From James Bond's invisible Aston Martin to the visible non-car in Ford's Ka Find It campaign

I want to return to this topic from yesterday. I wrote about the new Ford Ka campaign called Find It, that runs in many European countries right now. It has had me thinking - and re-thinking some concepts.

So first, augmented reality (or enhanced reality, I am not sure if these are exactly synonyms, it goes beyond my regular work competence).. I had always thought (stupidly) that the practical commercial possibilities of augmented reality would not become possible until reasonably low-cost headsets and goggles and projector-eye-glasses could be made.

I had the concept from the fighter jets and attack helicopters. The pilots with their futuristic headsets and perhaps a special display just for one eye, that projects a virtual mapping to what the pilot sees. This is the evolution of HUD (Heads Up Display or Head Up Display) technology of projecting fighter jet information into the line of sight on the fighter pilot's canopy (the glass). Some cars have this kind of technology today. It is static, it projects directly in front of the airplane (or car).

The more advanced type is now coordinated with the pilot's actual direction of view - dependent on the position of the helmet. I believe this is how modern Apache attack helicopters operate, for example, and many top end fighter planes. So the airplane weapons systems and sensors know where your helmet is pointed - ie what the pilot is looking at and seeing - and then they project vital combat information as an "overlay" to what you see (and also let you point your weapons at the direction where you are looking). So if there is an enemy plane flying in your field of view, it can be marked, like with a red circle - that is the enemy - and at the same time, the system can mark your friendly combat planes say with a blue circle - don't shoot those, they are friendlies.

This might seem like supremely wasteful technology, until you understand how rapidly the modern fighter pilot's world can change, as his own plane twists and turns in the sky, pulling several G's and flipping the plane upside down and back up again in fractions of seconds. This with dozens of other planes in the sky, some friendlies, other hostiles - and that in modern air war all fighter planes tend to look remarkably similar - and which tend to be all painted the same color, a sort of metallic silver - with perhaps new planes joining the battle and others exiting it. It would be impossible to keep all of the combattants in accurate account - who are our guys, and who are the enemies. This gets even more a mess, when allied airforces are included (on both sides) who again fly different aircraft types - sometimes our ally is flying the exact same model of airplane that the enemy flies.

So, back to augmented reality. So a modern fighter pilot has the assistance of a smart helmet, that will help by indicating who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in battle, in real time, and with computerized accuracy. Far more accurate than the best of human pilots could hope to be.

Fine. Now, you and I don't want to walk around wearing a helmet all day (unless you ride motorcycles at breathtaking speeds like our buddy Alan Moore but thats another story). So, the fighter jock style smart helmet is not a really viable option outside some videogaming arcades etc.

The more consumer-oriented concept from that, has been for many years now, the goggle or visor or projector that is with eyeglasses. It makes us look a bit like a cyborg (and a lot like a geek) but could easily in time, become as "normal" as those who walk around with the cyborg bluetooth earpieces to carry on with their conversations during the day. Its not a major step from the connected earpiece to the connected eye-wear.

And I've also been able to imagine some practical daily life uses of this type of technology. So for example, if the view is constantly projected into our line of sight - we could have, for example, the names of all participants in a business meeting, projected into our view. I am bad at remembering names, and it would be very useful, to have a "virtual name tag" for all people around me in a given business meeting for example. Technically, this is not a difficult thing. We all have phones, and we are starting to collect the "face galleries" of our friends and colleagues into our phonebooks etc - and soon the processing power on the phone can easily do a facial recognition match from our phonebook with all those in view - and then add the name of the person just below their face. Technically, this is not unfeasible and is probably pocketable technology within a few years - except for the display part. That - for this type of application - needs the goggle.

So I kept an occasional eye on the augmented reality/enhanced reality space, but thought to myself - self - no worries, this is not today's technology, it won't come until we get the goggles. And I thought the goggles would appear first in videogaming etc. (and yes, please don't write about this, of course I know such technologies already exist, but they are not mass market yet - and I mean mass market that it sells in the dozens of millions per year.)

How wrong I was. And how SILLY that I didn't see this coming. Because of course - of course - the first tool to bring this augmented reality to mass markets is.. the mobile phone of course. We all have it in our pocket. It has the connectivity and the intelligence and the screen. And I've been calling for magic, the magical experiences with the phone. Well, what is more magical, than looking at some space, where you know there is nothing, you can go and walk over that space and touch it and feel it, and you know there is nothing, and then you take out your phone, look through the phone, and you see it. Like the Ford Ka. It is not there. But look through your phone, and you see it.

Augmented reality yes. A magical experience, yes. 7th Mass Media? Of course. (and is Ahonen a moron for not seeing this coming, yes, yes yes..)

So, then it also hit me, that this is a strange case of a twisted result of a James Bond movie concept. In the last Brosnan 007, Die Another Day, we have the first case of James Bond being truly impressed by what Q had created - the invisible car. Those who have seen the movie will remember the classic scene, when Q says to Bond, here is your new car - and Q rolls out what is an empty platform. Bond laughs and says Q has gone totally crazy, when Q clicks on the remote control and the car - an Aston Martin Vanquish - appears. And Q quips that they call this the Aston Martin Vanish. And for the first time in the 007 series, Bond says he is truly impressed by Q.

