Always been a sucker for a bit of Augmented Reality ever since I found out about it last year in the RedBull Magazine... And then using it in one of my University projects (No-one had heard of it-WHATTT, how can you not have?!)... So when this popped up on Twitter a few days ago I thought it was a clever way of taking Augmented Reality to the next level, Billboards. Magazines have been using it for a while now, e.g Grazia and Pop have both tried it out, but now it needs to be used in a much bigger scale, and so it happened....
Forever 21 created a Digital Billboard in Times Square which made use of Augmented Reality by the model taking photos of the people in the streets watching, showing them, picking people out, and then doing the whole thing all over again.... Have a Watch...
Pretty clever, it definitely will have created a buzz around the brand and make them seem more "cutting-edge"... But it would be good to see how it helped their sales as it wasn't particularly promoting their clothes?
This is what James Squire's, Space150's director of technology thinks:
"Since it sits above a pedestrianized part of Times Square, we knew there would be big crowds in front of this billboard all day. But people only look at billboards for six seconds on average. We wanted to extend that."
But what do you think? hey hey?
Designed by interactive agency Space150 for Forever 21
Went Live 25.6.10