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Toronto Sandwich Shop Creates Bacon Deal for ‘Pig-Shaped’ Runs

March 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Rashers - Sweat Like a PigBacon-lovers in Toronto will be lacing up their runners and jumping on their bikes to earn themselves a 30% discount from Rashers, a bacon-only sandwich shop.

The restaurant’s new promotion ‘Run the Pig’ is out to reach runners and cyclists when they are at their hungriest – right after exercising. To earn their bacon, people are asked to use a mobile-app (such as Nike+ Running) to track their run or ride around a pig-shaped course of their own creation, ending at Rashers restaurant at 948 Queen Street East.

The restaurant is also using their Twitter profile @rashers to tempt bacon-starved Toronto-area runners who have shared their completed Nike+ Running status.

The campaign was created by the bacon-loving folks at OgilvyOne in Toronto.

[via Newswire]

Canada

Filed Under: Food & Drink, Mobile Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

CouchCachet Let’s You Fake Your Way to Foursquare Hipness

February 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment

CouchCachetBeing a hip urban social media superstar can be exhausting. You’re out every night, enjoying fabulous meals in fabulous restaurants, sipping on designer cocktails crafted by mixologists with ironic mustaches, and then dancing the night away to the latest bluegrass death metal band that all the indie blogs are raving about. Or, at least that’s how I remember it used to be.

Thanks to CouchCachet, now anyone can have that life, and let everyone else know about it through social media. First connect the app to your Foursquare profile, and on Friday night once you’ve ‘checked-in’ to a private residence (probably your own), CouchCachet will send you an itinerary of your awesome evening, and your night of fake-adventure is ready to begin.

CouchCachet will even find Instagram photos from “real” chic folk, post them on your behalf, then confirm your virtual shenanigans to Twitter. The app avoids awkward situations by avoiding a to a location where your other social media friends are at.

CouchCachet came about at a Foursquare Hackathon held earlier this year at locations around the world to create useful, clever and fun apps that utilize the Foursquare API. The NYC team of Brian Fountain, Justin Isaf, Harlie Levine, and Christopher Kennedy leveraged the Mashery API to create the app.

So, the next time you see me check-in on Foursquare at an impossibly-hip warehouse party, don’t be a hater. I just might be home curled up on the couch with the cats, drinking hot cocoa and re-watching Downton Abbey.

Filed Under: Mobile, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Air France Mobile App Unlocks Music Tracks Hidden in the Sky

November 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Air France: Music in the Sky

If you’re at an airport and you notice people their iPhones up at the sky, they might not be taking pictures of the clouds. They just might be unlocking music hidden in the sky by Air France.

The Music in the Sky app enables it’s users to find, unlock and collect dozens of music tracks from a playlist of established and emerging artists. The tracks curated by Air France Music are different depending on which country you are currently located. The sky here in Canada contained tracks from artists including Fleet Foxes, Lana Del Ray, Feist, Kanye West and many more.

Simply point the iPhone up to the sky or ceiling, (it uses the built-in gyroscope to detect the angle of the phone) and scan around until you locate one of the floating music notes. Zero-in on the music note until you’re ‘locked-on’ to it. The track will then be unlocked and added to the playlist in the app, available to you to stream at anytime.

The Music in the Sky app was developed by BETC Paris.

France

Filed Under: Mobile, Travel & Tourism Tagged With: , , , , ,

Lapland Tourism App Shows You the Northern Lights Wherever You Are

September 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Laplication - Northern Lights app

I’ve never been fortunate to visit the Canadian arctic (but it’s definitely on the bucket list), but I’ve been still been lucky enough to have experienced the Northern Lights on their rare appearances here in the south and eastern parts of Canada. The experience of watching the green ribbons dance across the northern sky was otherworldly and overwhelming.

Thanks to the folks at ‘Only in Lapland‘ – a site promoting tourism to the northern region of Finland – anyone can have the Northern Lights available to them at any time. Simply download the Laplication app, and point your iPhone (or iPad) at the sky or the ceiling and you’ll see the ghostly green and blue shapes dance above you. The app uses the smartphone’s compass and gps to show you how far away you are from Lapland.

The app also allows you to ‘Lapify’ your existing photos by applying filters such as Midnight Sun, Aurora Borealis, or Polar Light.

The Laplication app was created by SEK & GREY, and is available free in the iTunes app store.

Finland

Filed Under: Mobile, Travel & Tourism Tagged With: , , , ,

Buick Promotes 2013 Encore in China with Augmented Reality ‘Hide & Seek’ Game

September 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Buick Encore Hide & Seek

In a campaign reminiscent of 2010′s MINI Getaway in Stockholm, Buick has launched a augmented reality high and seek game across China to promote the 2013 Encore luxury crossover.

Buick has a long history in China, beginning in the early part of the 20th century as a car of choice for the country’s influential citizens. Buick was also the chosen brand when GM began regular production at its Shanghai GM joint venture in 1999. In 2011, GM sold it’s 3 millionth Buick since 1999, with over a million of those being sold in 2010 alone.

For the Encore Hide & Seek game, Buick hid virtual cars in 16 cities across China. Players downloaded the location-based game, showing the general location of the car in that city. After arriving at the location, players used the augmented reality feature to try to spot the virtual car on the street. Once found, the player had to hide the car at a location. The player that managed to hide the virtual car for the longest over the 7 day game period won the actual 1013 Buick Encore.

