L’Oréal Paris Brings Interactive Vending Machine to NYC Subway Station

L'Oreal Paris - Intelligent Color Experience Vending Machine

This fall L’Oreal Paris is going underground to the subways of New York City with The Intelligent Color Experience machine.

The installation, created in a partnership between digital agency R/GA and CBS Outdoor, features a full-length interactive mirror that uses camera sensors to analyze the style and colour of the user’s outfit.

The machine creates a digital animation of the user’s silhouette and colours that they are wearing, and offers suggestions on which L’Oreal products may complement their look. The machine can be stocked with up to 700 items with prices ranging from $6.99 to $9.99. User’s can buy the products directly from the machine using their credit card.

The Intelligent Color Experience will be set up at Bryant Park Station at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue from November 4 to December 30.

[via Brand Channel]

USA

Luna Corona Billboard Captures the Crescent Moon as a Slice of Lime

Luna Corona - Crescent Moon Billboard

It appears I’m the only person who ever thought about holding my bottle of Corona up to the moon.

Working with a team of astronomers, ad agency Cramer-Krasselt has created the “Luna Corona’, a billboard located on 15th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, positioned to capture the crescent moon in the mouth of a bottle of Corona. The experience should be viewable from approximately 8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET, assuming clear skies over NYC.

Luna Corona seems like a great idea for a mobile augmented reality campaign. Have Corona fans around the world capture the crescent moon using their smartphone camera, upload it with a #LunaCorona hashtag. Use each image’s GPS coordinates to designate each person’s personal beach (to bring in the campaign messaging). My apologies if this has already done, but there are certainly plenty of worse ideas out there.

[via Campaign Brief USA]

USA

Dudes Promote Chasing Mavericks by Surfing the Wild Streets of Manhattan

Chasing Mavericks - Surfing NYC

Mavericks is a legendary surf location for the world’s best big wave surfers. Located about 2 miles offshore off Pillar Point Harbor in Northern California, the unique structure of the ocean floor there is capable or producing waves that can reach 80 feet in height after strong winter storms.

With ‘Chasing Mavericks‘, a movie based on the life of Maverick’s legend Jay Moriarity, starring Jonny Weston, Gerard Butler and Elizabeth Shue, set for release on October 26, two surfers on wheeled-motorized took to the streets and sidewalks on Manhattan to promote the movie.

The stunt was created by Thinkmodo, who also came up with the Zombie Experiment for AMC and a flying people illusion to promote the movie Chronicle.

[via Surfer Today]

USA

NYC Restaurant Uses Instagram Hashtag to Augment Table Menu

Comodo NYC - The Instagram Menu

Comodo is an small, intimate restaurant in Soho specializing in a menu of Colombian-Spanish-Mexican-Brazilian-American influences that have been adapted to New York. However, what’e even more interesting than the fusion of these food cultures is the ‘social media fairytale’ of how the restaurant came to be.

Ad-agency employee Felipe Donnelly and his wife Tamy Rofe began hosting private dinners every Thursday for local food fans that they connected with through Twitter. Their original idea of doing a dinner every Thursday for a year, and documenting the results on the Worth Kitchen blog, became sidetracked when the success and publicity of their project resulted in a knock on the door and a letter from the NYC Department of Health, informing them that they could no longer serve dinners to the general public from their kitchen. After the shock wore off, Felipe decided to leave advertising for good and the couple rented a commercial kitchen and began holding dinner parties for a crowd of 50-60 people.

In December of 2011, based on the success of Worth Kitchen the couple decided to open Comodo (meaning ‘comfortable’ in Spanish). With the restaurant due to be opened in July, they leveraged crowdfunding site Kickstarter to help fund the last $15,000 worth of expenses.

With the restaurant now open, Comodo is leveraging photos shared by diners on Instagram. Because right or wrong, food fans love to take pictures of their favorite meals; both as reminders of a great dish, but as a way to brag and make friends and followers drool. Comodo has printed the words #comodomenu on Instagram at the bottom of it’s table menu. Curious customers to what the dish looks like can simply grab their smartphone and search Instagram for the hashtag.

Next item on Comodo’s menu should be a 100% mobile-friendly website. While the navigation is not in Flash, the ‘Story of Comodo’ video is embedded as a background element and prevents myself (and I suspect all mobiel users) from accessing the menu, reservations or anything else.

USA

Beneful Launches Virtual Dog Parks for Stressed-out Commuters

Beneful Virtual Dog ParkLast week, dog food brand, Beneful surprised NYC commuters with a virtual dog park inside the Columbus Circle subway station. The 64 foot long interactive wall features a group of playful dogs of several sizes and breeds.

Motion-tracking cameras would watch as people walked by, triggering the dogs to start following them. The dogs then paw at the screen and bark to encourage the people to stand on one of the floor stickers, where gesture-tracking enabled them to play fetch with the virtual tennis balls on the interactive wall. After playing, commuters can choose to customize the dog of their choice and save a photo to their mobile phone to share on their social networks.

Street teams promoted the interactive wall by handing out tennis balls and flying discs to commuters. Beneful will also be launching interactive walls in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and St. Louis this May.

In a press release Beneful brand manager said, “At Beneful, we believe the power of PLAY enhances everyday experiences and enriches the time dogs and owners spend together. And, most city dwellers
would agree that their daily commute is definitely a time in need of some fun, carefree play. “We believe that using innovative, interactive billboards will encourage people to unleash their inner child and have some fun in unexpected places, with the help of our team of virtual dogs!”

The Beneful virtual dog park was created by InWindow Outdoor.

USA

Madison Square Garden Invites Instagram Photographers to Document Rangers’ Playoff Game

@nyrangers on Instagram

@nyrangers Locker Room on Instagram

With the Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers set to battle it out on the ice at Madison Square Garden tonight, 6 influential Instragram photographers will be documenting the event, before, during and after the game.

The photographers, hosted by Madison Square Garden and Delta will have special access to areas of the arena that not even national press have access to, and have been tasked to document the game in as a creative way as possible. The photos will appear on Instagram and Twitter via the hashtag #NYRDelta, in the Rangers Facebook photo album and on the Rangers’ official fan site blueshirtsunited.com.

Mauricio Parise, Delta’s U.S. manager of brand marketing communications explained on Mashable that the promotion is an example of how social media has changed traditional notions of sponsorship.

“Just having the sponsorship is not enough — we need to make sure we bring it to life, and social channels are allowing us to do that in ways we haven’t been able to in the past,” he says.

The 6 NYC-area photographers with a combined 743,000 plus followers are:

The Instagram app can be downloaded free on iTunes App Store of in Google Play.

Calling All Brainiacs; Can You Solve Dow’s Giant Chalkboard Equation?

Dow Giant ChalkboardHey, no one told me there`d be math!

That was the first thought that went through my mind when I looked at the math problem being written on a giant building-size chalkboard in New York`s SoHo District. The problem is being revealed a few lines at a time over the week with the ultimate solution being revealed on Friday.

The numbers in the formulas are associated with science and communications facts. From the obscure; 11232 (Patent number for bromine extraction) to the more mainstream; 8675309 (yes indeed, that`s Jenny`s phone number from the 1982 hit song by Tommy Tutone). It`s been hinted that when the answers to the formulas are put together it will create a narrative told in data.

It`s all a teaser campaign dreamed up by the folks at Draftfcb Chicago for Solutionism, Dow`s discussion forum for technology, science and communication.

You can follow the developing campaign on the Giant Chalkboard Tumblr blog or Twitter account.

UPDATE Sept 26: On Friday the answer was revealed to be 7 billion, which represents the soon-to-be world population.