Consumers may be able to walk right through them, but FogScreen projections surely won’t go unnoticed.
Helsinki-based FogScreen offers fog projection equipment to create walk-through novelty ads and displays to catch consumers’ attention. They work like regular projectors, except that they require water to create a thin screen made of ‘fog.’
The four-year-old company recently opened a North American office in Mountain View, CA, where clients include Disney, Nokia, Microsoft and Budweiser. Victoria’s Secret recently used the fog projections on the runway for one of its famous fashion shows, and Budweiser used it in clubs last year for the Bud Light/Maxim Exposure Tour.
FogScreen’s president of US operations, Jorden Woods, says they’ve just signed a contract that will see the technology roll out in hundreds of malls across America later this fall. Advertisers will be able to purchase time on the FogScreen loops that will run continuously at the malls.
‘When people see a FogScreen they stop and say, ‘What is that?” says Woods. ‘It’s sticky because people come and play with it.’
Woods says they’ll start rolling out interactive gesture-based 3-D projections later this fall, too. For example, passersby will be able to kick a virtual fog soccer ball tagged by a major sports brand.
There are two different projector sizes available to create one- or two-metre projections, ringing in at US$45,000 and US$79,950 respectively (or for rent on a daily or monthly basis). The one-metre projectors are interlinkable to enable wider images.
At press time, FogScreen was being used by two Canadian clients: Ontario Science Centre and York University, both Toronto-based.
