(Too) Personal Ad

In futuristic movies, we are often shown how advertising is personally addressed to people (for example, automatic ads in "Minority Report"). Do you know that this is no longer just a fantasy?

Through clever use of advanced technology, MINI was able to turn standart billboard advertising into personal messages for selected MINI owners.

In 2007 MINI Motorby started out with an email to pre-selected MINI owners asking them random questions about themselves. Some were as straightforward as a profession, while others were more detailed, including 'What adjective best describes how you motor?' and 'What is your MINI`s nickname?'.

Four to six weeks later, the respondents received an electronic key fob, a small hardware device with built-in authentication mechanisms, which could be attached to a regular MINI keychain. Four interactive billboards in Chicago, New York, Miami and San Francisco were set up to detect any key fobs within a 150-metre range using Radio Frequency Identification technology.

Whenever a participating MINI owner drove by one of the billboards (which ordinarily showed content that was relevant to MINI or the location), a personal message would flash up on screen based on the information supplied.