Marketing innovation: using technology to make an impact
MARKETING INNOVATION: USING TECHNOLOGY TO AN IMPACT
“WE ARE THE ENGLISH FLEET, ” echoed Gabe Aldridge at SouthWired, founding partner of the SuperGroup. With over 25 years of digital and interactive leadership experience, Gabe Aldridge continues to be a technology pioneer. He continues to achieve this level of success by telling great stories with his History background.
Picture this…it’s the late 1500’s and the Spanish Armada is battling with the English Fleet. Spain is the aggressor attacking England by taking risks and innovating. They used creative things around them like smaller ships and setting them on fire. In the end, Spain would lose to England. If England had not won that day, Europe would be different. However, taking risks and innovating is the moral of this story.
SuperGroup makes interactive attractions plain and simple. They talked about their mobile phone cases with 360 degrees spinning for Ballistic and the gaming experience they created at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in a YouTube Video. Using the Oculus riff, they created virtual reality experiences for the people that approached their booth to talk about cell phones. They spent lots of company money and broke some stuff. They played with new technologies like the Neurosky mindwave, a headset that measures your concentration and your mind waves, to control their brain and leap motion.
“Technology is the catalyst for new ways of telling stories.”
John Preziotti, the Lead Developer of the SuperGroup, found innovative ways to use commercially available materials and technology to engineer the Small World Machines for Coca-Cola that went on to unite the people of India and Pakistan. This was an interpersonal challenge, not an interactive one. Rolling blackouts, violations of a political cease-fire, and language barriers were just a few challenges John faced. John engineered the Coca-Cola Small World Machines with Arduino, raspberry pi, and tabletop vending machine.
If great stories were easy to tell everyone would be telling them. Because Google is the master and overlord, you need to understand that sharing builds your community and relevance. It establishes you as credible. There’s a time for playing it safe and a time for playing it…Risky Business.
“If at first you don’t succeed, succeed at all costs.”
Never never, never give up. It’s not that you have to be smart; you just have to stay at the problem longer. The valuable things that the SuperGroup has learned about the failure to create some of their most interactive experiences include:
- Spend lots of company money.
- Rack up a questionable number of unbillable hours.
- Regularly destroy company product.
- Become a stubborn man.
The duo has recently used custom circuit boards and shading in octopi at Cannes Line Festivals in Taiwan. They believe in the principle of doing something unexpected and innovating. Try using projection mapping and projectors for your next PowerPoint presentations they suggest.
Final Thought: “Give ideas about cultures that are unexpected and can bring unique communities together.”
MARKETING INNOVATION: USING TECHNOLOGY TO AN IMPACT