April 2016 - Rick Mathieson: GENERATION WOW

Check out this spoof video from Project GramGram, which comes with some great tips for connecting with your dear old grandma—including using a fictitious new service that lets you send social media posts via snail mail, so you can update her instantly, "in three to five days."

My favorite: Alternative options like, "the phone app, available on most mobile devices."

Apparently it's all the work of some Brigham Young University students. Which means their muse was, most likely, a certain somebody who wasn't going to hear any more about their excuses for not staying connected.

If this is the result, we hope they tell her thank you for us.

Excedrin Uses VR to Show What a Migraine Feels Like (Video)

April 18, 2016

Yup, sounds about right. The idea here is to help those who don't get migraines to understand what those of us who do experience (minus the actual pain part).

Call it VRetched. Or maybe just Virtual Hell. By whatever name, it's an interesting way for the pain relief brand to use virtual reality to drive home the problem it aims to solve.

Now show me how fast Excedrin can make it all go away, and then you'll really have something.

Prankvertising With A Purpose: Reflections in a Bar's Bathroom Mirror—From Prison (Video)

April 13, 2016

The man in the mirror has a deadly serious message for you.

We love this PSA-based prank from We Save Lives, which campaigns against what it calls the 3 Ds: Drunk, Drugged and Distracted driving.

This particular initiative (see YouTube video above) involves a bar bathroom mirror in Los Angeles that serves up a video feed with a man convicted of manslaughter from drinking under the influences—live from jail in Florida.

Longtime readers know we love prankvertising—especially the kind promoting horror movies (and certain zombie stunts on sisters after dental surgery.)

This is a horror flick of a different kind. One where the story is, unfortunately, true.

Pretty powerful stuff.

Domino's 'Zero Click' Ordering App (Video)

April 10, 2016

Domino's does it again—this time with an app that lets you order pizza without really having to do much of anything.

Just open the new "Zero Click" mobile app, and a 10-second countdown begins. Let it run out, and your pre-saved order is automatically on its way.

In my book THE ON-DEMAND BRAND, I look at how Domino's has put some serious dough behind being the default pizza choice for the digital generation.

Indeed, the Zero Click app is just the latest from Domino's Anyware initiative, which uses its Easy Order platform to make it a breeze to order your favorite pie via Emoji on Twitter, text messaging, smart watch, Ford Sync in-car, and more

(Full disclosure: Then-Domino's CMO Russell Weiner wrote a glowing review of THE ON-DEMAND BRAND, featured in a cover blurb.)

Still, Zero breaks into some uncharted territory, at least for me. Now the hassle of ordering has reached a dangerously low threshold.

As the App Store page for the app puts it: "It's easy. Maybe too easy. You've been warned."

How is your brand using digital innovation to set itself apart?

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Posted at 05:06 PM in Branded Entertainment, Branded Widgets/Apps, Interactive Television, Media Culture, Mobile Marketing, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: advertising, app, brand, domino's, echo, internet of things, iot, marketing, mobile, ordering, pizza, qsr, restaurants, twitter, wearables, zero click

HoloLens TED Talk Demos The Future of Augmented Reality (Video)

April 04, 2016

We're still digging this TED video of HoloLens and Kinect inventor Alex Kipman as he shares his vision for the age of holograms.

Of course, we haven't decided how much of this is overly staged to optimize for video capture (clearly it's mapped to the area he's working in here, and it remains to be seen if HoloLens will create the same effect in any space).

We're also amused by some of the hype involved (we're pretty sure a thousand years from now, even AR will be a distant memory, replaced by something that makes it seem antediluvian at best).

And yes, for some reason he had us thinking of Ernie & Bert playing around with an ancient form of augmented reality.

But Kipman's vision is compelling, especially given his work with Kinect, the motion-sensing technology that enables you to interact with AR elements through body movement.

One thing's for sure: We can't wait to see where it all goes in next decade—let alone the 990 years after that.