Rec You

Sony is one of the world's leaders when it comes to cutting edge and user-integrated technology. It comes as no surprise that one of the most successful audience driven ad campaigns of recent times is from Sony.

For their new Walkman prodcut, they've launched RecYou, most likely short for Record You, which does exactly as the name suggest--it records you. You upload your own head shot on to the site, and it proceeds to transform you into one mean singing machine.

Here's the original ad example from Sony:



The ad shows the end product being screened onto one of Tokyo's most famous office towers, Roppongi Hills. I haven't heard or seen other examples of this, but according to this blog, Sony will randomly choose user-submitted photos to be used in their campaign and screen them in public places as well.

I think user-input media are the way of the future, and ad campaigns like this are not only funny, but get consumers excited and involved, which is a surefire way to generate buzz. While Sony certainly achieved this, most of the the people I've talked to about this campaign didn't know it was promoting the Walkman music player. Oh well, it's all about the buzz, no?

And if you fancy your singing head screened on the side of an office building, give it a try at RecYou.jp.