Device Measures Engagement Through Face Recognition

image source

A piece of news from last year's New Scientist that surfaced on Digg today: Media Lab students built a device that alerts people suffering from autism to social cues. "The "emotional social intelligence prosthetic" device [...] consists of a camera small enough to be pinned to the side of a pair of glasses, connected to a hand-held computer running image recognition software plus software that can read the emotions these images show. If the wearer seems to be failing to engage his or her listener, the software makes the hand-held computer vibrate."

"The software picks out movements of the eyebrows, lips and nose, and tracks head movements such as tilting, nodding and shaking, which it then associates with the emotion the actor was showing. When presented with fresh video clips, the software gets people's emotions right 90 per cent of the time when the clips are of actors, and 64 per cent of the time on footage of ordinary people."

This looks like a much more graceful alternative to sticking your research subjects into a brain scanner to see if your ads activate something. In the future, all TVs or whatever media devices we'll have instead should come with this thing built in.

This is the Media Lab group's page with a few other details.

Swedish Uni Works on Fourth-Gen Paper

BBC broke the news yesterday (thanks to John for the tip): "Researchers from Mid Sweden University have constructed an interactive paper billboard that emits recorded sound in response to a user's touch. The prototype display uses conductive inks, which are sensitive to pressure, and printed speakers."

After some digging and struggling with Swedish (the ways one navigates pages in completely unfamiliar languages would make an interesting usability study), I fished out some details and links.

The "billboard", it seems, is part of this Paper IV project that's been going on at Mid Sweden University: "We believe that the technologies that will be developed initially will be of interest to popular magazines and newspapers, and we will focus our attention there to start with. However, we will also study, in parallel, the feasibility of implementing these technologies in billboards and product displays of various types." Here's a video showing the technology at work (the above picture is a screengrab of this). Also see some other related projects the group is working on.

Very Targeted Banner from Orbitz

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past few days; was working on something else this past week that I hope to be able to share soon. Am back though.

Here's some Minority Report advertising for you. See, I've been looking for a last minute ticket to Chisinau (?), a city that's definitely not a top summer destination. I looked at Travelocity, Yahoo (but not Orbitz), typed the query into Google, then called someone up on a friend's reference, found a good deal, and forgot about the whole thing.

Then I go to Technorati for something completely unrelated, and there I see this Orbitz banner that apparently was generated dynamically based on some sort of data stored on my computer.

My question is, what exactly is this banner using for targeting? My guess would be that it's a Google search string saved as URL in history that was picked up on a third-party site by the network serving these banners. I think I also might have used an obscure site that could've been powered by Orbitz, which would be a good explanation. Leave a comment (moderated) or drop me a line if you know. Oh, and wouldn't it be cool if the banner could pull up actual pricing from the database? (No, because Orbitz's prices are at least twice the amount I ended up paying).

Book: Branded Entertainment

Over the past couple of months, I'd received several books for review but the time constraints were such that it is only now that I can sit down and pay them the attention they deserve. You will see more reviews coming in the next few days. Today, and with apologies for the delay, I'm looking at Branded Entertainment: Product Placement and Brand Strategy in the Entertainment Business by Jean-Marc Lehu, published by Kogan Page. The book has arrived in March in its beta (uncorrected proof) version, and has since been officially published.

The editorial review on Amazon says, "Branded Entertainment by Jean-Marc Lehu is the most comprehensive portrayal of events that surrounded the evolution of product placement -- a must read basic tool for anyone who is involved with the media industry." It might as well be the most comprehensive since the books on the subject are few (see the list at the end of this post) but it's hardly encyclopedic, and it's probably leaning more towards being just basic.

The book is written in an accessible language with a heavy flavor of academia. If anything, it reads like a very well researched paper with an abundance of examples and illustrations, which is a goldmine for like-minded scholars but can be overwhelming for the general reader. The sheer number of examples does not leave any room for any in-depth case studies that a practitioner would find useful, and yet, strangely, the book in its beta version lacks an index.

This lack of depth and misplaced accents are perhaps the biggest flaws of the otherwise fairly useful book. The author talks at length about the death of the 30-second spot pointing at the old suspects -- fragmentation, DVRs, clutter -- but devotes exactly one paragraph to the importance of meaningful integration of a product into the storyline.

The chapter that covers the history of branded entertainment is the most, well, entertaining, and will provide you with plenty of dinner-talk fodder. Lehu talks about product placements in the 19th century plays and speculates about the Bass beer bottles with the red triangular logo in the Edouard Manet's painting.



Yet the eight-page-long chapter teases more than it satisfies and you will probably want to pick up the much more detailed Product Placement in Hollywood Films: A History.

Speaking of Hollywood films. The book devotes one chapter to other opportunities -- video games, books, plays, music lyrics -- and mentions TV shows on occasions, but for the most part it talks about product placements in movies, even though its inclusive Branded Entertainment title suggests otherwise.

Although its back cover says the book is an "essential reading for brand managers, marketing professionals and students of marketing", the two groups that would benefit the most are scholars studying the subject (because of the number of pointers) and budding film producers (the extensive chapter on legal matters will come handy, as well as the bullet points designed to help sell advertisers on the idea).

Yet despite the shortcomings, the book covers a lot of ground very quickly, and can well be imagined on a bookshelf of a curious advertising generalist. It definitely passes my own very subjective value-for-the-money test:

1. Have I learned something new? (Yes)
2. Is it an extended magazine article? (No)
3. Is it painless to read? (Yes)

The examples alone are worth the price of admission ($26 and change).

Other books about product placement and branded entertainment:

• Madison and Vine
• Product Placement in Hollywood Films: A History
• Handbook of Product Placement in the Mass Media
• The Psychology of Entertainment Media
• Best Practices in Branded Entertainment
  

Blogorama: Agency Interiors

This Ain't New Disco is a new blog documenting ad agency interiors (see a few examples below). You can show off your digs by submitting pics here. If you are interested in the entire topic of spaces and creativity, Russell Davies made a number of comments some time ago.

Here are a few good books on the subject:

• 21st Century Office
• The Inspired Workspace: Designs for Creativity and Productivity
• The Designer's Workspace: Ultimate Office Design

The Hive Cooperative, Denver


Naked Communications, Australia


Clear Blue Day, Australia

Earlier:
Blogorama: CAVI Digital Experience

Inspiration: 300 Game Mechanics

If you are into advergaming design, are tired of the endless Bejewelled brand-skins, and are looking for inspiration, check out the 300 Game Mechanics challenge with Sean Howard posting one entirely new game mechanic each day for almost a year. Idea #22 -- an entire adventure game in a 81x31 banner.
-- via Kotaku

Altoids Clues Game in Google Earth

Altoids launched "Where's Cindy" game where you have to follow clues around Google Earth to locate, well, Cindy. There's no immediately available back story explaining why you should care about her besides the suggestion that she's "super hot", but it's an interesting attempt that highlights the difficulties around creating interactive applications around Google Earth. The gameplay, at least at the early stages that saw, is about showing you a drawing of a location and asking you to type it into the "passport" to download a kml file with the corresponding placemark in Google Earth. The placemarks don't do much besides showing a link back to a different page on the website with a new clue, so there's a lot of switching between the program and your browser as each clue has to be downloaded as a separate kml file. Also, it is not entirely clear why Altoids chose Google Earth over the much more convenient Google Maps.


Earlier:
Spiderman 3 in Google Earth

Apes Talk, Understand Brands

credit: abc news

ABC News: "The residents of the Great Ape Trust are part of groundbreaking language research where the apes are being taught to communicate with humans by pressing 350 lexigrams -- symbols that appear on a screen and represent thoughts and objects."

