Pixman’s Tribal Cast Service Welcomes Obama
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Montreal-based Pixman Nomadic Media has called on its partners in more than 30 countries worldwide to encourage their citizens to join in an interactive Wave of welcome and hope to incoming U.S. president Barack Obama.
jointhewave.com is an original idea from Pixman, which specializes in mobile marketing and nomadic advertising.
“We were sitting around at lunch discussing how easy it is for people today to contact one another compared to a few years ago, and thinking of ways that people can express themselves and how we could develop an interactive platform that could be used even in developing countries that are not as technologically advanced ,” says Emmanuel Stralka, Pixman’s project director for jointhewave.
And while it is an opportunity for people around the world to send their videos, drawings and texts to Obama, it doesn’t hurt that it’s also a way for Pixman to launch its new Tribal Cast service – a set of solutions to connect the real and virtual world and enable an interactive discussion opportunity for people to connect with everything from brands to political figures.
“We realized that everything is really grass roots, and how Obama’s campaign really came from grass roots support,’ says Stralka. “We got so excited about this project, a group of us worked right through the holidays. And our partners across 30 countries accepted to be involved without compensation. We could have developed this and launched it with clients and been paid for it, but everyone around the world is looking to Obama and was a great opportunity.
All messages to Obama in languages other than English are checked to be sure there’s nothing disrespectful, translated into English captions by Pixman’s partners, and checked again at Pixman’s Montreal headquarters. Pixman staff are in contact with Obama’s community at mybarackobama.com and people within his staff to make sure the future president knows about jointhewave.com.
“Obama says that he wants to be able to listen to everybody, and this gives a chance to deliver,” says Stralka. “And what makes it unique is that this gives a means to pinpoint the location of those participating in the Wave. Our founder Daniel Langlois, Pixman chairman, calls it Web 2.0 ++.”
Pixman also hopes to choose the most creative and original videos, put them into some form of tape or disc and present it physically to Obama, with the cooperation of his staff.
jointhewave was launched on 10th Jan and by 13th Jan 67 videos and messages had already been received. Stralka says that uploading the messages and videos from cellphones, Webcams and the like is easy.
We didn’t try that, but found the quality of some of the sound on the videos we watched left a lot to be desired. However, the whole thing was developed quickly and, knowing Langlois’ reputation, any kinks will speedily be dispatched with.
The idea is interesting and we feel that its use to showcase emerging technologies worldwide and to pinpoint locations of comments on everything from product brands to political figures will have merit.
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