GE Uses Augmented Reality to Promote Solar & Wind Smart Grid Technology

There’s been a very insistent banner ad running on Trend Hunter pages for the last several days. It’s promoting GE Smartgrid and it’s using a pretty cool hologram toy to do it.

The holograms are part of an ad campaign GE launched in February called NOW. The theme is, innovation you don´t have to wait for. The campaign incorporates three themes: ecomagination, healthcare and Global Research, and have a key focus on Smart Grid technologies. There are television, print and digital components. The digital campaign was created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

To try it, go to the GE site and follow the directions to print a ‘solar panel marker,’ on a recycled piece of paper if you want to stay earth-friendly. Turn on your computer’s sound and webcam. Turn off any popup blockers. Hold the paper up and angle it around until the hologram appears. There’s also one for wind.

Check out the video above to see how they work.

One guy used his iPod instead of paper to reflect the pdf image into his computer’s webcam; he put a short video and images of it on his Flickr page.

The entire project is elegantly designed and engaging. I spend quite a bit of time being interactive.