The coolest cat in Tokyo at the moment is one that’s perched on top of a building across 1664sqft, near Shinjuku subway station. The cat wakes up now and then, sways its tail, gazes down on the crowd and meows its way into the hearts of passers-by. The magic is created on a curved 26-by-62-foot LED billboard. And what we are looking at is another trend in advertising that may take over cities in the coming months.
Before the cat in Tokyo, we have seen videos of giant waves atop a building in Seoul’s Gangnam District. The videos that are making its way to YouTube are obviously in 2D and don’t do justice to the real action but the technology has a huge potential for advertisers. When the furball in Tokyo is sleeping, the screen can potentially show advertisements. Just to watch the cat wake up and wag its tail, people are waiting on the street with their camera pointed at the building. It’s becoming as much a conversation starter as the Winston signage (and the earlier Camel signage), complete with simulated smoke rings, on Broadway of the 1970s. But this is tech and the screen can display whatever (and whenever) it wants.
Similar curved LED billboards have been popping up across Asia in the past one year or so. People in Chengdu, China, have seen a lion “breaking through” the screen and “running away” while a gigantic cyclop appears to “step out” in Taiwan. And something on the lines of the Starship Enterprise has also been seen. To achieve “3D” status, 4K resolution displays are used and the panels are massive, giving a sense of realism. More importantly, the screens need to be placed at the corner of a building at 90 degrees from street level.
According to a report in The Korea Times, commercial design company d’strict, which is behind the “wave” billboard in Seoul’s Gangnam District, is headed for Times Square in New York. The company’s “media artist unit” —A’strict — was launched “as a loose group of artistic creators”. New Yorkers can expect a 1,400-square-metre digital screen that can transform into a surreal 3D oceanic tank with a blue whale moving inside.
Virtual replacement perimeter technology is changing the way advertisements are shown during matches
But it’s not just huge LED billboards that are making noise by showcasing hyper-realistic animation, virtual hybrid LED solutions also appear promising. The advertisements that are shown on the small boards, say around a football stadium, can be changed to fit the demography of the country where the feed is being broadcast. The technology is called “virtual replacement perimeter technology” and it works in a unique way. In India, we may see an advertisement from company X on one of the billboards while Messi completes a corner shot but in England, the advertisement can be from company Y and in France from Z.
In the last few days, there is a Reddit post that has gained major traction, one in which user erivaldoff offers an explanation of the technology that is being used. “The camera is mounted on a ‘virtual head’, which reads the positioning and alignment data. The lens of that camera is calibrated with the camera body and sensor, along with the software, so that the virtual software can be adjusted for any variance for offset off ‘zero’ when the camera was mounted. Think of a virtual 3D box, and they just tell the computer where to put everything relative to the camera.” Though the tech has been around since 2018, it has improved and is finding more takers now.
“The new ad is virtually inserted in the broadcast feed in such a precise manner that the television audience has no idea that they are seeing something different than the fans on-site,” wrote Massimo Magri, Supponor EU’s commercial officer in a blog.
Back to the kitty in Tokyo, it may not have a name (and the gender hasn’t been revealed) but it has a Twitter account (@cross_s_vision) with around 20K followers. #Burn.
