Huggies - Tweet Pee
Nice rip off of the arduino plant water hacks from a couple years back. This device attaches to the nappy and detects humidity changes. Once it notices the baby’s started flooding, it tweets the parents to let them know a change is in order. A handy iPhone app tallys the tweets and uses this to keep track of nappy stock. It alerts you when you’re getting low so you’re never caught short. Nice touch.
Nice use of Linkedin’s API to allow you to view 1st and 2nd degree connection profiles heading to your business trip destination, and then facilitates networking opportunities.
Clubhouse Studios - Equilibrium
Our transmedia iOS game ‘Equilibrium’ released worldwide this week. It’s worth checking out as theres a few things in it that are world firsts for mobile gaming. The marketing side of it is also really unique and equally worthy of a case study in itself (in my opinion).
What’s the gist?
Charles Mullock; brilliant scientist, disturbed genius has gone rogue and is planning to bring an end to the world by forming an army capable of unleashing the destructive power of Antimatter. His former research colleague Isla Gideon is humanity’s only hope. She’s discovered his plans and launched a gallant attempt to stop him.
What’s interesting about the game?
Stunning execution:
Beautiful graphics and hauntingly detailed sound design
A globally-connected real time battle:
Players’ scores are aggregated into their team’s overall power, making you part of a unique global battle that plays out in real time
Unique Twitter campaign integration:
A mobile gaming first! Equilibrium’s live narrative unfolds on Twitter and is influenced by players activity. Thanks to a series of automated bots looking for key phrases and score data, players can even receive personalised feedback from their team leader in the real world!!
Team-specific content:
The game’s visuals, sound and content all change to reflect the player’s choice of team
ARG-style transmedia storytelling:
For those wanting to delve a little deeper, a rich backstory can be discovered across audio blogs, Instagram and more; dynamically woven into the fabric of the game itself
How did we market it?
Because the game is unique in that the characters can communicate with players within the game and also the real world, we used this as the basis for our PR campaign. We targeted well-known gaming and entertainment press with personalised plea sites from one of the game’s characters (the goody). The messages asked for their help whilst explaining the game’s backstory, and delivered press pack material in an engaging way that followed the game’s narrative. High-profile twitter celebrities were also targeted with requests for retweets in a similar fashion, with all comms driving through to the game’s itunes page.
Example Twitter Plea here
Example of the detail we went to for each character’s backstory here
Durex - Fundawear
I’m surprised this hasn’t been done before really.
Once Again - The Tagging Drive
Nice angle and use of Facebook features so they have an actual purpose for the campaign, not just a box ticked.
Emart - Sale Navigator
I find this crazy but also a really interesting thing. First off the effort:value ratio vs online shopping with discounted products just isn’t there. It’s why digital shopping exists. Secondly in a supermarket or large store its ingrained behaviour to systematically walk up and down isles in order until you’ve passed everything and are ready to go.
It would make far more sense to use hyper-local alerts like Sonic Notify to buzz you at a relevant point when a deal of interest is in the isle you’re already browsing. Making people walk all over the store sporadically to get 10p off some ham they’d be passing at some point anyway is a tad counter productive if you ask me.
I’d not seen this form of LED tracking before though which is an interesting option for doing stuff like this.
VW - Search Engine Ad
Clever process. I can’t believe ‘ultimate business car’ is a search term ANY boss uses though. Maybe David Brent?
Recalling 1993
Love this. 5000 payphones throughout Manhattan are primed to tell stories of what that neighbourhood or street was like in 1993. All user’s have to do is dial 1-(855)-FOR-1993 and they’ll hear about a different time in NYC, for exactly the spot they’ve dialed from. Very simple but clever execution.
Connect with Facebook and a robot arm will sign your name on a petition (streamed live on Ustream), for those needing treatment for the terminal condition of Muscular Dystrophy.
Data visualisation of the casualties each US drone strike has caused since 2006.
exTouch
Although currently very limited in it’s execution, exTouch extends the users touchscreen interactions into the real world; enabling spatial control over an actuated object. From the MIT research labs. Worth keeping an eye on.
Another nice experiment; this time promoting their web speech API. Some interesting things could be done with that, i’m sure.
Volkswagen - Smileage
Liking the automated bits for this (for punch buggying and geo-achievements). It leaves you free to enjoy your journey and document it as you usually would with pictures and video etc. Bit like Nike+ for your car. Shame it relies on a social network nobody’s on.
