With many brands taking a back seat to creative product launching, Nike went full-force with innovation to—quite literally—launch the Jordan Melo M8, the latest in the collection designed exclusively with New York Knicks forward Camelo Anthony. Using special effects and an 85-foot 3D projector, 2,500 spectators were treated to a lights and water showcase over Pier 54 at Hudson River Park with a three story tall Carmelo Anthony sporting his new shoes and dunking on the water. For the rest of us not at the event, Nike also provided a live feed through a microsite dedicated specifically to the Melo shoe.

Nike has long been a brand patronage pro teaming up with athletes to develop products with an automatic fan base for decades. With more than half a dozen shoe designs already in the Jordan Melo line, the collaboration with Anthony has been an undeniable way for both to make a splash.

Many hotels are already offering experience-based rewards in their loyalty programs and enhanced concierge services to assist guests with discovering the world outside of the hotel. Instead of stockpiling points for a free night’s stay, members of these programs can earn cultural activities, like going backstage before a performance at the Peking Opera or spending the day with a professional bullfighter. Some loyalty programs even offer express experiences specifically designed for business travelers who may only have an hour or two to spare but who still want to go home with at least one memorable insight into the destination they visited.

Additionally, several startups have recently emerged to meet the wanderlusty needs of travelers by offering trip curation tools, local knowledge and a much-needed dose of personalization to the online trip planning process.

Launched in April, Vayable connects travelers with tour guides offering unique and intimate local experiences, like scouting Montmartre street art in Paris or visiting sample sales in NYC with a fashion insider. By allowing these independent guides to sell their local knowledge, Vayable is redefining the tour and activity segment of the travel market.

And then there’s Fortnighter, also launched this year, which provides (for a fee) made-to-order itineraries from professional travel writers based on the user’s dates of travel, interests and budget. Fortnighter brings currency, personalization and expert knowledge to the travel planning table and allows users to steer clear of the unreliability of algorithms and user reviews.

A slew of other services have also cropped up recently. All of this suggests that the travel experience marketplace is heating up, and there appears to be room for more. When looking across the dreaming, researching, booking, experiencing and sharing travel cycle, what kind of product or service can you offer that will assist travelers with collecting those sought-after experiences? How do you evoke the moments that inspire us when we travel? How do you help deliver more authentic travel experiences?

My initial non-reaction was happily short-lived, and after a few days, the friends started to trickle in (I’m at 60, to my 700 on Facebook). I finally got my chance to experience Google+, and it was pretty nifty. Nothing really blew me away immediately, but it looked pretty and it worked. Really, that right there would have been enough to wrest me away from my abusive relationship with Facebook, but there was still so much more to the experience that I hadn’t yet realized.

And then one evening, all at once, it hit me. I was writing an email in Gmail when a Google talk message popped up. It was a link to a hilarious, but somewhat family-inappropriate video, and I wanted to share it. As I moved my cursor up to open a new tab to go to Facebook, I noticed something that had slipped by me in the past weeks. There was now a little “Share” button inside of that slick gray bar that Google has quietly strewn across all of its sites recently. I pasted the link into the box and shared with everyone in my “Friends” but not “Family” circle, which meant that my ultraconservative aunt wouldn’t see it. Cool.

I went back to my chat conversation, and it wasn’t long before I got a notification of a comment on my link. I clicked on it and was pleasantly surprised to be able to read the comment in a slick little dropdown box without having to leave the site. Super cool.

I was doing pretty much everything that I do online at once, in one browser window, and it was fast, good-looking and intuitive. The integration of services was nothing short of beautiful. And that’s just barely scratching the surface.

Bye, Facebook, it’s been real.

Today’s post comes from Adam Stipanuk, Interactive Strategy Director at Upshot.

The nightly tooth brushing ritual with my two year old daughter goes something like this: we ask our child to say “Arrrr” like a pirate to allow us access to her pearly whites. When it’s all over, she gets to pick out a fun little sticker.  Success!

Mom and dad discovered the power of an incentive to motivate behavior, but the folks over at greengoose.com have one up’d us through technology. GreenGoose’s Points Giving Toothbrush turns a mundane daily activity into a fun and rewarding experience.

