The Future of Advertising is Here

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On the Internet, too, advertisers are finding more ways to intertwine marketing messages with entertainment. Online travel agency Orbitz has managed to entice Web surfers to bask in its marketing messages by embedding them in online pop-up ads built around simple interactive sports-themed games like Sink the Putt. Not only that, but players who like the games often forward links to them to friends and colleagues, spreading the message at no extra cost to Orbitz. LiveVault, a Marlborough, Mass., data back-up and recovery provider, got the same sort of free ride when it produced and released on the Web a short comic video about backing up data, starring John Cleese. LiveVault CEO Bob Cramer claims the $500,000 price tag for the video promotion was a bargain, given the big response. "It ended up all over the Internet," he gloats.

This sort of viral approach is getting a boost from some sophisticated technology. A San Francisco company called Pulse has developed software that can turn any image of a person or animal into a semi-animated talking head, complete with moving lips and a voice that delivers any lines typed in by a user -- and the resulting blabby little cybercreature can then be e-mailed to buddies. Sandwich chain Quizno's, online greeting-card site Sympatico, and cruise line Royal Caribbean have all made these online characters the centerpieces of successful Internet campaigns. At one point a third of all visitors to Royal Caribbean's website had come because of the characters, according to Dan Hanrahan, president of Celebrity Cruises, a sister company to Royal Caribbean. It may seem like a silly gimmick, but there's a powerful draw to this sort of approach, notes Byron Reeves, director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. "Persuasion is very much a social and emotional exchange," says Reeves. "An automated face provides some level of that."

That same sort of social interactive playfulness can also be put to work in advertising away from the computer screen. Accenture has designed a 10-foot-wide, high-resolution touchscreen display -- the world's largest -- intended to allow crowds in malls and buildings and on the street to interact with characters, games, information, and other images on the screen. Accenture has also integrated "focused sound" technology into the system, so that appropriate music, dialogue, or sound effects can be directed at individuals interacting with the display while passersby hear almost nothing. All of it, of course, would be mixed in some way with an advertising message.

You don't even really need a screen to get your interactive message out to the crowds. Reactrix Systems in Redwood City, Calif., offers a system that projects a colorful image on a sidewalk, wall, piece of furniture, or anything else, and that tracks the motion and gestures of people on or near the image to make it interactive. Ten or more people can stomp on or wave at the several-feet-wide image at once, kicking around a virtual soccerball or splashing in a virtual pool, all while ogling a sponsor's logo blended into the image. McDonald's, Sam Goody, and the MGM Grand have been among the clients, along with movie theater chains and malls, where the devices routinely attract enthusiastic crowds. According to Reactrix CEO Mike Ribero, studies have shown that as many as 86% of the people who interact with the Reactrix image can recall the sponsor days later, compared with 5% for prime-time television advertising. "In a world with a lot of advertising clutter, this sort of thing provides advertisers with a consumer's attention for an unprecedented amount of time," says Ribero. "Advertising has been built around reach and frequency, but depth and duration of experience is going to be the next big metric." What's more, he says, getting an advertising experience out closer to the stores can have a stronger influence on buying decisions.

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David H. Freedman

A Boston-based contributing editor, Freedman is the co-author of A Perfect Mess, which examines the useful role of disorder in daily life, business, and science. His other books include Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines; At Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion (co-authored with Charles C. Mann); and Brainmakers: How Scientists are Moving Beyond Computers to Create a Rival to the Human Brain.

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