A neat thing about technology is how it allows us to take a medium that people used to simply look at (if your message was compelling enough) and make that medium interactive and engaging. In England, Ford’s ad agency Ogilvy set up augmented reality screens in a shopping mall as a way for passersby to experience a new vehicle.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Yahoo set up interactive bus shelters all over town that enabled residents of various neighborhoods to play games against each other and score points in real time (the winning neighborhood, North Beach, won a concert).
Seems to me these interactive surfaces represent a great new opportunity to engage people and get them to spend time exploring our clients’ products. I bet the Royal Ontario Museum’s Bat Cave could be the inspiration for a great game in this medium. And certainly a sports franchise could allow people to play a virtual version of their sport as a way to generate interest – challenging passersby to put a puck in a net or a ball through a hoop, for instance.
When you think about it, if you can design a game or interactive experience for a computer or tablet screen, you can do the same for a larger surface, like a poster or bus shelter. Which means pretty much any advertiser could create something engaging here. And turn outdoor media into a local attraction.
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