I passed this billboard last week and took a picture of it because it is so rarely seen bereft of advertising. When it is naked, it is not making money. It looked so peaceful, and novel, and I thought about where I was in the moment instead of what movie to watch next or which condominium to consider, or which perfume I might buy. It was breathing room.

And I had a strange fantasy: what if everyone pitched in and bought out all the ad space in Toronto and left it blank for one week? We could call it Tabula Rasa Week, which loosely translated means “blank slate” in Latin. It would be like São Palo, Brazil but less permanent. I understand that it would cost too much for individuals, but what if advertisers also got into it? Imagine being the first ad seen in the subway after a week of white walls? Their would be a much greater impact and interest, I’m sure. So advertisers could help pay for Tabula Rasa Week to get first dibs on the follow-up. It sounds anti-intuitive, but I know it would work (because it’s my fantasy).

Imagine, every year, around the first week of spring, that Toronto started the season fresh with white walls, billboards, digital displays, bus shelters, subway cars, you name it. Blank slates. It would be a great way to kick things off before the blur of tourist season and summer blockbusters and inventory sales. Tabula Rasa Week, the first week of Spring, no advertising. Who’s in?

Whether you agree with this cautionary tale or not, it cannot be denied that the Lorax takes a firm moral stance against tree-chopping. So it stand to reason that regardless of his ‘green message’, the Lorax would be firmly opposed to being a spokes-creature for a major corporation. He’s a mythical being, after all, charged with protecting the forest, not a shill for hire. What makes the Lorax unique is his persistant, uncompromising voice. He is incorruptible. He is a force older than nature. He is… selling printers? Printers that print paper made from trees? Are you serious?

I like the Dr. Seuss story: it’s a bit long and heavy handed, but it takes on greed and infinite growth by showing the possible consequences of selfish, amoral behaviour. And ironically, it is a book. Which, by it’s own nature, is printed. On paper. Made from trees. So the medium the message comes in arguably contradicts the point of the story. But even Seuss said that The Lorax is not about the immorality of lumbering (since he himself lived in a wooden house), it’s about battling greed. But let’s put all of that aside for a moment.

HP is an interesting and innovative company. They do good and not so good things, like most big corporations. Like many of their peers, they are attempting to ‘go green’ where it makes sense, as this video shows:

I commend them. I think that recycling, reducing energy use, and printing responsibly are all really good things. But what about this?:

The Lorax would never, ever say, “Print any website with ease!” That’s out of character, which is the greatest problem I have with this whole thing. Would a mythical creature tasked with protecting every living tree show you how easy it is to waste paper by printing something that is already digital? Never. It would make a lot more sense (but still be corporately annoying) if the Lorax was paid by Adobe to push PDFs, or by Xerox to sell digital photocopying, or by Apple to hawk the iPad. But no matter how great and sustainable and carbon-friendly HP is, it doesn’t make sense for the Lorax to sell printers. It doesn’t make sense for the Lorax to sell anything. Period.

It’s absurd to imagine that the Lorax would ever sell a car as “Truffula-Tree Friendly”, not even a Mazda CX-5 with Skyactiv Technology. He wouldn’t approve of roads going through his protected forests, either.

But since the block-busting movie came out, the formerly uncompromising and morally untouchable Lorax, the mystical creature who ‘speaks for the trees’, the quasi-anti-capitalist, now also speaks for HP, Mazda, Comcast, Target, Pottery Barn Kids, Whole Foods, IHOP… around 70 brands in total. That’s a lot of compromising for one previously incorruptible creature. I understand that it helps pay for the movie, it promotes ‘green’ behaviour at a superficial level, it creates a shallow awareness of the environment, and it sells a few products. So who’s really getting hurt? Only Dr. Seuss’ legacy.

The book, The Lorax, was an answer to Dr. Seuss’ “frustration at the overconsumption he found in his community”. He wanted to create a cautionary, anti-pollution, anti-greed tale that was inspired by a trip he took to Africa’s Serengeti. It was never about selling pancakes and printers. It was about a Spirit who was above materialism.

Again, regardless of your capitalist leanings, the real crime here is using a character inappropriately. Using the Lorax to sell products is like using Babe to sell bacon, or Fantastic Mr. Fox to sell fur. Plugging the Lorax into our traditional marketing machinations compromises the integrity of Seuss’ intended story. It doesn’t make sense, it only makes cents.

For the record: I took my kids to see the Lorax last night and they absolutely loved it.

UPDATE: An article by FastCompany called “THE HORRIBLE MARKETING CAMPAIGN FOR THE LORAX JUST GETS WORSE” echoes and expands on the appropriateness of the Lorax selling cars to children.

A few months ago I had an opportunity to sit down with a few smart people (Demi Kandylis, Shawn Pucknell, Scott Suthren, Dré Labre) and we hashed out a preferred model for how a new type of conference could work. We didn’t want it to be completely unstructured, like an un-conference. And we didn’t want it to be a rigid schedule of rapid-fire presentations. We wanted a short, succinct presentation like TED, but then we wanted to have time for a reaction and conversation: a real discussion about what had been said and how it might impact us all.

Conferensation: Another questionable hybrid word (like phygital) that combines the speaking power of a conference with the intimacy and exploration of a conversation.

