Nova Scotia Fisheries and Aquaculture launched a contest campaign for its upcoming seafood festival Friday, an initiative that links traditional and social media with augmented reality technology.
The catch: The Nova Scotia Seafood Festival contest gives consumers a chance to win a prize pack every day until June 20, as well as the chance to win a grand prize that includes a seafood dinner at the winner’s home prepared by a professional chef and accompanied by live music.
Consumers can enter the contest by going to a Facebook page {Facebook.com/CATCHfestival} and holding a fish icon found in newspaper and postcard executions up to their computer’s webcam. The icon then transforms into a talking, animated fish that lets the consumer know whether they have won the daily prize pack, which includes tickets to the festival.
Those who don’t win are reminded that they can enter as often as they like for the daily prizes, as well as fill in basic information to enter the grand prize draw.
Using open-source technology, Halifax’s Trampoline Branding created the augmented reality application that fuels the interaction between the ads and the webcam. The agency also designed creative for the campaign and collaborated on the creation of the fish character with Nova Scotia post-production company HatchPost.
Tyson Hynes, associate creative director at Trampoline, said his agency’s objective was to balance innovation with simplicity for the festival.
“We wanted to come up with something that was fresh and interesting and would get some talk value, but at the same time be simple enough that pretty much anybody could get to [the contest] without having to know a lot about new technology,” said Hynes.
“As far as we know, this is a Canadian first–an instant-win augmented reality contest.”
Hynes said each day’s prize pack winner would be determined by an algorithm based on time of day, and that consumers can enter multiple times using the same print or postcard ad.
Consumers without webcams can also enter via a contest website.
The festival itself takes place in Halifax June 19-20.
