Sweet (Chili) Augmented Reality

With AR in mind (see last post) I saw this on Mashable and I think it is a great example of AR used in promotional marketing.

When you hold up a promotional pack of Doritos (in Brazil) to the webcam, the AR code printed there then initiates a little cartoon character which is active within the Orkut community. Orkut is big in Brazil (bigger than Facebook or Mypsace I think, so that makes sense as a platform for extending the campaign).
And with lots of different AR codes on packs, I assume that the purchase volume would go up as consumers look to see which other monsters they could reveal...

The campaign started last year and I can't see (via googling) how it has gone but everyone is a sucker for cartoon monsters (just me then?) and it would be interesting to see what impact this has had on brand metrics, sales and of course recycling / retention of crisp (chips) packets!

I tried to interact with the site, but Brazillian defeated me:

The Doritos Brazil site didnt have an English option , as you can tell!

Fabric or Fad?

I was at the first meeting of the Augmented Reality Mancheter Group last night and it was an interesting meet.
A mix of design , tech and client services folk interested in the growing-technology and applications of augmented reality.

I've only got one app on the iphone at the moment (Sun Seeker) but that itself demonstrates how useful the technology can be.
How it can boost a Brands reputation or increase sales for a client is of course another matter. But the technology itself looks really interesting and its role in marcomms / campaign strategies will no doubt take off very soon.
I'll add in some examples like the GE Energy App that is shown a lot, soon.
The ideal would be for us to start prototyping Apps  for clients as part of a wider campaign response.

But commercial / ROI usefulness of any new platform or technology is the acid test : Which is why this post is called fabric or fad, in that unlike (say) 2nd Life and virtual world technology - I think AR could be part of the fabric of Marketing communications , whilst virtual worlds (in that context - not for other instances e.g in closed-group education) is / was a fad.

What do you think?

Cynicism2.0

I’ve been driving past a big billboard recently near my local town (Huddersfield) and something about it (even at 30 miles an hour) looked wrong.

It’s of David Cameron and has him staring out, with a slightly far away looks saying something like “I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS." Which is a poor line in that its about “I” not ‘We’ so not a great party line and reads as negative, not commanding or upbeat.

But what struck me most was the stare and also the unsettling plastic look of the photo.

It transpires that it was heavily airbrushed (actually digitally reworked but that old school term still applies).

Pretty much all public / fashion / Advertising portraits will be cleaned up in some way, of course.. But this looks like it could be Dave’s 2^nd Life Avatar.

I’m not Tory bashing here (ok, a bit), the thing I wanted to note was that with social media and quick-to-build web technology what would have stayed within the realm of dismissive articles in the Press, the chip wrappers of tomorrow, has taken on a viral life with the launch of http://www.mydavidcameron.com/.

 The Original Poster

One of the Spoofs created on mydavidcameron - this one by the very funny http://www.bbdo.co.uk/blog/

Satirizing pompous or ill-judged political grand standing or false portrayal (literally) isn’t new but now you don’t just laugh once, you laugh at every new user (citizen) ‘s take on the subject and for much longer. 
The democracy of scorn, as a cynical Brit I’m all for it.

Twitter

I was thinking over the christmas period (happy new year to you by the way!) about how much time I spent with my nose in the iphone, either checking on friends via facebook or friends/colleagues/work/hobbies related stuff on twitter.

It struck me that only about a year ago I was very sniffy about twitter but would say now that is really is a great piece of technology and is shifting how we interact and behave : personally, locally and globally.

See some of the earlier posts related to my reserve nay scepticism about Tweeting. Even the term annoyed me ;-)

BUT .. I found myself at some quiet times over the holidays reading tweets that were filtered by the lists I've been curating.. social, tech, photography etc.

To be able to pick up as much of-the-moment info and enteraining / stimulating  thinking via a stack of magazines or newspapers or through sitting and searching / browsing on my mac via Google wold have taken for ever.

With the lists I've set up I was quickly absorbing some really interesting stuff from clever people and making the occasional note of an expanded thinkpiece (via a link they cited) for a deeper read.

To that end, I just read read an article by David Carr in the NYT about similar views he had. It expands beyond my point on lists curation so have a full read, it's a great article.

Twitter isn't a fad and is now part of the plumbing (I think it was Steve Johnson who Carr cited for that analogy - it's very apt).

Predictable Predictions

I have been predictably thinking about trends and themes in digital marketing in 2010.

My first is that SETI will pick up on a cosmic twitterfall, revealing a universe of digitised conversations.

A universal sign of intelligence will be the ability to share scientific knowledge across disparate communities, enrich cultural experiences and build commerce across vast distances. Whilst at the same time (as da youth say), chat shit about anything and everything.

Okay, lame joke over..

I was going to do some serious predictions for 2010 but after a twitter search (I’m using twitter rather than google for quick filtering) on ‘marketing predictions 2010’, I stopped.
Because many people, more insightful than me, have a plethora of sharp predictions out there.

That said, I did have a couple and some of my own quick-fire thoughts are :

> lists will continue to grow, everywhere, not just in twitter. Lists become more valuable as we try to cataegorise the enormous ocean (universe?) of content, data, knowledge out in the connected world.

> Paid for  / paywalled news media won’t take off as much as the professional media creators and broadcasters  would want, if at all.

> Apps will rise in importance in the marketing repertoire. Not just on iphones but across all devices.

> Google Wave will slowly take off..  But only when Google push the adoption harder and tweak the interface and functionality.  And only if conversations / collaborations don’t get hacked/ spammed / phished to death

Have a great holday / Christmas break.

nice campaign : Yellow Fun To Go – «Your Sad Friend» App.

Okay, I don't use my blog as a PR / sales piece for our Agency as that takes into into a different space.

But I got sent the details on this neat campaign from our colleagues at Mccann Israel and I really like the concept and use of technology behind it.

And the recent crappy weather in the UK put me in the frame of mind that this service helps change (from Winter Blues to happiness getting a free gift from a friend)

So below is a summary of the campaign and you can get more about it here:

=== Campaign Info ===

Yellow - The largest convenience store chain in Israel, has launched its Private label - “Yellow Fun to
Go” which includes smoothies, ice cream yogurt and chocolate drinks, sliced fresh fruits and many
others - all the sweet things that can make you happy while you are on the go.
The challenge was in creating awareness of the new product line and getting people to experience it through the online
campaign.
The idea McCann Israel devised was that of taking contextual advertising to the next level: via segmentation (for
the first time)  of the emotional status of the target audience.
They used Facebook as the platform for the campaign.

The execution :
They created a Facebook application that offers to send a “cheer up gift” to your sad friends.
How?
After installing the application, it scans all of your friends’ statuses in order to find “sad” behaviour –
depression statuses such as “I’m depressed”, “I’m bored”, sad pictures etc’.

The unique algorithm which was created especially for the application graded the “sadness” level of
your friends and found your saddest friend. But finding them is not enough - you could cheer him/ her up.

Your 'saddest' friends got a notification on Facebook and also a mobile coupon for receiving one of the
new Yellow Fun To Go products for free - Something from Yellow to cheer them up.

The Results look very good : (In first 2 weeks) :
# 167,000 unique visitors
# More than 45,000 people installed the application
# Thousands of people used their mobi coupons and experienced trialled the Fun and tasty product
line

======