We’ve seen virtually innumerable variations on the “pop-up” theme over the years, but recently we came across one we hadn’t seen before. Enter The Pop Up Agency, a group of six creative students who take residency at clients’ sites for 48 hours, deliver a concept or strategy, and then move on to their next destination.

Comprising an international team based largely in Sweden, the Pop Up Agency began as a way to enable the Hyper Island business course students to work on real-life projects in their spare time, which has essentially consisted of weekends. Now – in place of an internship program at the school – the Pop-Up Agency is doing an experiment in May and June whereby it plans to pop up in 15 different countries in 15 weeks working on two-day projects. “For 48 hours the Pop Up Agency will work for you,” the team explains. “We’ll share our way of working and thinking with you, which includes the methodology we learned at Hyper Island. In those 48 hours we are able to create a concept or strategy that will give you a fresh and new perspective on the brief.”

In reality, each 48-hour project typically takes about four days, the company notes. Clients need not pay for the team’s time, however; instead, all the Pop Up Agency asks are six tickets to the client’s location, places to work and sleep, and meals for those four days. Startups and agencies are the company’s target audience. The video below explains the premise in more detail:

How could you start up an agency with minimal investment and potentially maximal impact? Look to the Pop-Up Agency’s example, perhaps. One for inspiration!

Website: www.wepopup.com
Contact: hello@wepopup.com

Spotted by: Murray Orange

Statistics show that teenagers and young adults are almost around four times as likely to catch chlamydia than the general population. We’ve already seen medical bodies such as the UK’s NHS Hounslow offer chlamydia test results by text message with the aim to engage young people with health issues, and now STDTriage is enabling smartphone users to simply send an anonymous image of their intimate condition to a doctor, who will respond within 24 hours.

Rather than an embarrassing trip to the sex clinic, those downloading the app – which was created by Sweden-based iDoc24 for STD Awareness Month this month – can submit an image of symptoms they believe may be caused by sexual transmission. Although the app encourages patients to fill out information about their sex habits and existing conditions, the process is anonymous and the uploading procedure is secure. The service promises to reply within 24 hours with information about what the cause may be and how it should be treated. If the condition can be remedied with over-the-counter products, the app saves the patient a trip to the doctor and reduces pressure on clinics that could be dealing with more urgent cases.

STDTriage is free to download from the App Store. Are there other conditions that could use diagnosis apps in a similar way?

Website: www.stdtriage.com
Contact: info@idoc24.com

Spotted by: Smith Alan

While some restaurant owners see smartphones as detrimental to the dining experience, other venues such as the Comodo in New York have embraced the technology, encouraging diners to help create a visual menu of its dishes on Instagram. The photo-sharing platform is proving useful once again as the Ask CT Food campaign is enabling restaurant customers to photograph their meal in order to receive a recipe to recreate it at home.

CT Food is a supplier of Asian food in Sweden and the campaign has been designed to target those who eat out at Asian restaurants, but rarely cook the same dishes at home – either because the ingredients aren’t in typical supermarkets or they feel it’s beyond them. Diners at Asian restaurants can photograph their dish, upload the photo to Instagram and tag it with ‘@askctfood’. The company will then determine the dish and reply to the image with a list of ingredients and instructions on how to prepare it. Each ingredient is linked to a hashtag so users can see what it looks like when they come to buy the items. The video below explains more about the scheme:

The Ask CT Food campaign targets those who already enjoy Asian food and encourages them to be adventurous by cooking at home while potentially saving money on restaurant bills. At the same time, CT Food benefits from gaining new customers. How else can people’s engagement with social media encourage greater involvement with brands?

Website: askctfood.se
Contact: info@askctfood.se

Spotted by: Murray Orange

We’ve already seen at least one design-your-own pizza service, but Paint Your Pizza takes that premise a step or two further. Rather than simply allowing users to choose the ingredients they’d like included in their handmade pie, the new project from Swedish artist Jonas Lund works just the way you might think it does: customers paint a picture of the pizza they’d like, and then receive its real-life likeness for actual consumption.

New York-based Paint Your Pizza arose from another project Lund created last year called The Paintshop, which offers a platform on which online users can collaboratively paint pictures and then sell their creations for a price set by a continuously updating mathematical algorithm. Now focusing instead on the ever-popular culinary medium, Paint Your Pizza offers an online “canvas” on which visitors can create the image of their dream pizza. Examples currently displayed on the site include “Mona Pizza,” “Hogwarts,” “Kitten Pizza” and “Don Pepperoni.” Through a partnership with New York City’s Famous Original Ray’s Pizza, customers can then order an edible version of their creation for delivery to the door. Pricing ranges from USD 31 to USD 64 for an 18-inch pie. The video below demonstrates the premise in action:

Paint Your Pizza from JONAS LUND on Vimeo.

After launching at the Eyebeam Art + Technology annual showcase in January, Paint Your Pizza is now searching for additional partner pizzerias in other locales, according to an Animal report. Restaurateurs and artists around the globe: one for inspiration!

Website: www.paintyourpizza.com
Contact: newjonaslund@gmail.com

Spotted by: Lily Dixon

Kiosks enabling consumers to give their old clothes away to charity have been around for a while, and we’ve also seen the Red Cross in New Zealand offer rewards to donors. Now the You’ll Never Wear That Again Facebook app aims to encourage increased donations by displaying old photos of users to remind them of the clothes they no longer wear.

