There are some interesting billboards out there, but generally its not a medium you can get too engaging with. They’re big, seen by many and parades our “hit-centric” culture. But just as its all starting to blur into a white cloud, along comes Mini Cooper and their “Talking Billboards”. First things first though, they don’t actually talk like say Boony would, but they do spit out personalised messages to a legion of Mini drivers on the road.

The boards are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob. How do they know what messages to spit out you ask? Well, as much as we would like to say that the technology is an advanced mind reading application that works on brain waves, the boring truth is Mini owners were asked to fill out a questionaire about work and driving habits.

If you’re a Mini owner here in Oz and expecting these messages, keep waiting, it looks like these experiments are confined to the guinea pigs in New York, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco first. With “an ever-changing array of unique, personal, playful and unexpected messages”, mini are trying to encapsulate fun into theier marketing. Lets see how much fun it is when an over-excited driver forgets to brake around a corner because the board has just told her “Mary, turns are made to be carved!”

Safety issues aside, this is quite an interesting campaign, it createsevangelists with the “YOUvertising” approach and oozes a distinctive tribal feel, both of which we believe would add support to the brand. What we’d really like to know is the cost of each billboard, despite offical reports, we doubt it was a “modest” sum.

Sourced from The New York Times