[via PSFK]

China

Filed Under: Automobiles, Mobile, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Subaru Launches Sizzling Campaign for New BRZ in Montreal

July 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Subaru

Subaru Canada had heads turning on the streets of Montreal last month with an an ambient street-art installation featuring a 2013 Subaru BRZ surrounded by a burnt mailbox, singed bike rack, melted street lamp and a massive 32’ heat-blasted brick wall.

The installation was enhanced with singed posters featuring a QR code and embedded with NFC enabled tags provided by TAPmeTAGS Inc. The tags were directed consumers to a dedicated BRZ landing page where they could learn more about the vehicle, view images and book a test drive.

The Montreal ambient installation will be coming to major cities across Canada this summer.

The national campaign features also features a 60-second online film titled ‘Scorched’. The film was captured with Phantom camera technology capable of creating extreme slow-motion shots.

The campaign was created by Toronto’s Tribal DDB.

Canada

To enhance the installation DDB Public Relations engaged Canadian NFC tech firm, TAPmeTAGS Inc. to provide NFC enabled tags as part of a test-pilot program to encourage consumer interaction onsite. Singed wild postings surrounding the installation encouraged passersby to “tap or snap” using their NFC phones. This directed consumers to a dedicated BRZ landing page where they could learn more about the vehicle, view images and book a test drive.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Automobiles, Experiential, Mobile Tagged With: , , ,

Ex-Lover Blocker App Saves the Heartbroken From Themselves

June 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guaraná Antarctica Ex Lover Blocker

Guaraná Antarctica, the second best-selling soft drink brand in Brazil (second only to Coca-Cola) wants to save the newly heartbroken from a moment of weakness. With tongue planted firmly in cheek and a focus on it’s young male target audience, Guaraná Antarctica and it’s ad agency have come up with the Ex-Lover Blocker mobile app.

The app seeks to help friends protect their heartbroken friend from calling the ‘ex’. The user starts by blocking the contact number of the ‘ex’ (in the case of this demo her name is ‘Maria’), then selecting the contact information of close friends to help keep an eye on him. Then when he tries to call the ‘ex’, the app alerts his friends instead. If he declines their support and continues on with the fateful call, a message is posted on his Facebook wall highlighting his moment of weakness.

Yes, of course the app juvenile and when you think about it, Maria is probably way better off without this knucklehead and his buddies anyway.

The ex-Lover Blocker was created by DDB Brazil, and can be downloaded free from the Apple App store.

Brazil

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , ,

MusicBunk promotes Music Discovery App by Tossing Vinyl Records

May 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Musicbunk Vinyl Toss Viral4 friends of Pasadena agency Conscious Minds spent two days tossing vinyl albums onto a turntable in order to capture the successful landings you see in the video. The stunts are reminiscent of Ray Ban ‘Never Hide’ video from 2007 (5.1 million views) or Levi’s ‘Jeans Jump’ clip from 2008 (almost 8 million views).

The video went unbranded for a week, but now has been revealed as a promotion for MusicBunk. MusicBunk is an app that helps find out who likes the same music you do and connect with them to share songs and playlists.

While a few people will be shocked by the vinyl abuse, but anyone who’s visited a flea market or swap meet knows there’s enough scratched up vinyl to play around with.

The MusicBunk app is available for iPhone and Android.

USA

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Mobile, Music Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Use Your Mobile Phone to Take Action for Victims of Domestic Abuse

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

National Centre for Domestic ViolenceA series of interactive digital billboards at London’s Euston Railway Station is raising awareness about how a person can help put a stop to domestic violence.

The billboard for the National Centre for Domestic Violence shows an angry man verbally abusing and acting in a threatening manner towards a frightened woman. After a few seconds a message appears urging viewers to ‘Use Your Phone to Stop This Now – Drag Him Away at ncdv.org/stop. At the mobile site, the viewer can swipe their finger on the screen to pull the man away from the woman. The action is repeated at the train station as the man is pulled away across five adjacent digital screens revealing the message ‘An Injunction Will Put Distance Between a Victim and Their Abuser’.

The ‘Drag Him Away’ campaign was created by JWT London, and was produced by Grand Visual.

UK

Filed Under: Mobile, Non Profit Tagged With:

South Korea’s Emart Uses Shadow QR Codes to Boost Lunchtime Sales

May 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Emart Sunny Sales Shadow QR CodeThe much maligned QR code gets a boost of creativity thanks to an initiative by South Korea chain store Emart.

The stores were suffering low sales over the lunchtime hour. To solve this issue they created a three dimensional display that revealed a shadow-based QR code only during the hour of 12 to 1pm when the sun hit at just the right angle. When scanned the users were directed to the eMart ‘Sunny Sales’ mobile site where they could take advantage of special offers including a $12 off coupon, redeemable in-store or on the mobile site. The site orders would be delivered the next day to the buyer’s home.

The campaign proved to so successful that the program was expanded from 13 to 36 locations. 12,000 coupons were issued, there was a 58% increase in eMart membership, and most importantly a 25% increase in sales of eMart mall during lunch hours.

The agency behind Emart’s ‘Sunny Sales’ shadow QR-code is Cheil Worldwide, who last year had produced the Tesco subway virtual store.

South Korea

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Experiential, Mobile Tagged With: , ,