Is Ogilvy’s Color Sensitive Billboard for IBM Changing The Game of Advertising?

At the end of April, Ogivly Digital, the digital team over at Ogilvy & Mather, tweeted about a new project the company is working on: a color sensitive outdoor billboard for IBM for their Smarter Planet campaign.  The Smarter Planet campaign was created to encourage leaders of all industries to use the technology we have before us in order to create positive growth.  Color sensitive means that the billboard will have a built-in camera that detects the different color clothing of someone who stands in front of it, and the billboard will change colors based on that color.

The reasoning behind this is simple.  Color is a very simple, yet very persuasive thing when it comes to buying decisions.  There is a whole psychology to it!  Different consumers respond to different colors in different ways, for a variety of different reasons.  I saw this not only in the retail industry where I worked for a number of years, but learned about it in a Consumer Behavior class while in college.  When you walk around a store, there are specific reasons why certain colors are placed next to each other, why certain brands come before others.  Nothing happens by accident.

Instead of this psychology of color starting its influence through in-store displays, IBM is trying to get this going in an actual advertisement.  They call this “a smarter supply chain.” Check out the video about the billboard below:

These new smart billboards are definitely a game changer in the advertising and retail industries.  Outdoor and out-of-home advertising might be the toughest, most expensive medium to create for.  Just reading about this new billboard was enough to drive me to IBM’s website about the new Smarter Planet campaign to see what it’s all about.  If I saw this billboard in person and saw it changing colors as different people walked past right before my eyes, I’d probably whip out my iPhone and look it up right there.

If other companies started using this smart technology in their ads, I’m not sure if this alone would convince me to buy a product or service, but it would definitely spark my interest and do some research.  More importantly, I would remember this brand for using innovative technology from the very beginning.

IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign takes a positive running start with its color sensitive advertisement.  How do you think this will change the advertising and retail industries in the future? Will industries other than retail benefit from this color sensitive marketing?

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