Category: Shopper Marketing

Playable Music Posters: Tap to Hear

Borders between media are blurring. Books are being swiped, magazines digitally scrolled and even in print one can today occasionally navigate. So it is no surprise when regular paper posters come to life on being combined with bluetooth, conductive ink, sensors and speakers.

Paper as an interface, not a surface

The mechanism is straightforward. Conductive ink turns parts of a poster into touch-sensitive zones. Sensors detect taps, knocks, or touch patterns. Bluetooth and small speakers, or a paired phone, provide the audio output. The poster stops being an image and starts behaving like a controller.

In public retail and event environments, touch-based posters only work when people feel safe and permitted to interact.

In consumer marketing and live environments, interactive print means print that senses touch and triggers a digital response. It is a way to turn passive out-of-home into a touchpoint that behaves like a device.

Beck’s Playable Poster

Looking for an innovative way to mark New Zealand’s Music Month, Beck’s partnered with Shine to design a playable poster. Using conductive ink and speakers the posters were made playable with a simple tap of the finger.

The Sound of Taste

Herb and spice brand Schwartz is all about flavour. So to dramatise flavour which was invisible and silent, they got print tech collective Novalia and ad agency Grey London to collaborate on an interactive poster. The poster used conductive ink to turn the surface area of the paper into an interactive interface that also connected to the viewers smartphone to deliver a richer experience.

Change the tune

Agency Republic from UK created a poster with an embedded sensor which when knocked changed the song being played on the agencies shared sound system.

Why these work: the demo happens in your hands

Each example keeps the interaction legible. Tap to trigger sound. Touch to explore flavour as audio. Knock to skip a track. The poster does not ask people to learn a new behavior. It hijacks an existing one, touching a surface, and rewards it instantly.

Extractable takeaway: When you want print to feel alive, make one obvious gesture trigger one immediate reward, and let the brand message ride on that moment of viewer control.

The real question is whether the interaction earns enough memorability to justify the added production. If the payoff is not instant and on-message, do not build it. Because the audience causes the outcome with a simple touch, the message sticks.

Practical patterns for interactive print

  • One interaction, one reward. Do not overload the surface with too many modes.
  • Make the “how” obvious. A tap zone, a knock cue, a simple instruction. Then deliver instantly.
  • Use phones as infrastructure. If pairing adds depth, let the phone do what paper cannot, audio, saving, sharing.
  • Design for public confidence. People will only touch a poster if it feels safe, clean, and socially acceptable.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “conductive ink” doing in these posters?

It creates touch-sensitive paths on paper, so taps or touches can be detected and mapped to actions like playing audio.

Do these posters need special printing like QR codes?

They still require specialist production, but the interaction can be integrated invisibly into the design. The poster itself becomes the control surface rather than carrying visible codes.

Why add Bluetooth to print?

Bluetooth allows paper to trigger sound through a phone or external speaker, which is essential when the content is audio or when you want richer layers than print can carry.

What makes an interactive poster feel “worth it” to a passer-by?

Immediate payoff and low friction. If the result is instant and satisfying, people will try it. If setup or pairing is slow, they walk past.

Where does this format fit best?

In environments where people have dwell time and curiosity, festivals, transit hubs, retail windows, office interiors, and brand experiences where interaction is socially normal.

Polar Beer: Cell Phone Nullifier

There is a specific kind of modern annoyance. You go out with friends, and ten minutes later the table is lit by phone screens instead of conversation.

Polar, a regional Brazilian beer brand, decides to treat that as a solvable problem. If phones steal the night, then the beer should give it back.

A beer cooler that changes the rules of the table

The mechanism is a physical prop with a blunt promise. A special Polar cooler is described as blocking 3G, 4G, Wi Fi, and GSM signals for devices within roughly a five-foot radius. Order Polar. Get served in the cooler. Watch the room look up.

In bar and nightlife settings, the strongest behavior-change ideas work when they attach to an existing ritual and alter it with minimal effort from the audience.

Because the cooler makes the phone temporarily useless at the table, conversation becomes the path of least resistance.

Why it lands, even if people hate it for a minute

This plays with a familiar tension. Everyone complains about “phubbing,” the habit of snubbing people in front of you by focusing on your phone, but nobody wants to be the first person to say “can we put phones away.” The cooler does the awkward social work on behalf of the group.

Extractable takeaway: If a social norm is breaking down, redesign the environment so the better behavior becomes the default. Remove the need for a lecture, and replace it with a small constraint that everyone experiences equally.

The brand benefit is also clean. Polar is not asking for attention. It is buying it back for you, then sitting at the center of the moment it created.

What the stunt is really selling

On the surface it is a gadget. Underneath it is a positioning move. Polar equates itself with real-world connection and the kind of night people say they want, even when their hands keep reaching for the screen.

The real question is whether you can earn attention by subtracting distraction, not by adding more stimulation.

This is a smart positioning move because it delivers the promise through the ritual, not through a slogan.