Essentially, a wireless sensor is applied to the toothbrush that communicates back to an egg-shaped base station.  The base station relays your lifestyle points data into a website where you can track your progress. You can then trade in points with other applications or partners offering rewards.

Oh, and here’s the best part… Their sensors also work on many other objects. I’m sure by the time my daughter is old enough to help out with household chores (sweeping the floor for example), the chores might no longer be considered work, but play.

The ability to flip the perception of an activity or product that usually elicits feelings of pessimism to optimism is a powerful concept. It will be interesting to see how game-like experience technologies like GreenGoose continue to level up in the next year and if marketers continue to make their brand experiences more fun.

So, if you’re a marketer, ask yourself the question: What current products/services could benefit from gaming mechanisms to nudge your consumers to an optimistic behavior?

Now: Thanks for reading.  Pick a sticker.

More articles about our Game On! Trend.
Last’s years blog where we first introduced GreenGoose: Drive Slow, Win Big

Today’s post is by Jaclyn Gordyan. Senior Art Director and perpetually curious mind, discover more about her at Upshot’s main site. Follow Jaclyn on Twitter @JGordyan.

All the Peeps, Jelly Bellys and Cadbury Creme Eggs have been eaten. So what’s one to do during the afternoon Easter lull? Kick it on the couch with the NBA playoffs and hit Facebook. Yup. Wait a minute, what’s this in my Facebook news feed- Bonobos is having an online Easter Egg hunt? For cash? I’m so game.

Bonobos (a high end online menswear store) offered Easter themed promotional codes, but you had to find them first. The promotion leveraged the idea of a digital Easter egg hunt but by making you work for the codes, it became a game. An addicting one. Oh look at that, it plays beautifully into our 2011 ‘Game On! trend’. Their promo codes were distributed in an unexpected way that effectively sparked their consumers’ curiosity. It was almost too effective, as the grand prize was found just 15 minutes after the promotion went live. Lesson for those launching a game- prepare for quick wins.

Back to the hunt. They don’t even sell women’s clothes, but had you better believe I was in it to win it. A ‘friendly’ competition between myself and friends heated up to find any code, but mainly the $500 egg. We happily (and feverously) surfed their site, fast becoming intimate with the product lines, and site navigation. This obviously added value to their brand by giving us a welcome distraction from the holiday afternoon lull. Alas, I lost*. The anecdote is just a small example of how consumers are willing to ‘play the game’ and engage with brands. So where was the ‘Golden Egg’? [SPOILER ALERT] It was right under our noses… err… fingers in the HTML code. You heard me correctly. A picture of a goose laying a golden egg with the promo code below it was created in simple text (see below). 

The only hiccup in this hunt was smart phone or tablet users were at a disadvantage having to jump through bigger hoops to see the goose in HTML code. But that’s what the other hidden $25-$100 promo codes were for. The brand still won with an inevitable lift in page hits and fans. Brilliant.

A few candy companies such as M&M, and Cadbury held online Easter egg hunts in years past, but their executions were obviously targeting different demographics.

*Note: My friend wasn’t the official winner as someone had already found & used the Golden Egg promo code. But he can still hold bragging rights over my head. Sigh.

You can’t go wrong with helping people get around at these events, and we spotted complimentary private limos (from a social network called Tagged) grabbing people at the airport and getting them downtown. But, this was a tech fest after all, so the most appropriate mode of transportation were the pedicabs from Uber (pictured above). The clever Uber system cut out the dispatcher, and let attendees hail a cab by simply sharing their current location via the Uber smartphone app. That sure comes in handy after those free parties with the free beer, don’t they?

You also can’t go wrong by feeding these poor, starving conference attendees (who coughed up hundreds of dollars to attend). Many, many companies were offering much-appreciated free food throughout the event, ranging from street teams with breakfast tacos to food trucks with more breakfast tacos. (People like their breakfast tacos in Austin, alright?) But the brand that had attendees lined up around the block for the entire conference (literally – see the image at right) was a stationary food truck from the publishing platform Squarespace, who smartly submitted to the experts when it came to cooking. Each day, Squarespace brought in a new local food vendor to take over their site, delivering unexpected and unbelievably tasty treats each day (see the menu here). By offering both a rotating menu and tapping favorites from the local community, Squarespace managed to generate tons of word-of-mouth recommendation and capture the conference’s attention among countless of other free food offerings.

