From domestic violence awareness to free drinks – piggybacking on Google Glass
By Rich Leigh on Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Ahhh, Google Glass. The wearable technology everybody loves to hate. The tech specs, as hideously unfashionable as they are and as intrusive as they might be, are a PR hit and have been since they were first announced. Early adopters clamoured to be the first to unbox, test and review (with serial ‘ME FIRST’ influencer Robert Scoble declaring that he’d never live another day without them or a competitor’s product) and Google has enjoyed media attention for its futuristic invention – that, remember, isn’t even publicly available yet – that few companies save Apple could dream of.
As with all voguish things, it is inevitable that brands and businesses will piggyback on the interest and create their own campaigns based around the product and as there have been a couple notable efforts in the last week or so, it’s worth chronicling them here for you lovely lot to one-up.
First up, we have a video, released just before International Women’s Day on the 8th, that starts off nicely enough. It follows a woman #throughglass as she goes about her day, but takes a turn for the distressing when she gets home and is met by her abusive partner. The campaign, subtly promoting the at-present conceptual ‘Abuse Radar‘ app in a bid to find funding and/or developers, has been viewed more than 1m times:
From a campaign that clearly took a lot of effort to ones that are ready-made stories the second the story is conceived, here’s another in a line of San Francisco bars banning customers from wearing Google Glass, squeezing whatever Silicon Valley media interest there is in such a story out. In response to this and appreciating the fact they’d have to do something to shift the emphasis in order to spark interest, another bar in San Francisco has decided to give Glass wearers free drinks.
Anyone wearing Glass at the Stanford Court Hotel’s Aurea Lounge will begin given free wine, beer, or cocktails if they take a photo of the hotel or their complimentary drink and post it to Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram, tagging the hotel with the hashtag #stanfordcourt. Since the announcement a day ago, nobody has done so on Twitter (hashtag search here) or Instagram (search here), as far as I can tell.
The bar has indeed attracted media attention with it’s press release send to the tech press yesterday, and even if they don’t get one person wearing Glass in, they’ll have achieved their goal of creating buzz for the bar. It really is a case of bloggers and journalists wanting to write about it and companies simply creating the right idea to fill the space.
