• by Staff Report , September 26, 2013

Two reality-bending campaigns and one that generated -- literally -- positive real-world effects took best-in-show in their respective categories of the 2013 Digital Out-of-Home Media Awards Tuesday evening during an awards show in New York City.

kbs+ scored Best-in-Show in the “Platforms” category for its augmented reality effort for client BMW North America’s new i line with an in-window execution that offered an “i window into the near future,” visually transforming the reflections of all the cars passing by on New York City’s Sixth Avenue into the futuristic versions of automobiles -- all in real-time. The video generated 500,000 views to the BMWUSA YouTube channel. Leads for BMW i vehicles rose 52% in 10 days. The campaign also won the Augmented Reality campaign.

Grand visual won Best-in-Show in the “Industry Vertical” category for its “Lynx Apollo” campaign for Unilever’s Lynx brand (which is branded Axe in the U.S.), which enabled spectators in six public places in the U.K. to project their own faces into the visor of a 12-meter tall astronaut projected on a big screen. The campaign also won the Consumer Packaged Goods category.

Back to reality, Iris Worldwide took Best-in-Show honors in the “Best Venue/Location Based Execution” for a campaign for Adidas’ Boost running shoe that literally enabled marathon runners power the energy required to display personalized motivational messages and finish times on screens along the route of the 2013 Santiago de Chile Marathon.

To bring Boost’s energy-generating performance technology, Iris Worldwide incorporated the technology to “harvest the footsteps of 25,000 runners arriving to pick up their race packs” and storing it in batteries that were used to power the motivational messages displayed during the final kilometer of the race. The campaign also won the Wildcard category.