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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Concerned About Facebook Privacy? Drink Up

Norte Beer is friending drinkers with a new face-saving social media helper--the Photoblocker.

One of the great ironies of our time is the sheer number of Facebook users who label their debauched post-Las Vegas photo albums some variation of: “What Happens in Vegas…” Obviously, very little that happens in Nevada’s party district, or anywhere else, manages to stay there these days. As long as cameras are on hand to capture the evidence, and social media networks exist to distribute it, the days of worry-free decadence are gone. Or are they?

A new campaign from South American beer brand Cerveza Norte promotes an improbable new product the company developed with Buenos Aires-based agency Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi. Norte’s Photoblocker is a futuristic beer cooler that purports to do just what its title says: defend drinkers against unwanted interference from amateur paparazzi and day-after embarrassment (or worse).

The cumbersome object--it looks to be the size of a wastebasket one might keep atop their office desk--not only serves as a functional temperature-preserving beer cooler, but it also works to preserve nightclub anonymity. Photoblocker detects camera and cell phone flashes in 360 degrees, reflecting back a powerful flash that instantly destroys all attempted photos.

We've seen photoblocking technology applied in the automotive sector, as a speeding ticket evasion mechanism, but this may be the first bar-centric application. The agency says the device, which has so far only been planted in regional bars, is a real product that has been field tested and actually works. “We placed several beer coolers in different bars in the North of Argentina,” says Maxi Itzkoff, executive creative director at Del Campo. “People took lots of photos that ended up being blurry beyond recognition and then uploaded them to social media anyway."

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In an ad promoting the brand and the new “utility,” provocativel...


[Source: Fast Company]

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