Emerging Trends 36 | SunMatrix Ramble

Sveriges Radio: Swedish Radio Plus

Second screen usually broadcasts at you. This one lets you write back.

Right now, most second screen experiences push content to the user but do very little by way of two-way interactivity. That however is slowly changing and can already be seen in the TV based second screen experiences from Heineken and Chevy.

Now in one of the first examples of second screen experiences that I have seen with radio, Swedish ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors attempts to make the whole radio experience more visual, interactive, and shareable.

The mechanic: a radio timeline you can enrich in real time

With a new player called “Swedish Radio Plus”, listeners on computers and mobile devices can follow a program and simultaneously add videos, pictures, comments, maps, and polls to the radio timeline. Posts made on this custom timeline are also shared to the user’s Facebook profile, linking back to that exact moment in the program.

The player itself was reported as an HTML5-first build, designed to treat radio like a stream with attachable context instead of a one-way feed.

In public service media, second-screen design only earns attention when it adds context without breaking the core listening habit.

Why it lands

This shifts the second screen from “companion content” to “companion conversation”. By companion conversation, I mean a shared layer where listeners can attach their own context to a live moment instead of only consuming publisher-supplied extras. The timeline makes the program feel like a living object. Something you can annotate, react to, and re-enter at a precise point later. It also turns sharing into a utility rather than a vanity action, because the shared link is anchored to a specific timestamp, not a generic show page. That works because a timestamped timeline gives every contribution a precise place, which makes interaction feel useful instead of noisy.

The real question is whether added context deepens listening or simply competes with it.

Extractable takeaway: If you want genuine interactivity, give listeners one shared artifact. A timeline. Then let them attach context to it in the moment, and make every contribution deep-link back to the exact point that triggered it.

What broadcasters can borrow

Make interaction additive, not distracting. Users should enrich the experience without being forced to stop listening.
Anchor everything to time. Timestamped posts are what make the experience replayable and shareable.
Let the audience do the contextual work. Photos, links, and comments often explain a moment faster than official companion content.
Design sharing as navigation. A shared post that jumps to the exact moment is more useful than “here’s the show”.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Swedish Radio Plus?

It is an interactive radio player concept that lets listeners add media and comments to a program timeline while listening, then share those timeline moments socially with deep links.

What makes it different from typical second screen experiences?

It supports two-way contribution. Listeners do not just receive extras. They can publish context into the timeline as the show plays.

Why is the timeline format important?

Because it creates a shared structure. Every comment, image, or poll has a precise home in time, which makes the experience navigable and re-usable.

What is the main benefit for broadcasters?

It increases engagement without needing more programming. The audience generates context and distribution around the existing show.

What is the main risk if you copy this model?

If the interaction flow is heavy or noisy, it competes with listening. The best version feels lightweight and optional, not mandatory.

Adshels with Difference: IKEA LEDshel and ANAR

Here are two adshel innovations currently doing rounds online. An adshel is a street shelter advertising unit, typically at a bus stop. Both use the media surface itself as the message, not just a place to hang a poster.

Ikea LEDshel

IKEA swapped the regular neon tubes found in adshels around Vienna with its LED range. The product becomes the medium, and the demonstration happens at full scale in the street. Credited to DDB Tribal Vienna, the move turns “better light” into something you can experience, not just read about.

Only for children

In an effort to give abused children a safer way to reach out for help, the Spanish organization Fundación ANAR created an ad that displays a different message to adults and children at the same time.

The poster uses a lenticular top layer to show different images at varying angles and heights. An adult sees the image of a sad child with the line: “sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.” A child sees bruises and a direct help message with a phone number. This work is widely credited to Grey Group España.

What makes these “adshels with difference”

The shared mechanism is simple: upgrade the shelter from a passive frame into an active communicator. One example changes the hardware so the ad site demonstrates the product. The other changes the optical layer so the message adapts to who is looking.

Because the shelter itself performs the claim, the viewer can grasp the argument in seconds, which is why these ideas travel in public space.

In European city out-of-home media, small physical changes to the site often persuade more powerfully than a clever headline alone.

The real question is whether your out-of-home idea still works when the media unit itself has to do the explaining.

These are the out-of-home ideas worth borrowing because the medium carries the proof, not just the copy.

Why it lands

It makes the proof unavoidable. IKEA does not claim “LED looks better.” It lets the street lighting show it. ANAR does not claim “victims can’t speak safely.” It builds a channel that protects the child in plain sight.

It respects context. Adshels sit in public space where attention is brief. Both ideas communicate at a glance, because the medium itself is doing part of the explanation.

It uses targeting without data. The lenticular execution “targets” by viewpoint and height, not cookies. It is a physical interface decision, not a digital one.

