Interactive bus-stop billboard
Clear / Unilever · 2009
A text message brings a street ad to life and unlocks a sample.
- Send SMS
- Activate screen
- Collect sample
The problem
Clear needed a disruptive launch that connected the offline and digital worlds at a time when nobody in Colombia was doing it. Outdoor advertising was static and passive, and it created no real interaction with consumers.
What we built
We designed and built the first interactive bus-stop billboard in Colombia. It combined three technologies in one experience: an interactive street screen, a mechatronic SMS trigger and an automatic SMS reply that led participants to a product sample.
It worked simply: the consumer texted the number on the screen. When the SMS arrived, the ad reacted in real time and showed the dandruff disappearing. Right after, another SMS sent the person to the nearest store, no more than 50 meters away, to pick up a sample.
It was the first time in the Colombian market that an outdoor ad responded to a consumer’s action in real time, merging the physical and the digital in a single touchpoint.
The result
The first documented interactive OOH activation in Colombia, with three technology layers (screen, SMS and geolocated digital sampling) in a single piece. It set a precedent for connected outdoor advertising in the country.
Why it’s innovation
Three layers of innovation in one piece: technological (a reactive screen, SMS and geolocated sampling), experiential (the consumer triggered the reaction) and in the model (sampling activated by the user instead of handed out at random). In 2009, nobody in Colombia had combined OOH and mobile this way.
