Recently, I've been noticing that more and more brands are using high tech interactive media to show themselves as innovative, forward thinking and, most importantly, fashionable.
The moment that I realised that interactive media had reached a fashionable tipping point was when, a few weeks ago, I saw Vivienne Westwood using augmented reality to promote her new perfume range by bringing to life 'Naughty Alice', the character behind the name of the perfume. This isn't exactly typical marketing from your high end fashion brands.
Interactive technology has always had something of a childish or geeky reputation, due to its game-like nature. This was demonstrated recently by The National History Museum who have also introduced the technology to bring to life some of history's great extinct creatures, in a way that seems almost too futuristic for a girl whose formative years were spent with a two dimensional Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Megadrive. The technology is targeted at educating children in a new and more dynamic way than ever before. So how can something usually associated with children and geeks become a driving force in the realm of fashion marketing?
Maybe the stuff it can do is now cool enough to be objectively cool, rather than just technologically cool. Or maybe it's the fact that it's now far more accessible and part of every day life. Whatever the reason, this is most certainly a quickly growing trend, and one which is only going to get more advanced and exciting, both for people inside and outside the industry.
QR codes are another kind of interactive media that I keep seeing pop up everywhere. With the success of self service checkouts at supermarkets, it was almost in the bag that people would also like to scan codes using their mobile phones and there is something about this hands on kind of technology which makes people feel like they're part of the brand and are in the know with all things techie. The next big thing looks like it's going to be NFC, the wireless communications tech that allows for Barclaycard's contactless technology and which is built into Google's Nexus S Smartphone so there won't even be a need for scanning soon enough.
All of this only proves to us that the way people market themselves or their products is evolving, and people seem to be finally catching up with and accepting this futuristic kind of technology and it is intriguing and fascinating them.
So what's next? Only time will tell I guess, if only there was a QR code I could scan that would show me the future… maybe one day?
