Hair raising interactive ads in Stockholm

A very clever piece of interactive advertising has been dreamed up by the Stockholm advertising agency Åkestam Holst from Sweden, working with production company Stopp for Apotek Hjärtat’s Apolosophy products.

Stopp says the ad was scheduled to be run for one day only, but it was so popular that the company which owns the screens asked for it to run for the rest of the week “as a way for them to show the opportunities their screens can offer”. It turns out the billboard is driven by a Raspberry Pi computer which is still powerful enough to drive a full HD digital display and can be hooked up to respond to real-world inputs. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi blog for the tip.

Now the update, courtesy of theLocal in Stockholm

Early in October 2014, another Swedish advertising agency Garbergs snapped up the idea, hoping it could be used for the greater good. It created an eye-catching Cancer campaign and the first advert was installed in Stockholm's underground in the beginning of October. The installations were only there for two days, but a YouTube clip of the campaign (below) has had a much longer life. In less than a week it has attracted 300,000 hits. By November the number was over 2.5 million.

The focus of the project is 14-year-old Linn. As a train passes the billboard, the wind makes her hair blow so violently that it flies off her head.

That's when it becomes clear that this is not a copycat-ad. Linn was diagnosed with cancer and lost her hair because of it.

The billboard then displays a message explaining that one child is diagnosed every day from cancer, and urges people to donate. 

"The world shares the film not just because they think it's beautifully made, but because they think the message is beautiful," Garbergs' copywriter Sedir Ajeenah told The Local.