Marriott International lights up the sky with ECHO technology

London, UK – Marriott International, Inc. recently launched its “Travel Brilliantly” campaign using optical illusions created by Lightvert, a disruptive media tech company, and Kinetic, a digital innovator in out-of-home advertising.

The three-day campaign lit the skies of London’s South Bank in December of 2017 where Marriott projected images of iconic European landmarks. It challenged the public to capture the images and share it on social media for a chance to win exclusive travel vouchers.

This futuristic ad campaign was made possible through a new technology developed by Lightvert called ECHO – a type of patent-protected persistence of vision (PoV) display technology, which temporarily and safely prints images directly onto the viewer’s eye. It’s a revolutionary display medium that’s currently at the forefront of out-of-home advertising, which has not seen disruption since the invention of the LED screen.

According to Lightvert founder, Daniel Siden, the technology uses the concept of “low attention processing” – a model discovered by Robert Heath in 2000, proving that advertising can work even if the viewer isn’t paying active attention to them.

The ECHO technology is different in a sense that it unlocks large amounts of premium value real estate, previously beyond the imagination of advertisers. It produces huge virtual images without taking up equally large amounts of space.

The virtual ads are projected through a thin vertical strip of light that measures no more than 200 mm wide, which produces images of up to 35 metres into the sky. The unique projector may be in a mobile van, or at the foot of the building, and promises to deliver a light show that will surprise and engage the viewers.

No screens, headsets, glasses, or apps are required. Lightvert calls this new technology – augmented reality for the naked eye.

Watch Lightvert’s promotional video below, demonstrating how ECHO works: