Sacred cell phones
You could have your very own personal pontiff in the palm of your hand. Not literally, but aurally.
Users of Italy’s Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) SpA mobile phone service can now be the envy of their Roman Catholic friends as the phone company is providing phone text messages from the Pope’s daily sermons. By entering ‘Papa On’ on their phones, users can receive the papal wisdom at a cost of 15 Euro cents, or 25 cents Canadian per message.
The campaign is meant to generate revenues in a climate where the market for new subscribers is low and just about everyone and their dog owns a cellphone. There are 53 million cellular contracts in operation, versus Italy’s 58 million population. It just could work, considering that over 95% of Italy’s 58 million people are Roman Catholic, not to mention that TIM has gotten exclusive rights to the content of the Holy See.
Pride on wheels
It’s a Canadian institution. Also known as ‘Canada’s second national anthem,’ it’s the Hockey Night in Canada theme, and Motomedia, the ‘moving billboards’ people, have been driving their trucks around the streets of Ottawa and Toronto for Bell Mobility since early December, playing the sweet sounds of that very song.
Hitting the Air Canada and Corel Centres before and after hockey games, as well as nightlife hot spots for the after-game bar crowds, the trucks also display billboards letting people know they can have the coveted tune as a ring tone on their Bell Mobility phones. Delight and annoy your friends as you play the song over and over on your cellphone until the end of hockey season and into the playoffs….
If these posters could talk…
Imagine if that menacing orc in a poster for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers could talk: just what would it say, or grunt? Or if a poster for Kangaroo Jack could size up your impeccable taste in film and match you with relevant movies and their showtimes?
A company called Thinking Pictures, based in New York, has been working on exactly that with ThinkPix Smart Displays – interactive small-screen displays that wink, blink and, in some cases, collect important information about consumers. The displays go beyond the typical washroom urinal loop of advertising introduced a couple of years ago to become a new force in the realm of market research, enabling studios to cull such info as how many people walked up to the displays and how long they looked at them.
Eventually, the displays may be able to garner more complex info about consumers by using electronic smart cards that offer discounts to those who volunteer information about themselves.
Putting the ‘oooh’ back in O-O-H
No one likes a blighted cityscape, so why not spruce it up with a little advertising masquerading as fine art? ALR Outdoor, part of American Land Recycling of Exton, Pa., is providing city-beautifying O-O-H venues through products such as Wallscapes, BrandSculpt (3-D sculpture) and BrownfieldArt (corporate-sponsored art to help revitalize city areas). Locations are said to be highly visible from freeways.
