New interactive projects from Hyper Island

Lots of cool stuff comes out of digital media school Hyper Island. Here are two recent student projects that offer a different take on the shopping experience:

1)

Interactive shop window concept where the movement of a virtual model is triggered and controlled by the motion of people walking by.

The videos themselves are created by people online, who chose the model, background and which city it will be displayed in.

2)

Social media integrated into shoes via an RFID chip. This creates multiple opportunities for localtionbased actions and also offers the possibility to create real life "like" buttons.

Via: Trendland & Wireduk

Refresh Everything

Interesting new social media experiment from Pepsi. Each month they give away millions of dollars in grants to sponsor ideas that will help improve local communities. People (in America) are invited to either upload their ideas on the campaign website or vote for the projects they think deserve to get funded. The grants range from $5.000 to $250.000 and the categories you can apply to are: Health, Arts and Culture, Food and Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education. The campaign is set to run for a whole year and every month the ideas with the most votes get rewarded with grants. Pepsi expects to have given more than $20 million away at the end of the year - money that was originally budgeted for a big commercial to run during this years Superbowl final. I think this will prove to be a clever move.

Via HelloKinsella

Skype Outside

I really like this new campaign from Skype. To celebrate the Skype mobile app they have hired 5 different artists from all over the world to turn Skype customers' experiences into art. On the Skype Outside site there is a presentation of each artist to help you decide which one of them would do the best job expressing your story. Ranging from shadow artists to avant garde, Japanese street theater, wood carving and circus performance there should be something for everyone. All you have to do is call up your favorite one via the Skype link and tell them what's on your mind and if you're lucky the conversation will be turned into an outdoor piece of art in the artist's home city. It will also be filmed and uploaded on the site.

By using outdoor art they cleverly articulate the fact that Skype now has become mobile and that you can use it when you're out and about. But for me, the really great thing about this campaign is the way it involves people and makes their stories the central idea and main source of content on the site. It gives people the opportunity to participate and it offers something in return.

Augmented reality - technology hype of 2009

Augmented reality was one of those things that just seemed to pop up everywhere in 2009. Most of the time the AR based concepts were nothing more than marketing gimmicks that didn't seem to use the technology to improve on things. It was merely a case of let's-do-it-because-we-can" syndrome.

like this Tokyo store front where you can get the latest shopping information by looking at the building through your iPhone. But why would you have to download a special iPhone app, that only works when you stand in front of the building, to get that information?

Or this Mini print ad that shows the new model when viewed through a web cam. Again, I just can't see why people have to go through all this trouble to access information. There doesn't seem to be much in it for the user.

But there has also been examples of really helpful and interesting AR ideas. Like the Nearest Tube iPhone app by acrossair that will guide you to the nearest tube station.

Or the Invizimals game for Sony PSP where you can use the portable device to detect and catch monsters in your surroundings.

There's clearly potential to apply the AR technology to popular culture in useful and exciting ways. Let's hope we see more of that and less of the gimmicky stuff in 2010.

MediaBeat interview with Nick Law

Nick Law, Chief Creative Officer at R/GA (they have among other things done the interactive NIKEiD platform), shares his views on future advertising trends. He talks about how social media and platform building will play a bigger role in the advertising landscape in 2010. Law also points out that it's going to be more and more about maintaining ongoing relationships with customers than it is about broadcasting a message. This means that brands will have to focus more on fitting into people's daily lives and their individual media rhythms in order to engage with them in the digital space.

Via psfk