Created by creative agency DDB for the homeless charity Stockholm Stadsmission, the app is installed and subsequently requests users permit it to access their tagged Facebook photographs. It then cycles through random pictures and gives users around nine seconds to decide if they would never wear the outfit again. Users can tag photos on both their own and others’ profiles, signifying whether the outfit should be worn again. Once tagged, directions on how and where they can give away their old clothes is offered. The Facebook app requires permission to post on behalf of each user and the charity is hoping that having out-of-fashion photos appearing on their newsfeeds will shame them into donating the outfits.

The campaign harnesses the information people put online to remind them of the possessions they hold onto but no longer use in order to facilitate greater recycling of goods. Are there other ways social media information can be leveraged to benefit society? Or will privacy concerns always hold such efforts back?

Website: www.stadsmissionen.se
Contact: www.stadsmissionen.se/omoss/kontakt1

Spotted by: Murray Orange

India-based mattress supplier Springwel’s Sleep Exchange campaign recently raised awareness of the problem of homelessness in the country, by offering discounts only to those customers donating their old mattresses to shelters. Now Swedish charity magazine Faktum has created Faktum Hotels, which encourages those with a roof over their head to trade places with rough sleepers by booking a night in popular spots used by the homeless.

The magazine – which is created and sold by those with no fixed abode – teamed up with media agency Forsman & Bodenfors to create a microsite for the campaign, which lets visitors ‘book’ one of ten places where homeless people might spend the night. For instance, customers can select an abandoned factory or a ledge under a bridge. Whether they actually choose to go through with staying at the spot is up to them, but the SEK 100 fee is used by Faktum to continue its work in supporting vulnerable people in the country. Users can also book a space for their friends, which can be gifted via Facebook. The following video explains more about the ‘hotel’:

The campaign raises awareness and encourages donations that help alleviate homelessness, while also providing the possibility for customers to experience the trials rough sleepers face. Are there other innovative ways to engage people with social issues?

Website: www.faktumhotels.com
Contact: www.faktum.nu/kontakt

Spotted by: Murray Orange

We recently wrote about Canadian DJ Kid Koala, whose 12 bit Blues album offered a working DIY cardboard turntable along with a flexidisc. Continuing a trend of experimenting with the physical format in the digital age, Swedish band the Shout Out Louds have created a limited edition version of their new single Blue Ice as a playable piece of ice.

As the first single to be released from its Optica album, the band created ten boxes, containing a plastic record-shaped mould and a bottle of water. Offered to fans and press, those who got their hands on the boxes could fill the mould and place it in a freezer. Once ready, the piece of ice could be placed on a record player, producing a copy of the single at around 30 percent of its original recorded quality. The following video demonstrates how the ice record works:

As well as acting as an interesting marketing tool for the single, it offered fans a unique way of interacting with the band’s music and an alternative to the high speed of delivery of today’s mp3 files. How else can the consumption of music be slowed down to garner greater appreciation?

Website: www.shoutoutlouds.com
Contact: www.shoutoutlouds.com/contact.aspx

Spotted by: Murray Orange

Netherlands-based VideoDeals has already leveraged time-linked video tagging technology to offer viewers deals on the products featured. Now Linklib uses QR codes to give smartphone owners synced information about video playing on a different screen.

Currently in beta, Linklib already has its own library of relevant content attached to existing Youtube links, such as clips from films and viral videos. Users first find a video through the site on their computer, which loads along with a QR code. By scanning the code with their smartphones, viewers are automatically directed to a feed of links containing information relevant to what’s on screen at the time – from Wikipedia pages to Facebook groups on the subject. Founder Simon Klose explains the idea in the video below:

The premise of Linklib is to make researching a subject while watching a video easier, considering that many people may already use a second device to look up extra content. How else can the deliverance of information be made more simple in these times of data overload? And how could such a method potentially be adapted for marketing purposes?

Website: www.linklib.org
Contact: www.twitter.com/linklib_

Spotted by: Murray Orange

Hot on the heels of our coverage of Re-Timer, a light-emitting device that aims to help users readjust their bodyclocks, we’ve stumbled across another innovative use of light. Swedish firm Umeå Energi has replaced bus stop advertising boards with therapeutic illumination, hoping to tackle instances of winter depression.

Considering some reports suggest that the prevalence of seasonal affective disorders can reach as high as 9.5 percent of the population in regions such as Scandinavia, it seems that light is important for keeping a healthy balance of hormones in the brain. With this is in mind, the company has installed lamps that replicate daylight at 26 bus stops around the town. The bulbs are similar to those used in phototherapy and do not emit ultra-violet rays – they will be in place for three weeks.

Although part of a temporary campaign, could governments employ a similar idea to help boost the moods of citizens during the winter?

Website: www.umeaenergi.se
Contact: umea.energi@umeaenergi.se

Following fast from our coverage of the NotFound project’s campaign to use 404 pages to hold information on missing persons, the Civil Rights Captcha is now using anti-spam devices to test if web users are human by asking them questions about global human rights issues.

Current anti-spam tests often get users to type the word from a distorted image, something that malicious bots aren’t able to do. Using the design of current tests, the Civil Rights Captcha asks respondent to select the correct answer from one of three captcha images, responding to a question about a human rights issue. For example, the test may ask if the torture of civilians in Kosovo makes them feel ‘lively’, ‘frustrated’ or ‘enthusiastic’, or if the first legal gay pride parade taking place in Serbia in 2010 makes them feel ‘infuriated’, ‘great’ or ‘sorrowful’. Users are unable to continue if they do not give the humane response.

According to the Civil Rights Defenders, the charity behind the concept, some 200 million people complete captcha tests each day. With such a large audience, the new captcha hopes to raise awareness of the plight of oppressed and abused people around the world. How else could social causes be fought for in our connected world?

Website: www.captcha.civilrightsdefenders.org
Contact: captcha@civilrightsdefenders.org

Spotted by: Raymond Neo