So have you read Medi­a­Jobs most recent arti­cle from Roy Weiss­man about skip­ping on try­ing to make mon­ey on the ads and just going straight to sell­ing prod­ucts?  What would you say if the prod­uct being sold WAS the dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing out­let? Late­ly we’ve been going in-depth on the wear­able tech­nol­o­gy front like the LED fab­rics we cov­ered and most of us have already become aware of the strides that have been made with flex­i­ble elec­tron­ics, so check this out. Present­ly a com­pa­ny called ShiftWear is work­ing hard seek­ing fund­ing for their mirac­u­lous prod­uct on Indiegogo. The prod­uct being pro­mot­ed is a pro­to­type pair of shoes that have screens incor­po­rat­ed into them. The screens are made from flex­i­ble E‑Ink col­or dis­plays, a type of super-thin dig­i­tal screen that mim­ics the appear­ance of paper.

Digital shoes, well, what are the implications for advertisers?

On the screens you can dis­play two types of images, sta­t­ic or mov­ing, and the image pre­sent­ed can be cus­tomized and select­ed by Blue­tooth com­mu­ni­ca­tion (jobs for Blue­tooth com­mu­ni­ca­tion) via a smart­phone app or tablet. You could even dis­play pho­tographs. The idea is to let users browse, down­load, and pro­gram designs for the shoes. Art can be cre­at­ed for per­son­al use or sub­mit­ted up to the mar­ket­place for oth­ers to pur­chase. Neat, right!

See the pro­mo­tion­al video from ShiftWear here:

The shoes rely on a “walk and charge” sys­tem, mean­ing that each step tak­en by the wear­er is turned into elec­tric­i­ty stored in a bat­tery that pow­ers the screens. Wire­less charg­ing is also pos­si­ble. The built-in bat­ter­ies are designed to last up to 30 days, depend­ing on the type of visu­als set. Sta­t­ic images will con­sume lit­tle-to-no pow­er, while ani­mat­ed graph­ics would be expect­ed to drain bat­ter­ies much faster, espe­cial­ly with increased com­plex­i­ty or fre­quen­cy. There is also a back light so images appear clear­ly at night.

For the active user the soles are coat­ed in the super-strong fiber Kevlar to help pro­tect the screens from impact. The com­pa­ny has said the train­ers are water­proof up to five meters, and can be machine washed. To be hon­est, oth­er flex­i­ble E‑ink projects have gone through crowd­fund­ing but just didn’t accrue the need­ed dol­lars, how­ev­er, ShiftWear man­aged to raise 389 per­cent of its US$25,000 goal in 10 days and it’s a 30 day cam­paign. I’ll tell you this right now the min­i­mum pledge is $150 (count me out). Mind you the funds are just to get a pro­to­type up and run­ning so they can try to get them on the mar­ket mid-2016. Good luck on that as well know­ing the his­to­ry of time­li­ness for crowd-fund­ed initiatives.

Digital Advertising is going for a stroll down Branding boulevard!

But real­ly, when you think about it, dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing is dying a strange death, peo­ple hate see­ing them and Ad-block­ers have pro­lif­er­at­ed, but imag­ine pay­ing teens and young adults a fee to pro­mote  sta­t­ic or mobile ads for a min­i­mal fee. You know the old shoes that hang from the street light and elec­tri­cal wires around town; what if they were show­ing ads for Moun­tain Dew or Tri­dent Gum? Per­son­al­ly the brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties alone are mind bog­gling. In media who have to think on your feet, literally.