‘3 Minutes in Italy’ with San Pellegrino Robot
By Don Ferguson on Sunday, August 18, 2013
To launch their ‘three minutes in Italy’ campaign, purveyors of high-class sparkling H2O San Pellegrino are giving customers the opportunity to spend 180 seconds as a tourist in the town of Taormina – courtesy of their very own robotic guide.
The brainchild of Manhattan based Ogilvy & Mather in conjunction with experiential specialists Deep Local, Facebook fans are offered the unique opportunity to remotely drive five specially designed robots through the streets of the Sicilian holiday hotspot.
Closely resembling something like a friendly Dalek, each robot is equipped with an interface that allows viewers to soak-up the culture in real time via a two-way AV connection – giving ‘virtual tourists’ free reign to see the sights whilst interacting with the locals. Meanwhile across the water in Italy, the interactive tablet feature users’ Facebook profile pics and hi-tec translation software allows seamless English to Italian interaction, whilst brand ambassadors on the ground helped keep the conversations flowing.
Reminiscent of Birra Moretti’s ‘Italy Live’ last month in London’s Golden Square, it seems that brands are becoming more and more innovative in the ways they leverage their cultural roots for the purposes of publicity. Although at present the lion’s share of publicity utilising ‘virtual tourism’ seems to be coming from Italian drinks brands, its only a matter of time before other sectors of the lifestyle community get to grips with this new technology and take you abroad without leaving the house.