It is also a reminder that “anti-tech” can be a tech story. The cooler is not anti phone as an identity. It is pro conversation as an outcome.

Steal this for phone-free nights

  • Target the moment, not the attitude. Fix the table behavior, not the entire relationship with smartphones.
  • Use a prop that belongs in the setting. A cooler at a bar feels natural. A lecture does not.
  • Make it equal. The constraint applies to everyone in range, so it feels like a shared game, not a personal attack.
  • Build a story people retell in one sentence. “The beer that makes your phone stop” spreads fast.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Polar’s “Cell Phone Nullifier”?

It is a branded beer cooler concept described as cutting off nearby phone connectivity, so people ordering Polar are nudged into talking to each other instead of scrolling.

Why does blocking the signal work as a behavior-change tactic?

It removes the temptation rather than arguing with it. By changing the environment, it turns “I should put my phone away” into “my phone is not part of the table right now.”

What is the core creative mechanism here?

A familiar bar object is redesigned to enforce a social norm. The product ritual, ordering beer and receiving it in a cooler, becomes the delivery system for the idea.

How can brands adapt this without feeling preachy?

Focus on shared benefits and shared participation. Make the intervention playful and collective, and keep the user action simple and voluntary.

What is the biggest risk if you copy this idea?

If the constraint feels forced or punitive, it becomes the story instead of the conversation it was meant to protect. Keep it lightweight, contextual, and easy to opt into.

A New Kind of Catalog 2: IKEA’s AR catalog

Last year Ikea re-imagined their catalog via a visual recognition app that brought its pages to life through inspirational videos, designer stories, “x-ray” views that peek inside furniture, and more.

Now, for the 2014 IKEA catalogue, they push that idea into something far more useful: you can place virtual furniture directly into your home by putting the printed IKEA catalogue where you want the furniture to appear, then viewing the result through your phone or tablet using augmented reality (AR), meaning digital objects layered onto a live camera view of your real space.

The simple mechanic that makes a paper catalogue feel like a showroom

The experience design is almost disarmingly straightforward. The catalogue is not just media. It becomes the physical reference point that tells the app where “here” is, and roughly how big “life-size” should be. Because that reference point anchors position and scale, the placement feels believable enough to support a buying decision.

  • Open the IKEA catalogue app on a phone or tablet.
  • Scan a supported product page.
  • Close the catalogue and place it on the floor (or surface) where you want the item to “live.”
  • Watch the furniture appear in-context, then explore alternatives by browsing within the app.

In global retail and consumer brands, this kind of print-to-mobile AR, where the printed catalogue acts as the marker for the AR view, works because it turns “can you picture it?” into “can you see it here?” at the exact moment people are deciding.

Why it lands: utility beats novelty

AR marketing often dies as a gimmick because the “reveal” is entertaining but irrelevant. Here, the reveal is practical: scale, placement, and fit are exactly what shoppers worry about most.

Extractable takeaway: If emerging tech does not reduce a real decision friction, treat it as a distraction, not a strategy.

Even when the rendering is not perfect, the direction is clear. Reduce uncertainty. Help people make a confident choice. And if it cuts down on “it looked smaller online” returns, that utility is measurable, not just shareable.

What IKEA is really doing with this catalogue

This is a classic “bridge” play, a deliberate handoff between inspiration and purchase. IKEA keeps the reach and habit of a paper catalogue, then uses mobile interactivity to remove friction at the decision stage.

The real question is whether it removes enough doubt to change a purchase decision, not whether the AR looks impressive.

AR is worth investing in when it behaves like decision support, not when it just decorates a story.

It also quietly reinforces a brand position: IKEA is not only about affordable design. It is also about smart, accessible tools that help you plan and live better at home.

How to design an AR catalog people reuse

  • Make the printed piece part of the interface. Treat paper as a trigger, a marker, a controller. Not a dead-end.
  • Reward the scan with decision support. The “wow” should reduce doubt: sizing, configuration, compatibility, placement, or proof.
  • Design for fast repetition. The real value comes when people try multiple options in minutes, not once for curiosity.
  • Keep the action close to purchase. The best AR demos shorten the path from consideration to “yes” without feeling like a hard sell.

A few fast answers before you act

What is IKEA doing differently with the 2014 catalogue?

They extend the catalogue beyond scan-to-watch content by letting people place virtual furniture into their real home environment using AR.

How does the AR placement work in simple terms?

You scan a supported page, place the physical catalogue where you want the item to appear, and the app overlays a furniture model into the live camera view.

Why is a printed catalogue useful in an AR flow?

The catalogue becomes a physical reference point for position and approximate scale, making placement feel more believable than a free-floating 3D object.

What business problem does this help solve?

It reduces purchase hesitation by letting people judge fit and placement earlier, and it can help lower the risk of dissatisfaction and returns.

What’s the key lesson for marketers using emerging tech?

Build the experience around utility that supports a decision. Novelty may earn a try. Utility earns repeat use and moves people toward purchase.