Dooj Ramchandani, Co-founder at Blink Solution, the Bandra-based interactive digital agency, is a very busy man. We met him while he was shuttling between completing a client delivery and strategizing on how best to urge people to vote for their #KFC25 campaign, which has been nominated for a prestigious Webby Award this year. In between the ensuing chaos, we got him to talk about the latest event fad in India – projection mapping. Excerpts from the interview follow. If you were to pitch Projection Mapping to someone in a sentence, what would it be?
Projection mapping is as simple as taking any real-world object and transforming it virtually. Take this pillow (points at one lying nearby) for instance. You can map it, project different visual patterns or maybe a 3D animation and make it look like things are coming out of it. Since this is your stronghold, can you take us through a few applications of this technology?
There are plenty of things you can do with projection mapping. But the reason why you should use it is because the experience is great. You can create something visually stunning that’s out of this world.
In terms of functional applications, you can use a piece of real estate, like your retail outlet, to come alive. We recently created a 15×15 room with a couch, a lamp and a wall with the Royale texture for Asian Paints. Then we created 8 different sets of the entire room and we had mapped the sets to it. Using an iPad app we created, the visitor with a click of a button could change the entire look of the room. We took something like paint and made people experience it in an innovative and intuitive way.
You can even take a product and make it more dynamic with mapping, rather than displaying it as a static object. Like with Puma, we took a life-size shoe and 3D mapped it in a way for interesting video content to play on different parts of the shoe. Through this we could highlight different aspects of the shoe. So this is something that isn’t possible for you to do on, say, a video billboard where all you have is a flat screen to work with.
Take us through what goes behind creating a projected experience.
There are various steps involved. First we identify the object that we are going to map. Then we take into account a few technical details such as dimensions, distances, etc. After this we move into content creation where we decide the content we want to be projected. Finally we come to the execution bit where there is installation work involved. Great. Now tell us this, what’s a great occasion to use visual projection mapping?
I think it will fit into any place. Concerts and gigs definitely because these events are all about experience. Along with that you can also tap into retail spaces like malls and stores. What challenges do you face when trying to sell ideas featuring such technology?
We operate as an interactive agency and we try and understand the challenge that the brand is facing. Then we come up with solutions that answer to those challenges rather than force-fitting technology into it. However if we think we can fit tech in an intuitive way to address the problem, we’ll use it.
Now coming to the challenges. Cost is always a challenge. You have to prove that there is an ROI for whatever you’re doing. But I feel if brand managers believe in using it, then it isn’t a problem. Sometimes there is the novelty factor that motivates brands to say ‘yes’. But it may also make them apprehensive about the fact that it hasn’t been done before.
But such technologies actually justify the investment behind them. I recently heard of a real estate brand that used the Occulus Rift to take potential customers through a virtual reality tour of their property. I mean when you’re selling property worth crores, you shouldn’t worry about spending money on an experience. If your customer has a good first impression, your chance of a conversion just shoots up. Are we level with the west in terms of the work being done in this space?
Personally, I think in comparison to what has happened abroad, India is not right up there but I feel we’re catching up. However we shouldn’t be too harsh on ourselves because most of the tech we use is launched first in the west. So they have more time to work with it.
