Initial Idea for the The AA Home Insurance campaign.

Augmented Reality - The sequel

Over the past few weeks I seem to have been living in a virtual world, wherever I go I can’t seem to escape the augmented reality bubble. Having spoken about it some time ago when I was less clued in on the topic I thought that I would come back to it and see where it, as a mobile concept, is headed.

There are a number of ways in which AR can work but two major types of augmented reality seem most likely to see academic use in the coming five years, markerless and marked (Pence, H).  Markerless AR has little reliance on any fixed markings but instead can use GPS and recognition software in order to produce results. Marked AR however relies on the use of two dimensional barcodes that can be read by a web camera or Smartphone (Fig 1.0). It is the later that we have seen more over the last few months with many marked AR pieces coming to the forefront of marketing. Just a simple YouTube search for Augmented Reality will throw up hundreds of results for people experimenting with marked AR. A great example of marked AR would that of Ikea, as discussed in my previous entry on AR, Ikea have developed a try before you buy service that will be 100% dependant on 2D markers placed around the room in order to generate the furniture images.

Another example that came to attention a couple of weeks ago was Lynx’s station ambush that coincided with the new ‘Angels will Fall’ campaign. In the middle of the station, a large dot was put were people had to look above. At the same time, an Angel (such as in their commercial) would fall from the sky. Not literally, but virtually. (Callens, B. 2011)

 

The angels ambush at Victoria was a huge success and was followed up with another event at the Birmingham Bullring two weeks later. The reliance on the large screen of course was no problem given the size of the operation undertaken by Lynx but I still can’t shake the feeling that the future of AR doesn’t lie in gimmicky Smartphone apps or technology that requires us to live life through a lens.

Through some of my further research into the uses of AR in fields other than advertising I discovered that my fears may be unfounded as there are companies making inroads into the relevant new technology. Wearable computers may sound like something that you would rather see in Star Trek or a Japanese laboratory but by the looks of things that may be exactly where we are heading.

“Wearable computers will allow a much closer association of information with the user than is possible with traditional desktop computers” (Barfield and Caudell, 2001). Finally someone is reading from the same page as I am. This may just be the development that could entirely convince me that AR is a viable technology across the board. 

Barfield and Caudell, 2001, also believe that Future extensions of wearable computers will contain sensors that will allow the wearable device to see what the user sees, hear what the user hears, sense the user's physical state, and analyze what the user is typing. If this was possible, the incorporation of the other sensory factors would make for an all together superior experience and far more appealing as a technology, not just in advertising but across the board. 

It is unclear what form this wearable computer would take on a practical level, a form of head wear or goggle perhaps? While the theory behind this is exciting and there is no doubting in my mind that AR does have a future, I can’t help but feel that consumers will not react well to having to wear their computers. Even if it was expertly incorporated into a pair of somewhat chunky glasses, would this be seen as a practical solution? Surely the fashion police would be after you in a number of days at the most. The practicalities of wearable computer equipment are further questioned in my mind by Jaramillo et.al suggesting that if wearable computers were to take off as the future of mobile AR then In this case, the system should be extremely robust to tolerate outdoor conditions (Jaramillo et.al 2010), A fair point given the necessary durability of the gadgets in the market place today but as I am not a product designer the words robust and weather proof sound alarm bells that it’s going to have to be big and bulky.

Problems aside, the possibilities for AR would seem to be endless. Uses are being found in many different industries such as medicine, engineering, gaming and assembly to name a few. Feiner says the mainstreaming of AR technology now largely depends on the ability to manufacture and sell the technology profitably. He says he remains convinced that future AR technology will not be a mere novelty; instead, he says, it will be one of the fundamental user interface paradigms through which humans interact with the world. (Kroeker, 2010)

The interactive user interface would seem to be driving the success of AR for most people; an immersive world of virtual overlay that is a little nostalgic of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s view of the world in The Terminator series.

