today.

Another example of the digital shift in outdoor comes from Inwindow Outdoor and their Interactive Storescapes. With the ability for people to interact with the outdoor advertisement via motion, speech or Bluetooth, the day will come when media companies are being asked to report on the engagement time, downloads or views generated by their outdoor media buy.

Radio plays

Now, consider the evolution of radio. You've probably seen the Ford Sync commercials profiling technology that is powered by Microsoft Auto. Ford Sync is a voice-activated mobile phone and digital music system for your car. With digital music, the technology is currently taking advantage of what is essentially an in-dash MP3 player or MP3 player plug-in. But with interactive radio, there may come a day that you get into your car and plug a memory card into the dash of your vehicle. As you are driving along, you hear a song you like, but the artist is not announced. With two-way digital radio (check out U.S. Patent # 6990312) and the interactive voice response capabilities that you find in Ford Sync and OnStar, you may simply say "song information" and your radio will read the metadata (yes, as I said in my last article, the word "geek" will be applied to media of the future like never before) from the digital broadcast signal and tell you the artist, title and album. You then say "bookmark" and this information is stored on your SD card for later retrieval.

Translate this capability into the advertising world and you get a scenario much like online marketing today. A commercial comes on the radio, which may be behaviorally, contextually or geographically targeted, and you say "bookmark" because you want to check out the service or product at a later time. The advertising information is stored on your memory card and you continue on your day. Later, you plug your memory card into your home media hub (today's IP-enabled game console) and the day's requested follow-ups are presented in some sort of browse-able format. If we continue the trend we are on today, the advertisement was served via an ad-server with digital radio ad-serving capabilities, so the media company that placed the ad has the ability to report on the number of "listenings," "bookmarks" and "conversions" for a given spot. Forgive the "listening" and "bookmarks" metric term assumptions -- these are to be figured out by the IABs and Web Analytics Associations of the world at a later date.

The new TV

Television has been the medium that is most often referenced when discussing the convergence of IP-based technology and media. Given the technical and adoption hurdles required to implement the digital outdoor, digital print and digital radio visions previously mentioned, interactive TV is also the nearest to becoming a reality.

Cox Communications, Comcast and Time Warner are already experimenting with nascent forms of this in key markets, and are expected to begin implementing targeted, on-demand and personalized forms of advertising through their systems in 2010. Personal TV: The Reinvention of Television is a great whitepaper from Forrester on this topic. Needless to say, one day television advertising will also be targeted, interactive and measurable.

With this future vision in mind, it is clear to see that web standards are becoming advertising standards. The language of online media marketing today is the language of the media marketing of tomorrow.

In my last iMedia article, I discussed how crucial it is that the major components of digital media marketing (online display, email, organic and paid search, mobile and web analytics) must be integrated. It is equally crucial that the digital and the traditional media be planned and managed in an integrated fashion. Today we recognize this because of scenarios such as measuring the traffic of a print or TV ad based on a special URL, ensuring that our paid search is aligned with our offline advertising or measuring the cross-media effectiveness of our whole campaign. But it is even more crucial that traditional and digital is integrated because entrepreneurs and engineers are working diligently to ensure that tomorrow's media will all be digitally enabled.

Out-of-Home Integration Will Drive Mobile Campaigns

Thanks NextGreatThing for this post on mobile and OOH working together

September 4th, 2008 by Allison

No phone is an island. It needs to connect with other phones, otherwise you’re just talking to yourself. The same can be said of mobile marketing. As a stand-alone medium, the handset is a relatively ineffective communications platform. But in conjunction with other forms–print, broadcast, out-of-home–it can be an incredibly powerful way to reach the consumer.

Just think about how put off people are by the concept of push SMS (i.e. getting pinged with marketing messages). No one wants spam to come to the cell phone, especially not the mobile industry. Phones are personal device (not to mention expensive) so we want full control of them. Not only do we customize them with colors and sounds, but we choose who we speak to, how, and when. Just look at how popular texting is becoming; it’s more popular than voice for young mobile users. There are even services like Slydial that let you dial up voicemail–no conversation required.

