A perfect example of the Sensory Appeal™ Wave applied to ambient advertising.  With smell being such a powerful emotional and physiological trigger, I can’t believe this is only one of the first outdoor billboards that uses this technology.  The mind, however, boggles at where this could go… let’s just hope a detergent company doesn’t inflict smelly socks on us!

Her tattoos have brushstrokes and warm color; she works with a pallet that evokes thoughts of paintings rather than needles and tattoo guns. Her designs would be as much at home within a frame or on a wall as on a forearm or shoulder.

This is a great example on how simply looking at something differently can throw an entire industry into a different light.

Nintendo has set the rumor mill and tech pipeline rumbling with the talks of the Nintendo 3DS, a 3D enhanced Nintendo DS handheld. And while I don’t want to really talk about the 3DS, it’s what made me start thinking about sensory trends.

When the Wii launched, the idea of playing videogames with movement was revolutionary. We hadn’t seen the technology, the game play, or that level of interactivity before. You couldn’t find one on a store shelf for nearly two years. I even waited in line for twelve hours on launch day in November.

But how many people still actively play theirs? Although official numbers don’t exist, gaming site polls do suggest that people are slowly abandoning the once revolutionary console, and although there’s a thousand nuances as to why, I honestly think it boils down to sensory boredom.

Sure, it’s fun to play games that require motion when you’re with a bunch of people. You all look kind of silly, make comments and laugh at each others play styles and generally take it all in for a good time. But when you’re sitting home alone, flailing your arms about on the couch to get an extra life just seems a bit goofy.

I myself have moved on, I’m too much of a core gamer to really get into that. But besides that, I wonder if the rest of America has moved on as well. Sony and Microsoft are developing motion gaming, but it seems now everyone is hyping up 3D. It’s as if we’ve gotten bored with motion control and already moved on to the next bit of technological wonder.

Which brings me to the 3DS again. If we’re all really just bandwagon from new tech to new tech, how long will 3D truly last? We reported it in 2007 from CES, then again in 2008. I have a 3D render setup for gaming on my PC, it’s fun from time to time but nothing extraordinary.

And maybe we hit the peak of extraordinary too soon. We fizzled out on motion control long before we could see the peak, and perhaps that’s what we’ll get out of Sony and Microsoft. But with Nintendo pioneering into 3D gaming, I wonder if we’ll get too mainstream and too burnt out on it to fully enjoy it. We already have movies in 3D, soon we’ll have cable. What happens when we get tired of it, and more importantly; what will be bandwagon to next?

Just the idea of this kitchen is revolutionary; think about it- simply the idea of a kitchen has stagnated for about the last 50 years in that you’ve never really seen or heard of any new leaps forward in design for the everyday household cooking area. About the only thing we have progressed has been storage space. This kind of vision makes me optimistic for future home design and functional, tactile apparati. We would be so lucky if everyone strove for this kind of progress, rather than simply improving on the status quo.

This is the stuff the dreams of the future are made of.

There is another explanation.

It’s because we have been subjected to a decades worth of World War 2 dramas, Historical epics, actual war, scandals and 3 different flavors of both Law&Order and CSI. That we want something else should be a bit of a given. We do not want the gritty and dark, but the lush and colorful.The immense.The immersive.The heroic.

Across media outlets we’re seeing a revival of…well…..lightness. In the comics industry the ‘Big Two’ (DC Comics, Marvel Entertainment) are both bracing themselves for an end to the grim and gritty age of comics that have prevailed since the 80s. Marvel is calling it “The Heroic Age” and DC is calling it “Brightest Day.”

The Big Screen has also been hurtling towards a brighter era, evolving past rain soaked streets, ‘tortureporn,’ dark and moody anti-heroes and grim futures. They’re starting to show a penchant for brighter color palettes and epic, heroic stories- not the least of which is an effect of several entertainment industries starting to bleed over into each other (namely Movies, Video Games and Comics.) We’ll still see movies with roots in history (Take Clash of the Titans or The Lighting Thief) but they swerve off into heroic epics or urban fantasy, respectively; and yes, of course we’ll still have grim and gritty movies for the next 8 years or so, but that’s only because the movie industry tends to be about 10 years behind literary entertainment.

Music sales have shown consumers are buying up more country music than ever- and that’s not to say rough-and-tumble-I-killed-a-man-just-watch-him-die country is selling. It’s this new amalgamation of pop starlets and country that is proving to be light hearted and easy for the masses to connect to with the current global state of affairs. People are downtrodden, jobless, broke and despairing-They want something that will pick them up, dust them off and show them that hey, maybe everything isn’t so bad, and sure, you’ll make it through this.

