A Wider Net

The brilliant inventor of the Hyposurface proudly reported that the Hyposurface was successfully exhibited last week at Bio Boston to tremendous acclaim. The Hyposurface is a wall of triangular “pixels”, each about the size of a Dorito, that can move in and out of the wall independently, swiftly, and deeply. As the wall moves, it creates stunning 3D patterns and simple phrases. It’s even interactive - responding to sound, voice, and touch.

If you’re familiar with those little pin matrix toys that allow you to press your hand into the pins on one side and see your hand on the other, then you have an image of what this is like - just imagine it 10 feet tall and 40 feet wide, and you’re getting there.

This is no simple beast to set up, and the budget is not for everyone. But it is irresistible to watch. The inventor proposed that there must be some physiological aspect to our vision that remains since the days of our hunter ancestors, because there is something uniquely compelling about a wall that moves. It is absolutely not the same as a moving image on a screen. Physical movement is simply different than shifting pixels.

We had the good fortune to host the product at our production facility a little over a year ago, and the potential was obvious. I’m delighted to see that someone had the wisdom to incorporate it into such a dramatic public display.

I’m sure you can imagine where they can take this technology down the road, as it finds more money and time. Smaller traingles, and ever-increasing resolution, followed by colored video pixels on the end of each triangle, and you have a three-dimensional jumbotron.

In the meantime, this is a centerpiece attraction for an event, a stage backdrop, or a trade show exhibit.

*update* - ok, I stand corrected - this entire installation was set up in one day by four people, all local labor. Very reasonable.

This LEGO sculptor built our logo (out of LEGO’s, obviously) for our trade show booth last year. We loved it. It tied beautifully into our “connected” theme which included a nice print mailer, and a lego-themed premium.

I’m mentioning him here because we finally noticed his hilarious case study about our logo on his web site. Now, if we had written something like that for our clients and posted it without approval, we probably would have gotten into a bit of trouble. But I love it, and I wish we could be as creative with our client case studies. This is typically tragically dull web content that he has made as fresh and fun as a logo made out of LEGOs.

Sao Paulo Brazil passed a law banning outdoor billboards. The law mandates that all billboards must be removed by December 31, but the effects are already being spotted, as shown in this flickr photo set.

One Flickr comment mentions that Memphis has been doing this for years. That makes two billboard-free cities that I didn’t have on my vacation wish list anyway. Without billboards, who will remind us to turn off at the next exit for gas, burgers, and shoes? I foresee a massive highway logjam of gasless cars occupied by angry desperate people with gasless bellies and shoeless feet.

Imagine what it would be like if we banned billboards, unsolicited phone calls, spam, and direct mail? Then what if we all TIVO’d over commercials, tore out ads from magazines, and continued to ignore website banner ads? We would no longer be told to rush to a low-quality furniture store for insane bargains. We would no longer be told to buy a car because it has “V6 Power” or the best somethingorother in it’s class, which might be no big deal since we usually have no idea what other cars are in this supposed class, why the somethingorother is important, nor who decided that it is the best of whatever-it-is in it’s class of whatever-they-are-s.

We would also probably be unaware of a cure for cervical cancer. We wouldn’t hear about a better/faster/cheaper/easier/cooler way to do (fill in your favorite/hated thing to do). And we wouldn’t know what station to turn to and when to catch our favorite game, drama, movie, or radio show. Yet I agree that the world could survive without Deal or No Deal.

I’m not really sure how I feel about removing billboards. The photo essay is romantic and inspiring - that a city can choose to make a drastic and sweeping change against the tides in an effort to improve it’s quality of life. At the same time, when you look at the pictures, the city appears to be left with a lot of derelict rusty frames mounted atop a sea of urban blight. It’s hard to imagine a billboard as doing any worse visual damage to a countryside than a skyscraper, power plant, or condominium complex. If anything, it’s the billboards that breathe life and color into an otherwise dull and lifeless cityscape.

What I think we need are better billboards and ads. We can choose to inspire, motivate, encourage, and educate, rather than manipulate, brainwash, shock, and con. Maybe the law merely has to mandate that the billboard cannot suck.

UPDATE: A billboard for a billboard company that adds to my argument can be seen here.

Thanks Gogi for the tip on this photo set.

National Transit Media has brought the K2 to the United States. At 40′x60′, this double-sided mobile monster will get your message noticed with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. These will suit product launches, brand-immersed meetings, and of course, exhibitor and sponsor marketing at trade shows and special events. The whole thing unfolds from a trailer that acts as its stabilizing base - very slick.
You can change the banner in about an hour, so you can sell different sponsors for each day of an event, or change your graphics daily to keep people engaged and broaden the message.

