Blog

Grazia Magazine’s Augmented Reality issue

3D seems to be the latest crazy sweeping the fashion industry. Burberry Prorsum set the benchmark streaming their autumn/winter 2010/2011 collection in live 3D from London Fashion Week. Next, Grazia magazine have set another fashion first with its augmented reality issue. For me, the icing on the cake is Brit award winner Florence Welch, singing and dancing to the beautiful “You’ve got the Love” in a 3D space – activated by scanning the AR patch on the front cover. Content throughout the mag is also given an augmented reality twist with the option to see the latest spring trends in their 360 degree splendor.

Facebook onboard the Geo-location bandwagon

Facebook is following in the footsteps of Foursquare and Gowalla by allowing users to tag their updates with places. Speaking of the update, Michael Richter, deputy general counsel for Facebook, said in a blog post “We’ve removed the old language and, instead added the concept of a “place” that could refer to a Page, such as one for a local restaurant.”

In other Facebook news, the Social Network has rolled out the Gross National Happiness Index. Measuring the sentiment used in status updates. The somewhat charming index provides a barometer of the Nation’s happiness and collective feeling on a day-today basis. No prizes for guessing, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day are among the happiest of days.

This could happen

This near-future science fiction story by Tom Scott shows the amazing reach and consequences of how seemly innocent technological advances in Mobile, Geo-location and social networking and how they’re coming together to change our world.

Google Maps make-over

Hardly a week goes by without some announcement from Google Towers of their latest developments. This time round they’ve added in a new feature to Google Maps with the goal of creating a richer experience by “making it easier to find some of those shops and other businesses you visit most often“ (or rather increasing ad revenues, if you want to take the cynical view). For a fee, companies can make themselves more identifiable on the map by replacing the generic Google icons with their own branded, customized logo.

We like the idea. From a customer perspective, these easily recognisable logos more closely depict online what the offline world looks like, so next time you’re trying to find your way on the map you can navigate more easily using these icons as landmarks. Plus, it’s another route for brands to increase visibility and “promote their physical location on the map via an easily recognisable logo, and therefore connect with a larger audience.”

Lessons in Social Media: one good one bad

Nestlé has become the latest brand to make headlines for what can only be described as   ‘anti-social’ behaviour, proving once again the damage caused from having a poorly managed Social Media account. As the Nestlé saga gathered momentum and customers became ever-more disgruntled, the brand finally announced “Social media: as you can see we’re learning as we go.” They’re not the first and certainly won’t be the last, but let’s hope that this influx of social media blunders don’t overshadow the more positive and interesting work happening in the Social sphere.

Sony Vaio is a shining example of how to get it right. For the launch of a special edition of its Cyber-shot camera range, the brand harnessed the power of social media, in particular Twitter, and in doing so netted over £12.5 in revenue.
Its case in point that things can go very wrong very quickly in the wrong hands, but with the right strategy in place, the results can be phenomenal, just ask Sony.