Schwippy

Interesting Advertising by KFC

KCF has it all figured out. They have been using technology to advertise like never before. I just learned that last year, KFC had a commercial that told the world how to get a free sandwich at any location just by saying a secret password. They even told you the password right in the advertisement…. except for the fact that it was only put in a couple frames of the entire commercial. The only way to figure out the password was to record the advertisement and play it back in slow motion, most easily done with TiVo, or another DVR.

This was great for KFC. For one thing, it singled out a certain group of individuals for the promotion, and whenever this happens, there is ALWAYS going to be people trying to get into this group that otherwise wouldn’t be in there. Even if they really dont want the free sandwich, they want to be able to get into something they otherwise are not able to do. Thats just human nature. So eventually, word got out of the password all across the internet and everyone found it. Now they have a password, and only one thing to do with it. Go get a sandwich, and KFC hopes a drink and some tater’s too.

Another thing that made this a great marketing strategy; it is relatively uncommon. Almost unheard of for real promotions. And what more would geeks want than to tell everyone else about something weird and new about technology? Its that reason that KFC gained a lot of free press across the internet. Just the simple fact that people like to tell other people about interesting stuff. Look at what im writing about right now. Im giving KFC some free press.

Anyways… that was a while back. Im posting about yet another way KFC is using their ultra high paid advertising monkeys to churn out even more evil advertising. They are using the technological fact that younger people are able to hear different tones than older individuals.

This technology has been used in a few situations that I can think of off the top of my head such as cell phone ring tones that teachers couldn’t hear, but the kids could. Also I just saw a review on a device that was supposed to ward off teenagers from certain places that were more adult oriented (The review was horrible btw. It didnt work).

KFC’s new strategy is simple: insert a semi-ultrasonic tone into one of their advertisements. The advertisement looks and sounds completely normal to the elderly ear, but the commercial also says that there is a secret tone located somewhere in the commercial, and the first 1,000 kids to call a certain phone number with the correct location of the advertisement will get a free KFC menu item.

If you catch this commercial on the air and dont have one of your kids around to tell you where the sound is, I have a better idea. Go get your dog, set him by the television, and wait til the advertisement comes on again. When all of a sudden, your canine companion starts going into an epileptic seizure, you can bet that you just found that hidden sound.

Heres the commercial. I could hear that annoying sound perfectly, but just to be fair, this may be due to the video being transcoded into a digital medium. It may actually be a lot harder to hear on the TV.

KFC Mosquito Tone Commercial @ Engadget

Tangible Reactable What What?

Check out this instrument synth device. Aparently made by some hard core geeks.

The reactable is a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Reactable [Via DialyCupOfTech]

Magnetic Fluid Video aka Ferrofluid

If you’re like me, you’ve heard all about ferro fluid but just haven’t seen it in action. Heres a great video of it showing you its real-world properties.

For those of you that don’t know what ferro fluid is, ferro fluid is simply a fluid that is has a ferrous material embedded in it, thus making it magnetic.

Whats going on here is simple. The spiral ‘poles’ you see are connected to an electromagnet underneath and is being controlled with varying amounts of power to get the movement of the fluid.

Head on over to the link to see the project in the video.

Ferrofluid Spiral [Via Boing Boing]

How DreamWorks is Changing the World

According to DreamWorks, in the year 2009, every one of their movies will be produced in 3-D! The technology to make animated movies is nothing new, and in fact you’ve probably even seen a few 3D movies yourself. The reason that DreamWorks says 2009 is for the mere fact that the percentage of theaters that can show 3D digital movies is ub3r small in the U.S.

DreamWorks will not just be making all of their movies in 3D, but doing so exclusively. In other words, there won’t be ANY 2D versions of the films hitting the big screen. Just the DVDs. This is going to do a couple things. For one thing, its going to mean that you wont be able to find any more DreamWorks titles at the smaller movie theaters anymore. This COULD even put them out of business, unless they are able to cough up the costs to upgrade their equipment (which is going to be a pretty big cost). But on the reverse side of the spectrum, that means that all of the larger theaters (Regal, Edwards, etc) are going to upgrade every one of their theaters to hold 2 digital projectors for each screen that will show the 3D movies. Thats why its going to take 2-3 years before they start making exclusive 3D movies.

But along with the ability to display 3D movies, the digital projectors would be able to display a multitude of higher quality movies of all types (Think IMAX).

But heres the drawback… and its a pretty big one, in my opinion… you’re STILL going to have to wear some goofy glasses. Theres just no way around it… not with single screen projection anyways. The positive side of the negative side is the fact that they wont be those retro red and blue glasses… they would be the perpendicular-polarized lens kind (I honestly don’t know what they are called, i just know how they work).

This is the one thing that would keep me away from the theaters. I just don’t really think I would like having to wear uncomfortable glasses for almost 2 hours.

But this COULD be an interesting trend if you think about it. If every one of the theaters are transforming to the 3D projectors, then that means that there will be more productions in 3D that just DreamWorks’. There will actually be an available market for it. Nobody will have to be scared of making a 3D flick in fear of no theaters buying the reel due to the fact that they wouldn’t be able to use it.

If it gains even more popularity, then this will bring another kind of manufacturer into the scene…. yup, you guessed it… polarized glasses makers. You will be able to buy your own 3D glasses for the movies. You would have your own pair that you could leave at home and whenever you want to go watch a movie, you grab your nice comfy glasses that you hand picked yourself. Or hell, theres no reason why regular glasses couldn’t be perpendicularly polarized! You wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference, and they could still block out the sun on those extra bright California days. Go ahead and click the linky linky to see the press report on DreamWorks asking Bank of America for some money to do this with, haha.

DreamWorks Exclusively in 3D [Via Gizmodo]