Nine passes left to attend the Digiday Publishing Summit

You know when you take your favorite pint of ice cream out of the freezer before settling in for another episode of Real Housewives of Orange County only to find that it’s frozen solid and impossible to scoop? Bummer, right? Then you put it in the microwave to soften it up for a few seconds, but you leave it in too long and it comes out as soup. I mean, we can’t be the only one, right?
Fortunately, Häagen-Dazs is here to help, sort of. The General Mills ice cream maker has released a new “augmented-reality” app to keep you entertained while your ice cream reaches the right temperature. (For those of you keeping score at home, there’s an actual industry term for waiting for your ice cream to soften: “tempering.”)
The app is called Häagen-Dazs Concerto Timer and is available for free download in the App Store. As the app description states, “Just as wine needs to breathe, Häagen-Dazs ice cream needs to soften for a few minutes after you remove your carton from the freezer.”
Once you download the app, point your camera at the lid of your Häagen-Dazs carton of choice. Your phone’s screen will display a violinist, who plays a little concerto for you from atop an ice cream container, while you wait for your ice cream to soften. The app uses 3D Kinect technology along with your smartphone’s camera to present the augmented-reality concerto.
This isn’t the first time a brand has made an app that help you properly prepare its product. Pop Secret created the Perfect Pop app that helps users microwave the perfect bag of popcorn without burning it.
Watch a demo of the app in action:
Image via Flickr/yoppy
More in Marketing

‘Consumers are dying to get out of their houses’: How Cinemark’s CMO is getting people back to the movies
A look at how consumer demand looks in the movie industry and what other retailers can learn from Cinemark’s loyalty and membership programs.

Platform and agency execs recommended must-reads to unwind during busy periods
Senior execs from the likes of TikTok, Snap, OMD USA, Publicis London and more let us in on their favorite page-turners to unwind.

In Graphic Detail: AI adoption increases, but U.S. consumers are still wary
Digiday has charted the rise of generative AI, big tech’s investment into AI as well as agencies’ top use cases and consumer sentiment.