Show & Smell Marketing: Part 2

5 pm, Friday, March 9, 2012
#SxSmell

Somehow this session was only an hour, but it's going to take me days to recap it. Up today: marketing to your sense of hearing.

Spectra: language translation tool
Spectra is an app that allows you translate written or typed passages into a number of other languages. As of now I could only find it in the iTunes store. No android version just yet.

The session was moving pretty quickly, so I honestly don't remember and didn't note the marketing value of a handheld translator, but you have to admit, it's pretty cool.

Responsive Digital Signage
If you've left the house in the last year, you probably come across some version of digital signage. I've seen them in malls, convention centers, doctors' offices, restaurants and even our very own OSU Student Union. Companies are now working to make the signs interactive. You can ask the interactive digital signs questions and they'll answer you.

It gets even cooler than that. In development they found the signs "got confused" about who was talking to it and when someone was still listening. So developers added a face recognition component. The digital sign scans for faces looking at it, only listens to questions from the person addressing it, and only answers if that person continues to look at it.

Audio Spotlight
We totally need this for our new audio visual displays going in at the library. In fact, libraries and museums were the example the presenter mentioned as ideal locations. This gadget works just like it sounds it might. Imagine a spotlight, one discrete target of light. But instead of being bathed in light, it's sound. When you are in the audio spotlight, it sounds like standing in front of a normal speaker. But two feet away, those not standing in the spotlight can't hear a thing.

Here's the audio spotlight marketing at work:


Turn Any Flat Surface into a Speaker
Huh? I'm not even sure where to start with this one. Our presenter had a tiny sticky pad, when he placed it on a large foam core poster, the poster became a speaker. The tiny stick-able speaker uses the flat surface to amplify the sound vibrations. Um, yeah. You kind of had to be there.