Aap! - Alternative Advertising Possibilities

‘GATWICK Passengers landing at Gatwick airport are being greeted by a giant naked pole dancer. The 9,000 sq m (100,000 sq ft) image is painted on grassland under the incoming flight path

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Planning officers are investigating whether permission was granted for the advertisement, which promotes a website. The Council to Protect Rural England said that the display was “a tacky advert which set a nasty precedentâ€?’

Expect copy cats to follow suit.

And yes - of course we took a peak at the site…

The city council of Glasgow is fighting illegal handbills by paying city workers to go around and stick “cancelled” stickers on all the illegal gig posters put up around town. Staff who patrol the city every working day spotting new posters and marking them are now a central part of the council’s £100,000 a year war on flyposting.

And other workers have been issued with “cancelled” stickers which make it clear the ad has been banned by the council.

And they have already had an impact on some rogue promoters who have been inundated with complaints from music fans.

People who have bought tickets to some of this summers big gigs have complained, thinking that an event, rather than the advert, had been cancelled.

A creative way to fight illegal outdoor media.

Via [ Evening Times ]

RFID-enabled posters have been installed at the JR Shinjuku Station of Tokyo adding yet another medium of interaction between static outdoor media and cell phone equipped users. These “Suipo” short for “Suica + Poster,” billboards interact with passengers when passengers “swipe” their RFID tickets (SUICA cards) at the posters. The posters then parse relevant information, prizes, coupons and ads to user cell phones in the same fashion as QR, Bluetooth or other mobile marketing communication formats. ”

RFID readers located between the posters. First time users need to associate their RFID ticket IDs with their mobile phone email addresses, using a nearby kiosk terminal.

What’s hot is how well the outdoor prints are directing users to interact with the Suipo points.
What’s not is that users must first initialize their cell phone with Suipa readers.

Very frustrating, but from early reports - there is a high rate of adoption.  Compared to QR Codes and Bluetooth - swiping your phone is very, very easy and comfortable.
All in all - more great stuff for bored commuters waiting.

Must Read Article on Suipo/Suica Posters
” ãƒ?スター＋Suica＋æ?ºå¸¯ã?§é§…ナカ広告ã?¯ã?©ã?†å¤‰ã‚?る？——SuiPo担当者ã?«è?žã??”

Learn more @ the Suipo/Suica website

Learn more about Jeki - the company building the RFID units

Oh yes - you do want to buy Peach John…

Pepsi has started its largest ever Bluetooth based marketing campaign, allowing people to download video clips to their mobile phone from poster adverts, bus kiosks and other outdoor media locations.

The campaign to deliver viral video clips, which went live on April 2nd, runs for two months in outdoor advertising locations consisting of bus shelters in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Orange County, and pay phone kiosks in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Each of the media networks has integrated Qwikker’s Bluetooth content distribution technology into their street furniture. Any consumer with a Bluetooth enabled phone can download free video clips from a Pepsi Smash advertisement. The viral video clips being distributed are five “Pass The Mic” clips of freestyle hip hop, provided by Yahoo! Music.

In the first week of the Pepsi campaign, opt-in rates to download content were reported to be 27% across the network.

Impressive.

Other Examples of Bluetooth Marketing Done Right:

1.Casino Royale does mobile content via bluetooth

2. Landrover tires Bluetooth Marketing

Why We Think Bluetooth Marketing Works!

• There are potential great uses of this technology for free content downloads
• Targets early adopters and the tech-inclined.

Where we think there are problems and challenges!

• BlueTooth Assaults and Messages almost always feel like spam
• Bluetooth messaging platforms don’t have memory - example - They will blast you a message even if you have recieved it already. Annoying.
• Users Don’t always have their bluetooth messages turned on but this can be solved with visual cues to ask users to opt-in.
• Slow Data Transmission Rates and distance issues. Most proximity servers only work at short distance
• Eventually WiMax or Wifi will replace Bluetooth for proximity marketing
• Complicated and cumbersome demands on users:

Step 1. Turn on bluetooth or infra-red
Step 2. Change your phone’s name to XXX
Step 3. Point your phone at the box and wait for up to a minute to receive a message
Step 4. Get content.
Step 5. Repeat and start again

Where to go for the next step!

While there are a variety of full services solutions (Hypertag, Proxmity etc). We recommend going open source with

Consola - the Open Source BlueTooth Proximity Distribution Server

Very easy to use and free! > http://www.consola.org/consola.html

We’ve used Consola as base of our Aap!Mobile BlueTooth Marketing Platform with great results.

