Electrabell Digital Interactive Wall

This digital interactive wall was set up in Brussels airport on 2009 advertising one of Belgium’s largest energy suppliers. The cameras, which are in the wall, film the passengers as they stand on the moving walkway. The screens use thermal cameras and thermal heat imaging to show the body heat of passengers’ bodies as they walk by. On the bottom of the screen the company’s’ slogan ‘You’ve got the energy’, promoting sustainable energy, is shown.

The main tactic used in this advertisement is interactivity. By making the by passers interact with the panel they pay more attention, making the ones that come behind also look instead of just ignoring it. Once the viewers are looking at their body heat on the screams they also see the slogan and finally the brand. In studies it has been shown that ad interactivity enhances user involvement with product and hence leads to more positive evaluations. One study proving this theory is Shyam and Jinhee’s study on  interactivity and persuasion of online ads (Shyam & Jinhee, 2005).

This study used 48 students in a 3 (Interactivity: Low, Medium, High) X 2 (Animation: Static, Animated) X 2 (Ad Shape: Banner, Square) fully-crossed factorial within-participants experiment. The participants were exposed to 12 Web pages containing news articles, with each page containing a stimulus ad that represented a particular combination of values on the three independent variables. They saw one of three different samples of stimulus ads in one of four orders. After browsing through each Web page for a maximum of 90 seconds, they filled out a paper-and-pencil questionnaire eliciting their attitudes toward the ad and the product advertised in it. Effect results overwhelmingly show that interactivity, when attended upon, is a strong cue aiding the persuasive function of online advertisements. The results also show that the higher the interactivity level the higher the Attitude towards the ad is (shown in figure 1).The increase in interactivity levels also showed an increased the perceived product knowledge (shown in figure 2).

Shyam, S. and Jinhee, K. (2005). Interactivity and persuasion: influencing attitudes with information involvement,  Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol 5.No 2, pp.5-18.