So how can brands market to consumers using their phones without pushing to them? Through engaging content and branded utility, basically providing something they want. This can be a mobile alert (your VP pick) or a mobile poll (your favorite performer). But unless there is some outside trigger, how can a brand generate awareness, let alone action?

The key is integration with other platforms that already have the consumer’s interest. TV shows like Top Chef and American Idol have done a great job of using airtime to promote their mobile components. Heart, Conde Nast and Wenner all include shortcodes and QR codes in their magazine’s ads. And services like ShifD (from the New York Times) and Instapaper let readers easily “bookmark” items on both their PCs and phones.

One platform still in its infancy, yet perhaps with the most potential, is out-of-home (OOH). This term, which includes advertising outdoors and in public venues, makes perfect sense for mobile. Billboads can do more than create awareness, they can include an IMMEDIATE call to action. Digital signage can enable a two-way interaction. In fact, any screen can become a touchpoint. Here are some examples in action:

• Where’s Koodo? is an interactive game that allows commuters to interact with out-of-home advertising displays. Touchscreen kiosks in Montreal’s subway stations let waiting commuters play a Where’s Waldo-like game as well as check out Koodo Mobile’s phone and additional rate plan information.
• Applications from Locamoda, a “social platform that connects people and places,” are appearing everywhere from Times Square to your local pub.

- Jumbli is a simple word game you can play on the big screen.
- Wiffiti is their text-to-screen solution
- Fotowall lets you send pictures to screens in bars, restaurants and other venues
- Touchtunes lets you chose what song you want to play on the jukebox.

Once they have people’s attention, then they have valuable real estate.Advertisers can include a call to action on the screen through Locamoda’s shortcode so you can can get, say, the number for a taxi or a free drink. A smart campaign for Beck integrated with social networks to draw crowds to listening parties at local bars.

Such services will be immeasurably important. Digital is a young person’s main source of communication and entertainment. But (prior to some popular belief) they do NOT want to be sitting in front of their computers all day. They’d prefer to use their down time (commuting, waiting in line) to do things like IM, read sports news, or just kill time with a game. These emerging platforms are letting mobile users interact with their environments–and brands–in ways never before possible.

Tags: Marketing & Branding · Wireless World

Human Mirror

Another stunt by Improveverywhere that is well worth a look, thanks to TheCoolHunter.
Check out their video at this link http://improveverywhere.com/2008/07/06/human-mirror/ for the article and more pics.

Mobile Commerce

Remember when you could buy Coke from a vending machine at Central Station with your mobile phone??? Well I think this is a little more techy than that... Thanks to Mobile Crunh for this post:

Your Mobile Phone to become Mobile Wallet
Posted by John Kullman

Report Buyer published a study today that finds mobile commerce is quickly catching on worldwide. By 2011, 25 million Americans are expected to use their mobile phones as mobile wallets. Many countries are finding the ease and convenience of mobile phone commerce is hard to resist.

For the full article check out: http://mobilecrunch.com/2008/06/10/your-mobile-phone-to-become-mobile-wallet/

The Hottest Thing in Town

New service letting you visualise where people are via your mobile.  Great for marketers but limited for consumers? Thanks to TechCrunch for this post.

Location-Tracking Startup Sense Networks Emerges from Stealth To Answer the Question: Where Is Everybody?

Erick Schonfeld
What if you could look at your cell phone and see a heat map of where everybody in the city was at that very moment? The more people at any given location, the redder it would appear on the map. That’s what Citysense does. It is a mobile application that is supposed to help you figure out where the hottest clubs and night spots are so you can go there (or avoid them, depending on your preference).

It senses where the most popular places are based on the location information emitted by everyone’s cell phones, shows the places with the most activity, and then links into Yelp or Google to help you find out what is at that location. Over time, it learns about where you like to go (fancy restaurants or punk rock clubs) and shows you other people like you, and where they are—right now. And it does all of this anonymously. (You can’t see your where your actual friends are). Citysense only works in San Francisco right now. It is available as a mobile download for the Blackberry and soon for the iPhone as well.

