Coca-Cola - Personal Road

Back in 2011 Coca-Cola launched the incredible 'Share A Coke' campaign in Australia.  The campaign saw Coca-Cola print 150 of the country’s most popular names on labels of Coke bottles for the first time in the brand’s history.  The idea was to give people a reason to connect with friends through a Coke and by every measure was a huge success.  Since then Coca-Cola has been rolling out the campaign across the world, recently launching Israel where Coke & Gefen Team took the idea of personalization a step further.  They transformed the a series of prominent billboards into interactive displays.  Consumers were asked to download the Coca-Cola smartphone app and enter their name.  The app would then transmit and display their name on the billboard whenever they were in range (using geo-fence technology).  The app would then notify the user when their name was being displayed.

I would normally write this off as a gimmick with too many barriers to entry to get traction amongst users, but one shouldn't underestimate the narcissistic nature of today's smartphone user and their desire to see their name up in lights.  The app ranked #1 in Israel's app store and was downloaded over 100k times.  It's a cool idea and a wonderful execution, but also somewhat creepy.  Is this the first step on the road to the dystopian personalized advertising as imagined in Minority Report?  Check out the case study video below.



Posted by: Reuben Halper

Yediot Newspaper - History Where It Happened

I love this outdoor advertising campaign for Yediot Newspaper in Israel.  For most of modern history, Newspapers have been the authoritative source for documenting major events as they happen.  Yediot Newspapers (and their agency, Saatchi Israel) brought this ideas to life by showing people history where it happened.  Front pages from prominent days in history were placed in bus shelter ads in close proximity to where the events actually occurred.  For example, the front page from the day of Yitzak Rabin's assassination was displayed in a bus shelter where he was shot.  All of the bus shelter ads taken together, documented the majority of the key events in the history of Israel.  It's a lovely way to give real-world context to historical events.  It'd be interesting to explore additional digital components that could be added to an idea like this to make it even richer.  Check out the case study below.




hat tip: Adverblog


Posted by: Reuben Halper

Bus Stop Ads - The Good, The Bad & The Excellent

I thought it'd be interesting to change gears a bit and showcase some interesting (both good and bad) work from the out of home world, namely bus stop/bus shelter advertising.

The Good - First up is a nice stunt from Qualcomm which effectively delivers on the tagline 'We make life better with mobile.'  Check it out below:


The Bad - Next up is a stunt from the Weather Channel to promote their mobile app which tells users the exact time when rain will start or stop.  Since the Weather Channel takes the guesswork out of weather forecasts, they wanted to see people get caught in the rain one last time.  To do so, they outfitted a bus stop with a rain machine.  Call me crazy, but I'd be pissed off if I'm sitting there waiting for my bus and a brand decides that they're going to make it rain on me.  I wouldn't exactly be rushing to download the app after that moment of unexpected precipitation.

The Excellent - Last up is from SAS in Norway.  To show off the array of new sunny destinations that the airline services, JCDecaux outfitted a bus stop with what looks like an airplane window.  Users who pull up the window shade are presented with videos from one of the sixteen new destinations.  It's a great way to grab the attention of people who, by definition, have some free time on their hands while waiting for a bus.  It's also a perfect execution considering the winter weather in Norway and other Northern European countries, coupled with the universal desire to get away to sunnier climes.

Media Bridging Examples: Red Bull, ING, & NCDV

Lately it seems like there have been an increasing number campaigns bridging different forms of media, particularly in terms of connecting smartphones with out of home digital signage (remember this McDonald's example from Sweden).  Additionally we've been seeing increasing amount of executions that use audio (particularly Shazam) to bridge between TV and a smartphone experiences.  One of the nicest executions I've seen comes from Red Bull & NBC.   Fans watching NBC's snowboarding competition - Red Bull Supernational had the opportunity to use Shazam to get video from the snowboarders POV, thus creating a nice two screen experience during the broadcast.  Check it out below:


via Digital Examples

The second example comes from Germany agency Agenta as part of their activation as sponsors of the German Basketball Federation.  Using their smartphones, people could connect to the billboard and use their phone as a virtual basketball to play a free throw challenge.  At the same time a camera snapped pictures of them competing and uploaded/shared it amongst their Facebook friends.

Really nicely done, especially in terms of linking participation offline with a sharing mechanism online.  Check out the video below for more:

The third example was created by JWT London for the National Centre For Domestic Violence.  They installed a series of interactive billboards in London's Euston station.  The first billboard shows a man shouting at a woman with a call to action encouraging users to use their phone to 'Stop This Now and Drag Him Away.'  Users could scan a QR code or go to the website to drag him away via their phone which pulled the man further and further away from the woman and across the other connected billboards while displaying anti-violence messages.

It's a laudable effort, but I'd be curious to understand how well it actually worked it and how many people took the time to participate.  Was it clear what was happening on all the connected billboards or was interaction just limited to the one and then continued across after a user began taking part?  Anyhow, check it out below:


Additional Articles: PSFK | Creativity | Digital Buzz Blog | AdFreak | Mashable

Gap Geo-Fencing Campaign

In what's sure to be a much more common media play, Gap (in conjunction with out of home agency, Titan) just wrapped up a campaign that combined standard bus & transit ads with geo-fenced mobile display ads.  For those of you who may not be familiar with geo-fencing, it's essentially a virtual perimeter in a real-world area.  In this case, the mobile display ads utilised the location based services standard in smartphones/tablets to establish that users were within the geo-fenced area.  Here's how it worked, people in NYC, San Francisco & Chicago saw standard posters for Gap, but smartphone/tablet users within a specific area around the posters also saw mobile display ad offering Gap coupons if they were on particular sites or playing various games from Zynga, such as Words With Friends.

Dave Etherington, Titan’s senior vice president of marketing and mobile, says that 'The lines are kind of blurring,' he says. 'You’re only a click away now from rich brand experiences and purchases.'  He went on to say that Gap & Titan were pleased with the results which has a noticeable, but unspecified, sales uplift.  Additionally, 'the campaign, which ran from Feb 20 to March 6, delivered 2.5 million impressions, with a 0.93 percent click-through rate.'

It's a really nice way to enhance the efficacy of standard outdoor ads and I love the potential that geo-fencing and other mobile technologies are starting to offer as a way to bridge the digital and offline to provide true cross-platform experiences.

As eConsultancy pointed out, we'd need to know more about the campaign before passing judgement, were the posters near actual Gap stores?  Were the results skewed due to it being an offer?  No

Supporting articles: PSFK | TechCrunch | eConsultancy