Autotap by Daniel Codd

AUTO

TAP

TRENDS ACROSS THE

PLANET V5.12

AUTO

TAP

TRENDS ACROSS THE

PLANET

Auto TAP has been created with technological innovation in mind. Our aim is to provide a snapshot of the latest cool campaigns, future trends in technology and general marketing news. This edition includes Mercedes invisible zero emission car, our favourite auto appâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and a great solution to entertaining the kids on a long car journey.

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Contents

Contents 01

Volkswagen The Facebook Flip

“Scion Surface Experience”

New Volvo car features an external airbag for pedestrians

IN THE NEWS: How ‘Car Configurators’ Are Helping Steer the Dreamer to the Dealer

Cadillac Teases ‘Super Cruise’ Semi-Autonomous Car

Mercedes-Benz The Tweet Fleet

Toyota Belgium Adventure Discount App

Check out our favourite Auto App’s

MERCEDES MAKES THEIR ZERO EMISSION CAR INVISIBLE

Facebook: Auto Fans Have More Friends

Getting In Touch

GM’s Smart Windows Let You Interact With The World From Your Car

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Volkswagen â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Facebook Flip

Volkswagen The Facebook Flip

Volkswagen Amarok creates a cool ad utilising the Facebook Photo Gallery, using 200+ images. When you flick through it creates the ad inside Facebook. View Video 01

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“Scion Surface Experience”

Toyota “Scion Surface Experience” “Scion Surface Experience” is a really neat way to showcase Toyota’s new all electric brand of cars on the latest Microsoft Surface tables.

WE ♥ THIS!

You get one of 8 cards that unlock unique experiences on the Surface table, taking users on a journey to discover images, video, specs, and sales information for the latest Scions. And when you flip the card over, it triggers parts of a song… If you get all 8 cards on the table, it releases the full song while also allowing you to re-mix your own version. View Video

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Mercedes-Benz: The Tweet Fleet

Mercedes-Benz The Tweet Fleet Finding a car space at Christmas time is a daunting task just about anywhere in the world, so MercedesBenz created “The Tweet Fleet” to fix just that by tapping into the “Park Assist” feature. MercedesBenz Park Assist can automatically detect empty car spaces near you as you drive, so what if they could take that feature and provide it to anyone looking for a parking spot at Christmas? Well, they did, and the Tweet Fleet was born, a fleet of new Mercedes-Benz cars travelling around Stuttgart in Germany, automatically tweeting empty car spaces with geo-tagging to ensure that anyone following can not only find out where the empty spaces are, but can get directions directly to them. All rigged together via an Arduino board and the Mercedes-Benz Park Assist feature. View Video

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Cadillac Teases ‘Super Cruise’ Semi-Autonomous Car

Cadillac Teases ‘Super Cruise’ Semi-Autonomous Car Cadillac took a step closer to the self-driving car, showing off Super Cruise, encompassing way-cool features that edge ever-so-closer to automatic pilot on the highways. It’s not nearly as advanced as Google’s selfdriving vehicle. Cadillac warns that this new semiautonomous driving tech only works under certain optimal conditions, assisting you with automatic steering, braking and lane-centering on highways. It uses a combination of radar, ultrasonic sensors, cameras and GPS map data to keep that Caddy on the straight-and-narrow.

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Facebook: Auto Fans Have More Friends

Facebook: Auto Fans Have More Friends Fans of auto brands have three times the average amount of friends than the average user, according to a new study by Facebook. The social networking giant, eager to make its case to marketers, conducted a study of 15,938 Facebook users between December and March. The report found that the average fan of an auto brand has 433 friends, which is three times the amount of the typical user. Not surprisingly, 55% of car maker fans own a vehicle made by the brand and loyalty among fans is higher â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 62% to 46% â&#x20AC;&#x201D; than non-fans. Finally, 82% of fans are very likely to recommend their vehicle to a friend vs. 69% of owners who are not fans. Facebook introduced the study, the first of its kind to try to convince auto brands to make more of an investment in the network. As Doug Frisbie, the head of automotive, global vertical marketing at Facebook, pointed out in a blog post on Tuesday, the fan bases of the 10 leading auto brands in the U.S. represent less than 5% of their owners on Facebook.

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MERCEDES MAKES THEIR ZERO EMISSION CAR INVISIBLE

To demonstrate the zero carbon impact of its fuel cell vehicle, Mercedes-Benz made its car “invisible” with LEDs and a camera hack that transmitted images from the opposite side of the car, blending the vehicle in with its surroundings. This creative hack conveyed the company’s message that its vehicle is invisible to the environment because it produces zero emissions. To carry out the marketing stunt, panels

of LEDs were placed across one side of the car and a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR camera was mounted to the other side. The LEDs then displayed whatever was being filmed, making the car appear (virtually) invisible to onlookers. View Video

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GM’s Smart Windows Let You Interact With The World From Your Car