The application is essentially a demonstration for a startup called Sense Networks that is emerging from stealth mode today. Citysense is built on top of the company’s main technology platform, Macrosense. The company ingests billions of data points about people’s location from cell phones, GPS devices, WiFi, and even taxis. The company also collects geo-location data from everyone who downloads Citysense, or any future app (although, the company considers the data to be yours, and you can delete it from the database at any time).

Using machine-learning algorithms, it then indexes all of this location data and ranks places in the real world much like a search engine ranks Websites. But instead of looking at Web links, it looks at how much data (i.e., people) are moving between locations. The company makes money by selling this data in the aggregate to professional investors and financial institutions, who are keen to find out things like where people are shopping.

Sense Networks was founded by MIT computer scientist Alex Pentland and Columbia computer scientist Tony Jebara back in May, 2003. But it remained pretty much a research project until the company was incorporated in 2006. In April, 2008 it raised an A round from hedge funds (including Passport Capital, Drobny Global Asset Management and the Challenge Funds) and angel investors. The amount was not disclosed, but VentureWire reports that it was $3 million.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/09/location-tracking-startup-sense-networks-emerges-from-stealth-to-answer-the-question-where-is-everybody/

Mobile as remote control in multi-player large format game

http://www.playmegaphone.com/video/MegaPhone.Palm_Centro_Party.mov

"Nothing work like brand play"

Interesting post from Future Lab about Reactrix, a brand experience company. Something like this has been done in Australia at least once already, but it seems like a really unexplored area to me.

Serious Games Creating Entertaining Branding Experiences

by: Eliane Alhadeff

In malls, theaters and other spaces, Reactrix creates highly entertaining branding displays that respond to the physical movements of the audience.

The resulting "brand play" makes Reactrix the highest engagement advertising available today and reaches top-market venues with monthly traffic exceeding 100 million.

At CES 2008, Reactrix demonstrated how users could stand in front of a Samsung LCD and interact with several games and information sites using the movement of their limbs

In malls, theaters and other spaces, Reactrix creates highly entertaining branding displays that respond to the physical movements of the audience.

The resulting "brand play" makes Reactrix the highest engagement advertising available today and reaches top-market venues with monthly traffic exceeding 100 million.

Nothing Works Like Brand Play

Advertising's ability to capture attention and spur real brand involvement has been almost non-existent.

Each quarter, the measured performance of traditional media continues to erode.

In response to the lack of audience brand involvement in traditional media, lies the creation of Reactrix - the first out-of-home advertising vehicle that allows for true brand interaction with its audience.

Reactrix creates highly entertaining branding experiences that are projected in public spaces. These advertisements respond to the physical movements of the audience and engage them in true brand interaction.

The result for the brands that are the subject of "brand play" is unprecedented brand name recall, enormous purchase intent, and message delivery recall that is astonishing.

In fact, this new media form actually keeps people's attention longer and creates more memorable brand messaging than any other out-of-home venue, as well as most television commercials.

Engagement: Extraordinary Scores

Reactrix Brand Experience captures more consumers

WAVEscape advertising platform

Natural human interfaces, ones that involve human movement, for example, tend to be incredibly engaging. It's rarely more noticeable than at CES 2008--the crowds nearly always gather around those exhibits that provide some kind of interactivity.

One of the most popular has been the WAVEscape advertising platform, developed by Reactrix and exhibited in partnership with Samsung.

WAVEscape is a stereo near-infrared vision system that sits above a television to enable interactions between viewer movement and content on the screen.

It uses a stereo 3D vision system to sense the distance of a person from the television. In the same way a person has two eyes to gauge proximity, the computer can get the full shape of everyone's body up to 15 feet away.

At CES, Reactrix demonstrated how users could stand in front of a Samsung LCD and interact with several games and information sites using the movement of their limbs.

The technology is being used as a means of engaging people in a public space for interactive display advertising. Reactrix's first big customer is Hilton Hotels, which will provide the technology in its lobbies and other public spaces to both entertain and provide information on hotel services.

WAVEscape was developed by Matt Bell, Reactrix's chief scientist and founder.