We used server our proximity server in conjunction with an Aap!Stripes Campaign. Aap!Mobile’s Bluetooth proximity server sent free 10% discount coupons to cell phone users with Bluetooth enabled cell phones at coffee locations.

Read more about our efforts combining mobile marketing with alternative out of home media.

Last year at the 2006 Games Convention in Leipzig Germany Sony executed an excellent and creative ambient campaign for its horror title Forbidden Siren 2 by handing out disposable cameras. To the surprise of party goers the little disposable trinkets weren’t simply Playstation branded trinkets but instead special cameras that when developed displayed horrific spooky figures in the printed film. On every picture taken, ghosts and frightening faces appeared on the pre-expose film. The last picture of the series woudl reveal the mystery pitch - “The Horror is closer than you think” Forbidden Siren II - Out now for Playstation 2

This promotional campaign was created and executed by the German offices of TBWA.

Agency: TBWA\ Germany
Creative Directors: Philip Borchardt, Dirk Henkelmann
Art Director: Leila El-Kayem
Copywriter: Friedrich Tromm

Via - [Kotaku]

Adcreep or just plane strange. Considering we’ve put advertising on everything from the floor to subway tunnels - we commend Aquarium Media of Singapore for this fun, strange, wacky media.

Just try to remember - the medium is part of the message.

Today’s campaign of note is Common Design Room’s integrated campaign for popular sports drink “Pocari Sweat.”

Trying to capture the teenage market - Common Design Room, the agency behind this campaign attached removable “Puri Kura” or print club stickers with girly handwritten notes written to Pocari Sweat bottles in supermarkets shelves. Purikura is very popular among young girls who often carry around books containing purikura to show and swap with their friends. The intention of the campaign was for teenagers and other fans to collect the bottles and attach pictures of the starlet to their “techo” or schedule books.

The campaign integrated well across television and other media spots which featured the young starlet who would voice small heartwarming messages about the drink. The campaign stickers mirrored televsion copy like “I’ll protect you with Ions and Water Content (Heart)” and “Tangerine, Kotatsu (Japanese seat) - Pocari)”

Why it works:

Japanese teenagers often shoot themselves with superimposed stars, celebrities and more - in this campaign , individuals have a real print club with one of the fans. Fans then feels as if they are friends with the star and the brand integrates into some of the most personal spaces.

A simple, light campaign. Highly Commended.

More info:

“PuriKura” - Wikipedia provides you with info on this popular Japanese teenage obsession.

We’re not really sure what to make of Justin.tv - the streaming reality web show portraying the life of Justin Khan 24/7 - but we’re betting this might be something that could explode in popularity. Is this the natural progression of video online? Will “you” be the next Big Brother? Are we gonna see a network erupt of other Justin’s or other streaming video loggers? I can’t wait for a hot girl 24/7. I’ve always wanted a human fish bowl.

Congrats to the guys @ Justin.tv from fellow monkeys at Aap!Global

Kapitaal is an amazing animated video illustrating the overwhelming amount of advertising we [face, enjoy, encounter] (choose your verb) every day in our urban cities…

Via - Wooster Collective

Product placement in the movies is one thing - from James Bond driving a BMW to a Ferrari but ever imagine Sherlock Holmes recommending brands of pipes in his literary classic?

Well prepare for it - product placement and other subversive alternative advertising techniques have hit novels and popular literature.

Also known as product plugging - this type of advertising while controversial, is effective and proven.

One of the best-known instances of product placement appeared in 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which increased sales of Reese’s Pieces 65 percent. (Source wikipedia.org)

Other examples in movies and other media include:

- In Desperate Housewives, a popular American television series - three of the characters drive Nissan branded cars with camera view often focused on the Nissan symbol on someone’s car.
- The 1974 film The Man with the Golden Gun featured extensive use of AMC cars, even in scenes in Thailand, where AMC cars were not sold, and had the steering wheel on the wrong side of the vehicle for the country’s roads.
- or the example of exclusive Hewlett Packard computer placements in Ikea furniture catalogs

These inclusive examples are well known and common in most of today’s blockbuster films.

And while literature has always included examples of well known brands to help build scene or maintain a certain setting - new agreements between publishers, writers and brands showcase how novels have jumped on the popular product placement wagon.

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