Interactive Movie Posters

These interactive movie posters have been placed into train stations is Sao Paulo to promote the opening of the Twilight movie in Brazil. As you can see from the video, they are fairly rich in content and the interface has been well designed. The lessons of hugely successful touch platforms like the iPhone are clearly being internalized and extended.

An interesting twist to the functionality is that the interactive systems could send information to users phones via bluetooth. That’s pretty engaging.  In my opinion, out-of-home advertising is going to continue moving further in this direction.

Thanks to ViaComIT for this item.

posted by josiah at 1:53 PM No Comments »

Liberty Science Center Language Karaoke

This Participatory/Contributory activity within the communications exhibition at the Liberty Science Center www.lsc.org does a nice job of keeping the interaction simple while delivering an engaging experience. From the hardware used and related wear and tear you can tell this is not a new interactive installation but it’s well done.  Visitors step inside a green screen booth  

where they select one of four languages to explorer. Once selected (I choose Chinese) a language coach walks you through pronouncing a few basic phases which are recorded by a video camera and microphone. This 1st part of the activity is about 3 minutes and is fulfilling enough to stand on its own, but there is more. When you leave the booth a large projection screen allows curious onlooker to watch the final end product which is a combination of your recording and prerecord footage of another character. The system edits together a two way conversation between a character (a Chinese woman) and the your recorded segments, allowing the final product to become dialog. This conversational payoff adds contextual relevance to the recently learned words and leaves a lasting impression that helps reinforce the objectives of this activity.

posted by eric at 2:05 PM No Comments »

MSN’s Portable North Pole message from Santa Claus

The holiday season is an active time for interactive marketing and advertising. Here is a popular viral micro site which made its way around the mom community via email. Mothers are creating customized messages from Santa to their children that are very accurate to what the child is asking and preparing for Christmas. It’s a modern day spin on the classic idea of a message from Santa Claus, this one is web video. Here is an example of a completed Santa video message.

The parent fills out a short web form with various pieces of personal information which is sent to Santa. This is an extremely important part of this experience, the personal elements of this video are delivered through Santa’s voice over and onscreen imagery: such as the child’s age, name, desired gift, Canadian province where they live (this was created by the Canadian MSN. The production of this is very high quality; the Santa actor pre recorded the various audio elements/combinations such as the children names and gift options so when the audio is delivered in the web video it sounds perfect and appears to be custom recorded just for the child. Since Santa has a long beard it’s a perfect solution for the lip-sync issue between the static video and variable audio.

A digital picture can be uploaded of the child along with their name which appears inside Santa’s list of children who have been nice this Christmas. This one part really sells the concept that this is a REAL message from the all knowing and all seeing Santa Claus.

The video also touches on the classic Santa themes such as receiving your children’s letter at the North Pole and even discusses ideas like what does Santa do during the summertime. It’s a very convincing end product that really leaves a lasting impression. The combination of this Participatory and Observation based experience is the right tool to connect with eager 6 year olds who are yearning for news from the North Pole. It’s also a great way for parents to continue to leverage the power Santa to support teaching children to be being nice to their little brother because Santa is watching.

posted by eric at 2:23 PM No Comments »

Who’s in the Doghouse this Christmas?

Since it’s Christmas day, I figured I would blog about one of my favorite interactive campaigns of the season. It’s been a big viral hit, so you’ve probably seen it. I guess it’s the Elf Yourself of 2008. (I would link to our previous blog post here, but that reference pre-dates this blog - it was 2006. The site is still around, though it’s been jazzed up a bit since the original…) I’m talking, of course, about Beware of the Doghouse, the hilarious microsite created to sell diamonds from the jewlery store at JCPenney. Which, to be honest, seems like kind of an unlikely candidate for a hip, funny, forward-thinking interactive campaign. But there it is.

The site and the premise are both pretty simple. Both mostly revolve around the above video, which envisions a world where men who give thoughtless or inappropriate gifts are sent literally to “the doghouse” - a subterrainian bunker from which they can only escape by (surprise, surprise!) giving diamonds. It’s a good idea, executed well, and the video itself is quite funny.

Of course video is a passive observation experience, but the site adds in some contributory interactivity that makes the experience more engaging. Which wins my approval, because it too is well implemented. Basically the site contains a gallery of people who are “in the doghouse.” Users of the site can submit a name and photo of someone, which of course sends them a suggestion of what diamonds they should buy for you. You can do this directly by using a form to input the information and upload a photo. But there’s also a Facebook integration feature that lets you choose someone from your friend list. The Facebook feature also pushes news feed items, which may help explain the sites viral success. Because that exposes many more people to the experience than whatever people you opt to put into the dog house.

All-in-all, the Doghouse is good holiday fun. We hope to see more campaigns like this, that utilize Facebook and other contributory methods of expanding the experience to your social networks. Happy holidays everyone. And remember, don’t be a dual-bag…

posted by josiah at 10:14 AM No Comments »

Inamo - An(other) Interactive Restaurant

Generally the clever use of interactive technologies by a brand serves predominantly a marketing function - increase the level of engagement that your customers have with your brand. But sometimes it can provide an operational efficency function as well. Think of airline ticket check-in kiosks. When you can implement technologies that both increase your sales AND decrease your cost of doing business then you’re building your ROI from both sides. Such is the promise of restaurant automation if executed well.

The restaurant business is one of the last bastions of the labor-intensive services sector. It’s still driven almost exclusively by good old fashioned manual labor. Sure, the adoption of front-of-house computer automation has increased efficiencies in recent years, but overall it’s still a fairly manual process. I should note that from our point of view, that’s a fairly good thing. What we evangelize here at Operand is interactivity. And despite what some think, interactivity is not synonymous with digital technologies. The process of talking to a waiter, maybe getting recommendations about what’s good, and perhaps exchanging some small talk, is a deeply interactive process. And if the waiter is doing his or her job properly, this interaction should engage the patron with the restaurant’s brand fairly deeply. 

But the largest component of cost for just about any business, certainly for any service business, is the cost of their employees. That’s why people get laid off in recessions. So there is certainly a compelling financial case for restaurant automation if (and only if) it can be made as engaging as the conventional restaurant experience. And if you could manage to make it even more engaging, then that’s a double win. If nothing else, digital interactivity can offer restaurateurs the promise of a consistent customer experience.

Anyway, I say all that just to express my reasoning for why forward-thinking restaurants will continue to experiment with interactive experiences for diners. We’ve seen a number of really interesting examples of this already. Of course there was the interactive karaoke restaurant in Times Square that Operand developed and produced in 2007. There was the uWink restauraunt in Hollywood. And there was the Clo interactive wine bar, also here in New York.  Add to that list Inamo.

Inamo is a pan-Asian restaurant in London that uses projection touch technology to present an interactive menu to patrons. In terms of technical execution then, it’s very much like Clo. In addition to ordering food using a menu projected onto the table, the interactivity developed for Inamo allows diners to customize their booth’s ambience by projecting virtual tablecloths and other elements. And perhaps they expect a lot of first dates at Inamo - you can even summon a cab to make a fast getaway. 

Anyone who reads this blog even semi-regularly knows that we at Operand are extremely bullish on the future of touch surface technologies for public spaces of all kinds. It’s always nice to see emerging technologies like this employed in concert with a keen design sensibility, as has been done at Inamo. We’ll be watching with interest to see how all of these interactive restaurants perform in the marketplace. But whether they succeed or fail, we are certain that many more innovators will follow in their footsteps. 

posted by josiah at 1:34 PM No Comments »