MediaFrenzy

Alternate Reality applications

Allan — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:09:06 +0000

Chris Rawlinson and Dave Duarte were kind enough to invite me to speak at the most recent 27 Dinner in Cape Town. I spoke for a short while on AR applications, showcasing the December issue of Esquire magazine and talking briefly about the General Electric, Mini Cooper and the work we did for Wordsworth Books. The point that I tried to make was that for the most part, AR applications tend to be gimmicks – using the technology to attract the attention. The biggest problem with this is that we are using technology for the sake of technology – at best retrofitting the message or post-rationalizing why it is relevant – and end up with something that has initial wow factor, but no compelling reason to continue engaging and therefore ending up with something that is not sustainable.

As we continue looking for new ways to explore this space, we’re constantly asking “why?”… in a lot of the examples we see, the marker simply acts as a way of kick-starting the content on the screen. So how is this any different from the usual navigation that you find on a site – clicking a button or holding up a marker – both could essentially achieve the same thing. In the Esquire example, holding up the markers gives you access to exclusive content, but if you took away the markers from the magazine how different would it be from the CD’s of additional content that magazines sometime include? Make no mistake, it’s has been beautifully designed and crafted, and moving the markers about gives you some cool effects, but then you would expect something special from an 80MB download of custom built software.

So why are we calling these experiences augmented reality? I guess since you can see yourself on the screen via the webcam, and the interaction is triggered by the marker that you’re holding, you could, at a stretch, call it reality. And since we’re adding stuff on top of it, it is augmenting. But there is no added value in having the two combined in one place. The US Postal Service have an augmented reality application that uses markers to create virtual boxes that you can use to measure up packages you want to send, which is useful, but only if you don’t own a tape measure. I can see the point of an application like Layar – relevant information is superimposed over my view of the world – the reality as I see it has been augmented.

Which brings me eventually to the main point. I think the name augmented reality, for the most part, is a misnomer. Reality is not being augmented, we are simply using our reality to augment the experience. So perhaps what we should be calling them are Reality Augmented Experiences.

AtPlay Update: 11 March 2007

We’re hiring

Allan — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:53:01 +0000

We’re looking to fill 2 permanent positions and 1 contract within AtPlay. General overviews are:

Junior Interactive Designer (Permanent)
Young talent, fresh out of college/school/whatever and keen to learn/grow. Work experience not essential but wouldn’t hurt.

Interactive Designer (6 month contract)
Experienced multi-talented designer who lives in Photoshop and Flash.

Digital “Swiss Army Knife” (Permanent)
Can-do attitude and able to make magic happen wherever it is needed. Design, HTML and Flash.

Email me allan.kent at gmail, leave a comment or get me on twitter @allankent for more details.

Advertising spend paradox

Allan — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:07:00 +0000

This evening I was watching the series channel on DSTV (RoyTV had ended for the night) and an advert for Musica came one that looked quite interesting. Visit http://www.greatestsong.co.za/ to vote for your greatest song – the most voted for will be played for some children on the day that Musica give them some hearing aids. On the face of it, it sounds like a great idea – worthy cause, crowd-sourced result, TV driving traffic to web – but is it?

The first problem I have is the paradox of spend.

Both the TV spot and the website say that they are giving hearing aids to 4 children. Why only 4? Yes it’s a noble cause and all that, but how much can a hearing aid cost? Surely not that much that it justifies a TV and digital campaign? The TV ad is simple enough but does use Imagine, and in light of a recent campaign, I’m sure some usage rights had to be paid over.

Assuming that the TV flighted on DSTV for free and there were no royalties for Imagine, there’s still the outcome of the process – 10 greatest songs to be played to the kids when they get their new hearing aids. Kids aged 4, 7, 7 and 9. Who are going to listen to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven and (if my votes count) Pixies’ Where is my Mind. The same kids who listen to Hannah Montana and watch Spongebob Squarepants.

It also seems a bit strange to have a domain, but still advertise a gmail account as the contact address. But maybe that’s just me.

Recycling in advertising

Shuuuuuun the unbeliever

Allan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:13:19 +0000

As ongoing proof that the internet is weird, this video has had 39 million views:

Inspired by the sheer freakishness of it, I created a ring tone of the best parts. Well the parts I like. This needs to be shared.

Download Charlie the Unicorn ringtone

Assuming you are still interested in Charlie, here’s episodes two and three.

