Experience Manifesto

Oreo Café at American Dream

If you know me at all, you know how I feel about Oreo's. And if you don't, well, know that there's no way I could pass up a chance to visit the first Oreo Café at American Dream. Regular Oreo's, Double Stuff, yea, I can eat them all. Knowing I was pretty close to their first Café, I grabbed the family and we went over to check it out.

I'm also a great fan of location based branding, using the physical space to bring your brand story to life. To me, this is more than just having stores, it's spaces that allow consumers to both experience your brand and create a social space at the same time. The Oreo Café works on both levels.

It's on the 3rd floor of IT'SUGAR store there, which as you can imagine, had a pretty damn great selection of sweets and candies before the Oreo Café opened. The day we were there it was actually pretty crowded with quite a long line, so sadly, I didn't get to try anything while I was there. But I'll certainly be back to try it!

As you can see by the menu above, there's a good variety of Oreo treats to experience. From the more traditional, like Oreo Cookies & Cream cheesecake, or the more fun Twist Your Oreo, where you can create your own Oreo creation. I could certainly make more than a few meals from what's offered!

Below is a bigger picture of the full space, with the giant Oreo overhead as the centerpiece of the space. There was certainly a great deal of Oreo merchandise, from cookies of course, to a full line of Oreo cookies. Seating areas around the space gave guests a place to sit and enjoy their creations. There was also a full line of clothing, etc., so you could literally wear your love of Oreo's on your sleeves.

As you can imagine, everyone was having a pretty good time here, how could they not? I'll be back at American Dream next month when their luxury wing opens and I'll make sure I have time to try the menu when I'm there.

Remember, people want to hear a great story, people want to share a great story and people want to participate in a great story. Without a great story, you might get some attention, but you'll never get engagement. Thanks to Oreo's great story, there was a lot of engagement at the Oreo Café.

AR Art with WallaMe

This weekend I had a chance to play with the WallaMe app during an emerging ARtists scavenger hunt in Ridgewood, NJ. I had our 2 foster puppies with me, so I was stopped about every 3' so people could pet them, so I didn't get to do as many of the sites as I would've liked to do. It's possible that they're still there and I will try to check them out later this week.

Have to say that I had lots of fun playing with them and judging by the number of people I ran into also playing the game, it seemed to be very popular. It was a great way to introduce people to both AR and some new artwork, so I thought it worked on both fronts. Lastly, it was also a great way to get people to walk around Ridgewood and maybe find some stores that they didn't know beforehand.

The WallaMe app was easy to download and was pretty easy to understand. I had some confusion with the WallaMe app and still don't know where pictures that I favorited went, but that could just be me. All in all, a fun experience that really helped people understand what AR is and how it can be used.

We're Returning to SXSW with Show & Smell 2!

Back by popular demand! Building on last year’s packed Show & Smell showcase combining inspiring emerging technologies and sensory marketing, this hands-on crowd experience of leading edge technologies, continues to define the key factors of how to make new technology work in a promotional marketing program or experiential states.

With live demonstrations of technologies you won’t see every day—technologies bringing together the physical and digital to harness your sight, smell, touch and taste including Twitter-driven robots, crowd-controlled gaming, and a host of emerging technologies even WE haven't seen yet.

You can go here to see what we presented last year, we had a number of pretty cool things there, including the Twitter gumball machine! So if you're going to be in Austin this weekend, come see us!

Presenters

• David Polinchock, Dir, Media Lab, AT&T AdWorks
• Kurt Karlenzig, SVP Global Digital Strategy, The Marketing Store Worldwide
• Warren Kronberger, Dir of Research & Dev, The Marketing Store Worldwide

Show&Smell 2: Marketing Experiences Beyond Visual

Come Out and Play 2012

Yes, it's that time of year, the annual Come Out & Play festival in NYC. Once again returning to Governor's Island on Saturday, this yera's events also adds a Friday evening program at the South Street Seaport. As always, there are lots of cool games for all ages and thanks to being at Governor's Island, I think there will be more families again. Sydney & I had lots of fun last year (sadly, she's away at camp this year) and I'm sure this year will be no different.

I'm particularly excited to have helped the AT&T Research team bring their GeoGames to Come out & Play this year.

In the simplest game, players move in the real world (RW) while leaving an ever growing tail of walls in the virtual world (VW). They must not crash into or cross the VW walls created either by themselves or others. The winner is the player who lasts the longest without crashing. Think the motocycle battle from Tron, but played for real and with you being the motorcycle!

There's a really full line up of games this year (it grows every year) and this year Come Out & Play will feature three main events, each with their own distintive games and flavor.

• On Friday July 13, Come Out & Play After Dark turns @Seaport and the surrounding streets into a twilight playground.
• Then on July 14, Come Out & Play Field Day returns to Governors Island for another day of wild new field games.
• Also on July 14, Come Out & Play Family Field Day brings fun and games for the whole family, with a mini-festival of family-friendly games organized by ESI Design, one of the world’s foremost experience design firms.