Something tells me monkeys will be back in the next year's SuperBowl ads:

"I read Kanzi [one of the apes] a series of words, and then without fail, he hit the corresponding lexigram symbol on a touch screen.
I said "Egg."
He pressed "Egg."
I said, "M and M."
He pressed 'M and M.'"

Google Gears Powers Offline Apps

"Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality." Search Engine Roundtable shows how Gears work to make Google Reader accessible offline. "Meanwhile, the company also plans to add other programs such as e-mail, calendar, word processing, and spreadsheet to its list of Gears-enabled offerings. As of now, Google has partnered with Adobe Systems to use "Google Gears" in their products." (TechTree)

Google Maps Get Street-Level View

Google has added street-level pictures for major cities (NYC and SF among them) to its Google Maps service. See the Time Sq. billboards?

NY Times on Consumer-Generated Crap

NY Times on Heinz's "create an ad for us" YouTube contest gone not quite as expected: "Companies have found that inviting consumers to create their advertising is often more stressful, costly and time-consuming than just rolling up their sleeves and doing the work themselves."

I don't think it's about agencies wanting free ads. It's more about brands trying to open up to participatory culture and letting fans into the institutionalized part of the meaning-making world, but the YouTube tool is often way too blunt for the purpose. It's also a convenient short-cut: "Hm, so how to we let people interact with the brand? Oh, why, let's do YouTube." I still don't understand why the contests should be about video. How many "user-generated" print campaigns have we seen besides Nikon's?

Anyway, YouTube has a special contest page; there you'll find Samsung, Cingular, TaxCut, among others.

Thoughtvertising on eBay

"Bid to sponsor ThoughtVertising. Successful bidder to provide me with the brand message, logo or product. Every hour on the hour for an entire week I think about your brand regardless of the social situation or circumstance."
-- via AdRants

Earlier:
Sony Patents Telepathy
Dream Machine and Subliminal Ads?
Future: Product Placement in Dreams

Apple Angry Over iGasm Posters

You've seen these popular interpretations of the silhouette Apple iPods ads before -- used for everything from political satire (iRaq et al) to promoting church services. Now, Apple is unhappy about this particular one for the iGasm vibrator:

"Women all over Britain are saying yes, yes, yes to the £30 iGasm that plugs into a music player and delivers good vibrations that pulse to the beat. But shocked iPod bosses are iRate—demanding stores take down all posters for the gadget or risk a fight in the iCourt."

Gotta love the tabloid copy, too.

-- via MacWorld

Blogger Testimonials in Ads

On the topic of using internet celebrities in advertising: just saw this banner ad (click it to zoom) on Digg: "In our very subjective opinion, AskCity has become the best mapping product on the internet." The quote is by Michael Arrington, the founder of the TechCrunch blog with over 400K RSS readers that covers tech start-ups. The URL behind the ad was this; it was dead last night when I clicked it, but I'm curious to see what the landing page is.

Arrington wrote about AskCity's launch last December in this post, but the banner quote is not from there and it doesn't come up on Google as published anywhere else.

Earlier:
Online Celebrities in Ad Campaigns
Product Placement in Lonelygirl15
Bruce Willis on iChat

Google TV Ads Beta Sign-Up

I was googling around when this set of AdWords came up (see if you can find the right search string yourself):



Google's own ad leads to www.google.com/adwords/tvads, the sign-up page for the pilot TV advertising program announced last month.

Text Ads on Del.icio.us

This looks fairly new: apparently, Yahoo has extended its text advertising program to its social bookmarking service Del.icio.us that it had acquired back in 2005.

I wrote before that ads on social networking sites should acquire some of the social properties as well, like the gadget ads Google is currently testing, and many others. For del.icio.us, it would make sense to add "save this" button on each ad unit.

KFC Edits YouTube Clips into Spot

Instead of goading people into creating videos for the company, KFC started from the other end and scoured YouTube for clips it then compiled into a spot.

USA Today: "On Tuesday on American Idol, KFC will air an ad built from snippets of consumers' Web videos. The ad, called "Celebration," shows people pumping fists, flipping, jumping and generally going bonkers, ostensibly for the chain's new menu of chicken with no trans fats.