Extractable takeaway: Out-of-home innovations travel when the site behavior carries the argument. If the medium demonstrates the product, or adapts the message to the viewer’s vantage point, the campaign becomes self-explanatory and hard to ignore.

Borrowable adshel moves

Turn the placement into the demo. If the product has a sensory benefit, make the environment show it.
Use physical segmentation. Angle, distance, height, light, and motion can personalize a message without any personal data.
Design for public constraints. Fast comprehension wins. The structure should communicate before the copy finishes.
Let the medium do the persuasion. When the execution is the proof, the message needs fewer claims.

A few fast answers before you act

What is an “adshel” in this context?

A street shelter advertising unit, typically at bus stops, that combines a poster frame with lighting and protective glass.

What is the IKEA LEDshel idea actually demonstrating?

LED lighting quality in real conditions. The shelter itself becomes a live showroom for the light range.

How does the ANAR poster show two messages at once?

Through a lenticular layer that changes what is visible based on viewing angle and height, so adults and children see different visuals and text.

Why is this more effective than a standard awareness poster?

Because it delivers a help message to the child without alerting the accompanying adult, which is the real constraint in the situation.

What is the reusable principle across both examples?

Make the media unit behave like the idea. When the medium demonstrates, adapts, or protects, the campaign does not need heavy explanation.

Durex Fundawear

If t-shirts can be digitised, then why can’t underwear. Durex Australia has unveiled “Fundawear”, billed as a first-of-its-kind wearable electronic underwear concept that allows touch to be transferred over the internet while maintaining comfort, sexiness and flexibility. The idea is simple. People in long-distance relationships can tease, tickle and tantalise even when apart.

To replicate the nuances of touch, each garment houses touch technology that connects with a real-time server to communicate between touchscreen devices and the garments. Interaction happens through a smartphone interface, translating inputs into sensation on the connected wearable.

A prototype that behaves like a campaign

What makes this work stand out is the choice to launch as an experiment, not a finished product. Fundawear is framed as a prototype, which gives the brand permission to be bold, invite participation, and trigger debate, without pretending the tech is already mainstream.

Extractable takeaway: When a product concept is unfamiliar, framing it as a prototype lowers disbelief and lets curiosity do the distribution work.

The real question is whether people can understand the use case quickly enough to talk about it.

It also shifts the job of the communications. Instead of persuading people that “remote touch” is a good idea, it makes people imagine use cases. That imagination is the marketing engine.

How the technology story earns attention

The campaign leans on a clear mechanism. Touch input on a phone maps to specific zones, then the garment responds, creating a feedback loop, meaning the phone input and garment response feel connected in the same moment rather than as a delayed message.

When wearable technology is explained this clearly, it stops sounding like science fiction and starts sounding like an interface decision. That is when people share it.

In consumer innovation marketing, the leap from novelty to adoption happens when a physical interface makes a digital promise feel immediate, controllable, and consent-led.

Distribution strategy: invite the internet to co-author the idea

Fundawear is described as still in the experimental stage, with no confirmed release date at the time. But Durex uses that uncertainty as a hook. If you provide a creative reply to “How would you use Fundawear with your partner?” at the Durex Facebook page, you might win a free prototype.

That is a smart move. It turns the public into contributors, and it generates word of mouth that carries the concept further than a conventional product launch could.

What to steal if you are launching an unfamiliar product concept

Prototype publicly. Experiments can travel faster than “finished” products because people argue, imagine, and remix.
Explain the mechanism in one breath. If the audience cannot repeat how it works, they will not share it.
Design for participation. A prompt like “how would you use it?” converts curiosity into content.
Keep the tone playful, not clinical. For intimate categories, playfulness lowers the barrier to talk about it.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Fundawear, in plain terms?

Fundawear is an experimental wearable concept from Durex Australia. It pairs smart underwear with a smartphone interface so a partner can send touch inputs over the internet in real time.

What kind of technology does it rely on?

It relies on wearable haptics, meaning small actuators in the garment respond to signals from an app. A server connection synchronises inputs between two partners’ devices and garments.

Why launch a prototype instead of waiting for a finished product?

Because a prototype creates permission to experiment, earn press, and test cultural appetite. It also turns uncertainty into participation, which can generate more talk than a polished launch.

What is the biggest brand risk with intimate wearable tech?

Trust. The concept has to feel safe and consent-led, and the communication has to avoid any hint of surveillance or misuse. If trust breaks, the idea becomes a cautionary tale.

What is the core marketing lesson from Fundawear?

When the product is unfamiliar, the first job is not persuasion. It is making the mechanism and the imagined benefit instantly understandable, so people do the distribution for you.