Code graffiti can only be cracked by geeks

In order to advertise a competition to win tickets to the 2013 Campus Party tech event, the organizers commissioned cryptic billboards that contained binary and morse code.

A week-long festival discussing the latest in tech and web issues isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but is sure to excite hackers, developers, gamers and technophiles. In order to advertise a competition to win tickets to the 2013 Campus Party event to the right crowd, the organizers commissioned cryptic billboards that contained binary and morse code.

Placed in Shoreditch, London – close to where the event was held at the beginning of September – the advertisements featured images of important figures in computing, including mathematician Alan Turing, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. Each billboard also contained the event’s web address translated into languages such as binary, hexidecimal and Morse code. Those who recognized the language and translated it into English were then able to access the site and enter the competition to win free tickets to the festival. The video below shows the billboards being created:

Campus Party used obscure tech references to market its event only to those with knowledge of the history of computing – the ideal audience for it’s geeky get-together. Are there other ways marketing can be made more engaging by targeted ads in this way?