Ok, so in the movies we had a real car, which was invisible to the eye. You could touch it (and shoot it) but could not see it.

Now, real life imitates Bond (again) but in a bizarre twist. Its the exact opposite of that idea. Now we have a non-car, that appears. It is not there, we can go walk through it and touch it, it is not there, but yet, it is visible. Not unlike a hologram (but only visible, obviously, through the mobile phone).

So, first - this is obviously something that I think is cool and clever. Fine. So Tomi the geek likes something that is nerdy from a tech point of view, nothing new about that. And no surprise he loves something that uses a mobile phone - what do you expect from the guy..

But secondly - this does rather destroy the myth, that augmented reality needs those special goggles. And that is a major step. More than the cleverness of using this as a marketing tool for how a Ford Ka might look in a given street setting (after all, there are plenty of Ka's around, you could almost just as well drive a real promo car there and let people see and touch the real Ka). But this is a first step.

The campaign used a technology that they said works on recent model Nokia cameraphones, less than 2 years old, and also some Windows Mobile smartphones. So we are looking at hundreds of millions of people with the device already in their pocket, that can display the non-car, Ford Ka. This is mass market sized opportunity today.

Yes, I'm sure the current technology takes a lot of integration and custom work, from creating the virtual car itself, to the software and applications needed etc. But it is now starting. We can project non-items into our phone screens, to augment our reality. Enhance our reality.

Now, plug in the geo-tagging and location ability from GPS etc. Merge that with augmented reality. We could give the ability to find a virtual tour guide at a famous tourist site, and use our phone to interact with the virtual guide.

Toss in mobile payments, and we could have our purchasing behaviour enhanced with augmented reality, advertising, sponsorship etc. Your virtual tour guide could be wearing a McDonalds uniform and when we're getting hungry, help us find the nearest Golden Arches..

Toss in 2D Barcodes and we don't need to do keypad based data entry, and can hop rapidly into mobile websites. Any recent cameraphone, no problem. Any web content, more information, switch the augmented reality mapping, I don't care for the current view, can you give me a historical view to this site, what it looked like when it was bombed in World War Two? No website addresses to type, 2D barcodes zoom us into the right mobile website.

Toss in our digital footprint - Tomi is from Finland, perhaps he'd rather have the guide speak Finnish. And Tomi being a man, perhaps the guide should be a hot babe, but for a woman, the guide could be an attractive man, etc..

It is a magical device, the phone. In my newest book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media, I ask for developers to create magic in the fifth chapter and give some tools and examples (such as 2D barcodes for example) and in the book I have several case examples of mobile magic from the Just-in-time Dentist in Finland to Kamera Jiten the cameraphone dictionary in Japan. But this Ford Ka campaign of Find It, I think so far, this is the most magical use of the 7th Mass Media yet. Brilliant ! 

Comments

[Romi Parmar]

Whilst it's truly great to see the advertising agencies doing cool mobile things at last, I still sense there is a need for full buy in. This is a brilliant application - but even something as cool as this is out there on its own if the rest of the marketing effort doesn’t get behind it.

The perfectionist in me is irritated by this because i can see how it's adoption could have been so much better. Wouldn't it have been perfect if the application was also used in the James Bond Film Quantum of Solace. In the film a very memorable scene is where James Bond is picked up by the beautiful Olga Kurylenko in the new 2009 Ford Ka (it's first ever public appearance) but imagine if they involved the Aston Martin invisibility cloak and he could only find it by looking through his mobile phone?

Take it one step further - the bad guys steal Q's technology and chase him in invisible cars... only by looking through his mobile phone screen can he see them. Imagine the whizz bang car chases in which cars appear/disappear/bash into him/reappear/disappear... pretty edge of the seat dramatic.

Ah but the problem with magic is that we all know it is only as good as the magician that performs it... If the magician is good then the magic is good... If the magician is bad then the magic is bad... There may only be a fine line between Harry Houdini and Uncle Romi doing card tricks at Christmas... but to the spectator it's all that matters.

So just imagine how popular magic would be if you could do it just like James Bond?

Modify the mobile application a little and let the customers point their camera at the passenger seat of their own car where they’ll see Olga Kurylenko (or James Bond if they get the girl version) sat in the interior of the shiny new Ford Ka. Wow… you’d have to handle magic like that very carefully! ha ha…

Modify the application so it lets customers point their camera phones at an empty street where they would see 5 or 6 Ford Ka chase cars whizzing towards them. I don't think there is a single person who went to watch James Bond QoS who wouldn't want to be able to show their friends the chasing cars whizzing down the road on their mobile...

To crunch some numbers... on the first weekend in the UK QoS took £15.5 million in revenue (about 2 million viewers)... can you imagine marketing being any more effective than this? ....2 million highly visible gadget fans out there on the streets having fun pointing their phones to show others the magic of the new Ford Ka!

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