Passengers leaning their head against the window will "hear" adverts "coming from inside the user's head", urging them to download the Sky Go app. The proposal involves using bone conduction technology, which is used in hearing aids, headphones and Google's Glass headset, to pass sound to the inner ear via vibrations through the skull.
A video for the Talking Window campaign released by Sky Deutschland and ad agency BBDO Germany states: "Tired commuters often rest their heads against windows. Suddenly a voice inside their head is talking to them. No one else can hear this message."
The voice comes from a Sky-branded transmitter made by Audiva that is attached to the train window.
BBDO spokesman Ulf Brychcy told the BBC: "If our customer Sky Deutschland agrees, we will start with the new medium as quickly as possible.
Great news for schizophrenics
Sky Deutschland to broadcast adverts directly into train passengers' heads
Tags: doomed, spam
Current Music: The Pixies -- Bone Machine ♬
9 Responses:
Oh good. I thought it was just me.
They are specifically targeting tired commuters. That seems so rude that they must have some specific ulterior reason like wanting to keep people awake so they don't miss their stops.
Huh? The ulterior motive is to make money at their
customer'suser's expense."Tired commuters" don't miss their stops. I've seen people go from snoring to stepping off the train in the time it takes for the doors to fully open. Confused tourists miss their stops, and they're not the target audience. The people being targeted are the daily commuters, who could get to/from work drunk, high, asleep, passed out, and even if they were dead at the time.
They're targeting people whose eyes are closed and therefore are not susceptible to visual advertising, which is everywhere. Standard audio advertising kind of doesn't exist because of constant train/stop announcements.
People close their eyes and rest their heads on windows largely to forget about the smelly freaks next to them; or to minimize the humdrum of the reality that they can't afford to live near work, much less hire a chauffeur. Monetizing that escapism is horrible.
Whomever implements this needs to be stabbed in the face.
You're right that some remnant instinct means commuters, unlike both tourists and drunk people on the last train home, rarely miss their stop. I think James was joking. It also helps that the real regulars (not me, I work from home most of the time) know one another well enough to nudge somebody who seems about to screw up this way.
However in my area at least, the commuter trains don't have "constant train/stop announcements". Any guard who has been on the job more than a week switches the automatic ones off for the rush hours and makes only a handful of manual announcements. Commuter trains are also disproportionately likely to run non-stop to or from some outlying place, to prevent customers who live only a short distance away from filling long distance trains, so that my preferred train home hurtles toward the setting sun for an hour without even the plaintive bleeping of a soon-to-close door.
I foresee that interrupting this silence with adverts would go very badly for the operating company that first dared to try it, whether the adverts were via bone conduction or over the PA system. Among the commuters on the trains I use are not only powerful business leaders, but also politicians whose constituencies lie along the route.
One of the biggest insults of this is they plan to implement this horror show with all the innovation of "go download our app!"
If they wanted to crowdsource a Pandora station by playing music and downvoting any song that made people wake up--or vice-versa--I'd at least call it art.
Sorry, stabbing audio-cock-waveforms are not implemented in this version of the software.
Blipverts?
Instead of ads, the announcements should say things like "If you're going to rest your head here then please remember to wipe that greasy smudge off the window before you leave."
"Imagine how many penises have touched the exact spot your forehead is touching right now. "