Remember the first time you saw a flat screen TV? Remember how  cool and amazing it was? Or perhaps your cool, amazing thing was an iPhone, or HDTV, or (for some of us) a microwave oven. I remember the first time I heard music being played on a CD. It was during Christmas at a department store, and it happened to be playing a jazz band from LA that I was familiar with, which added to the awesomeness. You Gen Y-ers can stop laughing now.
The next level of coolness is fast approaching, and marketers need to be aware of it, Gen Y included.
It’s called augmented reality,  or AR for short, and it’s a fascinating combination of real life and computers.  Virtual graphics are superimposed on top of the real-life objects on the screen. For a simple example, watch football on TV, and you’ll see the yellow first-down line superimposed over the field, or you’ll see a virtual logo superimposed on the 50 yard line.
With a smartphone (which is a phone with computing capabilities like email and internet access), AR is viewed using various applications. For instance, by holding your phone up to view the street ahead of you, you could see small data balloons pop up describing the restaurants and their ratings. Hikers can view the next mountain up ahead and get information about the elevation of the mountain.
On a PC, you can go to the AR website provided by the host, download their software, then hold a magazine page up to your PC’s webcam, and watch a scene come to life. More on that tomorrow.
We’ll be exploring AR all week, with an eye towards what this means for marketers as we move into 2010 and beyond. And what does AR mean for marketers?
1. Audiences will be interacting with your storefronts and your brands in totally new ways.
2. Mobile marketing really is going to be big. Get started now.
To get you started, here are a few links that have examples and more information.
Article on AR from Digital Trends: http://bit.ly/DigtlTrendsAR
Demo of AR: http://bit.ly/ARDemo1
60 Second Marketer Blog on AR from Garrett Fuselier: http://bit.ly/SMWhatIsAR
Monday, December 7th, 2009, 2:35 pm | 
General Marketing | 
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