Ralph Lauren has found a way to command a premium from window shoppers 24 hours a day.
People that might have walked right passed the store are now being greeted with the opportunity to explore the store’s wares by touching a wide screen monitor embedded into the store window at the company’s London store.
Models in Ralph Lauren outfits are projected onto a 78 inch touch foil screen that has been applied directly to the glass. Shoppers browse through the inventory, make their selections, and are then contacted by e-mail or phone the next day to securely enter their payment information and arrange for shipping.
Will be interesting to see where else this technology pops up in the near future.
For all our media planning / buying friends, this one is for you.
EmptyBillboards.com is a free national database of outdoor advertising opportunities that is updated every single day. The website allows billboards to be easily searched and sorted by many different criteria and view results easily with photos.
Before I continue, I have to give a shout out to our boys Nick and Travis over at WorkBlast.com! they saw the potential and need for video resumes long ago and have since created Workblast to offer this service to both job seekers and employers.
Ok, back to the story.
Sean P-Diddy Combs is looking for a new assistant, but don’t even think about sending in a boring traditional paper resume. Instead, the hip-hopper turned mogul is accepting only video applications uploaded via YouTube.
Diddy, videotaped a help-wanted ad on the popular video Web site hoping to find a helper to replace his former assistant, who did everything from holding his umbrella in the rain to playing chaperone to his hip-hop group Da Band.
While Mr. Combs has not explained why he chose YouTube instead of a job-recruiting site like Monster.com, he offered some explanation in the video. ’It’s a new age, new time, new era,’ he said in his first posting, a minute-and-a-half clip of him yelling behind his desk. ‘Forget coming into the office and having a meeting with me and being all nervous.’
Hopefuls must audition by posting a video that is less than three minutes long explaining why they deserve the job. Initially, Mr. Combs opened it to anybody with a camera or a little creativity, but in a second posting, narrowed the applicant pool to only college graduates.
More than 600 people have already submitted videos.
John A. Challenger, chief of the recruiting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said Mr. Combs’s online video search is more than a ploy to get attention. More applicants are adding video clips to their applications. ‘It helps put a face to all the faceless resumes,’ he said.
Viewers will pick the finalists on YouTube, but Mr. Combs has the final say on just who the winner is.
Desktop Factory had developed a 3-D printer for the masses. The 3D Printer literally creates robust three-dimensional objects made from a gray plastic powder which can then be sanded and painted.
Current rapid-prototyping machines start at $50,000 and go way up to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. When Desktop Factory starts selling its machines later this year they will cost $5,000. The company plans to get them down to about a $1,000 within the next two years.
When this happens, not only will more businesses be able to use 3-D printers to analyze their designs much faster, but savvy consumers will be able to afford this technology too.
This will surely start out as a niche market, but can easily be adopted by the mainstream in a relatively short timeline.
Imagine all of those 3D modelers and art school students being able to print out their 3D work. That alond could end up creating a whole new market with the emergence of a new demand for online sharing/selling of 3-D CAD designs – so that people can source objects to create at home.
Introducing Megaphone a real-time multi-player collaborative gaming platform designed for use on large screens in public spaces. This system allows anyone with a mobile phone (regardless of their carrier service) to join in on the action and compete against other mobile users. Players join the game by simply making a regular phone call which links them into the game. They then control their character with either voice or keypad commands.
Our creative minds are already wrapping our brains around this technology and how we can use it in the future. We’ve talked a little bit about cinema engagement before but this could take those 20 minutes of downtime before the movie begins to a whole new level. We could also use this technology in Stadiums, Live TV Interaction, Concerts, Tradeshows, Nightclubs, Store Windows, Mobile Projection Van…. Really the possibilities are endless.
This is absolutely the coolest thing I have seen in a long time!
Explay a technology company based in Israel has developed the world’s smallest video projection system. The revolutionary Nano-Projector is small enough to fit inside your pocket or be embedded into mobile devices. The company says the screen size will range from 7″ to 30″.
The possibilities with this gizmo are endless – imagine being able to take the big screen with you wherever you go.
PowerPoint just left the conference room for good.
HP is at it again – this time the mission is to promote their new line of high end workstations for 3D animators. Rather than following the technology marketing trends of boring; big techie words, features, system specs, and hardware performance profiles, they elected to speak to this group of artists in their language and on their terms.
Enter Toyrama – an impressive creative execution inspired by Peter Fowler’s Monsterism toys.
The site calls visitors to upload their own user generated content for a chance to win a trip to tour the DreamWorks Studios. If your not a professional animator, don’t worry HP didn’t exclude anyone… normal people can also have fun on the site, using a series of tools that allow you to create your own homemade animation.
Well with the creation of Toyrama and the recently covered Hype Galleries, it’s clear that HP is gets it, and is on their way to continued success!
Google Print Ads is an extension of their AdWords program that makes it easy for advertisers and agencies of all sizes to run ads in newspapers across the U.S. – whether you’re buying space in one paper or a hundred.
Google announced today that they have widely expanded the program to sell advertising within major newspapers across the U.S. The online search engine leader now boasts of relationships with more than 225 major newspapers.
Google Print Ads can now deliver advertisers placement into 32 or the top 35 DMAs – reaching a total circulation of over 30 million readers. To date, many of the biggest companies in the newspaper world have signed on to participate in the program, including E.W. Scripps, Hearst Newspapers, Gannett, The New York Times, Tribune Publishing, and the Washington Post.
Similar to Google’s AdWords platform, advertisers large and small bid for ad placement in print. Advertisers utilize an automated Web-based interface, where they can conduct both local and national ad buys. The benefit to newspapers, according to Google, is that many smaller or non-traditional newspaper advertisers can gain easy access to the medium through the service.
Google Print Ads has brought in new advertisers who were either too small to consider advertising in a national newspaper or who hadn’t tried print advertising because their business was largely online. Google Print Ads provides users with the flexibility and control to set individual company pricing, so there is never a conflict.
Yet more proof that Google is slowly taking over the world…
I don’t know your opinion of Cinema advertising, but after driving to the theater and spending $20 for tickets to a movie and another $20 on popcorn and soda, the last thing I want is to be forced to watch product commercials.I am not talking about previews for up and coming movies, I am talking about those intrusive – annoying car, product, and beverage ads we are forced to view while waiting for the movie to begin.
A recent concept produced by MSNBC.com dubbed “Crowd Gaming” might just change my attitude.In select venues, motion sensors are placed throughout a theater to track the audience’s collective movements. Moviegoers swing, sway and rock in their seats as “human joysticks” to control the onscreen game. Working as a team, they direct the onscreen action using a ball and a long paddle like that in the classic Atari game “Breakout.”
Players climb through 10 levels, each with a new challenge. As they advance in the game, the headlines fall faster.Every 25 headlines players catch gains them an extra life, and “power ups” also fall to help players progress through the game. Scores are posted to a global leader board where gamers can compare scores.
Shout out to Sam Ewen of the Experiential Forum for pointing out this article on just what makes Apple Computers so much different than most other companies in the world. The article focuses on how Apple emphasizes customer experience at every touch point.
