In a world where everything is mobile, even billboards are starting to move in surprising ways.
Large advertising messages traditionally fixed to sides of buildings or planted along roadways are being freed by digital projectors and laptop computers to pop up in unexpected places.
With these tools and some advance planning, Dennis Catalfumo and co-workers from Interference Inc create advertisements where there were none before.
Though Catalfumo works primarily in New York City, one recent evening he was in Philadelphia doing “guerrilla marketing” for the Franklin Institute, a science museum and memorial to US founding father Benjamin Franklin.
Standing on a corner near some local bars, Catalfumo and an assistant projected images of a blackbird and a bicycle in a tree onto the wall of a nearby building.
“Curious?” the ad asked from the side of the building, enticing viewers to the institute’s Web site.
BETTER THAN TV
“It’s a new way to approach people,” Catalfumo told reporters. “It’s better than doing a million dollar ad clip at the Superbowl where if it isn’t ridiculous, you won’t remember it. This is an interaction that will last.”
As the night went on, the duo was approached by passersby eager for information about the Web site and the projected images.
“Some people hung out for a half hour to talk with other people coming up to see it,” Catalfumo said. “The reaction from people on the street seems like instant gratification and they’ll tell more people than if they just got a flier on the way to the train station.”
Sam Ewen, chief executive of another innovative marketing company, Interface, said a reason most people are so receptive is because it’s so different from traditional billboards.
“People might drive by a billboard and it might register or it might not,” Ewen said. “People don’t stand around and read billboard signs.”
But projecting a video with unique images has an almost artistic effect.
“It piques people’s interest,” Ewen said. “And the more time they spend, the more interest they have.”
Experience has taught Ewen’s team that there is more to hitting marks with guerrilla ads then simply projecting television ads on buildings.
They strive for unique, eye-catching images whether it is abstract art or a simulated tennis game between two opponents projected on neighboring skyscrapers.
When the US-based Discovery Network was preparing to release new archival footage from NASA, marketing and branding officer James Hitchcock wanted projection advertising in their campaign.
“We wanted people to see it. We wanted to have rockets shooting off the buildings,” he said.
WRONG EFFECT
Sometimes ads don’t have the intended effect.
Last year, Catalfumo invented a box that could emit an image from the sides of buildings or under a bridge. During its first use advertising a cartoon movie in Boston, a passerby thought one of the boxes might be a bomb.
“It was so blown out of proportion,” Catalfumo said.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS