Sketch Loves... Interactive Vending Machines

One of the blessings of technology is that it has the power to turn mundane, everyday activities in to something innovative and interesting; clever brands have even managed to make vending machines a memorable experience. This engaging new ploy increases consumer involvement and boosts brand loyalty. Here’s a roundup of some of the best interactive vending machines we’ve seen so far.

BOS Iced Tea created a truly win-win concept with its tweet enabled vending machine named ‘BEV’. Passers-by were instructed to help get the brand trending on Twitter by tweeting a given hash-tag, this was then picked up by BEV and seconds later a can of BOS Iced Tea was released whist the users Twitter handle flashed on the vending machine’s screen.

And as Kenco says, “Great coffee speaks for itself”, quite literally in Soho Square this summer. This time it’s ‘Kenneth’ – there seems to be a tendency in personifying interactive vending machines, perhaps to help make the experience more personable. ‘Kenneth’ was a rather noisy talking vending machine, giving free Kenco coffee to those who would answer his questions or perform his tasks.

And lastly, ending on an altruistic note, how about the Swap-O-Matic? It appears to be of no obvious benefit to a brand, but simply encourages people to reuse and recycle. It’s a Swap Shop in a vending machines body!

eBookers 'Blue Monday'

Research has shown that the 21st January is officially the most depressing day of the year. To inject a little sunshine into this 'Blue Monday' and to promote their latest online offers, eBookers asked us to create a PR stunt that would put smiles on the faces of early morning commuters. 

Braving the snow and minus temperatures, teams of actors rode the London underground in their summer holiday gear, posing for photos and talking to people about the eBookers promotions.

We also had teams of eBookers staff at Victoria Station handing out branded Oyster Cards.

Sketch Loves... Pretty Packets!

So we’re told not to judge a book by its cover, but we rarely apply the same rule when it comes to the packaging of consumer goods. But really, if we did, design and marketing teams across the globe would be doing a very bad job indeed. We’re tuned to judge a product by its packet, and interesting, simple or beautiful design can usually sway us towards one item over another.

Drink brands often push the boat out when it comes to packaging, and Smirnoff must have really stood out from the shelves with their fruit peel bottles.

They created a unique experience for consumers by allowing them to ‘peel’ open the bottle of Smirnoff Caipiroska and feel the texture of the fruit used in the bottle.

And in this digital age where the download is king, interesting and unusual packaging may be the way forward for traditional CDs to tempt consumers to purchase a physical copy.

This vacuumed packed salami CD (for an album called ‘Saliami Postmodern’) would definitely catch the eye in a sea of CDs.

General food packaging has also come on leaps and bounds; ‘Bob’s’ (a Brazilian burger chain) has developed edible burger wrappers so people don’t even have to wait to unwrap them. I would have thought that actually seeing your juicy burger would be part of the enjoyment, but the novelty factor in this is pretty epic too.

And if your eyes are now open to the world of pretty packaging, we've found a whole host of interesting designs over at toxel.com

Sketch Loves... Festive Advert Blockbusters

A good Christmas advert is a truly magical thing; it can turn a sour grape into a sobbing mess, i.e. John Lewis’ instalment last year, or simply let you know that it’s time to start feeling festive (although personally I feel no Christmas adverts are allowed until after bonfire night, at least).

But let’s not forget the aim of these such adverts: if they pull on our heart strings in some way, we may build an emotional connection with the brand and remember them next time we’re looking to buy that special something for that special someone.

Setting that cynicism to one side, (just for now) let’s take a look at a few festive blockbuster that spring to Sketch’s mind.

One that most females in the office may be able to relate to is this year’s ’12 Days of Christmas’ by Warehouse. If you haven’t seen it yet, I would recommend watching it before your work Christmas party as watching it after may result in unnecessary cringing.

And whilst we anticipate the arrival of ‘The Snowman and The Snowdog’, do you remember the Irn Bru remake?!

Moving away from traditional advertising, Homebase must have seen our post on 'A Good Bus Stop', as they've added a 3D interactive Christmas Tree to a bus stop in Ruislip to promote one of its stores. A combination of twinkly lights and QR codes entice passers-by with the opportunity to win through its innovative display.

But they’re not the only ones trying something new. If you watched the X-Factor final you may have seen an invitation by Intel to Shazam their advert and upload a Christmas message that may have been broadcast at the end of the show. You can read more about the technicalities of this ingenious partnership here.

And back to one of our feel good favourites, one from Christmas powerhouse Marks and Spencer, all the way back in 2009 with plenty of household celebrities and double-entredes to keep us suitably smiley.

And from the good, straight over to the damn right ugly. What is this atrocity?

Why ‘fix’ something that isn’t broken? #BRINGBACKGEOFFRY!

Sketch Loves... Pinterest

Wow. Having discovered Pinterest in recent months, we are now officially hooked.

It’s a visual catalogue of everything you've ever wanted on the web, neatly organised into boards; your boards, and others’ boards – sharing and discovering with others that have similar interests.

For anyone who doesn’t know, here’s a nice little breakdown of how it works – credit goes to thelinkbuilders.com for this one:

1) When someone likes an image on a website they can pin it back to a board they’ve created on the Pinterest site. These boards can be named anything but fall under categories designated by the Pinterest team, like weddings/events, home décor, travel, etc.

2) Individuals can see pins by people whose boards they are following, or by searching through the most popular pins (most repinned), by category, by search term, or by price. If a user has typed in the price of the object in the comment area it will also appear on the top left corner of the image (this only happens when the dollar sign is typed into the comment area. No other money symbol – like € or £ – makes the price appear on the pin).

3) Every image has a comment area, link, and options to like or repin. Viewers can visit the site that housed the original image by clicking on the image or on the URL in the top right corner of the image.

On our Pinterest account we’ve currently got 8 boards. As expected, they are mostly events and design led, but the opportunities for inspiration are endless:

But who else is using Pinterest? Back in February, US agency Modena put some stats together that help create a picture of who’s pinning:

As the infographic illustrates, there are plenty of brand using Pinterest. But what are they doing there? There’s obvious SEO potential, and an opportunity to display more ‘stuff’ from your site, but users aren’t always going to want to engage with that kind of content. So clever brands make boards that are insightful and reflect the interests of their audience.

ASOS, for example, has 23 boards ranging from Christmas, beauty, current trends and competitions.

But not all brands fit the Pinterest format, forcing them to think outside the box. Take Coca Cola, who ask users to help them discover ‘moments of happiness ’ by sharing photos. A little soppy perhaps, but all in all, Pinterest...we like you.

Sketch Loves... Believe in your Smellf

So back in September we heralded the brand your brand could smell like, aka Old Spice; who had hit advertising gold with their ingenious attempt at not taking themselves too seriously.

Even though Old Spice seemed to be on to a winning formula, they have dared to try something different: introducing their new campaign, ‘Believe in your Smellf’. And no, that wasn’t a typo.

These sensitive, empowering new adverts promote their new ‘Champion’ scent and their first instalment broadcasts a man quite the opposite of Terry Crews. Enter the sensitive man:

But Old Spice have stayed true to their interactivity element, (did you make sweet muscle music last time?) and this time it’s in form of ‘Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 ½ weeks to save the world'. This ridiculous yet strangely engrossing game is based on the idea that the world is set to end on 21st December when the Mayan calendar ends; Dikembe Mutombo (ex-NBA star) graces our screens with a scarily long waging finger and we control him as he tries to solve his first task, ‘The Great 2012 Dance Crisis’, by throwing bottles of Old Spice at people dancing a popular South Korean dance...

The great thing about this (other than the 80s style game animation, repetitive soundtrack and brilliant story telling) is that a new game level is released each week in lead up to the end of the world. Thus encouraging people to come back again and again for another dose of Old Spice silliness.

I for one am now craving to return to a simpler time, when game playing involved pointing, clicking and occasionally button bashing. Thank you Old Spice.

Sketch Loves... Pop Ups!

What’s not to love? There one minute, gone the next; leaving a trail of freebies and interesting experiences in its path. So let’s have a look at some of our favourites in days gone by.

Most recently, (last weekend in fact) The Bar of Aero popped up at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, touting itself as the ultimate ‘bubble playground’. The peppermint infused space, there for three days only, was filled with an array of Aero based activities including levitating, prize containing bubbles and a state of the art hot chocolate dispensers.

This bubbly bliss was actually experienced first-hand by Sketch’s Senior Account Manager Lucy. She was drawn there on the promise of orange and green waterfalls and although they couldn't be found, she fully enjoyed drinking hot chocolate and playing with levitating bubbles. Check out her pictures below:

A more gruesome example was Resident Evil 6's human butchery and morgue at Smithfields Meat Market.

This creatively gory experiential event invited fans to immerse themselves in a scene from the game; purchasing and sampling edible human limbs (really a sausage meat and prosciutto mix, if you weren’t sure) – with proceeds being donated to the Limbless Association.

Quickly moving on to a little bit of luxury, Ainhoa the Spanish skincare brand often found in 5* hotels around the world, can currently be found in St. Pancras International train station.

The spa, which is open until the end of January, is offering free express treatments to customers – giving us plenty of time to fully concentrate on a little experiential research...

And at Sketch we know all about making cool pop ups too; we were tasked to create a slice of summer in the heart of London in mid December for Corona last year.

To create an indoor outdoor space we built an 11m geodesic dome on London’s Southbank and installed real grass, tall palms, lime trees, a huge white up-lit bar and luxury beach furniture.

The tropical temperatures inside the dome meant that bar staff were serving Corona in their shorts in December, creating the sense of leaving winter behind and stepping into summer in a luxury beach resort somewhere far, far away...