Pah this idea is so simple and great it makes me jealous.

Agency DDB Stockholm created an interactive billboard game for McDonald’s where menu items bounce and fly all over the screen. If you managed to be quick enough to snap one with you’re phone, then you get it for free at the nearby McDonald’s!

How do they avoid cheating I hear you ask? I don’t know, but it’s still nice.

[Via Adfreak]

Remember that Nike billboard in Times Square where you could create your very own trainer in real time on the giant screen? Well it looks like Toyota are using that exact same space for their new Prius Experience iPhone application.

The application itself allows you to explore the Prius interior, play mini games, interact with Prius print ads using the camera as well as draw. This campaign centers around the drawing function where you can draw directly onto the environment of a moving Prius, it then reacts to the shapes and objects drawn.

For example the app may ask you to ‘draw a tree’, then once you’ve drawn it with your finger, your tree drops into the background behind the moving Prius.

Once you finish your lovely finger drawing, you’ll be presented with the option to submit it to the digital display in Times Square. All drawings are updated in real time, you can check out the webcam of Times Square here. I’ve been watching for about 5 minutes and haven’t seen any drawings of genitals so I’m guessing it’s moderated.

If you’re wondering what the hell finger drawings have to do with the Prius, it’s all part of Toyota’s overall theme which is ““Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine”. That totally explains it.

I love the ability of using a iPhone app to interact with the digital billboards, it can create a massive wow factor for a product or brand. The thing is, this campaign hasn’t really wowed me, I feel like it’s a lost opportunity to do something really cool with that giant screen but instead you have some quick UGC doodle thing that doesn’t quite make sense.

The press release is here.

Check out this campaign for the pension company AMF which went live last year. Its aim was to encourage young people to start thinking about their pensions sooner rather than later.

How did they manage to do this? By ‘ageing’ your face of course!

Outdoor billboards and TV adverts prompted the viewer to send a picture of themselves via MMS to a shortcode. A few minutes later the sender receives a picture of their face showing how they would look if they were 70 years old.

Some outdoor ads were made using lenticular printing which allows the image of a young man to morph as you move your viewing angle.

The campaign was well supported by online, with users being able to upload their pictures via the website as well as banners driving traffic. I’m pretty impressed with the consistent message across all the different types of media, especially the TV ad which featured famous young Swedish people, portrayed as seniors.

This campaign makes it fun to engage with AMF and share the ‘aged’ picture with friends. Although it doesn’t really address the reasons why young people like me don’t put money into a pension (probably not the objective anyway), it works great for brand awareness.

Results for the campaign were very impressive with 322,946 pictures sent via MMS which exceeded targets by 546%. Advertising awareness increased by 33% and preference of AMF quadrupled during campaign.

This picked up the ‘Best Mobile Marketing Campaign’ at The Epica Awards for the agency Forsman & Bodenfors.

What do you get when you take the Schiesser Bluetooth underwear campaign and use SMS instead? You get this ad from Axe deodorant (or Lynx if you’re in the UK). Click to enlarge.

The print ad displays a picture of a model looking like she could be naked and a call to action. The message says “To complete this ad send Axe to 2345 after 9pm”, once you send the text you get a picture message (MMS) back with the rest of the ad showing the model in her underwear. Great, so you paid 11p to basically look at a Marks & Spencer’s advert.

Although I think only allowing the user to text-in after 9pm is admirable, it surely doesn’t need to be done for this ad seeing as the reveal is something you would see on the front of a few magazines in a shop. What if you saw the ad at 4pm? Would you really go back five hours later?

The same sort of thinking applies to this outdoor ad where the light behind the poster comes on a night to reveal the bottom half of the model. However this one has no mobile call to action meaning if your kid is walking back late from football practice, well that’s tough because they are gonna see some skin.

The agency behind these ideas is Lowe Gingko.

Passers-by can text the number displayed on the billboard to activate the poster which then starts releasing actual smoke from the cars exhaust pipes with the rear lights switching on too! The experience then continues by the user receiving a text with the link to the Honda mobile site (www.hondaireland.mobi), where they can then find out more about the car and find the nearest dealer for a test drive.

The Bluetooth enabled billboard also sent out ringtones to people nearby of the Honda Civic R engine roar. Nice! Although could to have been confined to the

It’s a really innovative installation and probably bloody expensive. I’m glad Honda had the courage to go all the way, this definitely sets an example for what can be done with outdoor and mobile.