Last week we (Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town) were invited by Google and innovation / marketing website PSFK to discuss our Volkswagen Street quest campaign. We were joined by Hyundai‘s New York agency Bossa Digital and Innocean, who were talking about their Driveway Decision Maker app.
The Google hangout also talked about where the future of mapping tech and advertising is heading. From our side myself, Nic Wittenberg, and Adrian Varkel discussed the exciting opportunities of Indoor Positioning systems (IPS). We see it giving people a much more personalised experience, enabling them to find exactly what they are after quickly and easily. From an advertising perspective there are huge direct marketing opportunities in the form of targeted retail promotions etc, as well as there being huge creative possibilities (How about a DHL app that gets you from A to B in the fastest time, or maybe Adidas shows you directions that make you fitter? ). We also touched on the continued theme of layering information on top of maps, be it from a brand, or from crowd-sourcing of information.
Innocean talked about the exciting leaps being taken in in-car navigation. More and more cars are starting to become connected to the internet, allowing them to have constant up to date access to real time mapping and layered info (live traffic / roadworks / friends locations / road conditions etc). The other trend that hopefully keeps on speeding up is the number of cars that take advantage of smart phones capabilities. If done right even entry level cars could be online, and have powerful connected entertainment systems, all for the price of a screen and a USB socket / Bluetooth hub.
More on the above can be found on the PSFK website here.