Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

The Engine studio is a hub of creativity. A steady cast of characters often find their way into our Gastown space and they’re usually up to some innovative stuff that can make our afternoons pretty interesting. We’ve hosted a couple of demonstrations lately that are playing with the medium of the “Fourth Screen.” As much as I’d like to report that it’s a portal to a new dimension of time and space, and that I am currently writing this from 1954 on a break from trying to get my parents to fall in love, the “Fourth Screen” is simply one of the newish buzz words being used to described a new marketing channel available to brands.

So what is it, exactly? The Fourth Screen is basically a savvy way of describing marketing technologies that deliver content on something other than the three traditional screens of computers, mobile phones, and TV. It’s also referred to as Out Of Home content, or Digital OOH. Anything that is digitally produced and outside of the normal modes of presentation qualifies as Digital OOH. It’s offering up a new venue of marketing techniques and branded interaction for designers and developers to play with.

Recently, we hosted a demo from the folks at Moving Media (we’re trying to get them to re-design their website, btw) who brought the headrest from a car with a screen attached to the back of it into the Engine office. We thought this was an excellent solution for turning our studio chairs into fully functional gaming controllers until we realized that we were looking at a headrest to a taxi cab, and not a new plug and play extension for our board room X-Box. Allowing passengers to interact with a digitally branded environment en-route to their destination the headrests are finally starting to show up in Vancouver cabs. Pulling in GPS, RSS, and other location based information into the headrest data center offers clients a new, more immediate and localized, way of offering branded content to targeted demographics. Not hugely new technology, but new to Vancouver, and pretty interesting when our minds start turning around the possibilities. We’re currently developing an application that will use GPS to find the cheapest slice of pizza when we’re on our way to meetings away from the studio (where we have our own in-house pizza oven.)

If you’ve ever hung around the studio long enough to hear the music coming from Stephen’s office, you’d know that we’re pretty heavy into the rave scene. Ok, just jokes, maybe it’s just Stephen that’s really into the rave scene, but we were all still really impressed with some of the stuff Alex Beim from Tangible Interaction brought into Engine one afternoon. Alex used our board room big screen to show us some video from parties in Europe. They really know how to throw a party over there. Slightly more entertaining than watching hockey at our local down the street, the video clips of 50 000 people dancing like maniacs in a huge stadium with DJ’s and interactive lighting effects brought up that familiar “No Fun City” moniker that’s often associated with Vancouver. This is the audience Alex’s crew is into developing for, and it requires some serious innovation and custom technologies. At one particular party in Amsterdam, Tangible Interaction deployed about 40 huge polyuerathane balls throughout the stadium that had hardware connected to a network inside each one which would control the way they were lit up. These floating globes also allowed the crowd to interact with them by touching or hitting them, changing the way they glowed, bringing a massive crowd together in the act of creating even more ambiance to the party. Yes, it’s probably better than a rave in Langley, BC.

European’s aren’t having all the fun though. Alex also showed us some video of an interactive digital wall that was installed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Oval that was built for the 2010 Winter Games here in Vancouver so if you live here, you’re likely to run into some of the stuff his team has been involved with locally.

At Engine we’re always interested in new and exciting ways to connect brands with the demographic they are intended for. The technologies that come through the studio door, or our computer monitor, are always inspiring us to find methods of delivering content in fun and meaningful ways. We’ve already implemented campaigns that include Fourth Screen components and we’ll be showcasing a few of them here on the Engine blog when they go public. Oh, and you’ll have to come into the studio to check out our new Augmented Reality board room. Alex said he’d build us one in exchange for a 6-pack, at least that’s what we thought he said? It was kind of hard to hear over Stephen’s booming glow-stick soundtrack.

Update: We’re having an open house party this week! If you’d like to attend, and see the Engine studio first hand with a beverage and appetizer in hand, send me an email and we’ll hook you up with an invite. No raves. That was just for humorous effect. We only like jazz.

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