Binary Beverage
July 24, 2008
So the Carling iPint from BMB is currently one of the most downloaded free applications on the App Store. It's top ten in the USA and I don't think you can even buy Carling here. Maybe this will get the brand to expand into new markets, as the Gorilla did for Cadbury.
[Yes I got the new iPhone. Yes I did queue up. I really, really didn't want to.
I didn't enjoy it. I spent hours in the Apple Store. I read an entire book in the queue.
I tried to enjoy it as a piece of immersive ethnography. I tried to think of it as a means of gaining some insight into how Apple manages to create demand, truly create demand, by listening in to conversations.
People mainly were just concerned that they would run out, and would endlessly ask staff if this was the case.
Ultimately it was just a painful experience that I wish erased from my memory. I wish I hadn't dropped my old iPhone in water the Friday the new one came out.
Look, I don't want to talk about it.]
It's being described as the future of advertising.
I do think mobiles are important for what we do, I do think that we should be thinking about making stuff that's right for phones, not thinking of them as a pipe to push TV or banner ads through, and I do think that things that use the accelerometers as the interface engine are awesome.
I also agree with Ian that a sprinkling of geotility would make this application amazing, but that it's already very cool, probably the best ad for an iPhone that has been done, that people coo when they see it, and that people in pubs all over the land are going to be playing with it and showing it to their friends and that.
[Don't blame Ian for the neologism, that monstrosity is my fault.]
But let me pose you, dear reader, a hypothetical question.
Let's say you had been asked to be a judge for the Campaign Big Awards, for the Digital category.
Let's say that iPint had been entered, as the world's first interactive pint of lager, and that the judging criteria stipulated that originality was considered important, that new ideas or vitally refreshed variants of earlier ideas should be rewarded, because freshness in creativity is self evident.
Let's then say you saw the video above, for the iBeer application, that had been around for about a year.
What would you do?
[UPDATE: BMB and Molson Coors are being sued for 12.5M English Pounds. Apparently they contacted the iBeer creators, couldn't get a deal sorted, and then did it anyway.]