Considering that conferences are inherently temporary, it wasn’t surprising to see brands investing in pop-up retail experiences at SXSWi. While the most buzzed-about store was definitely Apple’s pop-up dedicated to selling the iPad 2 (it sure helps to be selling the most desired device at a conference full of tech geeks), the most unexpected pop-up came from CNN, as they completely took over an existing bar (even installing their own sign, as seen in the image to the right) where they held events and parties all week. Again, the ever-changing content, as well as the all-out commitment to the takeover of the building, got a lot of heads turning and stimulated a lot of conversations on behalf of CNN.

It also helps to think about the most pressing needs of conference attendees. At a place like SXSWi, everyone is essentially attached to a cyborg’s-worth of devices that each have a limited battery life. Fortunately, the automakers in attendance thought this through, with Chevy offering branded power strips at almost every outlet around the conference center, and Lincoln offering free access to every imaginable phone charger at a nearby restaurant . Sure, a nerdfest like SXSWi is the ideal place for these solutions, but as smartphones, tablets, and other devices become increasingly ubiquitous, offering (branded) power options at any conference will always be a much appreciated gesture.

But, of all the things brands can give away at these conferences, perhaps the most valuable takeaways aren’t schwag or tacos or even beer. They might just be your smarts. To steal a point from this great article by Scott Belsky, some of the brands that made the biggest impacts at SXSWi did so by simply getting themselves involved in a number of innovative panels and presentations. To paraphrase Belsky, brands have to work very hard (and spend a lot of money) to get people’s attention through traditional advertising, but attendees will gladly come running to them when they share their peek-behind-the-curtain insights and unique experiences. In particular, PepsiCo did an excellent job of contributing to a number of panels we’ve referenced in our earlier SXSWrapups, which did as much to activate their sponsorship of the festival as some of their other initiatives, such as their live stream of keynotes and panels at pepsico.com/sxsw.

This might seem like a lot to take in. Well, it is, especially when you’re there amidst the chaos. But if there’s one thing we’ve harped on since introducing our Driven by Data trend, it’s the benefit of being a good curator. And curation becomes especially useful at a place like SXSW, where data overload is a given. The Appstores site delivered a brilliantly simple service before anyone even arrived, offering attendees a series of recommended smartphone apps that would enhance and improve their experience. (Low hanging fruit alert! Brands should definitely offer a similar suite of recommended apps for attendees at other giant conferences or tradeshows.) During the conference itself, AOL offered a booth with a streaming screen of the top news from the conference, sortable by viewers interests. Interestingly, at a conference where every attendee had their own way of monitoring tweet streams and foursquare check-ins and the like, AOL still drew a crowd simply because they did an effective job of paring down the clutter to the real meat of the conference. And, of course, we did a pretty good job of that ourselves.

Speaking of getting to the meat of things, we’ll finally be wrapping up our SXSWrapup with our next post. Be sure to check back to see how the story ends!

Now there’s a headline that’ll get your attention! But, take it easy – the only naughtiness happening here is allowing so much time to elapse since our last augmented reality roundup! In the meantime, we’ve seen a ton of fantastic marketing examples worth passing along.

As we’ve long asserted, if augmented reality applications are really going to take off for marketers, AR producers will need to increasingly steer clear of the gimmicks and focus on more practical applications. (We’ll make an exception for apps like this Star Wars Falcon Gunner game, since it looks especially fun and it’s such a fantastic example of Life in the OOC.) And when it comes to practicality, we think we’ve found the most useful execution yet in the Word Lens iPhone app. As demonstrated in the video above, the app is remarkably simple to use: point your phone at a sentence and the app will instantly overlay the translated text. Must we point out how useful this app is for our clients in the international travel category? Yo no lo creo. (The fact that it’s currently limited to Spanish-English translation takes nothing away from the fact that this. Is. Friggin’. Amazing.)