 

 So looking at what augmented reality could offer us from an advertising perspective do we think that it is a viable medium? Well looking at the Lynx clip above you may well think so. I certainly see a bright future for AR in direct mail, the use of a 2D marker in a piece of promotion could add an edgy and engaging facet to a brand.

On a larger scale AR could be used in a similar way one of its current incarnations, Layar. The smart phone application allows the user to view to world through the screen of their mobile phones and offers pop ups and promotional information on stores you pass. If there was some way that this service could be offered without the need of a smart phone then who knows what may be possible.

The future potential of AR is an exciting prospect and I think that pairing NFC’s with AR would again open all sorts of new avenues and take advertising into a new position, perhaps more of an impulsive buying society. I will leave you with a clip of a public service campaign that was executed in Holland, while your watching think of all the other possibilities that AR could be used for in UK public sector marketing.

References

Barfield, W., Caudell, T,. 2001. Fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality. Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah USA.

Bimber, O., 2005. Spatial Augmented Reality : Merging Real & Virtual World. A K Peters: Natick USA.

Callens,B,. 2011. Axe Lynx: Angel Ambush. Unknown: Creative criminals. Available from http://creativecriminals.com/outdoor/axe-lynx-angel-ambush/ [Accessed 23/4/2011]

Jaramillo, G.E et.al 2010. MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY APPLICATIONS IN DAILY ENVIRONMENT. Revista EIA, 14, 125-134.

Kroeker, KL., 2010. Mainstreaming Augmented Reality. Communication of the ACM, 53 (7), 19-21

Pence,HE., 2011. Smartphones, Smart Objects, and Augmented Reality. Reference Librarian. Vol. 52 Issue 1/2, p136-145

(Not so) Ethical behaviour in the age of the Smartphone.

Smart phones, those of us who have them couldn't do without them and those who don't have one probably yearn after one. The rise of smart phones has been meteoric and with new pricing structures in place it is now possible to have a smart phone at a very reasonable price. According to Gartner, smart phones made up 19% of the 1.6 billion units sold in 2010, a 72.1% increase on 2009. There is no doubting the success and dominance of the smart phone in today’s market but we have to ask ourselves, what are the risks?

In the last month we have seen a number of news articles discussing the ulterior motives that some companies may have when it comes sensitive information and your smart phone. Most recently we have seen Apple come under some scrutiny for accusations that have been tracking their iPhone user without their knowledge. Apple's approach to ethics and privacy has been criticised in the past and this latest revelation will do them no favours with the launch of the latest iPhone coming later this year. Location services are however one of the main sales points of any smartphone. Built in GPS and maps applications allow us to find our way around and locate our nearest coffee shop or pharmacist. Many new social networking apps such as Foursquare and Facebook places rely on this to exist, so why is it that only now people are realising the tracking possibilities of phones? Just because you can look up your location to the nearest 20 metres or so doesn't mean that you are the only person that can do this, maybe you should be but in the grand scheme of things this is never going to be case. With the marketing power of Google these days information like that is invaluable.

Apple are not an isolated case though, Pandora's free radio services app has been pulled up in recent weeks for using code that harvests and transmits mass quantities of data. The application in question has the power to collate information such as GPS location, device identifiers, gender, and even user age without proper notice or authorization from the end user (Shields, T). In many ways this is an even worse breech of privacy than Apple's tracking habits. With the information stated the concern is that Pandora can sell this information, and has done so already, to large advertising libraries such as AdMarvel, AdMob and Google.Ads. Individually these pieces of information may be worth relatively little, but when compiled into a single unifying picture, it can provide significant insight into a person’s life. Supposing this information was sold to an Ad library in one nice neat folder, you could then be accurately targeted with products and services appropriate to you. They could build a picture of your life, know where you live and work, where your partner lives and the sort of income you have. All of the of course makes for the perfect customer profile form the advertisers point of view but at what cost?

