I went to tour an apartment recently in a brand new building.  When I arrived the leasing agent took me into the office and gestured for me to sit in front of a large plasma screen.

This immediately conjured memories of the BU Experience video – a 25 minute video designed to appeal to would-be undergraduates touring the BU campus.  They also show it at employee orientation.  Nobody gets to talk about health insurance until we’ve all listened to the immortal words of Martin Luther King (which, according to banners outside Marsh Plaza back in February, included the phrase “lorem ipsum“).

The Experience was a $3 million experiment that ultimately proved nothing more than that people are capable of editing segments of video into a presentation.  It carries graphics on par with Fox News, and flashy integrations of interviews and inspirational music.  It’s really the same video colleges have been producing for years, but instead of sending it out on DVD to students’ homes BU shows it in a theater dedicated to the purpose.  Promotional material and uncomfortable seats.  It’s a bargain.

Only students at Appalachian are really envious of BU’s approach.  Watch that video for even a few seconds and you’ll understand why.

In the leasing office of my potential future apartment, I saw a far more effective use of high technology as a marketing tool.

The plasma screen was mounted at an angle, with chairs in front of it.  At first, it just showed a 3D rendering of the floors in the building. Touch a floor, though, and it expands to show the layout of apartments on that floor.  The layout is color coded by price range, and labeled with the basics (e.g., how many bedrooms are in each unit).

Touch a particular apartment and it expands to show the floor plan inside.  Touch a secret spot (hint: it’s the corporate logo) and the screen adds the monthly rent to the display.  Touch buttons at the bottom of the screen and you can see views inside the space and perhaps out the window – features that I couldn’t use, since there were no photos available yet for the brand new building.

Nothing about this display is inherently novel.  Anybody in the world can download the same floor plans from the building’s website, and can explore prices for available apartments.  Touch screens have been around for decades, when their most public use was to order roast beef sandwiches at Arby’s.  Semi flashy animation is ubiquitous even on the web now.

What makes it exciting is that it organizes information in a way that makes sense, perhaps for the first time in the history of apartment leasing.  It generates the desire to explore.  I might want to check out the price differential between similar apartments on different floors of the building.  That takes just three taps per apartment.

You might be interested in comparing the views and floor plans for different apartments in the same price range.  Check out the dark blue apartment on one side of the building and you’ll see a small one bedroom with gorgeous Boston views; check out the dark blue apartment on the opposite corner and you’ll see a spacious two bedroom with views of the railroad yard.

It doesn’t take a lot of energy (just a lot of creativity) to put technology to good use.  An overproduced video?  No.  An interactive apartment finder?  Yes.

On the other hand, this was the same buildling that has a plasma screen in the mail room with little icons for apartments with packages waiting – 1313 with a little hanger icon means there’s dry cleaning waiting.  My current apartment solves this organizational problem by leaving a little tag on our mailbox – a system that hasn’t crashed once since I moved in.