Weird ideas that work

Cape Town Photo Walk

Allan — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:10:50 +0000

This morning I spent a couple of hours in some excellent company, strolling about Cape Town CBD on the Scott Kelby’s 2nd annual Worldwide Photo Walk. About 30 enthusiastic people, all weighed down with camera’s, lenses and (for some) tripods, set off at 8AM from the Planetarium on a route that went down past the Company Gardens, into St George’s mall and then back up Long Street. As with anything that involves a group of photographers, it took a fair bit longer than anticipated (“no really, there’s definitely a shot here!”) so I didn’t hang about for the post-walk coffee festivities, but it was quite fun seeing what 30 different people can find to photograph in one spot.

You can view the images on Flickr.

Dropping trou at Saatchi

Allan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:42:50 +0000

So we’ve been collecting jeans for the last month or so, and today we handed them over to the Salvation Army. Of course simply loading the jeans into their car would have been way too easy.

Alt Conference

Allan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:50:01 +0000

I spent the day at the Cape Town Alt Conference, brainchild of, and run concurrently in Johannesburg by, Paul Jacobson.

The lineup of excellent speakers notwithstanding, I think we got the most value out of the discussion and debate that happened during and between the actual sessions. We had a rather well-informed group of people, so it was great that the talks didn’t tread the usual social media avenues and end up preaching to the choir. In each session we had to deal with contentious points, lively debate and some sometimes difficult questions. This is the sort of thing that you want to have at a conference.

Thanks to Paul Jacobson for taking this on (and succeeding), Paul Cartmel for hosting us in Cape Town, Tim Shier, Shawn Jooste, Henk Kleynhans, David and Marc Perel and Gaby Rosario for providing food for thought and especially to everyone who came along and added to the conversation.

Let them into your pants

Allan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:09:46 +0000

As part of Saatchi’s worldwide sustainability division Saatchi & Saatchi S, we run an internal program called Saatchi True Blue that encourages everyone in the agency to Do One Thing – some small thing that makes a difference. We also sometimes work together (on this) as an agency and we’re currently running a “Let them into your pants” campaign. During June we’re collecting old pairs of jeans and at the end of this month will be donating them all to a homeless shelter to help spread some warm clothing this winter.

June is fast running out and we have collected a fair number of jeans but the more the merrier. If you have any old jeans that you no longer fit into (admit it, you do) and you are coming along to the 27 Dinner on Saturday, bring them along and I’ll take them all in to add to the collection.

We’ve strung up some of the jeans across our reception area to create a bit of interest and a talking point for clients and suppliers when they visit the agency – hopefully talking leads to action and they join in the donation drive.

The value of recommendation

Allan — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:34:43 +0000

I was looking through the Google Analytics for this site this evening and saw an interesting correlation in my referral traffic between the level of familiarity of the source and the bounce rate for the traffic from that source. I guess when you think about it, it makes sense – inbound links from twitter will typically be from people who have chosen to follow me, and are therefore interested on some level in what I may have to say – the bounce rate of that traffic is the lowest of all the inbound source. By contrast, the bounce rate of inbound traffic from stumbleupon is the highest of all traffic sources – the visitors are arriving on the site through some random recommendation/matching algorithm and are least likely to be interested in browsing further through the site.

Of course this just confirms what we already know – recommendations / referrals from people in your extended network or community hold the most value. It stands to reason that if we were trying to convince visitors to take some kind of action on a site, the best results would be from those who arrived via a referral of this kind. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith have a term (and book) Trust Agent that rings true in this case. Quality trumps quantity every time.

Reading marathon ahead

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:20:14 +0000

Over the last couple of months I’ve slowly been building up a pile of books that I just never got around to reading. Which is a real pity as there are some killer titles here:

I’m currently re-re-reading Mark Frost’s The List of Seven so that the characters and story are fresh in my mind for jumping into The Six Messiahs. Also, because everyone raves about it and frankly, I’m a bit embarrassed it’s taken me this long to pick it up, I’m alternating from the Mark Frost into Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. From what I’ve read so far it’s as good as everyone says and not going to disappoint. Of course there’s also Charles Leadbeater’s We-think waiting in the wings and to make matters worse, Hugh MacLeod’s Ignore Everybody has just arrived. It’s probably time I took some leave to catch up on all this reading.

In related news, I still have R300 in Exclusive Books gift vouchers … any suggestions ?

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