Billboardom writes about a billboard designed to trick drivers into slowing down to read their billboard. The trick is the realistic cutout of a police car placed below the billboard at ground level. A few years back, while under the influence of the draconian “Speed Kills” campaign across the country, I read a study that proved that speed variance was the leading cause of highway accidents, as opposed to speed itself. Of course, I’ve always said that running into things is what does it, regardless of the speed factors, but who am I to judge?

The point is - here’s a billboard designed to cause traffic to slow down. What if someone slows down suddenly, and gets rear-ended? (Forget that this billboard is in Turkey for a moment). Wouldn’t the ad company and the bank find themselves on the hook for that accident? In fact, a sudden slow down can cause traffic jams, multiple accidents, and even gridlock. So why is this ok, given that it is clearly intended to cause slowdowns, while the Mooninite project, which was designed to create the effect of people talking about mooninites, is being treated as an act of terrorism by the city of Boston and the conservatives on the radio?

You may have heard of a radio show from 1938 which unintentionally caused mass panic and hysteria. That event also occurred at a very sensitive time in our nation’s history.

I guess our industry has to be extra careful not to worry people. Or we can tell the media to simply stop broadcasting the news. Or we can be more diligent and investigate more thoroughly before we react. Is this radio program a hoax? Is that LED cartoon character a bomb? Do they really have WMD’s?

I find it tricky to write a post about a marketing campaign that resulted in the gridlock of the city of Boston, nearly a million dollars in emergency response expenses, and countless cases of irrational panic. Writing about it raises questions like “Am I giving undue attention to an inappropriate publicity stunt, thereby encouraging others to do the same?” and also “wait - was the problem the stunt, or the city’s reaction to the stunt”. I also find it tricky because it has already been covered by hundreds of other blogs.

As an attention-getter, the stunt worked. See ABC, CNN, WBZ Radio, Boston, (full coverage from Boston.com is here but may not be for long), and for a more insightful read, check out Making Light’s roundup.

This has truly received an undue amount of attention, especially in the city of Boston. These same devices were in place in 10 cities for weeks without gathering any attention. In fact, homeland security wasn’t even aware of them in the 10 other cities - think on that a bit… Perhaps I should feel safer living in the one city that took it seriously. Or perhaps I should add it to the same mental scrap book next to The Big Dig, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Mike Dukakis, and the Celtics, who have made it embarassing to admit to the rest of the country that I’m from Massachusetts.

Thinking back to the marketing aspects of this stunt - was it worth the $1 million in damages being sought by Boston Mayor Menino from Turner and their agency, Interference, Inc? Was it worth the legal fees and the costs to build them and execute across 10 major cities? Of course it was. Who but the lonliest of hermits isn’t now aware of the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force and their irreverent Mooninite’s?

But this campaign HAD to cause some kind of stir to succeed. Otherwise, as in the other 9 cities, it would have been casually dismissed by the masses and picked up by the same niche that already watches the show.

The book of “Bad PR is Good PR” will need a new chapter when this blows over.

Eleksen showcased their new line of Windows Vista-compatible laptop bags at CES. They utilize a new feature of Vista called SideShow. SideShow allows Vista to reach out to other devices and display small bits of information on them. The devices include remote controls, bags, peripherals, etc. The display can support a variety of user-friendly applications. For starters, a remote control with a SideShow display can display context-sensitive information to help navigate a media center PC remotely. A keyboard can display information about your application, incoming text messages, email status, weather, etc. A speaker can display the current status of your media player.
Here is a shot of a SideShow applications at Microsoft’s CES booth - it’s a smartphone controlling a PowerPoint presentation - with the presentation visible on the phone. Here are two other products - a keyboard and a speaker each with integrated display.
You can read more about these devices, along with loads of other SideShow devices at this site devoted to all things SideShow.

Marketers have long appreciated the value of branding carry-ons. Now we can start to think about what to place on these feet-on-the-street micro billboards.

Of course, the first thing that comes to my personal-space-minding mind is a shoulder bag that displays “if you can read this itty-bitty sign then you’re TOO CLOSE”. But in reality it’s plenty big for an animated version of your brand, or even a side-scrolling message. Folks waiting to board an airplane will spot your billboard-baggage while stranded in the jetway and strike up conversations like “You work for Google? Cool - we’ve been thinking about adding Google Enterprise Search to our company - can we talk about it on the 12 hr flight to Auckland?”