Since we’re not going to find a better example of the practical side of AR, let’s at least consider how the more entertaining implementations can be used in clever ways; for instance, shocking people into paying attention to a social cause. The Russian wing of WWF (the one that saves animals, not the one that features grappling beasts in speedos) wanted to raise awareness about the poaching of Siberian Tigers, and felt the most effective approach was to get everyday Russians to experience the sensation of being hunted. Thankfully, no one took this creative brief literally, and instead settled on a widely dispersed tiger t-shirt that featured an augmented reality marker. When unsuspecting shoppers tried on the t-shirts in front of AR-equipped dressing room mirrors, the tag would trigger the sound of gunshots and the appearance of bloody bullet holes on the victim. See the video above for how it – hey, wait a minute… did I catch the Bulls’ starting lineup music in that campaign video??? Unfortunately, I didn’t see any Derrick Rose cameos in there.

Now, we’re not trying to be cranks who decree that all AR efforts have to be hugely helpful or socially responsible. We’re saying that if you do go down the purely-entertaining AR route, just be cognizant about the high level of clutter in this space. You’re going to need a pretty compelling campaign in order to stick out… and being hilarious is one way to do it. Cue the “In Bed” Tagger from Sealy Mattresses, shown in the video above. The app takes the old fortune cookie joke and lets you append the phrase “in bed” to any phrase you can capture in your viewfinder (ok, how did no other mattress maker jump on that joke before?). Of course, users can instantly upload their clever compositions to Facebook, where their friends can marvel at their brilliant achievements… in bed.

Thanks to Celeste Payne for tips on the WWF and Sealy campaigns!

Following up on Monday’s clever YouTube tweak, we wanted to pass along a couple of other tricks and treats we’ve recently seen around the web.

The first is an iPad ad for the USA Network’s show “White Collar,” which is featured in the video above. What appears to be your basic banner ad quickly turns into a decoder that can be dragged around the screen, uncovering otherwise-invisible clues that are hidden on the webpage. Once all the clues are compiled, the user gets access to exclusive clips and content from the show. It’s further proof that Game On! can make any experience a bit more fun and unexpected – even web browsing.

While the “White Collar” campaign takes a bit of high-tech trickery, designers can achieve just as much impact by reimainging the way we get around the typical website. Friend-of-the-blog Jaclyn Gordyan pointed us to the Beercamp invite for the SXSW Interactive conference, which rethinks the idea of vertical scrolling and replaces it with zooming into the center of the page. It’s a bit tough to describe, but takes only an instant to grasp once you see it – head over to 2011.beercamp.com and scroll as you normally would. Even this simple tweak really imparts a sense of unexpected delight for the visitor, especially when compared with the hundreds of other party invites that are circulating as the conference approaches. (Of course, we’re not saying we don’t want to keep receiving those invites…)

Along the same lines, after watching your 10,000th kitten video on YouTube, perhaps the site doesn’t have the same level of engagement and novelty that it once did. Fortunately, experiments like the new music video from UK rapper The Streets are trying to instill a bit of interactivity back into the format. The clip below is the first minute of the music video, and offers a Choose Your Own Adventure-style menu at the end, allowing users to decide upon their own path through the new album, Computers and Blues. See? Building-in engagement doesn’t have to be so complicated – it just takes a bit of cleverness.

But, while the league is building up hype about these newcomers, some fans are getting themselves pumped up by sifting through the contest’s archives. The brothers behind Hoopism.com have a long history of being Driven by Data, using infographics and data visualization to communicate unique insights about the NBA, but their Slam Dunk collection adds some particularly useful functionality to their charting prowess. As shown in the image above, they’ve gathered YouTube clips of (almost) every dunk in the contest’s history, and organized them by year and score. Clicking on any of the orange balls brings up the corresponding YouTube clip, making it extremely easy for fans to get right to the videos of the best (and worst) slams from past competitions. Click here to give it a shot for yourself. (They’ve just added a similar setup for clips of the best shots in NBA history.) This setup is an intriguing, efficient twist on the YouTube playlist, and offers a compelling blueprint for brands to curate their own collections. Couldn’t you see a travel or hospitality brand linking up a world map with location-relevant videos? Or, a food brand organizing their recipe videos by ingredient? Or… well, you tell us.

