Flying car clip on YouTube.
When we wrote about this a year ago it seemed rather special to get 4.5 million clicks with our little clip. But what a year it has been. We just broke through 12 million and counting. That's a staggering 7.5 million views in the last 12 month. Beyoncé, we are rolling in!
The clip of the Opel Astra flying outdoors now consistently ranks in the top ten results for the keyword 'car' on Youtube. A nice side-effect is that the clip is pushing our Youtube Channel to a wider audience. Take a look! It's basically content from our website, but worthwhile a visit for a quick overview.
Our flying cars weight average around 5kg while they are so realistic that you can put them in the parking lot and people will not realize this is some sort of mock-up. We produce them from the CAD/CAM data of the original car design. Fitted with our custom-built radio control system and brush-less motors they are maneuvered with precision. Our clients use them at car shows, media actions, TV shows and many other types of events. Our flying cars are without doubt our best selling flying event product. The list of car brands that have used this concept is quite long.
The Flying Camaro in Buenos Aires.
Once more: Chevrolet wins with the flying Camaro the press award for the best exhibition booth at the 2011 Buenos Aires Salón Internacional del Automóvil (Buenos Aires Motor Show). That's three in a row after the press awards for Chevrolet at the car shows in Sao Paulo and Seoul, where the flying Chevrolets cars have been the main attraction of the show.
The flying Camaro was transported from Sao Paulo to Argentina for this exhibition and our worries it might suffer during the lengthy overland transportion turned out to be unfounded. So it was flying time again. During the ten day car show we air-staged about ten flights per day filling Chevrolets stand time and again. A nice touch was the responsiveness of the Argentinian crowd who gave our pilot for every flight a big applause, especially for smooth landings.
The Adidas project and the Smartbird.
A couple of years ago we had been contacted by TBWA Argentina. They loved our flying solutions and thought this was a fresh and exciting idea to offer to their client Adidas for their upcoming event at the Copa America. We discussed the possibilities with their creative department and narrowed it down to this: the flying concept for this event must be an idea around a ball or soccer boots or both. These were the objects associated with soccer that could be converted with high realism.
TBWA then came back with the great idea of an Adidas soccer ball flying back and forth over traffic between two high rise buildings which have been fitted with huge die cuts of famous soccer stars. Back and forth between the agency and us, the scale and details were adjusted until we had an idea that was convertible. Adidas loved the concept and we had a deal. However, the hard part was to actually get permits to do such an action. TBWA quickly hit the wall with safety minded city administrations in Venezuela. The concept was finally converted in front of the stadium in Maracaibo where the semis and the final took place. Four huge billboards with die cuts of Messi and Kaka were erected and we provided the flying Adidas balls along with a specially developed outdoor security system. The balls flew back and forth between the soccer boots of the players over a crossing.
The Flying Bumblebee Camaro attracted masses at the Chevrolet booth.
If you think car shows in China are crowded, you don't know the Seoul Motor Show. Happening every two years, there must have been millions of visitors or at least it felt that way. For this year's mega event Airstage has designed a Flying Camaro for Chevrolet's large booth featuring a bunch of new models.
The Flying Car had the same iconic design, yellow with black stripes, as the famous Bumblebee in the movie Transformers. If there would have been a price for the most photographed object at the car show the Flying Camaro would have outright won it.
We (air-)staged 10 choreographed flights per event day and filled Chevrolet's booth time after time. Operating over such large crowds comes always along with a good portion of suspense for us. The Airstage pilot team had to proceed with utmost concentration to maneuver the Flying Camaro in greater distances around the large stand avoiding obstacles and maintaining a safe height above hundreds of heads consistently. You can find a video of all the action here.
Flying Car Video on Youtube takes off.
When we uploaded this video three years ago the traffic was very modest, but then this outdoor clip of an Airstage Flying Car took off far beyond what we could ever have imagined.
Every day this video is watched by an average of 12.000 users around the globe and has received thousands of 'likes' and comments. It is our best horse to market our unique remote-controlled flying event technology to event planners and marketing executives on a very broad platform. We planned to talk about this for a long time, but now it seems the right moment to mention it: this amazing video is ranked around the top 15 search results for the
keyword 'car' on Youtube and is in the top three Google results for the search term 'flying car'. OK, it's a bit mischievous to call it a 'real flying car' in the
description, but then it is one
of our very real event products flying around in a village. The footage is actually from an experimental flight in ideal outdoor conditions.