Hit the links below for additional information and make plans to Come Out & Play!

Come Out & Play

AT&T Research GeoGames

Come on, how do you not want to play games like these and many others! See you Friday or Saturday!

Hack Manhattan! has unleashed Brain Bats—a bigger, awesomer version of the classic pong video game on a giant 6 foot by 8 foot display, controlled by players’ minds. Participants interact with the installation through our NeuroSky MindWave headsets. These devices monitor brainwave activity, which we then channel to pit the players against our artificially intelligent Pong opponent.

An import-export business mogul has vanished and foul play is suspected. Take on the role of a cop, private investigator, or underworld hoodlum, and solve the mystery. Unreliable characters and confounding puzzles threaten to stump you at every turn. Do you work with other players to piece together what happened? Or do you frame things in your own best interest?

Grab your friends and dim the lights. Graveyard Snuggle will have you bending your bodies and entangling your limbs with ghoulish delight.

A lonely skeleton awaits, and he’s dying to play with you. Obey each of the skeleton’s commands by placing one of your bones on another player’s bone. But creep cautiously! Moving too suddenly would be a grave mistake.

The skeleton loves to put players in impossible situations, so use your imagination! You’ll know when you’re moving too quickly if you hear the skeleton’s bones shaking.

The battle is on! The kingdom's of Red and Blue have been annoying each other for years - and they've just declared war! The reason? I heard that a King of Red crashed the King of Blue's birthday party and stole his birthday cupcake! This means war! At the beginning of the game, players are dealt cards with numbers on them. Based on the card's color, red or blue, players are split into kingdoms. Some cards even give players special powers! Then, players must walk or jog to tag their opponents! Once tagged, on the count of three they show their cards, the higher numbered card wins the battle! Unless, of course, one of those players is a bomb! Do you have what it takes to defeat the opponent...and get back your king's cupcake?

Marco Tempest - Magic & AR

Had the chance to see Marco Tempest do this life during the ARNY Meetup earlier this week and it was pretty darn cool. Great example of what you can do with imagination and new technology.

In This Horror Movie, the Call Comes From Inside the Theater - lastcall - Gizmodo

A few years back, the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU did a live theater experiment here in NYC where as guests came into the theater, they gave their cell phone numbers to the ushers. At certain points in the show, cast members would use the numbers to call audience members and have them participate in the show. The MIT Media Lab in Ireland also showed a technology a number of years ago where the audience could call actors in the movie, although no interaction really occurred. And one of the first interactive movies, I'm Your Man, allowed the audience to vote on how the movie should proceed.

Now a company in Germany has brought that technology to the movies. While I don't think people will want to interact every time they come to the theater, I certainly think that this kind of technology can and will be used quite well to create special events at the theater. It's also a great way to create a different experience in-cinema, something that could drive repeat business to the same movie. I think that one of the problems that I'm Your Man had was that since people could vote more then once, you didn't always how your vote counted. But with something like this, if you're chosen, then you can certainly see the impact that you're having. And people will like that. Of course, like anything else, content is king, so making good movies will be critical to the success of technologies like this.

What's more terrifying than a call coming from inside the house? The call coming from inside the theater. That's the thought behind Last Call, an interactive horror film in which the main character calls a random audience member for help.

Even though they knew their efforts were useless, moviegoers have long tried to help the ill-fated protagonists of horror movies. "Run!" "Hide!" "Don't go down there!" In Last Call, a new German movie, the characters are finally willing to listen.

Audience members supply their cell numbers at the beginning of the screening and, at one point in the movie, one phone is selected to receive a call from the character on screen. Voice recognition software listens for the moviegoer's commands and the story unfolds based on their instructions. From the looks of things it seems like it's a "left" or "right," "stay" or "flee" type of thing, so your exhortations for the main character to take off her clothes will likely go unfulfilled.

As you may know, I led the team at the Brand Experience Lab that developed the first in-cinema game, the msnbc.com NewsBreaker Live experience, so I've spent a lot of time in movie theaters watching audiences engage with the motion capture work. I think that there's great opportunities to captivate the in-cinema audience and we're just beginning to see what's possible. Serialized content; games that start at home and move into the cinema and the kind of interactive experiences like the ones on this page are just the start. I think that there will still be times that we want to just sit and watch a really excellent movie, but adding levels of interactivity around the movie make a lot of sense for the cinema experience.

In This Horror Movie, the Call Comes From Inside the Theater - lastcall - Gizmodo.

It's All About Place - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Noteput Music Table

Saw this on the Cavi Digital Experience site and thought it was pretty cool. You make music by placing music notes on the table. Imagine having this as a tool for teaching children about music, now that would be pretty powerful. Very exciting to see how people are experimenting with computer interface.

Noteput – Interactive music table from Jonas Heuer on Vimeo.

Jonas Friedemann Heuer - portfolio - Noteput.