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LEGO Pests Make for a Fun Promotion

Earlier this year, Rentokil introduced the company’s Pest ID feature to its Australian customers. Here’s how it works:

• Visitors to the Rentokil Pest ID page access the drop-down menu and choose whether the pest they have seen is either a flying insect, a crawling insect, a rodent, or a bird. Alternatively, they can choose to view all pests.
• From there, visitors can view Rentokil’s extensive list of pests that are unique to their country. If they still can’t find the right pest, they can use the filter option located at the top right-hand side of the page and search by: number of legs; size; size of antennae; color; and location spotted.
• Once users have found their pest by clicking on the image they can view interesting facts about its appearance, life cycle, and habits
   

To promote this new technology, the Rentokil creative team turned to an old, but still relevant and popular-as-ever toy: LEGOs.

“We were looking for something to celebrate the launch of our new PestID tool, but we wanted to make sure it was relevant. What better way to get people thinking about what makes a pest than to get them to build their own — and LEGOs were the perfect medium for them to express their creativity,” said Brigitta Carter, digital content manager at Rentokil Initial.

The Rentokil marketing and innovation team divided itself into six teams. A collection of LEGOs was then sprawled out in front of each team, which had 45 minutes to create a LEGO pest. “The only rules were that it had to be a pest and it needed to be able to stand by itself,” said Carter.

The end result of this exercise — which Carter said also helped “knock down barriers” and “let people’s creativity shine through” — was a series of fun, colorful LEGO pests that were photographed and videotaped. Rentokil then used the images and videos to promote PestID, which is being piloted on its Australian website and on its social media sites. “It‘s been really successful there and we’re now planning to bring it to our U.S. site on rentokil.com,” Carter added. — Brad Harbison

Mosquito-Catching Drones Being Developed

Microsoft researchers are developing autonomous drones that collect mosquitoes to look for early signs that potentially harmful viruses are spreading, with the goal of preventing disease outbreaks in humans.

Project Premonition, launched by Microsoft, is developing a system that aims to detect infectious disease outbreaks before they become widespread. Project Premonition could eventually allow health officials to get a jump start on preventing outbreaks of a disease like dengue fever or avian flu before it occurs, whether or not it is a disease spread by mosquitoes, researchers said.

It will do so by relying on what Ethan Jackson, the Microsoft researcher who is spearheading the project, calls “nature’s drones” — mosquitoes — to look for early signs that a particular illness could be on the move.

Source: Times of India