‘Blinkwashing’ – Marketing of the Future?

Recently Virgin Mobile released an e-marketing campaign called ‘Blinkwashing‘ (must watch). As explained by Trevor Mogg in a Digital Trends article, the advert let’s the viewer control the video with the use of your webcam to track your eyes as you watch the advert. The dialog remains the same, with 25 possible scene changes, all within the ‘blink’ of an eye. Personally this intrigues me, I then start to question from a marketing perspective:

• What valuable marketing data is Virgin collecting from the viewers watching the YouTube Video?
• Does the advert influence the consumer’s view on the brand?

It makes me wonder about the possible online marketing data that Virgin will collect from this YouTube video, and whether it is a snap-shot of what to expect in future adverts. Secondly, I ask the question ‘do you feel consciously influenced by the the video’, because if your not entirely sure then maybe it has conjured something subconsciously. This relates to Tjaco Walvis’s idea in which he expresses through his book ‘Branding with Brains’; that we as consumer’s subconsciously choose a brand over another, with the combination of the three branding laws. It is through Walvis’s third law of brand participation that links with Virgin Mobile’s ability to allow the consumer to ‘participate’ in the marketing, allowing the brain to make important connections with the brand, and potentially influence their buying behaviour.

Thus I can then start to conclude that Virgin’s e-marketing advert would not have been possible without the current technology of a webcam, it may give us an indication of what is to expect in the future…3D virtual advertising?

Walvis, T, (2010) , ‘Branding with Brains’, The science of getting customers to choose your company, Pearson Educated Limited, UK, 139-164p