It doesn’t take much to bring Dublin’s traffic to a grinding halt. But an advertising billboard poster? You’re kidding! Assuredly, not.
The offending street furniture was an electronic advertising billboard, or so-called metropanel, erected days ago in downtown Dublin. Nothing wrong with that, you might say. This new form of public messaging is just starting to make its presence felt in parts of Dublin, and it surely can’t be long before the idea spreads like wild fire. However, this particular poster piqued passers-by not for its content – which was harmless enough – but for its position. Located directly in front of a set of traffic lights and a street crossing at a busy city intersection, the poster posed a perplexing problem for pedestrians and motorists alike, their view of the traffic lights blocked as they attempted to navigate past it while avoiding bumping into each other.
As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And if any Dublin citizen had not previously noticed the name JC Decaux printed in small type at the bottom of the city’s numerous billboards, they will almost certainly now have the brand name burned into their memories. Which is, after all, what advertising is all about.
Following the ensuing public outcry – and a demand by Dublin City Council, which had originally sanctioned the city centre metropanel campaign for a public bicycle scheme – the 2.5-metre advertising panel was moved to a junction judged to be more judiciously located.
Why should this street fiasco be of any interest to the technology channel? The answer, in a word, is Bluetooth. Elsewhere in Dublin, JC Decaux is involved in another electronic poster campaign, this one for Honda cars. Equipped with an array of technology, the Honda poster detects passing Bluetooth phones, then sends a text message inviting the user to interact with the poster. Anyone not in too much of a hurry can pause at the poster and text the word Start, and be rewarded by the sight of flashing lights and the sounds of a revving engine. The texting pedestrian is also sent a free ringtone of an engine sound (yet another irritation for restaurant diners).
This is almost certainly the start of a lucrative “new wave” in advertising – at least for vendors and distributors, even if Joe Six-pack turns out to be less enamoured with the concept. But there are possibilities beyond advertising. Pedestrians – of which there are likely to be increasing numbers as the oil price rise continues – could, for example, use their Bluetooth phone, aimed at an electronic bus stop, to elicit the time of the next bus due at that location.
With these and many other possible uses, this type of mass citizen interactivity must surely be a positive development for potential Bluetooth sales. Just what manufacturers and vendors like to hear as recession clouds gather on the horizon.
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