A New Spin On Location-Based Advertising

Location based advertising is rapidly becoming the “next big thing.” Having the ability to hit (figuratively) someone with an ad on their mobile device based on their location at any given moment in time is, well pretty darn exciting and most assuredly very promising in terms of success.

Back in April a headline on cnet.com read: Location information to make mobile ads more valuable. In the article the writer made reference to two interviews in which “the CEO of the mapping app Waze and ad executives Jason Spero from Google and Mollie Spilman of Millennial Media talked up the importance of users’ GPS location information to help tailor advertising.”

Seems the folks at Facebook are paying attention to the ever-growing popularity of location based advertising as witnessed in Parmy Olson’s Forbes column on May 9th in which she wrote of the fact that Facebook (is) In Talks To Buy Waze For $1 Billion.

But today I want to share with you a completely different take on location-based advertising. A take that has nothing to do with mobile phones or devices.

It’s what I think is a brilliant advertising campaign aimed at raising awareness of child abuse and its victims. It comes from the Spanish organization – ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk).  Working with their agency, they used lenticular printing to create outdoor ads that look different to an adult and child.

So, depending on your height, or your location, you will see a different ad.

Adults seeing the ad will see an awareness campaign message that reads: “sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.”

But when viewed from the average height of a 10-year old child, the ad is completely different. It displays an image of a child who has been abused and includes the hotline number for ANAR where children who are the victims of abuse can get help and counseling. As I mentioned I think this is a brilliant campaign as it takes advantage of lenticular printing thereby delivering two messages through one ad.

It is also brilliant from the standpoint that the aforementioned phone number is only visible to those being abused with the thought being if a child abuse victim views the ad while with his/her abuser, they will see the number while the abuser will not.

Source: YouTube, Google Images, cnet.com, Forbes

Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a senior creative content strategist at Responsys, a leading global provider of on-demand email and cross-channel marketing solutions, and a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. He can be reached via TwitterLinkedIn or Email