Voice search Times Square on a digital billboard

To showcase the DROID’s built-in voice search feature, Verizon is allowing people to interact with digital billboards in Times Square today by only using their voice.  The digital billboards will instruct passersby to call a toll-free number (1.888.376.4336) to search locations in the Times Square area.

Their search results are then displayed on the digital billboards using Google Maps. The experience is also be shown in real-time online.

It’s a bit of a gimmick – but at least its tied to a feature of the product itself and does provide some kind of utility to the user.

Esquire Augmented Reality Issue

The December issues of Esquire is set to include half a dozen of pages of Augmented Reality the reader can experience by holding pages of the magazine with a special marker up to their webcam. Apparently it cost 6 figures to produce, with advertisers like Lexus eating up some of the development costs.

Here’s a shot of the cover with Robert Downey Jr. and the b/w marker that triggers the AR of him in 3D. I guess they decided to go the marker route to avoid people having to install a plug-in to launch the experience, which is what we did for our GE + Popular Science AR cover back in July.

Update 11-09-09* Here’s a video.

Draw on your iPhone and post to a digital billboard

Toyota are running a digital OOH campaign that allows people to draw a picture on their iPhone and have it appear on a Times Square billboard to promote the Prius. To submit a drawing, users must first download the Prius iPhone app and drawings are limited to what you can do in one single movement. Once you submit your drawing, it will get broadcast on the live boards in real-time during the day in the order in they are received.

I haven’t tried it myself, but I’m hoping they send you some kind of alert when your picture goes live. I don’t think anyone has the time or patience to continue checking the live cams on the Times Square website.

It’s a nice way to engage with digital ooh, but the link to the product itself is weak, and it feels more like a case of using technology as a gimmick.

Augmented Reality Banner – Burger King $1

Cool banner idea by Crispin for Burger King. It’s an Augmented Reality video banner that uses a $1 bill as the trigger for an animation promoting Burger King’s 1$ menu. To trigger the animation, the user simply holds up a 1$ bill to their webcam instead of printing out a marker/code.

The idea works because its to promote it’s 1$ menu, and because everyone has a dollar bill, it’s likely they’ll be able to try it out. I like the functionality of flipping the dollar over to see the available items on the 1$ menu. Try it out here.

Interactive Demand Determines Film Distribution

Utilizing a tool that is normally used to plan touring schedules for the concert industry, Paramount allowed their potential audience to determine how widely the low-budget horror film “Paranormal Activity” would be distributed, by clicking a “Demand” button on their site.  It started with a strictly limited release, then demand led them to open in select cities, and then they promised that if they got up to 1,000,000 demands, the film would get a nationwide release (and it has gone past that number now).

While this seems pretty cut-and-dry — increased demand is met by increased distribution — this was also part of the marketing campaign.  It got people excited, and the site helps people get what they want.

One of the co-presidents of marketing at Paramount summed up why they took this route to market the movie:

“Traditionally, when you cut TV spots or a trailer, you show the scariest parts of the movie, you build suspense, and then you actually have visuals from the movie to support it,” he said. “But because the movie works so well as a truly slow build into terror, we didn’t want to show your usual kind of scenes and cutting-style horror movies have been using. We wanted to use an experiential sell to help dictate how and where it rolled out to the consumer.”

Read the Ad Age article here.

Work it with Ikea Japan

I don’t think I need to say much about this. It pretty much speaks for itself, but I love Ikea even more now…

A Seamless Microsite

This Saab site may not appear especially amazing, but if you look closely you will notice that it’s nearly seamless in both audio and video.

Lots of little loops in both the music and 3d-generated video allow it to appear linear while staying interactive.

http://changeperspective.saab.com/global/en/

Rethink Print 3#: Video ads…in Print

From Wired: CBS is embedding a video player in a print ad in Entertainment Weekly that will serve up a video buffet of its fall lineup.

The ad, dubbed by CBS and partner Pepsi Max “the first-ever VIP (video-in-print) promotion,” works like one of those audio greeting cards. Opening the page activates the player, which is a quarter-inch-thick screen seen through a cutaway between two pages concealing the larger circuit board underneath.

Urban Screen

Un-fricking-believable building projection from Urban Screen in Germany. Amazing crowd pleaser. Listen to people gasp, and laugh as these illusions play tricks on their brains.

More NYT’s R&D – RFID tagging content

Here’s another look at some other advertising innovations the New York Times’s R&D lab is exploring.

Some of the R&D group’s advertising innovations include: RFID chips that connect print ads to more dynamic content on the web, ads that can shift from one screen to another, ads that are linked to what friends are chatting about online, and targeted advertising of all sorts.

via Neimanlab