The Finest Ambient Advertising Ever?

Human beings become a human joysticks in the latest MSNBC.com invention to entertain spectators waiting for a movie to begin. Adage today has an article on what is called crowd gaming and looks like a group Wii experience. Motion sensors throughout the theater track the audience's collective movement and use them as human joysticks to play an arcade game on the wide screen.

Crowd gaming could be an interesting (but expensive) new option to refresh advertising in movie theatres, but personally I would appreciate it (maybe) only as a one-shot experience. Also, it could fit only a certain kind of movies, blockbusters such as Spiderman or the Fantastic 4. I can't imagine playing such a game before watching for example, The Lives of Others... In the end, kudos to MSNBC for creating a PR story (yes, I'm also writing about it) but I definitely hope "crowd gaming" in theatres becomes a trend!

Ambient Media definition: "

Ambient advertisements are effective means at pushing a brand message in front of consumers and can develop even better top of mind recall within target audiences. This provides the ability to advertisers to maintain brand awareness created by other advertising efforts. Ambient media can produce mass attention in centralized locations, or directly interact with consumers during normal every day activities (2).

Examples are messages on the backs of car park receipts, on hanging straps in railway carriages and on the handles of supermarket trolleys. It also includes such techniques as projecting huge images on the sides of buildings, or slogans on the gas bags of hot air balloons.