John Hughes is rolling over in his grave.
This could have been worse, but mostly it just shouldn’t have been done at all. The end.
Angry Young Man’s take:
Why are we pretending that making a pop culture reference is somehow new unholy ground for advertising.
This was a fun spot. I’m sorry if you’ve decided that it has defiled your youth, but you are likely being far, far too precious about a movie you watched when you were younger.
AeroShot sent me a batch of “breathable energy” to wake up today’s project meeting. It’s lime-flavored inhalable caffeine (and some B vitamins). We wrote about AeroShot in the current issue of Fast Company, and Co.Design has a longer story about the Harvard Prof who created it — he also wants to make smokable chocolate.
So much want.
This is where Augmented Reality is going to tip.
Not in the wild, not in HUD-emulating applications that add an information layer to everything you see and interact with. No, AR is going to become commonplace in exactly this way, in controlled environments.
This is an overly simplified system, but there’s no reason looking at a page would limit you to links. It could immediately pull up animations, video content, and audio track narrating the shoot, etc - while keeping a tactile object that responds to multiple types of interaction (not just finger-on-glass), and that isn’t limited by the dimensions of a smartphone screen.
A QR code fails because it’s a voluntary interruption model - that is to say, it requires too many barriers, first one needs to see the page the code is listed on, then they need to care about the code, then they need to have an application to scan it, then they need to do the actual scanning, then the page needs to load.
An AR model goes “This magazine has an augmented mobile experience. Open this app to see all the extra content on each page” and leads into an ongoing experience, one that can very easily add value. There’s not a series of decisions. There’s a series of discoveries.
Do I want HUD style AR? Of course I do, I grew up reading science fiction. But do I think that we’re going to head directly there? No. It will first be applications like the one above. After that, retail applications (point your phone at any item for sale in our store, we’ll recognize it and serve you unbiased reviews, pricing info, and further details, as well as the ability to purchase via mobile, and pick it up at the door on your way out). After retail applications, expect it to graduate to wikipedia / serendipitous search (point at something, we tell you what it is. Without asking or clicking. Just hold the crosshairs on one item for too long, and image recognition does the rest).
But it starts here. With a removal of the ‘take a picture and see what happens step’, and its replacement with continuous passive content offerings, layered on top of the everyday world.
Sometimes I remember I have another blog, and actually update it.
Nike displays sculptures made out of shoe boxes in its store in New York
At the end of the day, the best social marketing is creating stuff that makes people say ‘I have to blog / tweet / instagram that”.
This really frustrates me on behalf of the BBDO employees of Detroit that are facing a layoff. I normally am not against global economic development if there are mutual benefits but in this case buying locally or even American should be required.
Wow, Francois must have absolutely no handle on the local environment. The first rule of doing anything in Detroit is to do it American - this was beyond obvious even before the bailout.
You’re absolutely right. My best friends Dad worked for GM, I drove a foreign car at one time. He wouldn’t even let me park it in his driveway. After doing digital work with GM for a couple of years, I understand even more. This decision by Chrysler just upsets me.
I’m actually in Detroit today. And over the the past two days I’ve been working non-stop with a number of GM’s digital agencies to get a really cool campaign live. Everyone connected to the US auto industry is working really hard to nail the comeback. Stories like this just piss me off.
Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t the insistence that American-ness should come before quality in decision-making exactly the reason the US auto industry failed so damned hard?
That said, given the situation and who they are selling to, the better PR move would inarguably have been to go with an American agency.
