Gratuitous billboard advertising is all over New York City, but W+K for Heineken turned their out of home ad into a stage for this recent pop-up performance by TV On The Radio.

Meanwhile, Conde is acclimating its readers to 2D barcodes, placing them on its Glamor cover this month, along with a slew of QR codes and Snaptags inside, allowing readers to instantly “Like” brands on Facebook, view additional content, get deals and offers.

As is usually the case with a mobile augmented reality app, all the user has to do – once the application is installed on the headset – is point the device at a Cadbury product and a 30-second game is launched. (via Gadget). “The player is challenged to tap quacking cartoon ducks as they appear ‘out of the bar’ on an augmented-overlay on their device’s screen,” it says. “The player can then submit their score to go into to a draw to win an array of prizes.”

AR game-maker, blippar’s CEO and co-founder, Ambarish Mitra, commented: “Image-recognition enabled augmented reality is far from a ‘gimmick’ and will fundamentally change how consumers interact with their favourite real-world brands. blippar has been built to bridge the gap from physical to digital and enable real-time interaction in mobile situations.”

I fully agree. AR still elicits rather a lot of eye-rolling among those who deem it faddish and useless but as our devices get even smarter, and our expectations of what we can interact with and manipulate in the world around us soars, we’ll see much more of these types of campaigns, not just for advertising purposes but for information-gathering and wayfinding.

via MarketingVox

B-to-B goes for Maximum Impact. The one-time annual blowout event is a thing of the past. In today’s business environment, reach and efficiency are keys to any successful experience. MetLife’s Day One, a week-long celebration of its acquisition of Alico last November, spawned 60 events that touched 70,000 employees in 64 countries, and exemplifies reach and efficiency at its best (TBA Global, New York City, handled).

“The beauty of it was the simplicity,” says our client, vp-internal communications at MetLife. “In a global company, one thing does not fit everybody, regardless of what it is. Respecting the differences and providing professional tools, and the fact that we gave them so much went a long way for them and allowed us to have control of one message. Day One still resonates with people.”

via Event Marketer magazine

As per MarketingVox, “a new ad created by Nike might lead the way in marketers using their data in entirely an entirely new manner. The ad is based on a data visualization of 12 months worth of Nike+ run data from New York City, Digital Buzz blog writes.

Nike laser etched the runner’s name, the distance he or she ran and run path onto a custom fabricated shoe box, which contained a pair of the ‘City Pack’ shoes from their city of origin.”

Here’s the video, created by YesYesNo NYC.

People throw the term “data-driven insights” around a lot in our industry but we love to see examples of companies really creating and using data in interesting ways, whether that’s to create a statement, a piece of art, a utility, or a physical product. We expect to see many more digital campaigns leveraging live datasets and streams and presenting them back in ways that encourage people to truly think differently about their world.

The study also analyzed the source and location of QR or bar code scanning, finding that users are most likely to scan codes found in newspapers/magazines and on product packaging and do so while at home or in a store.

via Comscore.

Beyond posting conference agendas and meeting information, the app should be easy to use and tied in to optimize the networking and promotion with social networks.  Eric Schwartzman has a terrific list of what you should additionally expect in from your B2B social media mobile app and we couldn’t agree more.

Here’s an excerpt of best practices list of meeting apps:

1. Social Network Sync
2. Make Public Posting Optional
3. Think Beyond the Event
4. Location Based Social Networking
5. Auto Generate Hashtags
6. Socialize the Photo Opp
7. Optional Push Notifications
8. Offer a “Pull” Option
9. Offer Keyword and Klout Score Search

via Eric Schwartzman