Anyone for tennis?

Technology isn’t just making possible completely new ways of communicating with people, but new ways of making brands become useful friends at the same time.
Take the iPhone app.

Kraft’s iFood application got into Apple’s Top 10 apps at the beginning of the year. Not bad, given that they were charging 99c for it in the USA.
Imagine that, people actually paying to interact with your brand?!

Okay, it’s true that the iPhone has 98% penetration among advertising creative directors and only 4% penetration of the total American mobile market but what Apple did was to force the other cellphone manufacturers into seeing that apps are going to be as important to their businesses going forward as texting was.

So here’s IBM and their agency Ogilvy London creating a stunning new app for visitors to this year’s Wimbledon to download to their mobiles.
As you wander through the crowds, you hear a noise. Point your phone and IBM Seer tells you why the crowd roared, what’s happening, who’s dropped a set etc.
Want to know where the toilets are? Seer shows you the way, helpfully telling you there’s a half-hour queue at the ladies’.

It pulls in all the twittering of the players and the pundits so you can join the debates. Is Federer on his last legs? (No) Has Andy Murray got what it takes? (No) Is this a really cool tool for tennis nuts to use, which will make them think both admiringly and fondly of Big Blue? (Yes)