This series of posts were created when I worked at a Marketing Automation company called “Loopfuse” in the early 2010’s. I was the Senior Manager of Technical Support and I posted blog content on the merits of Marketing Automation in general, as well as some of the technical aspects specific to that platform. I recently rescued these posts from the Wayback Machine for posterity and to remind myself of what I have written in the past. The images are missing, but you’ll get the idea.

During the recent holiday season I found myself in a local retailer looking at TV’s and dreaming of what I might find for my home office. I had heard some buzz about the newer 3D TV’s and I decided to look at a couple to see what the different features were. One really drew my attention, as it claimed to convert regular shows in to 3D shows. I *had* to see that in action. I didn’t think it was possible if the show hadn’t been filmed properly.

What I saw totally amazed me…and not in a good way. I could not believe they were trying to pass this product off as “3D” television when what I saw was a weak attempt at 3D display. Basically, once you put on the 3D glasses, you saw flat “layers” stacked up on top of each other, creating an illusion of 3D – sort of like a pop-up book. The problem with this method was that it was very apparent what they were trying to do and completely broke the illusion of 3D.

In contrast, I saw “Hugo” a few weeks ago in the theater. *That* was a good 3D experience. Scenes had depth and structures felt truly three dimensional. People moved around in a real space that drew you in as a viewer. I felt almost part of the movie. During part of the movie you see one of the characters directing early black and white picture shows on sound stages that were built by hand. Those sound stages had layers, very much like what I felt were displayed in the 3D TV’s I had been looking at, but even those layered sound stages in “Hugo” had more dimension in the true 3D movie than the poorly re-created images in the pseudo 3D TV show I had seen.

Here’s the point. Just because someone says they have 3D doesn’t mean they really do. They might have something that resembles or approximates 3D, but a high quality 3D film is built from the ground up to be a 3D film. It is scripted, blocked out, and filmed in methods that will result in a 3D film experience that far surpasses anything that someone can approximate by cobbling together an experience after the product has been finished. Unfortunately, there will be people who buy the inferior product because they simply don’t know any better.

Why is this on a Marketing Automation blog? Well, I could let the reader draw their own conclusions, but I think there are some similarities between what’s happening in the 3D movie/TV show space and the Marketing Automation world. Some have a genuine product and some are just approximators. If you want the best Marketing Automation experience you should use a product that has been built from the ground up specifically for Marketing Automation, like LoopFuse.