All this week we’re out in Mayrhofen, Austria, producing a real-time stream of news content for the official Snowbombing festival iPhone app by Eristoff – Vodka from the Land of the Wolf.

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, download it for free while the event is taking place and let us know what you think. You’ll find news, gossip and interviews direct from the week-long festival, which sees artists like The Enemy, Editors, 2ManyDJs, De La Soul, Fatboy Slim, Vitalic, Doves and Friendly Fires playing to 6000 fancy dressed loons high up the Tyrolean alps.

Live Feeds

The app makes use of Alchemy Content’s specialist experience of developing and running mobile applications that go beyond the gimmicks; providing a useful, always up-to-date information service that’s constantly available in a user’s pocket.

Live feeds of high-quality custom content give people a reason to refer to the branded application repeatedly throughout their time at the event. For Snowbombing, we’ve devised an additional Eristoff Secrets feed, offering exclusive calls to action on things like VIP party access, ticket competitions and insider tips for getting the most from the resort.

Intense Usage

Mobile apps based around intense periods of usage, like major events or holiday locations work particularly well, so the Eristoff Snowbombing app is an ideal use of the technology and Alchemy Content’s editorial and project management services. See our Clubber’s Guide to Ibiza app for more.

GPS maps pinpointing and recommending local businesses, a fully searchable events schedule including artist profiles, plus user generated community feeds from YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all add to the application being an essential download for anyone – whether out at Snowbombing or not – with an interest in the artists or wanting an interactive guide to the best of Mayrhofen’s après ski.

Download the Eristoff Snowbombing app for iPhone or iPod Touch.

Bringing such a seemingly unsubtle commercial tie-in, reportedly worth in excess of £100,000 into theatres, particularly for family orientated shows like pantos, is sure to make a lot of people feel very uneasy.

But this is the reality already facing TV and online in the digital age as the audience becomes more savvy at ignoring/skipping through the sponsors messages that make things possible. It’s very interesting to see the theatre industry get in there first while the broadcast regulators worry about how to relax their laws.

It may not be pretty, but developing and creating characters for ads that then take on a wider life of their own is only a reverse twist from Disney or Star Wars characters helping shift McDonalds burgers. The new patrons of the arts are the nodding cuddly toys.

As long as the audience are sufficiently media literate they should be able to take this kind of thing for what it is (something that helps keep their ticket price down for starters). And that’s a good argument for actively teaching such literacy in schools, particular in an age of Wikipedia ‘facts’ and fanatical websites on health/religion/football being absorbed by otherwise impressionable minds.

Although it feels a bit brutal to have sponsored characters leading the “oh no he’s not”s in festive stage shows, this new era of highly creative advertising delivery actually shows how far our collective cultural intelligence has had to come in a digital era. A previous generation simply wouldn’t be able to comprehend the message, but today an insurance company can make money from putting a dog into a panto without having to plaster their name everywhere. Somewhere that’s actually quite subtle.