This is our final installment in our series this week on augmented reality. It’s all been fascinating and, indeed, very, very cool. So now to the practical side (Whoa there! Don’t worry. Just because we have to be practical doesn’t mean there’s no more coolness ahead!)

How can my company use all this fancy AR to make money?

Here are a few of the success stories. They all have one thing in common. They encourage interaction between the consumer and the product. We all know that means more sales.

• Sorso Tea in uses packaging and a large kiosk screen at the point of sale to attract customers. Hold the box of tea in front of the kiosk, and see yourself hold a scene that is appropriate for enjoying the product. The display in the store attracted both the young and old to see how this new packaging worked.

• The launching of a new Star Trek movie has been made even more of an event with the use of AR campaign. Watch 3-D trailers that respond to your commands.  There are three different views, which are seen when you turn the paper with the design on it.

• IKEA, the Swedish furniture store, has applied AR to encourage customers in Germany to try furniture pieces out in their home – using AR. The customer aims their webcam at their current furniture in their home, then they virtually place the prospective new furniture into the setting. They then are viewing the un-purchased piece on the computer screen, superimposed over the real furniture setting. The hope is, of course, that the customers will then confidently purchase the furniture, knowing what it will look like before they get it home.

• Molson Dry Beer has a fabulous shtick that gives me a sudden urge to go buy beer. When the beer is cold, the “partaker of the product” can hold the bottle itself up to the computer screen and see an animated 3D party message. It is the first use of a product itself to trigger an AR experience. Users can even save their 3D experience and upload it to add to others for total consumer engagement. Awesome.

Using Augmented Reality for Marketing

The Esquire Magazine augmented reality issue has been receiving its own kinda buzz on the web lately, and the question comes up – who took on designing the digital side of the equation? The Barbarian Group, who designed the AR elements, took on the project last spring. In an interview of Benjamin Palmer, CEO of The Barbarian Group, it was revealed that they felt Esquire Magazine was a good place to start with combining a magazine with digital enhancements. “We think the Esquire reader is a perfect audience for AR – generally well educated and likely to have a decent computer with a webcam.”

This brings out an good point for marketing professionals interested in incorporating AR into their marketing plans. Whether you are developing an app for a Smartphone, or creating an online AR experience, the rules of marketing don’t change. Remember your audience.

Here are a collection of ideas we saw on the web. Keep these in mind as you formulated your own marketing strategies as we enter the next decade.

Marketing Ideas for mobile AR applications:

Take and point your Smartphone down the street, at a product, or at a menu to see

• Business Cards hover over buildings or offices
• Coupons for your business or product appear when pointed
• Friends enter their favorite “hot spots” at certain locations, which you can view
• Event calendars show on the outside of your business.
• Absolut Vodka’s Drinkspiration app lets the users choose a drink while at a bar based on mood, weather, surrounding music, etc.

Other Marketing Ideas for AR

• Not everybody has a Smartphone, so
• Direct Mail pieces with the AR element on it, so when held in front of a webcam, a 3D image pops up.
• Retail stores that have packaging that shows the 3D assembled toy when held to the webcam

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Previous Blogs:

Augmented Reality is Virtually Here

Esquire Magazine Demonstrates the Coolness of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality for Your Phone

In this segment of our series on augmented reality (AR), we have some ‘sploring to do. I am going to excuse you from doing much reading today, and instead, you are to go explore what a couple of AR leaders are creating. Even a 60 second glance at these websites, and you’ll be fascinated.

Georgia Tech’s Augmented Environment Lab

One of the nation’s hotspots for augmented reality development is Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, Georgia. They are developing all sorts of uses for AR, and have a marvelous sample of many applications for it:

Total Immersion, Augmented Reality Solutions

Total Immersion is a cutting edge creator of augmented reality  for all sorts of products and places. They’ve done work in museums, amusement parks, and retail to name a  few. From interactive live shows, to baseball cards, to 3D books, this company has done amazing things with AR. Definitely check out this site to get a good feel for the uses of AR.

