Nerds are in a lather over wearable computing. You’ve seen the viral image of Sergey Brin on a New York City subway train with his Google glasses on, and you’ve heard all the buzz about people applying to be able to buy a pair of these glasses of the future. Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal and Partners got together as an agency to try to score a pair.
The way that people could apply to become a “Glass explorer” aka one of the first people that Google would sell the glasses to, was to submit an essay on Google Plus about why they want the glasses and what they would do with them or tweet why they should get a pair using the hashtag #IfIHadGlass. KBS+ decided to make its own pitch on Twitter using its own special hashtag #kbsglass. KBS+ released over 70 videos showcasing a wealth of ideas for using Google Glass, sourced from across the agency’s offices in the U.S. and Canada.
“When the Glass announcement was made, we immediately started brainstorming about what KBS+ should tweet as its idea for the chance to get Glass,” explained Vikram Tank, director or product development at KBS+. “We quickly realized we had tons of ideas and a single tweet wouldn’t cut it, so we decided to draw on the enthusiasm and creativity of the staff and give everyone the opportunity to amplify their voice by taking part.”
The videos highlight original ideas from employees’ personal interests, like this one about making a Karaoke Hero or this one about Nerf warfare. KBS+ shared all of the videos on their social media channels and also created a Tumblr to house all of them.
Tank explained that KBS+ really wanted to get a pair of Google glasses to be able to explore the changing relationship between people and devices. This Google Glass joint effort by the agency staffers was just a natural part of the agency’s “inventor culture.” According to Tank, the agency has many initiatives that support this inventor culture, like KBS+ Ventures and the Ventures Fellows program, which give staff members a chance to participate in the world of venture capital. There is also the Invent-o-pocolypse competition among the agency staff to find a great new product idea to be sold to clients or consumers.
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