KFC evaluated 400 videos and got approval to use 35, before making the final cut to clips from 13 people, including a vegetarian." See the video.

Earlier:
Online Celebrities in Ad Campaigns
KFC Claims Secret-Message Ad Successful
ABC Rejects KFC Ad As Subliminal

Inflating YouTube Stats

YouTube has just the kind of thing that's been promised to advertisers for years -- the exact number of times a commercial has been viewed. Here are a couple of articles about how these numbers can be artificially inflated: a new one from InfoWorld, one from January in ZDNet blogs, and an example at PR Blogger. Why bother? Because crowds draw in bigger crowds; the most viewed video gets promoted to the front page, driving more views.

And it's not an exclusively YouTube's problem. "The study identifies Bolt.com, GrindTV.com, Broadcaster.com, Away.com, RooTV.com, and Diet.com as the beneficiaries of spyware-driven traffic," writes IT News.

Study: Customer Service Boosts Stock Price

A study published in January 2006 in Journal of Marketing: "It is possible to beat the market consistently by investing in forms that do well on the ACSI [American Customer Satisfaction Index." Consumerist, which has a pdf copy of the article, explains, "Companies at the top 20% of the the American Customer Satisfaction Index greatly outperformed the the stock market, generating a 40% return."

Interesting. Would it be possible to beat the ASCI's quarterly schedule by ordering your own Net Promoter surveys for selected companies? Is anyone doing this already? Comments? (moderated).

Update: here's a study from London School of Economics that links Net Promoter Score and company (and stock) performance.

Joost Invites

Get Joost invites right from the web here and here.

Friday Special: 40,000 What Jobs?

This is Tania Derveaux running for Belgium's Senate and she approves this message:

"I am the leading NEE party senate candidate in Belgium. And due to popular demand, I will give 40,000 blowjobs to anyone who requests one on this page. Note: those who are married or shy can also choose to receive their blowjob in Second Life."

From TOS:
"Submitting several applications will not result in more blowjobs. Services for female applicants can only be provided in Second Life if the applicant has the necessary avatar modifications."

PSA: Magazine Calls for Ad Addicts

Since you are likely to be interested in ads, I'm forwarding to you this email I just received:

"A nationally syndicated news magazine is working on a story about this unique subculture of super ad-fans. They are interested in interviewing someone who can wax poetic about advertising all day long and rattle off One Show "Best of Show" winners like nobody’s business. If you feel that you are this person, please contact me at 212.255.8455 or Meredith (at) rosengrouppr (dot) com."

Ringtones on Paper

The Mechanical Music Box: "Make your own music box melodies with this mechanical music box set. Comes with hand-cranked music box, one pre-punched music strip that plays the "Happy Birthday" song, 3 unpunched strips (48cm), a hole punch, and instruction manual to have you creating your own music box melody in minutes." About $15.
-- via Cool Hunting

Wired Video Umbrella

"Pileus is an umbrella connected to the Internet to make walking in rainy days fun. Pileus has a large screen on the top surface, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass, and it provides two main functions; a social photo-sharing and a 3D map navigation."

What kinds of ads would work on this situational display? Exotic cruises to sunnier places? Aspirin?

A few other media umbrellas:
iBrella - an iPod controller
Music umbrella

Earlier:
Concept: Wi-Fi Billboards

Offtopic: Inspirational Photoshop

Every time I am down, my old (6.0) trusty Photoshop is there for me. "Be a man, buddy", he tells me. "Show character."

Earlier:
Easter Eggs in Products
Ads in Game Easter Eggs

Dog Welcomes Customers to Store

credit: weird asia news

From the "Aww, cute!" department: this dog was dressed up by the leather store owner and sits at the front door welcoming customers in. "And when a customer is leaving, he will bow, expressing thanks." How do I tag this post: formats or devices?
-- Weird Asia News via Trendhunter

Quote of the Day

Fort Wayne Gazette (Indiana) on consumers participating in ad creation process:

"We can’t blame the outsiders, the brainwashers, the clever admen, when we are all complicit, when we are all One of Them."

