Out of Home

Check out how the marketer ran a multichannel campaign that mixed offline and online efforts to promote an online video contest. Their results kicked butt. Includes creative samples.

Cisco seems to be showing up in all kinds of entertainment mediums, and is bringing digital signage to the forefront when advertising or doing product placement in those mediums. In addition to the digital signage placement in the video game Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Cisco is also working closely with major networks such as CBS, FOX and NBC to integrate its products into TV shows, such as Heroes and CSI.

Minneapolis firm Spyeglass has put a demo on YouTube showing how consumers can interact with a large touch screen. The clips show a viewer touching an element, and dragging it to the center of the screen. It's a nifty trick, but the platform's key may be the laptop that powers the sign. Clearly the screen is programmable, which is where the real future lies. Rather than just drag a screen element, viewers could tap it for more information. In a sense, a billboard whose content consumers control.

Digital Signage Today has published a new how-to guide for those planning for a digital signage network deployment. The guide is titled "Digital Signage Project Planning" and is immediately available for download. Sponsored by Diversified Media Group, this guide tackles the digital signage deployment process from concept development to rollout.

Wendy's has rolled out a bar-based campaign on the Ecast digital jukebox and ad platform. The idea is that bar-goers will be inspired to think Wendy's when looking for tunes, tap the touchscreen, and get directions for nearby locations. Could be the start of a whole new trend: the burger crawl.

People have discussed ad applications for RFID tags for some time, and they may be getting closer. Consider a YouTube clip titled "RFID in Mirror." RFID stands for radio frequency identification, small electronic tags manufacturers and retailers attach to products. The mirror in this case is being used for a party, but imagine it reading tags from a clothing store. You could program the signage to advertise related accessories. How relevant is that? And there's no better time to make a pitch than at the point of the sale (POS to you acronym lovers).

When Dukes of Hazzard 3 debuts this September, you might feel like a dipstick for going (all right, that's my obligatory bow to April Fool's Day -- I know of no such movie -- though it wouldn't surprise me). Still, if you did get to go, you might also get to feel like a joystick. After some wildly successful test runs, National CineMedia is rolling out its AudienceGames platform to the top twenty movie markets. Brand recall was fabulous in the tests, and the audience was nearly unanimous in preferring the game to theaters' traditional slide shows and ads.