Please Exhibit Carmen’s Spam

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

Every few weeks we receive either Spam or an email (we still haven’t quite figured out what category to put this into – nor indeed have our Gmail spam filters) from the nice lady ‘Carmen’ from Taizhou Jingxiang Advertisement Communication Co., Ltd (or the Shanghai Jingxiang Advertisement Communication Co., Ltd as it’s known in English).

EL8900

It’s easy to smirk at the wording in the email “Dear Sir, How are you? Thanks for your time to read my email. We are the pioneer of OUTDOOR MOBILE LED DISPLAY VEHICLE manufacturer in China. And our advertising vehicle are suitable for road shows, promoting activities, events, football show, band show and exhibitions and so on!”

However as I don’t speak or read/write Mandarin (at all, let alone any better) who I am to criticise?

One thing we have learnt on our extensive travels around the world (both DOOH and pre-DOOH careers) is that we are actually Xenophobic … well ok I’m actually not sure what we learnt.

Anyway, ignoring the English in the email for a second, the lovely Carmen is always kind enough to supply us with pictures (not that kind chaps, not that kind) and we always dutifully click through and have a gander.

Out of all the LED on offer that is integrated into vehicles, mounted on trucks, pulled as a trailer or built into ISO shipping containers by far our favourite is the EL8900 shown above – although the E-P7100 Beetle (Scissor-type) is also kinda crazily cool!

First of all the bus stands out on the web site as one of the only real-world installations (in amongst hundreds of mock-ups, line drawings and ‘artists impressions’) but also, hey, it’s an LED on the whole side of a bus (or a ‘coach’ as we would call it in England) and we think that is pretty ‘neat’ in itself.

A long, long time ago working for an Intel VC backed startup, a company that wanted to be a global Internet Service Provider (ISP) we created an ‘Internet Bus’ – these were the days when there was no Wi-Fi and when we’d (literally) pull up at a show we used to drag telephone wires (POTS) or sometimes ISDN out to the bus and hook it up in order to demonstrate the Interweb to potential punters.

The bus was driven around European and went to all the major shows over a period of a couple of months.

At larger shows, say the size of #ISE2012 you would simply drive the bus into one of the exhibit halls, lay out a carpet, set out some tables and chairs and you’d have an instant booth.

For smaller shows (as of course is often done) you can simply park it up outside. During the dotcom days at the wannabee global ISP we also drove the Internet Bus to corporate campuses and many of the larger shopping centres around Europe.

If these Chinese Manufacturers are serious about Europe then this is exactly the sort of innovation we would like to see. So, what do you say Carmen?


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