Tag: advertising

SI Swimsuit Models Come To Life Through QR In Lexus Ad

Posted on by Lab Team

In this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, Lexus is utilizing QR coding to bring the models in the magazine to life. The ad features three models that spring to life when the reader holds a QR reader over the image of the models on the page. The models walk towards the phone to music and a Lexus slogan. This is a definite step forward for a QR technology that’s seemingly stalled out as people continue to criticize its clumsiness, but in this instance Sports Illustrated and Lexus are bringing the technology to a much wider audience in a new form in a continued attempt to keep the swimsuit edition current and innovative. 

Intel Announces Streaming TV Box

Posted on by Lab Team

Prepare to be watched while you watch. Intel Media GM, Erik Huggers, has revealed that Intel will launch a set-top box this year to power an Internet television service including live television, on-demand, catch-up television, and apps.  Hopes are high for the quality of the service, but concerns over privacy have already been voiced, as the box will feature a camera, which is rumored to be used to target advertisements to users.  Advertisers have been excited for some time about this type of targeting technology, and this box could be a strong first step towards integrating it into home TV setups.

Superbowl Ads From The Eyes Of A Brit

Posted on by Lab Team

Watching the Superbowl as a Brit it was hard to escape two overriding feelings.

One- The Superbowl doesn’t really seem to be about the sport, instead all those people clattering into each other are rather background to the whole thing, people talk over the action, nobody really supports a side with any vigor and people come and go as the event goes on. The whole thing seems more about sport as an excuse to get together, chat , eat and talk about ads.

The second realization is that for a nation that spends it’s entire year doing everything it can to avoid ads, this seems to be this one curious window where people actually like ads, scrub that, they LOVE the ads, they talk about the ads, they laugh at the ads, they may even listen to them and remember them. For months it’s like ad agencies have rubbed their hands together knowing that for this one time, people will actually be watching and actually may care about what you have to say. That’s rather puzzling to me.

It’s not like this in the UK. While we don’t love ads, we have a curious relationship with them, they are at worst tolerated and at best, beloved. We have TV shows in primetime that celebrate the best ads from around the world. And you can understand why, most TV ads in the UK are rather gentle and sophisticated “films”.  They are often creative narratives with pleasant storylines, feature nice plinky plonky music, they cajole and entertain, and smuther you and endear you. It’s not like that in the US, and I understand why most US ad breaks with their shouty patronizing interruption are not welcome.

It did get me thinking, how is it in a world where we now have no attention span, where we do several things at once, where so many people skip ads on DVD’s and if they do view them, they do so in the context of frustration, why on earth do we still have ad “breaks”?  What rationale is there behind stopping the thing we want to watch, then taking 7 mins or more with the entire screen removed of the thing we were paying attention to, and either force people to put up with “paid interruption” or more likely, tempt them to put on the cooker or do something else for a bit.

What’s the need for the break? Would people not pay more attention to the screen and therefore the ad like message if they were not on together?

Why have we not more found ways to embed messages within the broadcast simultaneously and maybe as a way to add value and meaning?  Sure we have “sponsorships” and logo’s and wardrobes provided (seemingly always by Ralph Lauren), but why not feature more things akin to banner advertisements, or branded utility, and do away with the entire concept of a “ad break” .

I’d love to do some research at the lab and find out if it’s better to get half of someones attentions while they are watching the show, or to take up the full screen when they are not. I’d love also to think of creative ways to get ad content and viewing content blended together in ways far more sophisticated that current techniques like sponsorship and product placement.

 

Joining The Dots

Posted on by Lab Team

I think sometimes we look at things in a lens that is too focused.

For many years we’ve looked and laughed at internet enabled fridges and tweeting plants but to make sense future thinking people have  taken a step back and had the imagination to see the whole ecosystem of the connected home, a world where you can turn on your cooker from work, or check to see if you have left the garage door closed.

But I still think these use cases are rather pathetic, relatively fringe and certainly not providing enough value to make the $15k investment in an entirely connected home worthwhile.

But when you really take a step back, where you vision includes things that seem rather peripheral,  you can begin then to  join a lot of things together that show how amazing things could happen.

I don’t think we are far from a world where the world of advertising starts becoming less the use of creativity to get brands and consumers to connect and engage, but a world where creativity is used to allow brands to provide value to consumers. The process of agencies like the IPG Media lab will be to have the imagination but also the knowledge of fringe technology to join the dots together and to do so in the context of business and brands.

We are talking of a world of both creative business models and branded utility.

I think in less than 3 years a connected home will include a fridge that knows what products we like, what food we have, when it is about to turn bad, where we are going to be that week, who we may expect to have come and visit.

This may seem rather out there, but it’s a simple question of taking in some of the utility that apps like “Slice” provide now, advancing it a little, and then pulling data from your google calendar, location and other sources to help suggest solutions, or as we like to call it, the world of “anticipatory computing”

In a world like this, an online grocery company could subsidize the cost of your fridge by ensuring that it will only be able to order goods from their own site.

You may find that you never run out of milk because it’s ordered before it’s about to go bad or run out.

You may find ads for food products that sync with your fridge and tell you what else you need to order to make a suggested recipe and order it for you.

This is world far removed from the now, but not because the technology is so advanced, but because our attitude towards “advertising” shifts away from technology as an enabler of better brand messaging, but technology as an enabler of better brand solutions.

140 Proof Targets Tumblr

Posted on by Lab Team

140 Proof expanded its social advertising technology today by launching what it calls Native Ads for Social Sites, allowing advertisers to reach targeted consumers on an array of social networks including Tumblr and WordPress. The addition of Tumblr to the company’s arsenal is of particular interest as it allows ads delivered in “native” format to be reblogged and shared like any other post, while also taking advantage of strong targeting, and Tumblr’s largely unexploited advertising potential.

Gracenote’s TV Ad of the Future

Posted on by Lab Team

Gracenote, the service best known for being the recognition and recommendation technology used in iTunes, has now expanded its technology to ID video sources as well – now it’s ready to branch into TV. The Sony subsidiary hopes to capitalize on second-screen TV viewing by offering advertisers the opportunity to target the masses with precision similar to that available with web-based ads.  Their algorithm dynamically inserts ads based on what is playing on the screen and demographic data about the viewer.