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Previous Blogs:

Augmented Reality is Virtually Here

Esquire Magazine Demonstrates the Coolness of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality for Your Phone

As we continue looking at augmented reality (AR) this week, we can’t pass by the applications available for Smartphones. There are more being created every day, and for marketers, it’s yet another great way to get your customers involved with your brand.

Here are some cool Smartphone apps that are using AR. Check them out, and then start thinking about what apps your company could provide.

List of cool iPhone AR apps:

http://mashable.com/2009/12/05/augmented-reality-iphone/

London Tube Stations from accrossair:

REAL SKI, with info on ski slopes in America from Resort Technology Partners:

Question:How  do we create Smartphone apps?
Answer: I don’t know. That’s what we have programmers for! But I can tell you I searched “how to create augmented reality apps” on Google, which yielded tons of how-to videos for programmers. I have to leave that to you whom are smart in the ways of ones and zeros.

Final thought? Thirty second TV commercials of yore are fine, but get your customers involved by providing a Smartphone app, and you’ll:

1. Get customers involved for a long time with your brand. They’ll interact with your app longer than 30 seconds.

2. Get customers to come back to your brand. If it’s a useful and/or fun app, they’ll come back to it over and over. And they’ll tell their friends.

Come back tomorrow for more on augmented reality.

“Cool!… This is the future of magazines.” A. Pruitt, my 11 year old son,

upon seeing an augmented reality magazine for the first time.

The December 2009 issue of Esquire Magazine has diminished the line between paper and pixels. Using augmented reality (AR) to enhance its reading experience, the magazine shows us some of the uber-coolness that is the current state of AR.

At a large indoor amusement establishment a few years ago, I stood in line to experience “virtual reality.” I donned a heavy pair of goggles, and had gloves attached to my hands. Through the goggles I viewed a scene, which I was able to walk through and interact with. It was an incredible experience.

AR, as Esquire Magazine demonstrates this use of it, is sort of the opposite of that. The scenery exists on your computer screen, and you interact outside of the experience. It works like this. Printed on the magazine page is a black and white square with a pattern on it. After downloading an application from their site, and turning on your computer’s webcam, you hold the magazine up so the webcam “sees” the box. Then the fun begins.

First, an image pops up, much like a video. But it has a 3D look, and by turning and tilting the magazine page, the image reacts by moving, turning, and tilting on your screen. It’s also referred to as a “digital hologram,” which is a pretty fair description. It’s a little difficult to manage holding the magazine and viewing the screen at the same time, but the results are worth adding that to your skill set.  After all, you can only move your mouse in a 2D fashion, but you can move the page with the AR grid in real-life 3D and get the corresponding response on your screen. Yeah, it’s cool.

Esquire Magazine’s AR demos include an introduction by Robert Downey, Jr., an art show, some jokes, a fashion show, and some music. Your input triggers their response, simply by moving the grid from the appropriate page in front of your webcam. It’s similar to what you do with your mouse when moving the googlemaps street view or using keyboard commands to move through a video game, but smooth and seamless, and mouse-less.

What’s In It For Marketers?

Imagine the possibilities! For starters, if you incorporated AR on your website, the novelty of AR could be enough to drive prospective clients to your site. Send clients a printable pattern, provide a website with AR capabilities, and your customers could view your product in 3D. They could “visit” your store. They could interact with your widget. You can tell more of a story about your product. And you have to admit, listening to a new jazz CD is better than reading about it.

What else? Any marketers using this type of AR? Let’s hear from you.

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To see Esquire Magazine’s demo:  http://bit.ly/EsqAugRealtDemo

To see GE’s demo: http://bit.ly/ARGESmartGridDemo

Click on the left demo window to see what the experience is like.

Click on the right to print a grid to try it yourself.

More tomorrow on other uses of augmented reality.

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