BlueCasting

I've just been on the phone with those nice folks at Filter | Worldwide in London and we were talking about how their proximity marketing system call BlueCasting could work for my client. Essentially, it is a mobile marketing solution that utilizes your smartphone's Bluetooth capabilities.  BlueCasting deploys small transmitters that transmit up to a 300 meter radius and when you walk within the range the transmitter detects you and send you a short message with a Bluetooth icon.  If the user opt-ins, its gotta be a sexy message, then the transmitter can deliver files such as a still image, a sound sample, a video clip, a MIDI file, a WML deck, or a vCard/vCal event.  

Now if you are running this in, lets say, Times Square or Tokyo, you are in luck.  The market penetration or saturation of Bluetooth devices is deep but in Kansas City, you might not have such good numbers at the end of the day.  However, the good news is that this type of marketing operates on three levels: 1) audience proximity, 2) viral buzz, 3) pr buzz.  Nike, Absolute, Discover, etc have jumped on this.  Nike built out a massive program in Tokyo that was a city-wide interactive scavenger hunt for sneakers.  Crazy, right?  Very cool? Oh yes.

www.bluecasting.com

www.filterww.com

ThinkPad Reserve Edition in NYTimes

A nice pick from the Times' Circuits section for the Reserve Edition.  Led the team that created this fun site.  The cool part is that all images of the product are modeled in Maya and woven together in Flash.  We were able to create a much more fluid approach to, 'discovering' the product rather than traditional photography or video angle.  The teaser launch of this product was also a great lesson in viral marketing.  That is for another post.

the article is here.

the site is here.

Smart Pox

This is a very fun mobile tool that no one is using quite yet. Very much like Geo Tagging was before Jeep got a hold of it. Essentially, you can create a 2d barcode, the pox, that is readable by your phone via a downloadable application that is java based. The Smartpox creates a link between the offline and online world through the decoding of the "pox."

For example: say you're band wants to gain word-of-mouth exposure about a new song you have released. Plaster the town with posters that have the Smartpox on it. Encourage users to decode the "pox" which could lead them to the url with your new song embedded in it. Have them download right to their phone/mp3 player and you're in business.

www.smartpox.com

10 is the new 15

15 used to be the new 30, while 30 was, forever, the new 60. Infotainment commercials even took over for a while, 60 minutes is the new 30! With all of the new ad formats, from Out of Home to Rich Media, it hard to keep up. One prays that their compatriots in Media have their heads on straight when structuring the Media Buy.

Low and behold on a recent buy, I noticed a new format. So small as to be barely noticed! Welcome to 10 seconds as the new arbiter of marketing communications. A challenge to be sure for working in the 10 second format is no slight turn. Tell a story in 30 seconds, sure. Tell a story in 15 seconds, um o.k. Now you have five less seconds. What are you going to do? Well MacGuyver, just what are you going to do?

Questions: Are you going to sell brand benefit or product benefit? A blend of both? Do you have an intro or a setup to the story? How long do you want to hold the end title? If you hold the end title for 5 seconds this means you have 5 seconds for product or brand attributes. Or maybe you hold the end title for 3 seconds, which means you now have 7 seconds to tell your story.

Suffice to say, a unit like this is a unique challenge. Yes, it may strike fear in the hearts of Creative folks everywhere but ultimately it is a challenge. In a way, we are really catching up to the folks in Out of Home and Consumer Package Goods. A highway billboard has to deliver its message to someone driving by it at 65 mph. A read of 2-3 seconds tops. The same goes with any product stacked in a supermarket aisle. The read has to be instantaneous. A sense of recognition and brand story has to occur in the blink of an eye.

Good luck to all of us in the design of the new 10 second spot. Oh, btw, there is a new Out of Home unit in a bus stop shelter that has an animation time of 4 seconds. Wooof!

Welcome!

Hello!

Welcome to my new blog.  I have set up this forum to talk about all the new formats and channels for Interactive Marketing Communications.  A long-winded explanation for sure but we are in an era constant change and there has to be something macro to explain all the micro.

Please join in the discussion.  I prefer dialogues to monologues. :-)