Festivus For the Rest of Us

So it has begun…

Today, June 20^th 2010, was the first day of the extra-extraordinary and completely un-ordinary Cannes Loins Advertising Festival. Before arriving, I didn’t know what type of journey was ahead of me. No one in our group of wolves knew what to expect. Once the group made it inside, we were given our special VIP badges, aka student badges. On long with our badges we were given a nice satchel full of free goodies. Free things are the best.

First of all…I have to mention the high tech equipment that was posted up along the hallways. I’ve never seen technology like this. 3-D TVs that do not require GLASSES. Pretty sick. Ice cream vending machines that produce free ice cream by scanning the costumers face to see if they are smiling. Huge touch screen maps of the entire area. That, my friends, was pretty awesome.

Let’s move on. The real reason behind the madness is of course advertising. As a group we all attended the work shop, Mobile Mania. We were given a book to go along with it. This book is really awesome. It explains the multiple points that were made in the session while also giving some random, maybe useful someday, facts. I love those types of facts. There were two points that really interested me about this workshop and the role of mobile/application advertising.

Number one, the mobile advertising revolution will be un-American, unlike the first internet revolution which was USA all the way. This is because call quality, signal quality is actually better in countries located in Asia and Europe. America will for the first time in a good minute not lead the way in a revolution. Quite frightening for Americans, I would assume.

Number two is mobile augmented reality. This is some straight-up terminator shit. Augmented reality is the ability of a web-based app to read visual information via barcodes and other web-information. For example, a person holding a smart phone next to a group of houses that their friends reside in will allow them to see if they are home or not. It’s kind of like a GPS device but for people. Also, the smart phone will pick up certain stores that a consumer ventures into and send coupons for that store straight to their phone screen. Some individuals see this as invasion of privacy. It may indeed be just that. But think of it this way, we always want gratification instantly. This will give consumers just that. It’s like Arnold as a machine, scanning the information of the human race, but this time it’s not a movie it’s a phone.

Those are just two of the very interesting points that were made in the Mobile Mania workshop. They really cause your mind to think about where the world is heading. We are in the middle of a revolution. The mobile revolution.