The future of outdoor advertising has potentially kickstarted from a floating feline.
Suspended over Tokyo’s Shinjuku train station, a giant digital cat stretched, meowed and would curl into a sleepy ball after midnight.
As reported by The Washington Post, the cat, along with a cresting ocean wave (shown below) displayed in Seoul, wasn’t a biology experiment gone awry.
Both were 3D anamorphic outdoor ads, proofs of concept from several Asian firms.
The pieces would inspire designers at British ad company Ocean Outdoor – which owns many public screens – to create tools for a separate 3D ad platform called DeepScreen.
Deepscreen is part installation, part “1984” esque vision, that hints at what commercialized outdoor spaces could soon look like.
With locations like Piccadilly Circus, the heart of London’s West End, along with others across Europe, this has attracted advertisers including Fortnite, Netflix, Vodafone, Deliveroo and Amazon.
Amazon’s Prime Video promotion of the ‘The Dark One’s (shown below) gives off an effect so strong it could give passer-by’s the impulse to duck from the realistic graphics.
The Dark One's forces have arrived in London, Piccadilly Circus but Moiraine rises to meet them. #TheWheelOfTime premieres November 19th, come join the fight? ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/1C2VEsWVT2
— Prime Video UK & IE (@primevideouk) November 15, 2021
This new trend of gargantuan branded figures is innovative and has every possibility of ushering in a new era of advertising where full-bodied branded action takes over city streets.
Giant digital play spaces are fun, dynamic trends which open new worlds of opportunity in the advertising world.
“When you literally have things popping out of a billboard at you, it feels inviting in all kinds of new ways,” said Greg Coleman, Prime Video’s global head of marketing and franchise.
However as noted by the Washington Post, a move towards 3D could turn public commons into obtrusive brand exercises.
While advertising is already impossible to ignore, the new technologies afforded to advertisers could border on invasive if displayed.
“This is exciting and it’s attention-getting,” said Arun Lakshmanan, an associate professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management.
However, he also stated, “It also could really start getting intrusive.”
On the other hand, supporters of the anamorphic technology, say that pedestrians already have their heads buried in their phones and maybe soon, AR glasses.
But, even the sceptical would admit there’s something cool about dynamic images occupying the space around us.
It can also be said that the next steps forward in ‘forced perspective’ imagery and filmmaking will only offer a more lifelike version of what already hits us daily on social media.
