Augmented Reality: putting your brand in front of smartphones
Augmented Reality apps are an exciting new way to encourage people to engage with your product or brand. Luigi Cappel explains.
Experiential marketing, game mechanics and mobile applications all sound complicated and geeky, but if you found yourself in a Westfield shopping mall in the July school holidays, your kids were probably involved in all three. They were entertained and many went on to make a buying decision, having engaged with a brand and product in the form of 20th Century Fox and epic, the latest film from Blue Sky Studios.
Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that allows developers to enhance the user experience of someone on a smartphone (for example, an iPhone or Android) or tablet. It uses technology in the phone such as the camera, GPS and gyros to place objects in front of the phone, visible on the display, that aren’t really there.
Game mechanics or gamification is the use of applying elements that might be found in games and applying them to non-game environments to encourage people to engage in activities and make them more enjoyable. This can include anything from adopting a virtual pet to learning how to maintain a photocopier.
At Westfield St Lukes, 20th Century Fox installed a large diorama and took children on an ‘epic experience’. First, children coloured in a picture; then they took it to the set, dressed in leafman headgear and got a tour through the display, culminating in a visit with epic character Nim Galuu. In his house they held their artwork up to a display where they saw themselves and their drawing, plus video elements magically appearing as if in thin air in front of them.
Their reaction was typically ‘WOW!’ You could see the excitement in their eyes when they came out with their parents. Many went back for as many as five tours!
This experience was the brainchild of Neil Lambert, sales and marketing manager of 20th Century Fox NZ and the applications were developed by Auckland start-up, Imersia Limited.
“We wanted to encourage people to go to a cinema and watch the film. Not only did we achieve that, but we heard of people who changed their minds on the movie they had planned to see and went to see epic instead,” says Lambert.
“We were really excited to find out that there was a New Zealand company leading the way in this technology as we didn’t have the budget or time frame to work with an offshore company.”
Imersia also built an epic treasure hunt application which was featured at most Westfield Malls around New Zealand, where children had to find epic movie signs hidden around the centres. When they pointed their mobiles at the signs, a movie character popped up out of nowhere and they heard a sound bite from the movie.
“The challenge set by 20th Century Fox was to draw people into the malls and have them stay longer,” explains Imersia CEO, Jonathan Lowther. “Our location based AR apps achieved this and it was possible because so many people have iPhones and Androids today; and the children, especially, don’t need much prompting on how to use them.”
Augmented Reality isn’t exactly new, but as Lowther points out, we have now reached a critical mass where there are sufficient numbers of people using smartphones. In fact in November last year, Russell Stanners, CEO of Vodafone New Zealand, announced they were moving to an all-smartphone line-up. That means that even if you bought a basic mobile, it probably has the capability of running AR apps.
AR’s influence
One area that is being revitalised through AR is the print industry. This Christmas when children get their latest Guinness Book of World Records, many of the pages will come to life in front of their mobile, with 3D images and social media integration.
The music industry is also using this technology to get people to continue to buy albums; notable bands using AR on cover art include the Rolling Stones, One Direction, and our very own Shapeshifter.
Another area is image recognition in direct marketing. An example is the ability to point your mobile at a picture in a mailer and see a video demonstrating how the product is used. A tap on an icon allows the app to know your location through the GPS in the phone, then up pops a map showing you the nearest stores to your current location where that product can be purchased.
Now that you think about it, you have probably heard of other Augmented Reality applications. An example is the Google Sky Map that comes with Android phones, allowing you to hold the phone up to the sky and identify the constellations.
Another New Zealand company, HitLab NZ, created an application called CityViewAR, which allows people to look at buildings in the Christchurch earthquake zone and see what the buildings looked like before the quake took its toll. This concept, seeing things differently through a mobile device, has been used in travel and tourism for several years, but by a select few. That is what is changing, particularly with developers and brands targeting ‘digital natives’ – young people who are growing up with this technology.
Department store IKEA plans to use AR in its 2014 catalogues which allow you to ‘place’ furniture items in your house and see what they would look like in situ.
You have probably heard of Google Glasses, I’m only mentioning them because it would be wrong to write a story on AR without a little mention. Instead of using your mobile, AR glasses would allow you to really immerse yourself in this technology, but it will be a long time before this technology or AR ‘heads up’ displays in cars will be commonplace. Whereas smartphones are here today.
Engaging with your brand
What’s in the immediate future for you? Without getting technical, people can engage with your product or brand. They can look at your packaging through their phone and have an experience, play games, watch promotional or instructive videos, enter competitions, and connect with you.
You can control where they have an experience. You can even give different people a different experience based on their context, location and profile. For example, if I point my mobile at a billboard on a bus shelter I might see an advertisement for the latest mobile phone accessory, while my wife sees an ad for the latest magazine story about the Royal baby from the same billboard.
Kiwis are famous as early mass adopters and this need not be an expensive addition to your marketing mix. AR technology is as close as… well, your phone.
Luigi Cappel is MD of SoLoMo Consulting Limited and CMO of Imersia Limited. He is a speaker, consultant and coach on blogging, social media, experiential marketing and augmented reality, with a focus on engaging and winning customers to specific locations. A popular conference presenter, Luigi is also past president of the NZ Wireless Forum, past VP of Sales & Marketing Executives International, chair of the Computing and IT Industry Advisory Committee at the National Technology Institute, member of the World Future Society and the Auckland ICT Cluster.