Mostly This:
Why AR ‘Things’ like Blippar will fail
AR is an infant technology, it’s GOING to be massive, it will be part of everyones lives in maybe 50 years time. At the moment it’s a tech demo, with no real use. Of course advertisers jump on any new tech like a (insert rude metaphor here).
Theres a hunger to be the first, to get that gimmick regardless of if it will benefit any client or consumer. So Advertisers were ‘all over’ QR codes, no one used them. They have slowly stopped, but now they have a new toy - Blippar. Which is basically QR codes done by image recognition.
Image recognition is very cool technology, put to a lame use. No one wants to interact with their chocolate bar, at least not in the incredibly clunky and inconvienent way that AR attempts to make you.
Out and about in shop windows and billboards is not the location for people to start pulling out smart phones, downloading software, waiting for extra bits to load in and ultimately just see an overlaid video or link to facebook or a website - that is normally not optimised for mobile use.
My personal favourite is blippars/QR codes on the tube!
Demo this tech to a marketing manager and he will be signing up before the demos end, but without actually THINKING about why. Just because you can, is no justification.
Google Glass is showing a bit of a shift to a potential AR platform that will find genuine useful applications, Blippar doesn’t solve any real world problem for anyone, and its not not a good enough experience in itself to raise it above a one off gimmick.
So by all means PLAY away with blippar, layar and other new ‘apps’.
Experimentation is good, but expect more miss than hit and basically a PR benefit at most.
iPhone5: An Extra Row. An extra row of Icons was the spin, obviously it’s a better aspect ratio for movie watching. It amazes me the iPhone video player doesn’t force an NTSC colour profile / resolution and super impose a curved glass bezel, you know for that full real world 4:3 experience of yesteryear.
But why didn’t they add an extra row to the keyboard?
The newer new iPad….
The newer iPad - Will it be called mini? I doubt it - its not exactly a ‘mini’ device at 7 inches, and it also isn’t a term they use any more. I woudl imagine a better marketing spin on the reasons for having a 7 inch iPad, and for me I would focus on two areas.
Comfort - it’s just the size of a paper back vs the Hardback iPad. You can hold it in one hand for lengthy periods. It’s also better suited to kids - the major end users in many households.
Portability - 7 inch screens work on the go, I’ve seen a few people using them on my commute and it looks natural and appropriate The rare person that pulls out an iPad looks awkward and loses any privacy, that 10 inch screen is for all to see.
So iPad mini? or iPad To Go!
Atari Arcade Shoreditch - was a special one night event put on by Microsoft to show off Internet Explorer 10 / Windows 8. The tablets were all playing a bunch of HTML5 versions of classic Atari arcade games in a ‘clubby’ environment.
www.atari.com/arcade (no ads if viewed in IE)
They also had a browser based version of ‘Contre Jour’ some levels are only accessible in IE10 - which supports multi-touch.
www.contrejour.ie/
It was as smooth and playable as the native windows phone version (and presumably iOS version)
Nice to see microsoft seeing the gaming potential of windows 8 and not by only riding on the xbox brand. RIP Minesweeper/Hearts.
New hoxton sq graffit (Taken with Instagram)
When marketing people don’t think very much no 253.
This instagr.am promotion (currently being a paid post on twitter) for walkers seems simple enough - until you check out that all important step three.
Enter this ‘LONG wordy promo style’ text - on instagr.am - so on your mobile keyboards, oh and you can’t cut and paste (tricky on mobiles anyway) as we’ve only given you the epic tomb of ‘marketing managers wet dream’ text as a .jpg so you’ll have to enter it from memory, and you can’t even see it as you’ll be in instagr.am.
Next time walkers - use a simple hash tag, not a brand devaluing bunch of crap. Any maybe walk though the process before going public.
This stuff is easy, why do so many brands do it wrong, STILL!
Burkowski in box park is a great little burger joint. It’s in one of th he box park ‘containers’ on the upper level with loads of shared outdoor seating and 3 or 4 tables inside. The menu is equally small, basically its a regular burger or chicken burger or the giant big one. I went for a straight burger with added Stilton £7.50 and small chips for £1.50.
The burger was well cooked on a lovely soft brioche roll. And the Stanton cut through. The chips were of the x cooked variety and equally good. The icing was the little touch of homemade ketchup and mayo.
If you like Byron you’ll love Burkowski.
Forget the Internet Fridge, Digital Bin’s are where it’s at. possibly. Though one US friend pointed out “what brand would want to be associated with trash”
Oh no - FURBY is back, best furby i had was a gizmo one.
They don’t sell lurpak in ireland, leaving the door open to copy campaigns/designs. Update: it’s the same company that makes Lurpak, so basically they re-used the campaign with a very different product, basically pissing on all the planning / strategy / brand work :)