Observation should be followed by application. In other words, if you tell me your concept (observation), then show me how to use it in my life (application). In my creative workshops, I split the class into smaller groups and ask them to tackle specific problems, which are then presented back to everyone. Can this model be duplicated in a conference? Can a conference become a conversation?

We’ll soon find out. Next Friday, October 14th, marks the first ETA (Emerging Technology and Advertising).

We invited 7 diverse and challenging speakers (see above) to break us out of the echo chamber, as well as creative and strategic leaders in the advertising universe to lend their thoughts and opinions. Each speaker presents on a challenging topic (for roughly half-an-hour), ending with a challenge to the audience (like, “How might agencies be transformed if consumers paid for the ads?”). The speaker then joins the audience for a 20 minute discussion about this challenge. All the speakers will be participating with the audience all day, distributed and sitting at the various attendees tables, and participating directly with the attendees in the conversations.

And I get the enviable job of hosting the entire day: introducing the event, the speakers, interviewing some of them, and posing the questions to the crowd.

If you are interested in the future of advertising, but are sick of the marketing echo chamber of social media experts and phygital services, you don’t want to miss this ETA. How does magic, neuroscience, graffiti, home broadcasting studios, memes, or culture interact with the latest technology? How will this play out for companies, brands, consumers, and ad agencies? These topics (and more!) will be presented and discussed.

You go to a concert. You’re given a free poster. Small print on the poster suggests you place it on a wall facing a webcam for added effect. You mount the poster and record a short video of you reviewing the concert. What you don’t know is that it contains an augmented reality marker – a simple fiducial that can be used as a point of reference for computer software to insert or embed digital imagery that wasn’t there before. This marker might look like an icon, a logo, or a simple QR code. In this example, it is the black Warner Brothers logo on a white square background.

The software reading the marker is built into popular media upload sites like flickr and YouTube. It works on both photographs and video. When a marker is recognized, a simple calculation is made based on its size and angle, and a limited ad field is created. In this case, the ad field is the size of the poster. Since the poster is mostly black, it is easier for the software to effectively mask the area and appear ‘behind’ other objects.

When your video is displayed, contextual ads are embedded seamlessly into the background. They change depending on who is watching the video, and at what time. Placing these ads in situ is far more effective than overlays because the content appears naturally in the environment. And if the ad is related to the original content (i.e.the Green Day poster) and the audience (people who want to watch you review the Green Day concert), than it should theoretically be more powerful. In this example your Green Day poster becomes an announcement that the band is making a local appearance next week: local to the person viewing the video.

Rolling over the limited ad field turns off the mask, and brings the announcement into the foreground where all of it can be read. Clicking on it opens a new window with further information.

As time goes on, the old poster from the last album is digitally updated when a newer album is released. Your paper poster has essentially become it’s own electronic billboard, thanks to the magic of augmented reality.

But who controls this new display area? Is it owned by you, the content creator? Is it owned by the online service providers, the Googles and the Yahoos? Or is it owned by the traditional companies who distributed the physical originals? Ultimately it will be all three— in a complicated revenue sharing agreement. Since Reprise Records distributes Green Day, and is owned by Warner Music Group, Warner Brothers might want to show some of their other media properties. If a big movie release is pending, WB could choose to convert all their augmented reality property to movie posters. Flickr’s serving software and augmented reality presentation layer would need to be updated, and you would need to click a checkbox allowing WB to present action movies. Now, instead of an old concert poster, there’s a promotion for the new Sherlock Holmes movie. You would be paid by the view, and even more by the click. Or something like that.

And what about three-dimensional objects? In both pictures and videos, the augmented reality marker can calculate perspective, and therefore embedded 3D objects into a scene. But they need a bit more space. Ideally, the software would look for a smooth, uniform colour and expand the mask beyond the borders of the original poster. In this case the expanded ad field takes over the entire wall. Now there’s a lot more space to insert a realistic object into the scene.

The next trick is to match the lighting. In this example, an IKEA shelf (complete with books and magazines) is embedded in place of the band poster. IKEA would have to pay Warner Brothers (both of which pay flickr, of course, who hopefully then pays you!) for the right to advertise these shelves to your audience.

Rolling over the shelf results in catalogue information being displayed. Clicking could then pause the video, but allow you to inspect the shelf in three dimensions, including zooming in for more detail. (I don’t know why you’d want to zoom into the details of an IKEA shelf, but it was a conveniant example.)

Companies will need to encourage users to display or capture these augmented reality markers in their pictures and videos. Revenue sharing and giving the users some control over what is displayed would go a long way. Imagine an Augmented Adsense of sorts, where you could set parameters over what type of images are embedded, and track how much you earn.

Then you could choose and change the poster you wanted to have hanging on the wall behind you, without leaving your chair, and get paid to do it.

Augmented Reality Markers will find their way onto T-shirts, changing the way we see concert footage. They will find their way on to cars and buses, changing the way we see streaming traffic camera feeds. They will find their way onto the logo-dotted backdrops of red carpet galas, so that photo-opps of celebrities become even richer marketing opportunities. They will find their way onto signage at popular vacation destinations so your family travel photos become ads for future vacationers…

The possibilities are endless, but the plausibility is up to you. Do you look forward to this new potential revenue stream, or are you repulsed by the idea of marketers placing ads deep inside your own creations? Please discuss.