Even video games, whose leading sales were held for the last two years by the family-friendly and casual gamer embracing Nintendo Wii, shows that the average consumer enjoys bright, lighthearted fare.

Companies have an opportunity to embrace this and show their consumers that they understand their plight and are willing to meet them on their own terms. Fear and Paranoia no longer need to be a brand message.

However, something very interesting has surfaced out of CES from SONY, a new technology for thier televisions called “Distance Alert”. Essentially, you TV will have a camera in it that detects where everyone in the room is. If someone is too close, the television goes to a blank screen and tells you to back up, and if you don’t move at least a meter back the video won’t come back on.

This also adjusts itself for the amount of people in the room, and can alter the lighting from the unit as well as the sound output, giving a more balanced feeling in case, like some people, you all happen to be clustered to one side of the couch. This way the sound balances out for the viewers.

Of course, there’s no detail of pricing unless you can call “very expensive” a price. But a model with these features will be available sometime this year.

I think this sort of progress is important for television and surround sound. I absoutely hate having to reconfigure the sound just because someone is shuffled off to the side of the couch or one person can’t hear well. And something else I think this will put an end stamp on is sitting a foot away from the TV pretending the screen is way bigger than it is. (I know I’m not the only person that did this as a kid.)

But from a sensory point of view, having your television automatically adjust settings based on people in the room is a wonderful concept. Especially if in the future it can be set up for different types of movies and progressively change soundscapes based on what’s happening on screen.

So in response to this Radio Shack has decided to throw a big event with live music, 14 foot tall laptops and webcam broadcasts from New York to San Francisco and vice versa. The problem with this is that anyone could do it with a couple webcams, projectors and a big enough building to project onto. I do applaud them for recognizing the need for change and not just fading quietly into the night. It is definitely a step in the right direction- but they needed to really shake things up; instead of settling for ‘The Shack,’ they should have done away with the shack stigma all together. The first concrete evidence of this rebrand was leaked on a blurry cellphone camera. It’s like they know they need to change, but aren’t sure how or why.

Communities are stronger in ways that haven’t been seen in quite a while due to economic downturn and a greater feeling of global unification due to social technologies and web based communication.”Our Friends Call Us The Shack” is nice but still mired in a language that’s more at home in 1999. If Radio Shack had truly wanted to rebrand, they should have leaned more towards community and less towards bargain bin. The word and image association that is tightly intertwined with the word “shack” is not really desirable in today’s market- cheap, small, on the edge of society, barely held together and the B-52s- these are not things that denote an embrace of new media and technology. I realize that they’re trying to bank on brand association because Radio Shack does have a  legacy to an extent, but to be honest it’s not a brand legacy you can bank on.

Shed your skin Radio Shack. Embrace the new shiny future with a smile and a hug, and you just might come out of this okay.

Sure, there’s definitely potential danger of nicotine overdoses, but used responsibly by adult smokers and some may find the Orbs better for the environment and their lungs –after all, these pills melt in their mouth and won’t burn in their hands, or anyone elses’ nostrils for that matter. Treehugger quotes that “the EPA estimates second hand smoke kills as many as 50,000 Americans each year”.

Our Flexible Flux wave represents those looking for equilibrium in their products and lifestyle, a give and take that represents a desire to be better without giving up all the bad. A more environmentally friendly tobacco product that’s less harmful to others directly around you might prove to be quite attractive for many smokers. Available in cinnamon and mint the RJ Reynolds Company is test marketing Camel Orbs in Portland, Indianapolis, and Columbus, Ohio with plans on introducing Camel Sticks and Camel Strips later this year. If the product takes off, we don’t doubt the human truth of “wanting some good stuff even in my bad stuff” might have something to do with it. Either way, we’ll be keeping our eye out on this one…

While this pharmacy might not be intensifying the experience of taking medicine, its surely making it much more pleasurable! Targeting children and catering to adults with new textures, colors, and tastes gets to the heart of our Sensory Appeal™ Wave. “When you add a new sensation, it all seems new™,” and it certainly will for the next 150 mg of Ibuprofen I want to lick. And for a mere $5 bucks, I don’t mind paying a little extra more for shipping and handling.

Chromotherapy, sometimes called color therapy, is an alternative medicine method. It is claimed that a therapist trained in chromotherapy can use color and light to balance energy wherever a person’s body be lacking, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental.  Chromotherapists claim a scientific basis for their practice proposing that colors bring about emotional reactions in people.

Anyone who’s lit candles in the bathroom knows the bathing experience can be sexy or soothing.  Light is a huge part of “setting the scene” or ambiance.

I’m surprised it’s taken so long to combine it with a showerhead but I guess alot of good ideas are that way…

SENSORY APPEAL meets MOMENT MOMENTUM.  “Why didn’t I think of that!”