The Brave New World of Interactive Marketing

We are on the verge of something much cooler and bigger and more groundbreaking than just Googling for info and poking our friends on Facebook.

Tipp-Ex’s (that sleek and tidy white out contraption) latest online marketing campaign is breaking out of the box, literally.

I have to thank my good friend Matthew Slutsky and his BuzzBuzzHome post for alerting me to this brilliant campaign. This is leading edge consumer advertising, and it is pretty incredible!

On the seismic shift in print advertising: “Think of print advertising as directional signage. All the ‘more’ is on your website.”

Using YouTube, the company has created a video titled “A hunter shoots a bear.” The viewer sees a hunter on the right hand side of the frame preparing to shoot a bear rummaging around his tent. But then he stops. Remarking that he doesn’t want to shoot a bear, the hunter climbs out of the screen grabs a Tipp-Ex perfectly positioned to his left and erases the word “shoots.”

Now it’s your turn. Yep, you get to fill in the blank and see what happens.

Couple this interactive campaign with something like Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense device outlined on TED talk and it’s pretty apparent we’re in the midst of a brave new world. This working prototype consisting of projector, sound device and finger cap sensors can interact with any surface – from an airline ticket to a human body – providing you with relevant, accessible information for anything you care to look at.

Everywhere you look, everywhere you listen there is someone – often lots of someones – using this time of change to experiment. Marketers are continually pushing social media boundaries to create more compelling campaigns. Companies are testing new mind-blowing, “I can’t believe that’s even possible gadgets” everyday. And individuals are coming up with some crazy cool concepts for, well, just for the heck of it.

These are just two examples amongst thousands. And it has, of course, been building for a while. The TED talk piece was posted in March 2009, and our friendly hunter has already been viewed over 75,000 times. Every week, there seems to be a new campaign that’s going viral, or a latest and greatest gadget in the works that’s totally mind-boggling.

For those of you who have been out of the loop, I wanted to take some time to draw you back in. This is an exciting time for marketers. This is a time to get out our old dusty copies of The Tipping Point and re-familiarize ourselves with the rules of change. It might be a bit of a bumpy ride in the beginning, but it’s going to be a fun one.