Tag Archives: Billboard Magazine

Billboard Yourself – What Are You Made Of?

I’m late to this in Internet time, but I just stumbled upon it and thought it was a great example of the 11th Screen – merging the offline with the online, the physical world with the digital world.

The whole concept here for Billboard Magazine was to show what music is made of, in the form of getting down to influencers on specific musicians.  For instance, you can see that Eminem is “made up of” Ice T, Run DMC, LL Cool Jay and Vanilla Ice.  Each musician is a mosaic of these influencer musicians.  Pretty cool.

Then, any individual can walk up to this screen, turn the dials to correspond with their particular “influencers,”  and see what they’re made of.  Then, they can instantly save a photo of themselves to Flickr, which is a nice use of a social component.

The only downfall that I see is that it is single-user.  This could keep many people immersed at the same time.  I also don’t see any tie-in back to the magazine, which in the end, should be the goal – get something out of bringing this experience to the masses from Billboard Magazine.

That said, I think it’s a great example of taking a physical object (fabricated unit with dials on it) and digital components (like a screen and camera) and creating an immersive experience out of it.  Then, being able to share it with a social community like Flickr.  This, of course, racked up many awards last year (Clio and a Cannes Grand Prix).  Nice work, AlmapBBDO.

Side note thought – I was at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas earlier this year and interacted with their Rock Wall and the other technology in their store and they could really learn from this.  While all of the Hard Rock’s technology and experiences are cool and certainly immersive, they aren’t personal and they don’t extend beyond the store.  Here, in this example, you can see how easy it is to a) make it personal and b) extend it beyond the physical location.  In my mind, both of these elements really separate good from great, shallow from deep and meaningful experiences.

What do you guys think?  Would love to hear your thoughts.  Shout back if you’re so inclined.