ROVIO, Pulse, 2013

It is often said in business circles that half of advertising is completely useless – we just don’t know which half. Many companies spend on advertising because they feel they have to, but do not often know whether their efforts are working or not. And with degrees of trust in advertisers as low as 25 % in Europe, it is safe to say that most are not doing very well. New technologies and platforms appear at an ever-increasing pace, but surprisingly little has changed in this respect – Billboards, TV, print and radio are now accompanied by banner-ads and pop-ups, but the fact remains, they are all being mostly ignored and largely mistrusted.

Pulse is a system for collaboratively creating, experiencing and capturing events; a tool for matching people and brands in a way that is unique every time. It is a mobile and browser application that lets any group of people create an event simply by taking a picture. And not just any event, but a Pulse-Event. These events capture all the pictures taken at them in real-time, and show up on a “Heat Map” to attract other event-goers. And what’s more, each event has a sponsor – a brand that helps users in enjoying their event experiences with something called Smart Content. In this way, brands become part of our experiences not by interrupting them, but by actually improving them. For brands it is a completely new kind of tool for brand building and advertising. For Rovio, it fits naturally in their vision of being a powerful media channel, and a provider of entertainment in all its forms.