Paper Bubble by Jason Wagner

Public Ad Campaign, an organization that is opposed to outdoor advertising, has created an augmented reality mobile app that replaces the billboards in Time Square with artwork (see the app in action at a recent public beta test). Public Ad Campaign and collaborator The Heavy Projects hope to expand the app in order to takeover billboards in other public spaces.

This is a great idea but the irony is advertisers will use the same technology to surround us all with bepsoke adverts!

Tesco, in an effort to take the number one spot for home shopping in South Korea recently launched a virtual shop. Situated in a Subway station and using QR codes, customers can shop for their groceries while waiting for the next train. Here’s how they did it:

So I”m sure many of you saw the original VW ad with the wee Darth Vader kid, yeh?

Well check this out, the follow up (of sorts) but not quite what you expect…

There has been quite a lot written about this already on the net but it’s such a great use of digital trickery that I had to add my pennies worth.

So, at the end of May Warner Bros released the official site for the latest Batman film and if you’ve not been there yet do it now… Done? Good.

So what the hell!?! It’s a black site with a pretty disturbing sound file, nothing else.

As word spread via the internet community, blogs, twitter and other sites many people tried to work out what the audio file was saying. Some attempted to play it backwards, change the sampling and other audio tricks. But nothing worked.

However it was a poster on the Superhero Hype message board that found this.

Hidden inside the audio file was a Twitter hashtag. As the word spread and people started to tweet #TheFireRises they received a link to a hidden page on the Dark Knight site.

As more people tweeted their profile image was used to create part of a collage that eventually revealed this.

A photo of Tom Hardy as Bane!

The thought and simplicity of this idea is astounding. It relies entirely on the community to share information, communicate and discover the truth. It’ a testement to social media, the internet community and the agency that made this work are genius.

Of couse, this type of campaign only really works for a movie, we wouldnt be using this at Ping for the latest NHS campaign but it does illustrate how involved people are willing to get to discover the truth.

via lots of people and Joblo

But you can’t take the cave out of the man.

From the Guardian UK:

Teenager’s 60ft painting of penis on parents’ roof spotted in space
When ancient Britons drew male genitalia on chalk hillsides, little did they know people would ape their customs millennia later

A house, near Hungerford, has had a penis painted on its roof. Photograph: KNS News

A wonderful advert from Japan. I just wondered if this was tweaked in anyway or is as natural as the setting.

via Néojaponisme

My apologies for not posting recently, I’ve had a busy week or was it two weeks creating the Ping website and getting ready for showcasing at Digital 2011 at the SECC in Glasgow. I’m very happy to report that everything went very well, Ping site is getting amazing feedback and traffic has gone through the roof since the conference. So let’s celebrate with a cartoon montage.

When client conversations start with “Let’s create a viral ad” alarm bells ring in my head. I usually point out we don’t have a creative concept yet and that’s going to prove difficult. Furthermore, the reality is, no agency makes a ‘viral’ ad they just make a good ad that becomes viral for a variety of reasons.

Jeremy Porter recently wrote “The Secret Formula for Online Video” using the latest Coke Cola ad as reference. His post is certainly worth a read and as he points out at the end “if all else fails, use cats in your video – for some reason, cats almost always go viral”

via Annie

This was inevitable although quite entertaining none the less.