Tag: augmented reality

Augmented Reality in 2013

With smartphones and tablets becoming part of our everyday life, we will also see more Augmented Reality apps mixing the virtual and the real world in 2013. Here are some examples from ARworks that recently caught my eye…

Audi Singapore Showroom app

For the opening of their biggest showroom in South-East Asia, Audi created AR experiences that allowed visitors to fly around the showroom building without actually boarding a plane or drive the Audi R18 race car around Singapore at full speed without the risk of getting a ticket. Whats more, they even allowed visitors to personalize their individual license plates and then take photos with the car.

Dakar race in a shopping mall

A real Dakar desert racecourse was built for the new Opel Mokka on a 4mtrs long table that was placed in a shopping mall. Visitors could use the provided iPad’s to race against time and each other. The results were then shared on Facebook and the weekly and overall winners received various prizes.

Christmas Ornament Sling

Deutsche Telekom for their Christmas promotion developed an iPad app where visitors could throw virtual Christmas ornaments containing their personal message onto a huge Christmas tree erected in a mall. A successful hit to one of the real ornaments on the tree, lighted it up through an integrated server application.

Track My Macca’s

McDonald’s in Australia decided to use technology to tackle one of its biggest problems i.e. the disbelief that its ingredients are fresh, locally sourced and of decent quality. So with image recognition, GPS, augmented reality and some serious integration with its supply chain, they put together a full story behind every ingredient people came across while buying food at McDonald’s. 😎

Making magazines instantly interactive

Enabling readers to buy directly from magazines or newspapers is slowly going to become the industry standard, as revenues from print continue to slip.

Last year Ikea re-imagined their catalog via a special visual recognition app that brought its pages and offerings within to life. Now Marie Claire has taken it one step further by letting their readers use the Netpage app, to interact with its printed pages i.e. clip, save, share, watch and buy.

The Netpage app uses a combination of image recognition, augmented reality and digital twin technology. Hence no special codes, watermarks or special printing processes are required.

The future is all about content being fused with commerce so that it’s a quick step from reading about an item to buying it. So get ready! 😎

Jameson Irish Whiskey “Apple Attack”

Jameson Irish Whiskey has recently launched a huge outdoor campaign where they have teamed up with augmented reality specialist Blippar for their image recognition technology.

People with the Blippar app can now scan any Jameson Irish Whiskey ad or bottle and immediately get immersed in a Jameson Irish Whiskey version of Space Invaders…

Having played the game myself, I found it would have been a better experience if they had just allowed players to tilt the phone around, instead of non stop tapping at the screen. However it is still good to see more brands innovating like this.

If you would like to give it a try, then download the Blippar app on your smartphone and scan the below bottle to start playing…

A new kind of catalog

Every year, the Ikea Catalog inspires over 200 million people around the world to create homes they love. For 2013, Ikea is taking the inspiration one step further by bringing technology to their paper catalog and driving a more seamless connection to purchase.

Ikea has worked with ad agency McCann New York to re-imagine their catalog via a special visual recognition app that bring its pages and offerings within to life in the form of inspirational videos, designer stories, ‘x-ray’ vision that peeks inside furniture, and more.

Magnum Pleasure Hunt across Amsterdam

Earlier on in April Magnum launched the second edition of its hit online game ‘Magnum Pleasure Hunt‘. To extend the campaign further, a real time mobile augmented reality game was created that took the game to the streets of Amsterdam.

The game is currently ongoing and participants between April 22nd and April 29th can use the special mobile app to hunt down 150 chocolate bonbons that have been hidden across 9 locations in Amsterdam. The one who claims the most bonbons wins a free trip to New York, while the rest are rewarded with the new Magnum Infinity ice cream.

I find the the Magnum mobile game to be a toned down version of the Vodafone Buffer Busters game that ran in Germany last September. Either ways its good to see more brands using augmented reality as a medium of engagement.

Lacta Love Messages

Ad agency OgilvyOne Athens has created another innovative campaign for Lacta Chocolate. This time consumers are able to write their own love messages and see them appear on real Lacta Chocolate bars though an augmented reality mobile app…

Click here to view some of the past Lacta Chocolate campaigns that are equally innovative.

Mickey Mouse brings Disney magic to NYC

Happy Birthday, Mickey Mouse! Walt Disney’s beloved icon turned 83 this month and Disney Parks celebrated at the Disney Store in Times Square with an augmented reality installation.

Disney is also using a Twitter hashtag #DisneyMemories to track the experiences at Times Square and the campaign.

This augmented reality installation seems to be trending with brands wanting to do live events, as National Geographic and Lynx have also used the same style of augmented reality to engage with their audience.

National Geographic “Live Augmented Reality”

Appshaker recently launched a large scale way of immersing people in some of the most amazing scenes from National Geographic’s extensive archive. Using augmented reality they placed people right inside the content, and allowed them to immerse themselves in different scenes such as leopards, astronaut, dolphin, storms and dinosaurs.

The reaction to this was huge. Tens of thousands of people interacted with the National Geographic brand while it toured Hungary and thousands shared pictures and videos on Facebook.

Sometime last year Lynx had also done a similar activity with their Fallen Angels in London’s Victoria station…

The Volkswagen Beetle. Juiced Up.

Volkswagen has made their biggest ever re-vamp of their classic Volkswagen Beetle. With the help of their agency Red Urban, they launched the new VW Beetle through a series of standard billboards, bus shelters and just about every other traditional print-based media property that they could buy. So whats the big deal about that? Well, the twist was that every ad was an Augmented Reality marker that unlocked a 3D experience to the users who downloaded and pointed the custom VW Juiced Up app at the various ads.