Tag: Shanghai

The Moby Mart

The Moby Mart is set to turn every parking space in the world into a new 24-hour store. About the size of a small bus, the store carries a selection of everyday products like snacks, meals, basic groceries, and even shoes. To use the store, you have to download an app, register as a customer and use your smartphone to unlock the doors.

The store is currently undergoing trials in Shanghai, thanks to a collaborative effort between Swedish startup named Wheelys Inc and China’s Hefei University. For now, the trial prototype is stationery i.e. based permanently in a carpark. But the company says that it is currently working with tech companies to develop its self-driving technology as seen in the below video.

For more information visit www.themobymart.com.

Porsche 911 Birthday Song

For the 50th anniversary of the Porsche 911, Shanghai based ad agency Fred & Farid recorded the sounds from all 7 generations of 911’s. The sounds were then made availble on the web via a musical keyboard, where Porsche fans from China and around the world could login and compose their own tunes.

The official “Birthday Song tune” from Porsche received over 6.9 million video views and the musical keyboard was played over 1.5 million times.

The Duel: Timo Boll vs. Kuka Robot

Kuka is the Chinese market leader in industrial robotics. To provide a realistic vision of what robots can be capable of in the future and at the same time celebrate the opening of their new robotics factory in Shanghai, they got German Table Tennis champion and former world number one Timo Boll to take on a Kuka robot in what was dubbed as the first ever man versus robot (arm) table tennis match.

The match took place on March 11th in Sofia, Bulgaria. Since then the results of the match have been sliced and diced into the below final cut video that celebrates the inherent speed, precision, and flexibility of Kuka’s industrial robots in tandem with Boll’s electrifying and tactical prowess in competition.

A making of video is also available at the official campaign microsite www.kuka-timoboll.com.

The Stolen Phone Tour

There are many sources for people to find things to see and do in Shanghai. So Time Out magazine decide to promote its Shanghai city information guide via a marketing stunt created with the help of Energy BBDO China.

The insight for the stunt came from the product itself i.e. Time Out Shanghai digs deeper into the city to find hidden gems that might not otherwise be discovered. To demonstrate this Time Out purposely “lost” a cell phone on a random street in Shanghai. Any passerby who picked it up was in for a suprise, as to return the phone they had to get into a London Taxi that pulled up infront of their location. Here is a video recording of the entire stunt through specially placed hidden cameras…

Shop and Pay on-the-go

In June last year I had covered how Homeplus in South Korea had created a virtual store in a subway station in order to blend into people’s everyday lives. Since then Procter & Gamble has set up the same virtual stores in four of the busiest subway stations in Prague and Chinese online supermarket Yihodian has also borrowed the idea and installed virtual supermarkets in 15 subway stations around Shanghai.

This year PayPal has also launched the same QR code shops in 15 Singapore subway stations and enabled commuters to buy Valentines gifts from eight different retailers by simply scanning the QR code on their smartphone…

In USA, PayPal has eliminated the need of a wallet or phone altogether. In a partnership with Home Depot, PayPal has begun to roll out an in-store service that enables payments at stores using only a mobile phone number and a pin number at checkout…

Money is truly being re-imagined and contactless payments is going to be a norm by late 2012.