Just been reading up on the latest experiment from Google - using it's 'Goggles' project/app it's applied the visual recognition technology to adverts for a few test brands.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/offline-meet-online-marketing.html
The user sees an ad - photographs it (in the Goggles app) and this then links with a relevant (pre-designated) page on the brands website. Cool you might think - and yes it is. But it's been done before - it's just this time it's the behemoth Google getting in on the action.
QR codes do exactly the same thing - without the joy of using the ad itself as the code but this level of visual recognition technology has been possibly for a while.
I suggested it to one of my old clients; to have a part of their billboards and print as visually recognised direct link to the website. In this case the campaign was all about focussing in on the extras the car came with so a perfect link to the idea of photographing certain elements of it. (So if you were into alloys, you could take a shot of the alloys and the image would be recognised and link you to the section online where all that lovely alloy details lay.) The idea never ran, as ever it got buried in the more pressing needs of the campaign - but it shows that this sort of thinking has been about for a while.
So, one possibly good outcome from Google claiming the floor is that what would once have been an innovative tool for a brave marketer, can now be pulled into the safe domain of 'approved Google offerings'. Which may mean some cute campaigns actually get run rather than put into the 'too hard' basket.
We did manage to do lots of nice stuff with SEAT though - if you fancy taking a look just click
here and you'll be linked to my
portfolio page on the website. Enjoy!
(If the seamless technology is less-than seamless, you could just copy and paste this url into your browser http://www.mcowenandbanks.co.uk/becky/seat.shtml - or send me a letter and I could write to you about my work!)