Of course, the big boys aren’t exactly sitting idly by and letting the geeks steal this weekend’s thunder. Over the past few weeks, Nike’s been teasing a multi-platform campaign centered on Kobe Bryant, which will culminate in the unveiling of a Robert Rodriguez-directed short film in the vein of Grindhouse – catch the trailer below (and get yourself some Danny Trejo!). Like any good marketer seeking a viral hit, Nike didn’t just sit back and hope the hype would create itself. Rather, the brand created the “Unlock the Black Mamba” campaign specifically to drive conversations on Twitter. Nike dangled the prospect of free Kobe shoes for anyone who tweets with the hashtag #mambamoment, but also devised an ingenious twist on the communal tweeting we saw from Uniqlo. The site lets visitors builds customized tweets by clicking on a variety of scrolling adjectives behind the image of Kobe. After the tweets are sent, Nike tracks the number of tweets per hour that feature the various hashtags, and promises to unveil new pieces of exclusive content from the campaign whenever certain thresholds are surpassed. It’s an undoubtedly clever combination of being Driven by Data with the mechanics of our Game On! trend. Better yet, with word on the street suggesting that Twitter plans to hike the price of their Promoted Tweets, Nike’s effort demonstrates a pretty savvy workaround for brands who aren’t willing to buy their way into the conversation.

Ever since Sao Paulo decided to ban billboards, ad folks in the US (and around the world) have nervously wondered, “Could it happen here?” While it’s hard to say, we’ll soon know what that scenario would look like, thanks to the latest project from Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame). He’s developed a platform called No Ad that taps the power of crowdsourcing to virtually erase billboards and outdoor ads in US cities. (Thanks to Jaclyn Gordyan for the tip!) He starts by filming a panoramic view of the area in question, and then asks fans to use the site (essentially an online, stripped-down version of Photoshop) to replace the ads in each frame of the clip. And Spurlock’s aiming high to kick things off: he’s taking on Times Square. While it’s unclear whether this campaign is reflective of a larger sentiment among Americans (one could certainly make the argument that the advertising clutter in Times Square is precisely the draw of the place), it’s certainly a reasonable discussion to have about the future of advertising. After all, knowing that consumers are seeking Primitive Simplicity in their personal lives, is it just a matter of time before this preference gets applied to experiences outside of their homes? It’s certainly a possibility.

But, as we’ve regularly restated, don’t mistake this desire for simplicity as an anti-technology stance. In fact, certain technological advancements are considered to be the solutions to these dilemmas, rather than the problems. For instance, let’s consider one of our favorite things in the world: interactive projections! (We’ll take any excuse to mention them, won’t we?) In this case, it’s MINI Cooper projecting virtual vending machines in a handful of Canadian cities, as seen in the video above. Passersby choose from nine different MINI paint jobs and text their selection to the projection, at which point the selected car is discharged in a very MINI-esque manner. But, in the context of our discussion above, does this kind of OOH experience qualify as clutter or enhancement? One could argue that it’s a shiny, distracting intrusion each city’s nightlife, while others could make the case that turning a boring ol’ building side into an interactive, engaging source of entertainment that enriches the participants’ evenings. Moreover, projection as a medium is inherently temporary, requires relatively little power, and leaves no lingering impact on the environment. If we can check those boxes off, does Spurlock’s complaint become spurious?

(Aside from the clutter discussion, we do want to note one other spot where the campaign falls short. After choosing their car, the recipient receives a text message inviting them to Like MINI on Facebook. Certainly, some follow-up is better than none, but considering the projection’s level of engagement, shouldn’t the SMS deliverable be equally engaging? Why not ask the participant for their zip code and provide them with the nearest dealer, or offer them a chance to schedule for a test-drive, or offer some promotional incentive to walk into the dealership? Seems like a missed opportunity.)

These kind of projections are only the beginning, especially considering what hack-happy designers are doing with the Microsoft Kinect system. The gesture-based interface is proving to be enormously versatile, delivering jaw-dropping interactive experiences without the need for wires, controllers, or other electronic clutter. One example that we especially enjoyed is the music video below, in which the German group Moullinex uses 3D motion-capture to show renderings of the musicians in action. Better yet, the group was kind enough to share the secrets behind their process, just in case anyone else has a hankerin’ to be Driven by Data. Knowing that these low-impact, high-engagement options are becoming more readily available, are critics of consumerist clutter going to view these solutions as resolving the problem or making it worse? If you’ve got an opinion on the matter, let us know in the comments below.