WOMI – new ad idea for social media

There is a new ad idea for social media, called WOMI – Word Of Mouth Impression. Developed by a company with a name that says it all: Social Media.

It functions like a mini-application that spreads in my own social network of contacts and friends, and I wonder: does it do that automatically, whenever I interact with it? Here is the description of Techcrunch:

WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.

For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?”. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element.

This is spooky, unless they definitely ask users before they present their friends with the answers to the multiple choice questions. It’s like a facebook app that spreads as soon as you launch it, without even asking.

If however, the user stays in full control, it could turn out to be rather interesting. Especially if you get to see all your friends responses later on, too. People love to see how they compare in polls and questionnaires. This can be a huge playground for brands. More effective than regular applications/widgets in a sense, because of the „classical“ advertising component: „pushing“ these polls onto the profil pages of friends and contacts, instead of just mentioning in some news feed „XYZ installed application ABC“.

Doritos Superbowl Ad Contest – Update

I already blogged about the current Doritos contest before. At Adrants I just found out about the fact that Doritos has announced their 5 top contestants for the superbowl television commercial. These are:

1. „Free Doritos,“ Joe Herbert, Batesville, IN
2. „New Flavor Pitch,“ Oren Brimer, New York, NY
3. „Power of the Crunch,“ Eric Heimbold, Venice, CA
4. „The Chase,“ Chris Roberts, Burbank, CA
5. „Too Delicious,“ Michael Goubeaux, Los Angeles, CA

One of them will be shown during the superbowl. Even the contestants don’t know yet, which one will be aired. They will have to wait until superbowl sunday, in order to find out whether they won, or not. And they will only win the $1 mio., if the ad tops the USA TODAYs annual Ad Meter.

I don’t know how likely that will be, but if the ad competes against all the other professionally made ads of last year, it will be difficult for this particular consumer to rank high, I guess.

Sony’s new ad will be the worlds first motionflow event

Somehow Sony managed to get everyone excited even about the making of a new advertisement. There was a lot of discussion about the previous bravia ads during their production. Now Sony has started the production of a new ad, which is being shot in a square in italy, where they are intending to build something that looks like the following:

The idea is to build a camera setup, that makes speed of images visible. Hence they rebuild the zoetrope:

It’s 1834 and William Horner has just invented the zoetrope. Its rotating drum transforms still images into a single moving picture. As the Greek name suggests, it’s the ‘wheel of life’ (zoe ‘life’, trope ‘turn’).

Fast forward to today and Sony’s Motionflow technology, intelligently adding new frames to action scenes to make them appear smoother than ever. At 200 frames a second, Motionflow 200Hz is like a fast, fluid 21st-century zoetrope.

What better way to celebrate this technology than through the creation of BRAVIA-drome, the most technologically advanced zoetrope in the world. We’ll bring you breaking news of our Motionflow 200Hz event, as it happens. Stay tuned.

So they need something or someone really fast to demonstrate the uniqueness of this setup. The solution: the ad will feature brazilian football player Kaka:

Football’s speeding up: the players run faster, the ball travels further. It’s the ultimate test of Motionflow 200Hz, the world’s first technology which makes intense action scenes appear as clear and smooth as real life.

It’s certainly a challenge, keeping up with AC Milan player Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, better known as Kaká. He’s one of the fastest players on the pitch with a speed that’s rarely matched, making him the perfect embodiment of sharp and fast Motionflow 200Hz technology.

Currently, they are still building the whole construction. You can follow their progress on the blog specifically setup for this.

(Found at adrants)