|
|
| Alternative media | |
|
|
|
| Alternative media | |
streamed to millions There's the boy's picture and a few choice words Oct 22, 2009
Today there are the usual ads but commuters also see a series of images of people and next to them short quips of their thoughts. There's a picture of a man, neither famous nor particularly handsome, and alongside is this simple thought: "The world is a beautiful place." A few seconds later, a photo of a boy appears. His words: "Go green!" Then another man's image appears. His words: "Will you marry me?" As the minutes go by, dozens of pictures appear, each with a thought in black letters on a blue background, ranging from uplifting to borderline profane. Now imagine this scene taking place on hundreds of screens reaching millions of commuters in terminals and rail stations and on the sides of buses from New York to Chicago and London. What you've got is a unique take on social networking that's in fact a joint promotion by Titan Worldwide, the outdoor company, and MySpace, the world's No. 2 social networking site. It works this way: MySpace users are invited to say what's on their mind, and their pictures and thoughts are then beamed around the world to more than 300 digital outdoor screens, reaching an estimated audience of 52 million. That's more friends than even pinup Tila Tequila has on MySpace. The images and words scroll under a logo that reads: "Step Up to the Mic." Here's how the Step Up to the Mic promotion came about. "We were trying to think of ways to get people to visit our web site, and we also have this digital network, which we always knew could be united for one campaign globally, but no one had really done that," says Dave Etherington, worldwide marketing director at Titan. "All the ideas came together. We thought it would be great to have a forum for people to be able express how they're feeling. It's a bit Twittery on a huge scale. Rather than 120 followers, 50 million can see what you have to say. The MySpace connection seemed obvious once we'd established we could do this." MySpace and Titan both set up sites where anyone can type in their thoughts, up to 50 characters long. They also submit a picture of themselves, usually the one on their MySpace page. Titan and MySpace screen the entries for profanity or other inappropriate content, then they go into a virtual queue, waiting their turn to appear on screens worldwide. People began submitting entries on Oct. 12, and the promotion went live last week. It runs to Nov. 3. Roughly 50 entries are being received every 10 minutes. It took two and a half months to implement the idea. Titan had to make sure it had space on its ad networks to run the promotion, as it often sells out in advance. And the company had to coordinate with the software vendors that program its digital screens, which are mainly located in New York City, Chicago and London. "They're all different types of screens from different software vendors," Etherington says. "It took a lot of planning to get them all on the phone at the same time to explain what we needed to do, working on data feeds each of them could take. There was a lot of testing, trial and error." The screens still show other ads. For example, if a screen usually has six ads in a rotation that run for seven seconds apiece, Step Up to the Mic takes over one rotation and splits the time in half between two submissions, each appearing for 3.5 seconds apiece. Now that Titan knows it can get one message on all of its screens, it will likely try to use the idea for further advertising and sponsorships. The promotion has gotten coverage on blogs and some advertising sites, as well as earning a big ad on the MySpace homepage. But Etherington says he's most interested in looking at all the entries once they've been received and trying to figure out if any themes emerge. One has already. "There are quite a few examples of people calling their mates out, making fun of their mates," Etherington says. "Then they can send them a viral postcard and say 'I made fun of you all over Philadelphia, New York and London.'"
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 2010 Media Life Privacy Statement |
