Posted in Events, Experiential, Interactive Brand Experiences, Technology Bookmark the permalink.

Elation Labs – New Wearable Gesture Control MYO

June 14, 2013 at 11:41

Elation Digital’s research and innovation team has been on the forefront of gesture control for several years working mostly as Kinect Hack developers for experiential advergames for major brands for events and tradeshows.

In the last couple of years, this specific area of emerging technologies has garnered more attention as people realize the potential for gesture based controllers for driving all types of experiences from games, to robots, to watching and controlling your TV.

Recently a company we follow, raised an additional $15M to complete their development of a promising new gesture control device that utilizes several different inputs including your muscles to interpolate movement and deliver digital instructions that can control digital input devices. Basically an armband that you wear that connects via wireless Bluetooth technology, you will have the capability to replace other input devices and use just your body to drive experiences.

As developers we are excited to explore the possibilities for our agency and brand partners. We imagine all sorts of interactive brand experiences and experiential marketing opportunities. Imagine a competition game by Char-Broil to have participants flipping virtual burgers at a mobile experiential marketing deployment on their virtual Char-Broil Grill!

Stay tuned!

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New PQ Labs G4S Touch Screens

June 12, 2013 at 07:29

by Chris Rogne

The labs at Elation Digital just received our first batch of PQ Labs G4S touch overlays and the team is reporting super performance. These touch overlays provide multitouch capabilities and the new frame is extremely thin, and extremely smooth. Our development team tried out some of our legacy touch games and the responsiveness speed is dramatically improved. Since our clients deploy many of our interactive games and experiences on experiential tours outdoors, we like to test the performance in ambient lighting conditions. Dragging the equipment out into the parking area, we did a very unscientific yet effective test of a fast moving touch game for one of our brand partners and we detected no issues. KUDOS to the engineers at PQ Labs for continued developmental improvements. Looking forward to trying out some of the larger sizes for video wall installations in a museum. We’ll keep you updated!

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Agency Speed & Event Marketer Awards

May 17, 2013 at 23:40

by Chris Rogne

We were chatting today about how funny it is that we never have time to work on “marketing” for our company, being busy running around delivering projects and pitching new ones. We forget to capitalize on great projects and keep reminding each other to send a professional photographer to the next launch of one of our activations.

Our technology team did an incredible engineering feat in our zeal for putting one of the world’s first sea water projection billboards up in Luanda bay just a few months ago and I’m sure Discovery Channel would have dedicated a whole episode of reality TV to all the twists and turns on that project. Somehow in the course of actually doing the project; floating barges, chartering airplanes for missing car sized water pumps, building a floating projection stand in the ocean, and carrying suitcases full of cash to cover any unforeseen disasters, we forgot to get a professional videographer! It would have been a great documentary.

Projects in the last year have been helping our agency partners win awards and industry recognition and that’s something special. We’re part of a team effort to deliver important pieces in much larger campaigns. We are a digital interactive vendor to agencies with a goal of helping these partners win more business through good ideas and good execution.

Will every one of our projects end up winning a Guiness Book of World Record, or an Event Marketer Platinum Award? No, of course not.

But what is cool is consistently delivering award worthy activations that meet our clients campaign goals. Putting in the extra work to make something special.

In providing digital interactive services for our clients, I am continually amazed at the speed in which business is accomplished in the agency and brand world. I call this warped time field, AGENCY SPEED. Half of our projects are started with a conversation that goes something like this:

We have a big opportunity, the budgets are there, the venue is booked, and the brand client is ready to go. Can you put together a digital interactive experience that’s never been done before using some new technology to help communicate the essence of the brand, and integrate it to social media using video and images. It would be really great if we could get some crowd sourcing on a facebook app to submit designs for the next release and to vote for a winner during the tour, like the Mountain Dew project…. Oh, and can you do it in 45 days??

And yes, we have delivered on some amazing projects to help our clients out of tough jams including a superbowl event (but that’s a post for another day). But what’s amazing is the authentic belief that these projects can be done. The eternal positive view that it’s possible. It’s this energy and enthusiasm that makes working in the agency world so much fun. I get caught up in AGENCY SPEED and these reach for the moon projects. Jonathan always warned of drinking the kool-aid. Of course after celebrating the signed contract, you wake up and have to actually produce the project. Lucky that we have a great team of idealists. Funny thing is that we seem to create our best work during these distorted bits of reality. But please remind me to ask for 90 days next time.

2012 Guinness Book of World Record Winner -Chevy Sonic Claw Game in Hollywood California