Direct Marketing: Samsung Back-up Memory Project
From: 3SG BBDO, Tunisia Last year, Samsung Tunisia collaborated with the Tunisian Alzheimer Association to develop a phone application that would work as an interactive memory bank for an Alzheimer’s patient. Enabling the to consult it discreetly, the app acts like a stimulator, flashing pictures of the patient’s past life experiences with the person concerned. Prior to this, the patient’s family/friends must upload various pictures and information to set-up the application. The application was launched on Google Store recently, along with a new film for it. Why we Like? It’s tough to look beyond the LCDs, RAMs and GHzs,but if you sometimes do, you’d know that technology is eventually about touching upon emotions, finding a chord to connect with a dear one and improving relationships in ways never imagined before. Most electronic brands tap on this, superficially showing the joys money can buy; Philips with its ‘sense and simplicity’ approach did it better. Last December, Samsung’s Amsterdam agency made an outstanding film for its curved UHD TV, showing a family’s drawing room experiences but not the TV itself. Now, we have a film that marks the launch of a unique app that bridges Alzheimer’s patients with their loved ones. The cognitive disorder that’s a result of slow brain cell death has been around for a while now and no effective cure has been found despite painstaking research. Family members of a person with dementia will know, it’s a piercing knife through their heart when he/she fails to recognise you. With this project, Samsung has probably made itself heard to millions of such family members. Aiming to push its ‘making life easier’ motto, the tech giant here gives a chance to Alzheimer’s patients to be more independent. I hope the app is more than just a PR activity, for it nudging its users visually to recognise their most intimate blood relations is something extraordinary. Not that it is difficult to appear more humane and sensitive while pitted against a capitalist rival such as Apple, but this project, besides helping the handful of users’ families, hopes to put another brick in the brand’s ‘efficient’ perception. And of course, there is the other thing about the programme being called the ‘back up memory’ project, with a subtle nod to its phones’ features. The two-minute film, featuring music by the London Metropolitan Orchestra, is slow, simple and explanatory – after all the projectisn’t too easy to explain. Importantly, the film succeeds in inducing a small ‘wow’ from those who don't know anything about the disease nor have it in close range. Here’s hoping more such collaborations back home, for there’s no better image exercise for a tech giant than it quietly funding and creating something that changes a few lives. (To watch the film and explore the app, visit its download page –type ‘bit.ly/viewtubeApril13’in your browser) Social Newsfeed Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe Housing.com playing well on social (except for..) Post their 90 million dollar investment from the ‘karta-harta’ of many Indian start-ups Softbank,Housing.com has made a splash in the cluttered realty portal market. Backing up their neat, visual-heavy OOH messages in the urban landscape is a wise social media strategy – Facebook talks about the basics (rental agreements, house hacks, parking regulations) in illustrative ways while its Twitter handle butts in to conversations about realty, in a helpful friendly way among other things. Now this story would have been perfect had I not stumbled upon a comical pow-wow between Housing.com’s co-founder Rahul Yadav and Media2Win’s AlokKejriwal who’s a self-appointed critic of all things that move. After the latter pointed out perceivably misplaced hoardings on Peddar road, the former hit back on his Facebook wall. Then, Yadav’s colleague IshanShrivastava posted shots of edited pages of Alok’s Wiki page (see those to believe them, they’re hilarious!). Good entertainment boys, now get back to work. Alok Kejriwal likes this It was ‘Meerkat’ that pushed Periscope Amazing to think that headlines such as these would have made no sense only a few months ago, but now they do! If you read my last column on the emergence of Periscope, the live-streaming app that Twitter acquired and launched, there’s a back-story to that. The announcement and acquisition was apparently a rushed activity by the blue bird after it realised that Meerkat, another live-streaming app for iOS was making waves with celebs. Now Meerkat still holds the advantage of arriving first for many users, especially with its back-end pretty solid, capable to have as many as 5,000 people watching your stream. But the twist is that while Periscope is now rushing to launch an Android version, Meerkat just suffered its first big screw-up when Madonna decided to launch her new video, and it failed to stream. The heat is on! Periscope likes this Do you know of @knowkenny? If not already, you must, for this talented 20-something is using his creative and vocal chords to utterly entertaining effects on Twitter and YouTube. Kenneth Sebastian, stand-up comic and singer has been getting the laughs at live gigs in our metros but they’re only getting louder with his latest project, #KennySing4Me. His idea is to crowdsource words/terms from his Twitter followers and then compile them to string together a song. Obviously, he would get terms such as constipation, bromance and even er, Ninja Hattori. Within a few hours, the man publishes a music video on his YouTube channels and it surely is amusing to see how just random words thrown at him fall into a comical song. One of his latest is with Kanan Gill (of the Pretentious Reviews fame) and another is about sitting on a toilet. No really, check them out(and fire your musician who takes weeks to come up with a jingle for your 10-second ad.) Anu Kapoor likes this
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