The deception and cunning of large corporations never fails to amaze me. Looking back across my application usage, I am sure my personal information must be in the possession of all sorts of Ad libraries but at the same time I can’t help but have a strange admiration for however thought of gaining this information in this way. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a disgrace, a breach of personal privacy and entirely unethical, it should be stopped or at least policed.

The worse part about all of this is that it only fueling the fire of those people who really believe that George Orwell’s 1984 may be a reality. I must admit that all of this does point to a “Big Brother” society but then again doesn’t all social networking do that in some way? Digital privacy and ethics are something that many of us take for granted, some don’t think about them at all it would seem until they have been violated in some way personally. From a business perspective there will surely be an ongoing struggling between what is right and what pays, the shame being that the two rarely go hand in hand and the online community is so vast that it is nearly impossible to regulate in practically. The two examples discussed above, highlight the shortcomings of those companies in their ethical behavior. We can only hope that they act as cautionary tales for other companies and are not repeated by others. That said, I am a realist and therefore realize that that is probably a long way off.

References:
Shields, T., 2011. Mobile Apps Invading Your Privacy. Veracode. Available from: http://www.veracode.com/blog/2011/04/mobile-apps-invading-your-privacy/ [Accessed 25/4/2011].

Further reading:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/22/apple_iphone_location_tracking_analysis/page2.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/06/pandora_smartphone_privacy/

Digital Activism

How Social Networking bought down a Government.

It will be no surprise to any of you who have seen the news in the last two months that President Hosni Mubarak has stepped down from his 30 year rule of Egypt. How is it though that a nation as vast a Egypt were able to organize these fierce riots at such short notice ... well it seems that social networks aren't just for playing Farmville and sharing photos. Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and many other social networking sites all played their part in the events that unfolded.

As we saw last year in London, Riots can be organized within a couple of days an have devastating effects. In the first student protest, 25,000 school children and University students acted out on the proposed increase in fees. Protests went on into the night and caused millions of pounds worth of damage. This all started from a Facebook group calling for an organized walkout and peaceful protest in demonstration against the proposal however in truth it resulted in scenes like these.

The revolution in Egypt was much the same. Deciding that they had had enough of Mubaraks 30 year dictatorship, rose up and stood their ground calling for the current leader to stand down. It took 17 days of constant protesting to get rid of man who had been in power for three decades, millions of people campaigned through the night breaking curfew laws put in place. After just seven days of protests, mobile phone signal was cut and the internet blocked in an attempt to disrupt the protesters organization. Twitter was still accessible for some though, Twitpic and YouTube were used by those that had a connection to send evidence of the events to International news stations. After a while houses around the main squares opened their WiFi networks to allow Facebook and other networks proved vital tools in the organization of both of these events. .

Marshall McLuhan once talked about the "Global village", a world bought together by electric technologies. Free and instant movement of information between quarters with no practical restrictions. It is this facilitation of communication between social groups with similar opinions that has changed the face of society as we know it. Where it would have once taken several weeks to organize such public uprisings, and even then may not have come to fruition, now only takes days, possibly even hours.

Social networking is all the rage, it's where the people are and where businesses want to be but does it have a darker side? Yes it can be used to do great things like help find lost relatives in the devastating situation in Japan, you can broad cast yourself like Justin Bieber or rebel against commercialism by backing "rage against the machine" for Christmas number one. Social networking is such a powerful tool though that I worry it may be misused by those looking to cause trouble. Both of the examples that we have looked at in this blog just go to show how you can rally thousands of people in a common cause from your back bedroom. Provided they all share your view on a given matter who knows what is possible, that is the brilliance/terror of digital activism.

How can we protect ourselves in cyberspace?

