Augmented Reality Ice Cream

As a company with a vested interest in mobile application development, we're always taking time to stay up on current technology trends in this area. One we've been following closely is the burgeoning area of augmented reality. To date, there have been a few really incredible uses of augmented reality in mobile apps, most notably augmented reality browsers such as Layar. Layar's a really cool application that uses the viewfinder from your phone's camera and your phone's GPS capabilities to show you on-screen descriptions of what's nearby.

Here's one that we just stumbled upon, and while I'm not sure I'd classify this as a mobile application nor a USEFUL deployment of augmented reality, it certainly qualifies as incredibly cool. Enjoy:

by Garret Ohm

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Keeping An Eye On The Competition

As brand managers execute integrated marketing campaigns it’s absolutely essential that they have a good understanding of both their product (or service) and their target consumer. But let’s not forget how important it is to keep at least one eye on the competition.

Conventional wisdom has always said to be proactive, not reactive but I’d contend it’s important to be a little bit of both. You have to have the ability to think on your feet and adapt to changing market conditions and react swiftly to competitive campaigns. BMW was able to do that in the example below, and turned what was a competitor’s direct assault into a net positive for the brand. Brilliance:

This billboard duel has gone viral, too, receiving coverage on tons of blogs and Twitter feeds over the last couple of days. One of our favorite blogs, Jalopnik, has even been taking reader submissions for an Audi response to the BMW billboard. You can check that out HERE. Here’s my favorite:

by Garret Ohm

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KFC Skips Ads, Fixes Potholes Instead

There’s so much talk about how important it is to spend your marketing budget wisely these days. But if traditional advertising isn’t working like it used to, then what? KFC came up with a pretty good use for their advertising dollars recently. They’re sending the Colonel to five major metropolitan cities to repair potholes.

It’s not as weird as it sounds. They’ve recently launched a campaign aiming to focus on the high-quality and unsurpassed freshness of their chicken. As a tie-in, they’ve decided to “re-freshen” streets in five cities by filling potholes, and marketing them “Re-Freshened by KFC.” It’s a win-win-win. The public gets better streets, the city saves a ton of maintenance costs, and KFC gets the credit for responsible marketing, and news outlets, Twitter streams and blogs just like this one are telling EVERYONE all about it. Wouldn’t it be great if more marketing was for the good of all mankind?

I am curious as to why they didn’t choose to integrate this effort with an interactive and social media presence. I think a microsite with a description of KFC’s campaign and their efforts along with video, images, and more could have given the campaign even more horsepower. And a strong presence on Twitter could have been really powerful in spreading the world-of-mouth marketing. Even still, this is a pretty innovative use of a marketing budget.

Btw, KFC - We have a few potholes here in Washington, DC that are RIPE for filling. Come onnnnn down!

by Garret Ohm

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Champion’s Latest Viral Marketing Effort

Champion, the maker of men's and women's sportswear, recently debuted their newest viral effort, the Champion Hoodie Remix. The campaign centers around a microsite at hoodieremix.com that allows customers the opportunity to use a color palette and a number of pre-determined patterns to create their own hoodie design and share it with the world. So far there are over 53,000 original designs uploaded to the site, which is pretty massive. These aren't just impressions - these are people that have ENGAGED with the brand.

Unfortunately, no matter how much you love your design, the chances are slim that it will ever be produced. Only one of the designs will be produced, and despite the voting system that's set up, wisely, there are a number of criteria taken into account for the selection of the winner. The criteria include: 40% voting, 10% creativity, 10% originality, 24% spirit of the design/authenticity/style in relation to the Champion brand, 10% ease of manufacturing...and they even have a 6% weight for how viral you went with your design! Even now, a month and a half before the contest deadline this promotion has resulted in a torrent of word-of-mouth marketing value for the Champion brand, which has lived in relative obscurity before this promotion. Being somewhat in the know about what the development costs for a site like this likely were, I'm willing to bet that this campaign has created a tsunami of return on marketing investment. It just goes to show you the power of going viral. Shameless plug alert: If you're interested in going viral, we'd love to have the chance to talk to you about some of our viral marketing case studies and what we might be able to do for you.

Oh, and don't forget to vote for one of my designs using this handly little widget that Champion has developed to aid in the process of taking their campaign viral: 

Thanks @rdeal1 for bringing this one to my attention!

by Garret Ohm

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Joustmas

Everyone that has ever played the arcade classic Joust should be familiar with this game! Nostalgic fools that we are, we tried to keep this game as close to the original as possible while giving it a facelift to fit with the holiday theme. We hand illustrated each frame of animation, swapping out reindeer for the flying ostriches and elves for the knights in the original game. We also thought it would be fun to swap the hatching eggs in the original with exploding presents. We traded the lava pits in the classic with a snowy winter wonderland, too. We even recorded our own original taunts and sped them up (a la The Chipmunks) to give them an elvish sound.

This year, we wanted to encourage some friendly competition out there, so we added a scoreboard to the game, using PHP and MySQL to link to a database on our server. Just enter your initials at the beginning of the game, and see if you can make it to the top. Go ahead, beat me if you can!

Click here to play it yourself. Bring it!

by Buzz Napper

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