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Opera to Put User's Face in Times Square

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-in-good-fun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Opera has announced that they will be putting one lucky user's face up in Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebrations. The ABC SuperSign will display the winner of of Opera's most recent contest that only requires a submission of your picture and the reason why you should be chosen as their New Year's mascot. Nearly one million partygoers will witness the super sized fan tribute with the Opera browser logo on the 585 square foot (that's 54 square meters!) screen."

3 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Screen Resolution by biocute · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For me, I would rather have my photo on opera.com for a month.

    By the way, does anyone know the screen resolution of this thing? I checked here but it didn't say much, and Wiki says it's often very low resolution.

    --
    Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
  2. Here's the resolution... by gasmonso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are a total of 2,300,000 LEDS at 122x48 feet. That equates roughly to a resolution of 2418x951 give or take a few :)

    http://religiousfreaks.com/
  3. Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox? by StateOfTheUnion · · Score: 4, Interesting
    come on . . . get off your high horse . . . any company willing to purchase time on the jumbotron in Times Square on New Year's Eve is looking for a BIG publicity stunt to launch them into the big times . . . The fact that you think that this is merely a simple "thank you" from a happy company that is in touch with its customers speaks more of your naivete than it does of the strategies of Opera. Of course a big thank you is exactly what Opera's senior leadership want the userbase to think because they don't want to alienate their userbase.

    But closer examination of their strategic intent indicates that they have bigger plans. Big jumbotron on New Year's Eve smells a lot like Monster.com buying commercial airtime during the superbowl. They are looking to kickstart an infective marketing campaign through a very prominent ad on a very prominent medium at a very prominent time.

    Where is Opera compared with the other browsers? A niche player that serves as a focused differentiator (Read up on Classical Strategy (Michael Porter's five forces)). How can a niche player increase its market share? Only by becoming a differentiator or low cost leader . . . It's quite apparent that this marketing campaign is testing the waters to see how easy (or hard) it would be for Opera to shift gears.

    If we consider the Boston consulting Group Matrix (BCG matrix), we can plot FireFox as a question mark (upper right quadrant) making moves to the upper left quadrant (star). It's logical to assume that Opera may be wondering if it can do the same thing . . . becuase it is likely that Opera currently hovers somewhere betweeb dog and star (between upper right and lower right quadrants).

    In other words, Firefox has successfully broken Microsoft's stranglehold on the browser. Because customer's are now more likely to believe alternative browsers do possess adequate levels of Garvin's eight dimension of quality (Performance, Features, Conformance, Reliability, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality), it is likely that this creates an opportune time for another browser to test the waters to see if it can go mainstream. It is quite apparent to the casual observer with elementary understanding of classical business strategy that this is a marketing stunt to gain data on the receptiveness of the marketplace.

    To think otherwise is to have bought into Opera's marketing agenda, to not uderstand classical strategic theory (I have intentionally ignored resource based systemic, and processual frameworks for strategies because I do not have the data to comment), or to simply be naive.