Ads from the Minority Report?

This sounds very much like the holo ads from the movie Minority Report.... now, add the current RFID technology, and you will likely have personallized ads come alive as you walk past, just like the movie... pretty frightening actually...

A Tunnel With a View -- and a Profit
Metro Looks at New Technology for Ads to Boost Revenue

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 31, 2003; Page A01


Metro officials seeking ways to increase revenue are hoping there's a light in the middle of the tunnel.

The transit system is considering selling advertising space inside subway tunnels, using a new technology that creates mini-movies that appear to float in the darkness outside the train windows. The technique relies on a series of illuminated panels that give the illusion of motion to a passenger on a train rushing past, much the way the images in a child's flip book appear to move.

"This is unusual, and it holds a lot of promise," said Leona Agourides, Metro's assistant general manager for communications, who will seek approval for the new type of advertising from Metro directors next month.

Selling advertising space on subway walls is one of several new ideas from Metro staff members trying to boost revenue in the face of looming deficits. Metro raised fares July 1 and trimmed costs to avert a $48 million deficit in the current fiscal year's $899.8 million operating budget. But analysts looking ahead to next year are projecting a $60 million shortfall.

www.washingtonpost.com...

cool... hollagrams if you like...

It is very Minority Reportish, but have any of you seen the remake of The Time Machine?

The A.I. steward at the museum was a holographic projection, but within a flat pane of glass. Perhaps this is the kind of technology they are heading towards...



Screen capture courtesy of me and the infamous DVD collection

And here is the technology to make it all happen...

'Big Brother' smart tags in stores face legal battle
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 01/09/2003)


Retailers using microchips in products to track customers are facing legal challenges from freedom campaigners anxious to curb the abuse of the "Big Brother" technology.

Liberty, the civil liberties organisation, is setting up a unit to check on stores and supermarkets employing radio frequency smart tags to stop thefts and identify buyers.

www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2003/09/01/nchips01.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/09/01/ixhome.html

Actually - Marketing Week (Subscription Req) ran a great article ablout RFID as its know in last weeks issue.

Seems like Tesco and Gillette were using digital cameras to take photos of purchasers of razors - now that is scary. The aim was to embed the chip in the product and compile a database of buying activity and to be able to produce personalised ads ala Minority Report at strategic locations in store - You bought a Mach 3 - try our breakfast cereal. Didnt Wal Mart try the same think in the US last year ?

Gillete now claim that RFID will be limited to stock control pallets and NOT in the actual products. However having been in marketing a long time I find this sort of development VERY disturbing.

www.marketing-week.co.uk...

RFID strikes already.... and you are a criminal!


Big Brother is watching you, and he's keen on your cardigan

Campbell Deane


IT WOULD make interesting viewing. Tom Cruise in Minority Report 2, this time wearing a Marks & Spencer cardigan. The twist is that, unlike the first movie, this one is based on fact not fantasy.

Not normally associated with the cutting edge of anything, the M&S cardigan is both at the forefront of technology and the developing law of consumer privacy.

To be more precise, not the cardigan itself, but a tiny chip which the manufacturers are considering placing inside the material. The size of a grain of sand, the "spy chip" or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) label allows goods to be tracked electronically along the supply chain from warehouse to point of sale. M&S are one of a number of retailers considering its use.

www.thescotsman.co.uk...

Wearing another hat as a "futurist" I anticipated the advent of virtual signs and billboards some years ago.

I hadn't thought then about virtual moving images serving the same outdoor ad purposes, but I had thought that Hollywood actors might have been dispensed with by now. So few of them have anything to offer in the action blockbusters that they may as well just be CGI's.

But, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. There is too much stupid message bombardment already (saying nothing about the tasteful presentation of the Google ads at ATS). At risk of offending William's commercial sesnibilities, these couple of sites are starting points offering alternatives:


www.wikipedia.org...

www.nologo.org...

Saw the time machine,
the version noted above,
quite good.
Must have seen three versions of Jules Vernes Classic over the years.