I recently had problems with my computer at home, various viruses had managed to slip through the AVG net and embed themselves on some fair important files that I was working on. After much shouting and swearing I managed to remove the offending files and was advised to used a piece of software called SUPER Anti Spyware (SASw) that would ensure that all unwanted programs and files on my machine were removed. I was must say that I was hugely impressed with a the software particularly as it was free! Having run an initial AVG scan, you would have thought that any spyware or malware would have been removed but oh no. I followed it up with a whole computer scan on SASw and to my amazement it found the following : 7 Ad-ware cookies, 1 Browser Hijacked and 1759 tracking cookies. As you can imagine I was slightly taken aback by AVG inability to detect 1767 unwanted files.

We are all familiar with Social networks like Facebook taking over the world of communications but why is it that no one seems to have any major objections to showing their relationship status, contact info, likes, dislikes favorite films, artists etc? Many of you will be aware of the Facebook privacy settings in place but some may not know how these have evolved over time. Matt Mckeon talks of how the Facebook team have relaxed the approach to default privacy as more emphasis has been put on monetizing the site. The picture bellow depicts how poor Facebook's default settings have been over the last year.

Some of you may not be aware of how Facebook use our personal details and profile information to target us with Ads although they maintain this is done anonymously, it still takes place.We can of course opt out of this unnecessary exposure of information but why should we have to? shouldn't the default be the highest possible setting? Of course in an ideal world it would. It is these short comings in online privacy that lead to Spam mailing, excessive tracking cookies, spyware, fraud and viruses.

Online privacy is a massive issue, you wouldn't give out your contact details or personal information to a random person you met on the street. Nor would you give your card details away to anyone unless you trusted them 100%. Unfortunately many sites, groups and networks do not have security and privacy barriers in place to stop your info leaking out to a wider audience

So how can you ensure that your online privacy settings are up to scratch? Well following these tips offered by the EFF would be a good place to start.

1.      Do not reveal personal information inadvertently.

2.      Turn on cookie notices in your Web browser, and/or use cookie management software.

3.      Keep a "clean" e-mail address.

4.      Don't reveal personal details to strangers or just-met "friends".

5.      Realize you may be monitored at work, avoid sending highly personal e-mail to mailing lists, and keep sensitive files on your home computer.

6.      Beware sites that offer some sort of reward or prize in exchange for your contact information or other personal details.

7.      Do not reply to spammers, for any reason.

8.      Be conscious of Web security.

9.      Be conscious of home computer security.

10.  Examine privacy policies and seals.

11.  Remember that YOU decide what information about yourself to reveal, when, why, and to whom.

12.  Use encryption!

BEWARE: Even if you Facebook privacy settings have been put in place, every time a new profile layout is bought in you settings may reset to default!

Product Placement - Friend or Foe

We have come a long way from the Unilever’s first deliberate insertion of Sunlight Soap into the early Lumiere films of the late 1890’s (Gregorio and Sung 2010) to the point were today we would probably be more surprised if a film didn't include product placement (PP). Most of the movie blockbusters of the past few years have used PP to either fund parts of production or market the film through co branded advertising.

In recent years there has been a rise in films that use product placements heavily to subsidize the production of the movie such as Sex and The City (2008) and Hitch (2005). Both of these films use product placements shamelessly, whether they are there to add a sense of realism to the scene or as stealth advertising is irrelevant, the fact is that an increasing number of brands are placing products but with what consequences to consumer attitudes?

Before you do anything have a flick through this video.

Do we as the audience actually notice these placements as much as the advertisers think we do? Well I would probably say no, granted some of them are unavoidable like the use of Chevrolet in Transformers or Ford/Aston Martin in Bond but how many fly under the radar or merge into the background. Looking through that video above I tried to count how many brands were included in that montage but the truth is that PP is so rife that in some scenes you can easily over look a background brand. There is an ongoing discussion in the world of academia as to whether prominent or plot connected placements are as effective as previously thought. Supposedly background placements are more effective for long term recall but if we don't notice them surely they are good for nothing. 