"We are using these technologies to reinvent out-of-home advertising," Bell said. "Most advertising outside of the home is billboards and digital signage. I describe this as glance media--you look at it for two seconds, if that, and then you move on. What we do is engage people, get them interacting. They have fun and therefore the advertiser loves it because the user remembers the message, and the venue is happy because the venue is more interesting."

Bell says users are 10 times as likely to recall the message of an interactive advertisement as a static one.

"It is a revolution in the way people relate to TVs," he said. "The TV is now able to sense you and respond to your wishes."

Via: Reactrix - Advertising Is No Longer A Spectator Sport

World's first QR Kill match - In Barcelona

From http://www.qrcode.es/?p=209&&language=en

Today we went to Corte Inglés (Barcelona Shopping Center) and we played the 1st QR-Kill match in history. Urban game based on cameraphones and the use QR-Codes.

Goals and Description

Before the match starts players are to decide a scenario, a modality and a meeting-point.

Players will stick in their back a QR-Code with his/her telephone and name embedded. They will have to kill each other capturing the code and sending an SMS.

QR-Kill Rules

A QR with your name and phone (SMS format) will be printed in a 20cm minimum width sheet of white paper. It will be reinforced by a hard cardboard and stuck to the back using american tape.

The QR must be visible at all times. It cannot be covered by any means, wall, floor, etc…

Once you receive the deathly SMS you must leave the scenario right away.

When team playing, members can only communicate by using same phone they use as a weapon.

Disguising is allowed as along as the QR is visible.

Unless playing “sniper mode” no extra devices can be used to capture the QR-Codes (E.g. zoom photo cameras, videocams, etc…)

If there is a conflict deciding who killed first, SMS time will decide (we recommend synchronizing watches before the game starts)

No one can assist you to kill the enemy with your phone. However you can hire spies, etc…

Modes

“There can be only one” (Highlander).
All player compete by themselves. Once everybody but the winner gets to the meeting point they will call the winner and communicate his/her victory.

Team
QR-codes will be printed in different colors (as many as teams) and when there only one team on the scenario they will be communicated.

Sniper mode
Whether playing individual or teams if playing “sniper mode” extra devices can be used to capture the codes.

Google Coming To A Gas Station Near You

November 7 2007
By Duncan Riley

Google’s quest to be everywhere continues to grow with news that the Mountain View search giant will today announce a new deal that will see motorists in the United States hooking up to Google at the gas station.

Pumps made by Gilbarco Veeder-Root Inc will include an Internet connection and will display Google Maps on a small color screen. Motorists will be able to obtain directions to hotels, restaurants, hospitals, or other local landmarks as specified by the gas station owner and get a print out from the pump to take with them.

Google will not be displaying ads against the content, however there may be opportunities for coupons and similar revenue streams at a local level directly with each gas station owner. The initial roll out will be 3,500 gas stations with future expansion dependent on demand.

AP quotes Google’s Karen Roter Davis saying that the move is part of Google’s drive to make its services available whenever and wherever people need them; “This will be sort of a Googley, more stealthy way of getting directions,” she said. Googley indeed

Get Cash and Grooming Advice

Nivea Uses Gender-specific Ads on U.K. ATMs to Launch Men's Product
Published: November 01, 2007




Brand: Nivea
Brand Owner: Beiersdorf
Category: Toiletries/cosmetics
Region: U.K.
Date: April 2006 to March 2007
Media Agency: Carat Hyperspace
Media Owner: ATM:ad
Media Channels: Out of home

Nivea was about to extend its male-grooming range with the launch of aftershave soothing balm. As part of the launch campaign, it put its message on cash machines so consumers getting money out would have a suggestion on how to spend it.

The innovative part of the strategy: For the first time in the U.K., male cashpoint users would get a different message than female cashpoint users.

More than 600 cash machines on high streets, in shopping malls and at supermarkets determined customers' genders from their cards and displayed the appropriate five-second ad.

Men using the machines were shown images of the new product, while females were told: "For best results, cunningly place next to his shaving kit."

Consumers who asked for receipts were given further brand messages highlighting the benefits of the new Nivea for Men product.

More than 1 million U.K. consumers used the cashpoints running the ads.