Symon Communications announced a new SDA line of small network appliances for digital signage. Designed to be small, low maintenance, and low cost - these little boxes can transform any display into part of a powerful digital signage network. They can support the native resolutions of most any LCD or Plasma display, providing the highest possible image quality. Their software makes it easy to add content to the sign network from any location, and remote managers can view a “snapshot” of what’s on display at any location in the network.

This is an impressive new offering since signage networks this robust have historically required a full-blown computer at each sign location. Now, if you’re trying to set up a network of informational signs in your enterprise, a series of promotional displays at a venue, or a network of signs in retail stores, these appliances will make the process simpler, the network more reliable, and the total cost of ownership lower.

I’m a big fan of digital signage (when they’re done well). The industry is growing rapidly. In fact, for the past several years InfoComm has been completely packed with signage displays and software applications all aimed at making it easier to manage content. I especially like solutions like Symon’s where you can design displays that utilize real time data automatically. Real time data solutions allow you to provide content based on a variety of criterion - time of day, sign location, current special offers (retail), scheduling information, stock prices, weather, current sales volumes, customer service call wait times, etc. So, in addition to displaying critical daily information that is entered manually, the signs can provide a wealth of valuable data automatically.

I’m not a big fan, however, of digital signage done for the sake of digital signage. At the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, for example, one of their restaurants uses a large LCD display to showcase their menu. The problem is - you have to stand there and wait while the menu slowly changes from page to page. If they had simply tacked their menu to the wall, I could zero in on what I was looking for (breakfast) and be on my way. Instead, they blew $10K on a sign that represented an inferior replacement for a laminated piece of paper.

The true test of a sign is whether the content owner would use it. If you’re creating content for a sign or sign network, and you can’t say without a doubt that you would stop and view/read/experience the sign content, then it probably has no business being there.

At CES, I found eStarling, a manufacturer of digital picture frames, and to my knowledge the only one out of about 50 exhibiting manufacturers, that allows you to email a photo directly to the frame. Apparently Thinkgeek was selling the WiFi versions these puppies at one point. Regardless, you can certainly “picture” these being used to send your loved-ones photos from far-far-away-land. Would it be so wrong to give these to customers and slip them a promotional image every so often? They are, after all, premium-priced premiums, and they have to put up with corporate logos tattooed all over their other SWAG. This just feels a hundred times cooler. Digital signage to the individual desktop. Banner Ad Designers rejoice! People may be ignoring you on the web, but they can’t ignore you if they’re waiting to see pics of the grandkids.

You can also have the display automatically grab images from an RSS feed, such as a feed from a Flickr photo sharing account. It’s a pretty neat device, and I bet there are lots of clever ways to use it for marketing and signage applications. Yes, I’d like one.

At CES, I was impressed with Samsung’s unique digital signage solution “MagicNet”. Most digital signage systems use some kind of central server and a network of signage player devices - one per digital sign.  Then, of course, you need the flat panel displays. Samsung integrated their player device into a few LCD models, greatly simplifying the system. Now all you need for a complete digital signage solution is a bunch of these Samsung monitors all networked together, and one standard PC running their MagicNet software. The capabilities are generous, including playback of most media file types and graphic file formats, and the ability to incorporate live video.

This is a good option for new installations (where you don’t own the displays already) and touring applications that want to simplify setup. You can use it for enterprise communications, event signage - pretty much all the typical digital signage applications.

And here’s where the love-fest ends. Try to find MagicNet on the Samsung website. Here’s a link to a MagicNet LCD screen. In the center of the screen it clearly states, (spelling error and all) “Super high contrast ratio with 178°/178° viewing angle topped of with MagicNet.” but nowhere on the page is a link to learn about MagicNet. Nice.

So - their online marketing may be a mess, but the technology looked pretty spiffy. I’m sure your favorite A/V system integrator, marketing partner, or Samsung dealer can help you get going with MagicNet.

Use caution if you’re considering digital signage, since we see it done poorly more often than not. Make sure you have a clear idea of who the signage will target, what content they will find interesting enough to stop and absorb, and most importantly - who will be producing this content and how often.  Often times the content isn’t changed often enough, it’s poorly targeted, or the sign’s layout is too complex and confusing - rendering it highly ignorable.

For example - at one recent trade show I attended, the digital signs in the lobbies were display scheduling information for the three days prior to the day I arrived. Page after page of information was outdated, making the signs dreadfully ineffective. There’s nothing quite as sad as an unwatched digital sign.