Long car rides, typically of the road trip variety, can often be exhausting in their monotony and isolation. We don’t often think of car rides as anything more than a means of reaching a destination. We become disassociated with the other people, cars and environments that are inevitably surrounding us. GM’s new Windows of Opportunity project was begun to explore innovative ways to use interactive technologies to create a more interesting driving experience. The project, which was inspired by

psychological studies that show passengers typically feel disconnected from their environments, uses smart glass to generate augmented reality digital layers over passing landscapes. The company commissioned students from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel to explore unique ways to use the smart glass technology. They were given full creative control to develop different applications regardless of whether they would be produced. The apps are primarily games but help to

cultivate a stronger relationship between their users and their environments. Otto, for example, is capable of responding in real time to car performance, landscapes and weather. Real time interactivity with constantly changing environments then leads to a completely different and unexpected experience during each trip. What’s more, it is as educational as it is engaging. Car trips become more about the actual trip itself as opposed to a simple journey from point A to point B. 07

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GMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smart Windows Let You Interact With The World From Your Car

GMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smart Windows Let You Interact With The World From Your Car The smart glass operates as a window into the real world giving us a fuller awareness of our surroundings. It is a means of exploiting technologies, that typically might be seen as disassociating us from the real world, to nurture a closer relationship with it. Similarly, another app, Pond uses the smart glass to generate a veritable social network by connecting passengers of different cars to each other. People can share messages and music with each other between cars. It suggests a means of connecting with people who hitherto were in close proximity to each other yet were completely isolated from one another. Driving in general has always has had the odd effect of surrounding us with people (on highways or high volume roads) or with various environments yet completely isolating us from them. Smart glass takes advantage of this isolation to connect us directly with those people and places that cars already bring us to.

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New Volvo car features an external airbag for pedestrians

Swedish auto maker Volvo has just announced that the new Volvo V40 will have an external airbag on the front of the car designed to help protect pedestrians in the event of a collision. Internal airbags have become commonplace as a safety feature for car drivers and passengers, but Swedish auto maker Volvo has just announced what it says is a first: an external airbag on the front of the car designed to help protect pedestrians in the event of a collision.

Volvo’s new 2013 V40, introduced earlier this week at the Geneva Motor Show, actually adds several new safety-minded features to the vehicle’s design, including a lane-keeping aid with haptic auto steering, a cross-traffic alert radar system to detect vehicles to the rear of the car, and a pedestriandetection system with an auto brake function. Perhaps most groundbreaking among them, however, is the car’s front pedestrian airbag. If collision with a pedestrian is deemed unavoidable by the detection

system’s auto brake technology, sensors in the front bumper register the physical contact between car and pedestrian. The rear end of the bonnet is then released and simultaneously elevated by the deploying airbag. Once inflated, that airbag aims to reduce the severity of pedestrian injuries by covering the area under the raised bonnet plus about onethird of the windscreen area and the lower part of the A-pillar.

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IN THE NEWS: How ‘Car Configurators’ Are Helping Steer the Dreamer to the Dealer

IN THE NEWS: How ‘Car Configurators’ Are Helping Steer the Dreamer to the Dealer In the dark ages of automobile marketing – before the mid-1990s buyers researching cars actually had to go to a dealership, get the “If-you-buy-today-it’scheaper” treatment and walk a lot for inspiration. That process was called “kicking the tires.” And rare was the salesman who offered prospects a cappuccino. More likely they got a business card stapled to a brochure. For more than a decade, however, kicking the tires is increasingly a matter of virtual shopping and personalizing your car online. In 2012, a visit to the dealer often marks the end of the sales chain. Besides acting as a marketing tool, the “car configurator” has become an important element in a brand’s digital campaign and social-media assets. For example, your best friend 1,000 miles away can check out the Mojave Metallic 3 series you just “built” on BMW’s site by clicking a Facebook button on the summary page. BMW’s site (nearly all automakers have something similar) gets an average of more than 3 million hits monthly, said Alex Schmuck, the company’s internet

communications manager. Twenty-five percent of those visitors click through the configuration process (there are 56 models to build in the brand’s U.S. market). “At the end of the process, you have the ability to forward your configuration to a BMW dealer directly to get a quote,” Mr. Schmuck said. That’s key to a sale, he said, adding that 25% of people “who contact the dealer end up buying a car.” At Team Detroit, the agency that works with Ford, the configurator “is about fusing different components and leveraging data,” said Chief Digital Officer Monik Sanghvi. “Car-buying is very personal. It starts out as rational but becomes more emotional. We use our abilities to build sight, sound and motion around the experience. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface.” In North America, BMW uses Dotglu, the digital division of its creative agency, KBS&P, to design and develop the configurator’s front end. “That is the look and feel of the interface that the customer sees,” said Stacy Morris, BMW’s marketing communications manager.

