Projects: Pooch Follows Shoppers Around UK Mall Via Sensors

May 29, 2015 by Dave Haynes

This is a very clever marketing campaign, spotted in Digital Sign Age, to drive animal adoptions from a London shelter.

Called Looking For You, the recent campaign used the digital screens at the Westfield Stratford City in London to run a series of triggered videos that gave some shoppers the sense a very cute little dog named Barley was following them, looking for new owners. The campaign also used a hashtag and dedicated website.

The screens play their normal loop of content and ad spots, but when people pass by carrying a leaflet handed to them outside the shopping center, that pamphlet has an embedded RFID tag that gets picked up by what must be an industrial-strength, long range reader and triggers the media player to play a specific spot with Barley.

It’s both simple and sophisticated way of using Internet of Things data.