Because of the high realism we achieve with car models the debate on Youtube (over 7800 comments so far) is quite fierce whether this is a real Opel Astra, a blimp, computer graphics or some kind of magical trick. Believe it or not, dozens of folks have contacted us and wanted to purchase one believing it's an actual flying car or wanted to order upgrade kits for their vehicles. Sorry, can't help there!
Design study of the SmartBird and a test video.
You will recall the drawings of Leonardo DaVinci's flying machines trying to copy the bird flight from nature. It took more than 500 years for his vision to be realized: in 2011 finally the Festo SmartBird has arrived.
Airstage, part of Festo's Bionic Learning Network, has designed the SmartBird for Festo's trade shows and event activities. Airstage has played a major role in the development of this ingenious flying robot from the early design sketches by our engineers to its actual production in our facility. Before, nobody has gotten any farther than elementary models with simple flapping wing technology.
The SmartBird is inspired by a seagull and its design and flying capabilities are so true to nature that it can be easily mistaken for a real bird.
The SmartBird wings don't only beat up and down, but tilt at specific angels controlled by an intelligent micro-controller monitoring continuously all data and parameters during flight and making automatically real-time adjustments. The control of flight direction is achieved with a turning head and tail, just like real birds do it when they maneuver themselves through airspace!
Our previous experience with developments for Festo, especially the AirRay and AirPenguin, helped immensely to take things a giant step further in realizing the ambitious idea of a robot bird. The SmartBird was designed to prove and convey fresh ideas regarding the potential of greater energy efficiency in aviation. The SmartBird design has reached an unprecedented energy efficiency of staggering 80%. It's extremely light weight with a minimal use of components, materials and an ingenious drive technology made this stunning invention possible.
The Flying Sonic at the Chevrolet stand.
Chevrolet Detroit utilized for the first time the Flying Sonic at this year's International Auto Show in Atlanta. The Airstage Flying Car performed to perfection and was commented the most exciting attraction at this event. The project was conducted in cooperation with Jack Morton Worldwide, who developed the concept of the Chevrolet booth at this exhibition.
The Atlanta International Auto Show is not the largest car show around, but has a unique co
sy atmosphere, perfect to take an Airstage Flying Car to the air. The Flying Chevy Sonic was executed to perfection and its realistic design with a high level of detail made many in the crowd believe this is a real car taking off. For once there was plenty of space and the Flying Sonic cruised over the whole Chevrolet stand much to the enjoyment of the Chevy product managers and models. Of course they were a bit scared at first by such a large object flying close to them overhead. Our explanations that an Airstage Flying Car weighs only 5kg, is based on lighter-than-air technology and therefore can't fall out of the sky reassured all staff and they played around with this surprising show during their car presentations. In fact, Chevrolet was the only car brand at this motor show that offered it's visitors some exciting entertainment. No wonder, the Chevrolet stand was comparatively well attended (what happened to car shows in the US by the way?). Especially the kids were very ecstatic and danced along under the Flying Chevy Sonic all the way. You can watch a video here.
The Flying Chevy Spark at an Azteca TV show.
For the recent launch of the Chevrolet Spark in Mexico Airstage has designed and produced two flying versions of the car model. It has been the first time an Airstage flying car has been utilized in this market. A series of events and guerrilla marketing actions were planned during the 201
0 Fifa World Cup, developed and arranged by GM Mexico's lead advertising agency McCann-Erickson. In cooperation with McCanns we devised a series of suitable applications for the Flying Sparks in line with the overall launch strategy.
For a period of nearly two weeks a series of events took place at a variety of locations. One Airstage team toured in Mexico City from shopping mall to shopping mall and surprised the shoppers with a flying presentation of the Chevy Spark. In similar style the other Airstage team operated twice at the Mexico City international airport in terminal 2. We hope sincerely nobody missed a flight!
The Flying Chevrolet Spark on Mexican TV: the buzz began
The most exciting part of this project was to fly one Spark in several high-profile Mexican TV shows of broadcasting networks such as Azteca and Telemundo. The TV shows were partly live and partly recorded. The live television programs have been of course the rather suspenseful gigs and the Airstage team piloted the flying car to perfection, but not without a few drops of sweat here and there. The word of the Flying Chevrolet Spark has spread quickly hereafter and a few other networks like MTV showed up, to get their footage of the 'talk of the town'. We would say, General Motors has made the most out of their advertising budget with this highly successful campaign and we had a lot of fun being part of its conversion. Actually the Spark launch became sort of a reference project for us, when we need to explain to our clients how to get the most value and impact out of our flying solutions. The events and actions have been so cleverly linked up that the buzz in the city reached quickly incredible levels. Youtube, like always, tells us the story.