Product placement assumes that just seeing a product in a particular setting or scenario will increase awareness or desire to purchase the product. Surely though if a placement is too obvious and in your face it is going to have a negative effect on the audience who may feel that the brand is violating their enjoyment of the movie or program. It has got to the point now where if were not careful, films are going to become 2hr commercials for the big swingers in advertising.  To make matter worse now we are going to see it in UK television as well. 


It may seem from what I have said so far that I am against PP in a big way, I actually don't mind the practice provided that it is done tastefully but at the moment I believe that some of it is crossing that line. We are so used to products in films now that we often dismiss it as an unfortunate truth but how will we react to PP on our televisions. You are probably familiar with American Idols placement deal with Coca Cola (seen below), do these new rules mean that we will start to see a similar situation on the X Factor? 

My big fear with this new wave of PP is that UK television will become just as bad as some of that in America. So long as ITV, Five, Sky and the others can keep this tasteful I won't mind. I find it interesting that the new UK regulations require programs that include PP to show a warning symbol at the beginning and end of ad breaks. Why has this not been the case in films over the past few years? There has been a call for some time now that films featuring PP show a warning at the start to caution audiences as to its presence. Why I wonder have they now decided to make this warning mandatory, is it warn people so they can choose to change channel or so they pay more attention and increase the effect of each placement?


I shall leave you to form your own opinions of whether or not we should be warned about PP or what the future holds for PP in UK programming. One final thought, David Lynch, the Oscar nominated director and his thoughts on the practice of product placement. 

Gregorio, F., Sung, Y., 2010. Understanding Attitudes Toward and behaviors in response to product placement. Journal f Advertising. 39 (1). 84-96

Augmented reality

Augmented reality has been on the fringes for some time now but it has only come to my attention over the past couple of months. When I bought my first Smartphone, the G1, back in 2008 I was one of the first customers at the T-mobile store to walk away with one of the converted handsets. On the way on home my best friend asked me why on earth I would want a phone that could do all of these things when I had a perfectly good laptop at home. In short I couldn't answer him, I just knew that it was the way things were headed and it just so happens I was right.

It was a few months after I first bought it that I was introduced to my first Augmented Reality app and I was far from blown away. It was slow, clunky and I couldn't understand why someone had gone to the trouble of producing something that clearly didn't have a future. Well in this case I guess I was wrong. Over the past few days I have been investigating the new and improved Augmented Reality software now available and this time I was amazed. Technology has come far from my last encounter with AR and my word it shows.

OK so some people are still using AR for stupid gimmicky stuff that is never going to sell or appeal to the wider audience but the video of the Toyota iQ above shows a real potential for marketing success.Over the years some of the big car manufactures such as Audi have done very clever and innovative things with direct mail but surely the future lies here. If you could send out an appropriately appealing piece of direct mail with a marker that would allow you to do that then surely it would be a winner?

I remember seeing the Back to The Future films as a child and thinking that the advertising show for Jaws 19 and the new hover cars would be something for my children to enjoy but maybe this billboard will become common place in my life time.

In my research I stumbled across Ikea's new development, My Ikea. My Ikea is an online service where you will be able to print out markers and place them around your room. Each marker will be linked to a certain Ikea product and when viewed through your My Ikea webcam the markers turn into fully three dimensional pieces of furniture. The idea behind this is so that you can "try before you buy". Well this seemed too good to be true for me and had to be tried. My Ikea is still in it's infancy and currently there are only three demo products available but it gives you a good idea of things to come. Although I struggled to make the sofa work, the lamp and side table were excellent. Give my Ikea a go yourself here.

So does AR have a future and can it help service delivery day to day? Well in it's current form I would say no. Who is really going to walk around town viewing life through the small screen of a Smartphone? I love some of the ideas popping up with new and interesting ways of using AR but I personally believe it won't be truly successful until we can use it in innovative marketing or condense the technology into a pair of normal looking glasses.