Tag: sweden

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.

Volvo Keyless Cars

For decades, drivers have been accustomed to accessing and driving cars with physical keys. But no longer. In a ground-breaking move for the automotive industry, Volvo Cars plans to become the world’s first car manufacturer to offer cars without keys from 2017.

Volvo customers will be offered an application for their mobile phones to replace the physical key with a digital key. The innovative Bluetooth-enabled digital key technology, will offer Volvo customers far more flexibility, enabling them to benefit from entirely new ways to use and share cars.

The new Volvo app would enable the digital key on the customer’s mobile phone to do everything a physical key currently does, such as locking or unlocking the doors or the trunk and allowing the engine to be started.

Volvo plans to roll out the technology to a “limited” number of commercially available cars in 2017 and will test it in the real world from spring 2016 via its car sharing firm Sunfleet, stationed at Gothenburg airport, Sweden. Physical keys will continue to be offered for people who want them.

Volvo In-Car Delivery

Swedish carmaker Volvo is launching a new in-car delivery service for customers who subscribe to the Volvo On Call telematics service and live in Gothenburg (Sweden).

This Christmas, customers who meet these basic requirements of the Volvo in-car delivery service will be able to have their packages delivered directly to their car, rather than their house. The only catch being that the packages must be ordered from online retailers Lekmer.com and Mat.se.

The package will be delivered by communications and logistics company PostNord, who will find the customers car and use a special one-time access digital key to open the car and drop the package in the boot.

In-car delivery is a good example of how carmakers are experimenting with new ways to move beyond simply building and selling cars. Tapping into connected technologies will help car companies like Volvo make money off customers long after they drive away from the dealership.

A Sirious safety message

By hijacking Siri, Toyota in Sweden has found a new way to get people to turn off their phones in the car and stop texting.

With the help of Saatchi & Saatchi they created a unique radio ad that interacted with the phone without human intervention. Of course relying on the fact that the iPhone was plugged in, charging and would wake up to the voice command “Hey Siri”. So, even if the driver wasn’t paying attention, their phone was. 😎

Two separate ads ran during rush hour – one for Apple’s Siri and the other for Google Android with “OK Google”.

Knorr Physical Retargeting

In November, a Knorr food truck in chilly Stockholm offered free warm samples of the brand’s tomato and Thai soups. Visitors could eat it on the spot or take home the samples.

To ensure the visitors could also be retargeted through relevant mobile ads, Knorr equipped the truck and the people handing out the samples with battery powered iBeacons. Through these iBeacons, visitors to the truck who had the popular Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet app preinstalled were registered as having been there. Then instead of immediately pushing a coupon for Knorr soup to the user, they waited until the next time the user opened the Aftonbladet app to serve it up through a mobile ad on the start screen.

Hello Fuffr

Touchscreens have revolutionized our everyday lives. But there is still a continual conflict among device designers about what customers really want. Some believe in small screen sizes like that of the iPhone, while others prefer larger screened devices like that of the Samsung Galaxy S5. So a bunch of engineers from Stockholm decided to get together and bridge the gap between all the different screen sizes.

Fuffr is an iPhone case that greatly expands the users phone workspace and helps interact with it in new ways. The case has its own motion sensors which help it interact with the phones Bluetooth LE. Here is a short demonstration video highlighting the usefulness of the case… 😎

Blowing in the wind

To introduce a new line of hair products, Apotek Hjärtat, a Swedish pharmacy decided to give subway commuters in Stockholm a surprising special effect. With the help of their ad agency Akestam Holst, they fitted digital screens on the subway platform with ultrasonic sensors that discerned when a train was coming.

The pharmacy ad then featured a model with a lush mane. When the train arrived the sensors immediately simulated the blowing in the wind effect for her hair.

Coca-Cola Happiness Machine #ReasonsToBelieve

Coca-Cola is at it again, this time unleashing happiness in Sweden. A special Coke machine was put at a bus stop to spread some summer happiness in the middle of the cold and dark Nordic winter. The results…

Click here to see other Coca-Cola Happiness campaigns from around the world.

Sveriges Radio Plus

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 has attempted to make the whole radio experience more visual, interactive, and shareable.

With a new radio player called “Swedish Radio Plus” they allowed people on computers and mobile devices to listen in on the radio programs and simultaneously add videos, pictures, comments, maps and polls to the radio timeline. All post made on this custom timeline were also shared on the users Facebook profile, with a link to that exact part of the program.

To give it a try yourself visit the demo page here.

One Copy Song

Adam Tensta, a hip hop artist from Sweden remembers back in the day when one had to wait for a song to release, and then stand in line to get the new single fresh hot off the presses. So for his new single “Pass It On” he along with R/GA New York decided to bring some of that exclusivity back with a Facebook app that allowed only one person to listen to the track at a time, before it was passed to someone else.

To spread the song by word of mouth they played on peoples need to get first in line. Registered users were asked to watch, listen or tweet in order to pass 15 people in the line.