Firefox Extension Replaces Ads with Art

If you enjoyed AdWordless Google yesterday, here's more ad-avoidance goodness: AddArt, a Firefox extension prototype, replaces banner ads with art. A write-up in NY Times; via Stay Free! The NY Times piece also mentions this piece of trivia from Forrester: "53 percent of consumers had ad-blocking software on their computers in 2006, up from just 21 percent in 2004." That probably includes all the pop-up blockers that come bundled with browsers these days, though, but I'll post more if I find out something. The Forrester research is this one, if your organization has a subscription, and here's more info in Information Week.

NewsBreaker Theater Game: Video

The video of the NewsBreaker game in an LA movie theater is now posted on YouTube. Besides the techno coolness involved, I think it is (or could have been, I'm guessing here) a case of brilliant social engineering. You don't really have to train the motion sensor or the camera on the entire audience (an exercise that must be costly and complicated). You can point it only at one individual and have the game react to his or her motions only, while people in the audience think it's their collective effort that directs the paddle -- and they wouldn't know any different unless they somehow move in perfect sync in the opposite direction.

Come to think of it, you don't need any motion sensor at all: just have the paddle move automatically according to some algorithm, and have a couple of your people in the audience to stand up and pretend they are playing to get the crowd going. In this case, it will be the paddle controlling the crowd, not the other way around. Maybe that's why Brand Experience Lab calls the game Crowd Control.

Search Google Without Ads

Here, make your own dent in GOOG's stock price -- Google search without AdSense AdWords.
-- via techeblog

Playboy Soon in Second Life

Playboy Island in Second Life is opening soon. Look for Playboy in group search, join, and you too can be a playmate (that's the title group members get automatically). I bumped today into someone who said the island was actually open, but when I tried, the teleport failed. Don't you love the island's shape, though? It's one of the few businesses for whom Second Life is a natural fit, given how many of the residents spend most of their time.

Weekend Movie: Doll Face

You have to see the Doll Face video, either on YouTube or as a Quicktime on the makers' site (higher rez). The execution of this very familiar theme will give you shivers.

By the way, if you haven't seen the hilarious spoof of Dove's Evolution spot, see it on YouTube and also visit the Campaign Against Real Life site.

Bruce Willis on iChat

Credit: FreezeDried Movies

You signed a celebrity to endorse your product, you put him or her on your ads, even though you secretly know that the power of celebrity endorsement is declining. What's next? I don' think I've ever seen a brand opening access to its celebs, but see the reaction to Bruce Willis's appearance on fan forums and an iChat session.

Earlier:
The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns
Online Celebrities in Ad Campaigns
Product Placement in Lonelygirl15
Offtopic: Chavez's Endorsement Pushes Chomsky To Top of Charts

Salon: Where's The Future?

credit: tales of future past

Salon runs an excellent feature reviewing a book titled "Where's My Jetpack" -- an illustrated catalog of undelivered techno-prophecies -- and musing about the bleakness of the future as we imagine it today. The author, Simon Reynolds, writes: "From the trusty traffic meters and sturdy blue mailboxes to the iconic yellow taxis and occasional cop on horseback, 21st century New York looks distressingly nonfuturistic. For a former science science fiction fanatic like me, this is brutally disappointing."

A couple of good sites on the subject: Paleo Future, Technovelgy, and Tales of Future Past. And something from George Carlin: "The future will soon be a thing of the past."

Screenshots: PlayStation Home

Credit: PlayStation Universe

As you might know, Sony is building Home, "a real-time 3D, networked community that serves as a meeting place for PlayStation 3 users from around the world, where they can interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share content and even build their own personal spaces." PlayStation Universe has some new screenshots. More details and a video on Joystiq, and more info on Wiki.