Canuckflack
… Colin McKay has some thoughts about design, data management, retail quirks, government communications and oddities … and written in Canada!
Apr 2,2004
A SoCal company is developing technology that can deliver highly focused beams of sound at shoppers, browsers and passers-by, enticing them to look at displays, sample products and maybe even eat McDonald’s. As the WSJ tells us:
… Donna Now was caught off-guard by a subtle voice above the corned beef. Glancing up, she saw a plasma screen bursting with color and seeming to address only her. The voice pitched a special on Sara Lee honey turkeys and brown-sugar hams.
“It’s pretty powerful,” Ms. Now said. “I mean, I’m a vegetarian, but this makes you want to buy that ham.”
… In tests at retail stores, these laserlike sound beams pinpoint individual shoppers to encourage buying with recorded messages. At some Wal-Marts that have in-store McDonald’s, for example, shoppers heard messages extolling the fast-food outlet’s offerings.
The technology’s been hyped for a while and is a Popular Science award-winner. It’s now beginning to be rolled out in retail applications. Check out how Borealis Breads has been using it.
Here’s a more technical explanation from Appliance Manufacturer magazine.
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2 Responses for "I hear voices … over by the canned peas"
“A smiling Gap employee appears on a giant flat-screen monitor just inside the store, greeting customers as they walk in. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Yakamoto,’ she says, loudly and cheerily. ‘How did you like that three-pack of tank tops you bought last time you were in?’ That’s a scene from ‘Minority Report’, the futuristic thriller starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg. [...] With the help of contemporary advertisers like Lexus, Reebok, Nokia, Guinness, Bulgari, and Pepsi-Cola’s Aquafina, Spielberg and his team paint a fascinating picture of what advertising might look like in the future — complete with interactivity and personalization. The vision grew out of a ‘think tank’ of MIT futurists that Spielberg asked to imagine what the world would be like in 2054.” (ClickZ, June 21, 2002)
Flash news: it’s sooner than they (and we) expected.
You can turn your eyes away if you don’t want to see an ad, but what can you do when somebody is whispering in your ear? We have eyelids, but we have no “earlids” (McLuhan).
This makes me think: is the future of mass media advertising campaigns to establish the visual and auditory cues (think the coca cola jingle and BNL’s “one week” ad for Mitsubishi) for more targeted marketing in retail and personal situations?
For example, when you walk past the toilet paper display, will you hear a gentle voice singing “can you feel the cottony softness…”?
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