The company sold nearly 248,000 cars and SUVs in the U.S. last year, giving it a 1.9% market share, according to Automotive News. Scion, a division of Toyota aimed at younger buyers, takes another tack. While BMW details its options with a fairly Teutonic approach, Scion is party central. Its configurator for the iQ City Car is packed with animated clips and interactive drag-and-drop functions as well as the requisite specs. 10

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IN THE NEWS: How ‘Car Configurators’ Are Helping Steer the Dreamer to the Dealer

IN THE NEWS: How ‘Car Configurators’ Are Helping Steer the Dreamer to the Dealer Scion is also working with the Malbon agency in New York to create an “interactive brochure” that focuses on art, fashion and other elements important to Scion’s target audience. Near the top of the price pyramid – the opposite of Scion – is Bentley, the British premier label owned by the Volkswagen group. “We’ve steered away from advertising generally,” said James Barclay, head of marketing in the U.S. Bentley’s website “becomes the avenue,” he added. “The higher up in the market, the consideration phase becomes a little more thought-through. It’s where we can capture the interest to purchase.” In fact, all the configurators aim for the same result: Drive the dreamer to the dealer. Dealers generally have come to terms with online shoppers, and many are enthusiastic. But not everyone agrees that configurators are bulletproof marketing machines.

“It’s not like if you didn’t have one, you’d stop selling cars,” said Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of Edmunds.com. “It can only get you so far. For a lot of people, it’s a quick thing they do, to catch the cost of major options. “At the end of the day, a visit to a dealership is still the best way to check out options: a physical configurator” Mr. Anwyl said.

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Toyota Belgium – Adventure Discount App

Toyota Belgium Adventure Discount App Toyota is challenging people to find them as part of a new digital campaign for the RAV4 Black Edition. An app that gives customers discounts of up to five thousand euros for checking in at a location deemed adventurous. The more adventurous, the bigger the discount. When players reach their chosen locations they log on and the app (for iPhone and Androids) logs their location on Google Maps, and calculates the corresponding discount in Euros. Different criteria are used to determine whether a location is adventurous or not, including altitude or remoteness, proximity to a dangerous river or to an area inhabited by wild animals. Other criteria can be a vivid historical past of a location or even the fact that there are few inhabitants. If the user is happy with the discount level, they press ‘buy’ to receive an email voucher which can be presented to any participating Toyota dealer in Belgium when buying the RAV4 Black Edition. All entries will be mapped on a ‘Toyota Discount Map’ of Belgium so players can see the locations reached by other participants. View Video

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Check out our favourite Auto App’s

Waze

Inrix Traffic

Imagine working with other local drivers to make your commute shorter and easier. You might even be able to stave off the road rage you feel every time you’re behind the wheel.

Inrix Traffic provides a map of live traffic similar to what you’ll find in Google Maps or the iOS Maps app. Inrix, however, goes several steps further with options like comparative traffic, predicted traffic, and an incidents report.

With Waze, you’re immediately connected to a network of local drivers who contribute to traffic information and road reports on obstacles such as construction zones, police traps, accidents, and more. You can also join Waze groups and connect with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. The more people who use Waze, the more information it provides to its network of drivers. And, luckily, Waze already has a strong and growing community, making it a truly useful app. You can also use Waze to receive turn-by-turn driving directions on a live map. In fact, the app automatically checks for the latest traffic information and will re-route directions based on traffic conditions to provide the quickest commute. And while you’re moving along your route, you’ll see nearby Waze drivers and road reports on your custom map. The magic in Waze is that it collects users’ GPS locations while they are driving, and adds that data to its traffic logs. In order for Waze to collect the data, however, the app needs to be active in the foreground of a device. Waze also adds an element of fun – driving doesn’t need to be a drag – with its scoreboard and cute mood icons. You earn points for how many miles you drive, and you can choose your own mood icon.

Inrix gathers all of its traffic information from its Smart Driver Network, which aggregates data from more than 100 million GPS-enabled cars and mobile devices (with the Inrix app installed). This network also taps into traditional road sensors, partnerships with regional traffic providers, and hundreds of other sources. Comparative traffic gives you a look at current conditions compared to normal conditions, and predicted traffic provides snapshots of how traffic should be flowing at various times in the future (all based on previously collected traffic data; see screenshot above). An Incidents tab reveals a list of reported traffic snags - Inrix Traffic users can contribute to this list using the app’s One Touch Reporting button. The app’s most useful features require upgrading to Inrix Traffic Premium. Once you upgrade, you’ll be able to save your commuting routes, and receive personalised directions and travel time recommendations. Inrix also offers premium users access to traffic cameras along certain roads, so you can check live video before heading out.

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Check out our favourite Auto App’s

Car Minder Plus There are plenty of devices and apps to track your health, sleep, and fitness – so why not be as obsessive about the vehicle you rely on to get from point A to point B? Car Minder Plus makes logging all of the minute details of your car’s needs and health easy. The app’s interface is colorful and intuitive. You can manage multiple cars, as well as multiple services for each car. You can also keep gas and repair logs, and more. Car Minder Plus offers cool little perks, such as being able to edit a car’s icon to be a photo of that car, and the ability to email your records to others. To help you better understand your driving habits and needs, Car Minder Plus offers charts showing fuel economy and mileage, and will remind you when your car’s due for servicing. Indeed: You’ll never forget to change your oil with this app in your pocket.

Article sources: Digital Buzz, Mashable, PSFK, Springwise, Ad Age, Creativity Online, Wired Magazine

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