The Times Square experience: learnings for the digital marketing space
During a recent leisurely visit to the Times Square in New York, it was quite interesting to see how people were reacting to different types of marketing / communication. Not a surpise but simple interactive content on billboards enthused the crowd the most.
For example, there was one electronic billboard which let the audience "play scrabble" based on letters being displayed at that instant on the billboard. Audience had to text their words to a specified phone number to put it up on the board. It was essentially a quick interactive game to see who scored the maximum points. There were several responses on the board, and even my 6 year old was excited.
Then there was another billboard which was basically just a camera showing the crowd within an application that created the impression of a picture being taken and being moved around. Very simple but enthused the crowd a lot.
All of these had the marketed product or brand message embedded in the content.
While these are simple observations, these principles are becoming more important as companies move spend towards their digital marketing campaigns. These digital campaigns could be these "from us to you" communications that need to be pushed to the audience because they are essentially an electronic version of their traditional ads. Or they could be these really simple yet engaging games/ chats/ innovative ideas that make their customers spends several minutes or hours interacting with the brand. Who knows, in the future maybe the more innovative "creative" groups might even altogether move away from traditional static or video creative in favor of games or puzzles or future other formats that are so much more engaging and convey the brand message effectively.
Which are the best practices you have seen in interactive marketing?
