What is Augmented Reality?
Simple put, Augmented Reality, or more commonly known as AR, is a way to take digital assets and superimpose them into the real world. Often times AR is confused with virtual reality. A simple way to understand the difference is to note that AR augments, or makes greater by adding to it. While Virtual Reality is an experience where you were a headset to immersive yourself into a completely different reality.
AR is an amazing way to engage with all types of audiences. In actuality, it is a new form of content delivery. Just like websites and blogs in many ways have replace newspapers, AR is expected to be the next leap in how we can consume media. Many companies and organization have even started to explore how it can be utilized as tools and resources in the training, medical, and various other industries. If utilized properly and in the right circumstances AR can be revolutionary to how we interact with our content.
What makes AR so interactive?
One of the coolest things about AR is the way in which it is developed. Think about this way, most mobile apps or games are created with interesting and unique ways for you to interact with the screen or controller. AR is the same way except the content is not contained simply on a screens digital background. Instead the view is the digital content in your cameras field of view. This means if we are playing the insanely popular game ‘Pokemon Go’ we can actually use AR to see the Pokemon we are trying to catch on the floor of our house. This changes the level of immersion by merging with with reality.
Another example of this is some of the work we have done for HGTV’s television show ‘Theme Queen’. For this experience we worked closely with the host of the show, Moe Anato. On the show her primary focus is to renovate rental properties into themed homes that families on vacation would love to stay in. In the episode that we helped out on the theme was a dragon’s den, and our goal was to make it an interactive experience. So we put our minds to work and strategized two AR apps that immersed the home renters and their families right into the den of the dragon. As you can see in the image below we brought the digital assets to life and let users pf the application interact with them. The key to any good AR experience is a lot like a good movie, try and add as many elements as you can that keep the user fully immersed. This meant we added lighting, sound, and distance based effects.
3 tips on how to create an Augmented Reality marketing plan
When creating a marketing plan centered around an Augmented Reality experience here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Identify the goals of your plan
The most important aspect of any marketing plan, regardless of the medium in which you choose to deliver it, is setting up your goals. Without proper goals and ways to measure them you have no way of understanding if your plan was a success or not. Make sure you focus your first efforts on setting up attainable and trackable goals!
2. Explore and understand what makes your audience respond
Next, how are you gonna achieve these goals through the use of Augmented Reality? Well, the great thing about AR is that you can deliver a new type of experience to you audience. The challenge is figuring out what exactly that experience looks like. In order to figure this out, we have found it most beneficial to start with understanding what make our audience get excited. For instance, a great example of marketing utilizing AR is the wine brand ’19 Crimes’. They found a unique and innovative way to get people excited about their specific brand of wine over all others by making it an experience. For those who don’t know, the bottle wine, when viewed with the companion app comes to life to display interactive videos that capture the attention of the user. To learn more about ’19 Crimes’ tap here.
3. Identify your call to action and where you will lead your audience
Finally, make sure you think about what the result of the experience is for your user. This means determining if you are simply creating brand awareness or trying to drive traffic to a certain location. This is essential in achieving your goals as this will be the definitive moment of the experience where you get to capitalize on the audiences willingness to engage.
Need Some Help?
Never fear, we are heavily experienced in developing augmented reality for a variety of clients. If you are interested in our services and would like to check out our packages: tap here.