Tuesday 10 August 2010

A concert in the palm of your hand - Blink-182’s Tour kicks off in a bag of Doritos

That’s the gimmick behind a new online promotion from Doritos that centers on an “augmented reality” performance by the California band “Blink-182” which broke up in 2005. A special symbol printed on limited-edition packages of Doritos Late Night chips, will serve as a virtual “ticket” to the show. To unlock the online video, fans visit the Doritos Late Night website, flash the Augmented Reality (AR) marker at their webcams and watch as a stage literally appears to pop out of the package of snacks.


By blending 3-D, video, webcams and interactive AR elements, the 3-D image of Blink-182’s taped performance can also be manipulated by moving and shaking the bag. Like holding a hologram in your hand - this participatory experience lets viewers zoom in and interact with the performance. After the song finishes, fans even get a chance to bring the band back for an encore. The more noise you make, the faster they’ll come back out. Genius. To further integrate and amplify, after the virtual two-song show, viewers can also enter a contest to win tickets to a real world Blink-182 concert.


As a part of the integrated promotion, Blink-182 also seeded the content; tweeting about a “mystery video” that showed a little of the green-screen shoot for the Doritos promotion.


The Evolution of Celebrity Endorsement
Companies have a long history of enlisting famous faces to push products, but as brands fight for attention in an increasingly saturated media market, advertising campaigns often turn to the Internet and the latest emerging technologies in an attempt to generate interest.


Rapper Big Boi of hip-hop duo Outkast also performs a song using the same Augmented Reality (AR) technology as part of the Doritos campaign. Recent improvements to 3-D video and Adobe Flash make this kind of interactive web content possible today. Moreover, the songs will be viewable by anybody with a broadband connection, a webcam, a reasonably new computer and one of the AR markers.


Check out the Video of how Doritos did it? (Well Proto and Mekanism for the puppet masters at Goodby).


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