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| Watch This Magazine Cover Transform Into an Interactive Game [VIDEO] | | Friday, November 09, 2012 2:47 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  The cover of ShortList, a weekly men's magazine in the UK, took on a uniquely interactive quality this week thanks to Blippar. Using Blippar's augmented reality app for iPhone or Android devices, readers can scan the arcade game-style art on the cover to bring a fully playable version to life on their phones, as shown in the video above. Elsewhere in the issue, readers can use the app to pull up extra slideshows, vote in polls, take quizzes and more. Blippar, a UK-based startup that set up its first U.S. office in Manhattan earlier this year, has been making increasingly frequent appearances in ads and even the cover of Justin Bieber's last big album release, Believe. Meanwhile, augmented reality and other 2D-code-activated applications are being integrated into a broader array of magazine titles, including Allure, The Atlantic, Elle and Esquire. |
| 15 Million Customers Have Visited Microsoft's Stores | | Friday, November 09, 2012 11:24 AM | Seth Fiegerman |
|  Microsoft's retail stores have had more than 15 million customers visit to date, the company revealed in a blog post this week. "We've welcomed more than 15 million customers and counting so far, and have learned a lot from them," Jonathan Adashek, Microsoft's GM of Communications Strategy, said on the company's blog as part of a larger post about the growth of Microsoft's retail strategy. "Having this direct connection to our customers has really helped us better understand their tech needs." Microsoft opened its first retail store in 2009 and now has 30 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. The stores themselves are often compared to Apple's retail stores -- indeed, Microsoft hired a former Apple retail exec to help figure out its retail strategy in 2010. While Microsoft's store traffic so far seems impressive, it still has a long way to go to catch up with Apple. It took Apple just one year to attract 15 million customers to its retail stores, compared to three years for Microsoft. Apple now gets 300 million visitors to its stores each year and had an average of 19,000 visitors per store each day in the September quarter. To be sure, much of that has to do with the sheer number of Apple Stores. The Cupertino company launched 57 stores in the U.S. after one year and now has 390 retail locations around the world. Image courtesy of Flickr, ImagineCup. |
| Progressive Insurance Claims High Engagement For Halloween Tweet | | Friday, November 09, 2012 10:30 AM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Update: A Twitter rep disputes the claim that the tweet had the highest engagement ever, even for one that's part of a Promoted Trend. A Halloween tweet from Progressive Insurance had an engagement rate of 29.6% on the social network, making it the most-engaging tweet to ever be part of a Promoted Trend, according to a source. Twitter informed the company of the record Friday morning, according to the source. Twitter is planning to use the tweet in an upcoming case study. The tweet came on Oct. 22 and was part of the #DressLikeFlo Promoted Trend: BOO! Ha ha, you should have seen your face. In the spirit of Halloween, here's a great costume idea: pgrs.in/Rk3i #DressLikeFlo - Flo from Progressive (@ItsFlo) October 22, 2012 While declining to get specific, Progressive confirmed that the engagement rate was north of 20% and that the Promoted Trend netted "tens of thousands of new fans and followers." (The Flo account had around 19,000 followers as of Friday afternoon. However, she has 4.7 million Facebook fans.) As the hashtag implies, #DressLikeFlo was a promotion in which Progressive asked fans to dress like Flo, its long-time spokescharacter, for Halloween. To help fan the flames, Progressive sold its own Flo costume this year after offering one through a third party on Amazon last year. Among the other fan responses was the video below, in which makeup artists working with Progressive show variations on the costume, including a zombie Flo. |
| Watch The Sequel to Last Year's Most Viral Christmas Ad [VIDEO] | | Friday, November 09, 2012 8:01 AM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Since 2007, UK retailer John Lewis' new Christmas ad has been a seasonal event, but last year's ad was particularly hard to top. That commercial (see below), featured a boy who just couldn't wait for Christmas and added a nice twist at the end. The ad, which was also beautifully photographed and featured Slow Moving Millie's haunting version of the Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," has racked up more than 4 million YouTube views. SEE ALSO: 9 Viral Videos That Are Actually Advertising John Lewis is attempting to spark the same kind of interest with the new ad above, which was shot in New Zealand. This time the creative approach is completely different and features a snowman who treks to the city to do some shopping. Once again, there's a bit of a surprise at the end, and the score -- a cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Power of Love" sung by newcomer Gabrielle Aplin -- strikes a similarly emotional chord to the tune in the 2011 ad. Update: There is already a parody out of this hours-old ad below. What do you think? Will this ad be as big as last year's? Let us know in the comments. |
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