Japan Institute of Science and Technology has created a racing game inspired by the “WipeOut” game! The team re-created the racing track with quantum levitation elements and added Liquid Nitrogen to the cars for effect… 😎
Is this a glimpse into the future of car racing? 😉
Here is a great example of Online, Mobile and Shopper Marketing converging with Augmented Reality (AR). Integrated Marketing literally put into the hands of the people.
Japanese ad agency Dentsu has started this experimental coupon download platform called iButterfly on the iPhone. The free iPhone app transforms the habit of collecting coupons into a fun little game using AR and the device’s GPS.
The app tasks its users with catching virtual butterflies that are flying around, each representing one or more coupons. You can even share “butterflies” with your friends via Bluetooth.
Augmented reality in this context means the phone camera view becomes the backdrop, while digital objects. Here, butterflies. are overlaid and tied to location signals like GPS.
In retail and FMCG shopper marketing, the value of this approach is that promotions become a location-linked experience, not a passive download.
The key shift is motivation. People are not “clipping” coupons. They are playing a simple collecting game, and the reward is a deal that feels earned.
Because butterflies can be placed around specific areas, the mechanic supports targeting by place and moment. That makes the coupon feel context-aware rather than generic.
This is less about novelty AR and more about a new distribution behavior. Turning offers into collectible objects changes how often users open the app, how long they stay in it, and how naturally they talk about it with friends.
It is also a rare example where “share with a friend” is not a marketing CTA. It is a gameplay action that carries the promotion with it.
iButterfly is a mobile coupon platform that turns deal collection into a location-based AR game. Users catch virtual butterflies on their phone and unlock coupons as rewards.
Users view the real world through the phone camera. Virtual butterflies appear and can be “caught”. Each butterfly contains one or more offers, which unlock after capture.
It shifts promotions from passive browsing to active discovery. Location and gameplay increase attention, repeat usage, and the likelihood of in-the-moment redemption.
Butterflies can be tied to locations and contexts via GPS. That links the offer to where the shopper is, not just who they are.
If redemption is hard or the rewards feel weak, the novelty wears off fast. The game loop only survives when the payoff is clear and friction stays low.
Here is a strong example of a banner campaign that refuses to stay inside the banner frame. For Uniqlo’s end-of-year clearance push, the idea came in two parts. A blog or website widget, and a set of banners connected to a competition.
The core mechanic is simple. Embed the widget on a site, press it, and it transforms every image on that page into a Uniqlo “Lucky Ticket” that promotes the sale and the competition.
A widget is a small embeddable code block that adds interactive functionality to a webpage. In this case, it acts like a page-level switch the viewer controls, rather than a passive ad slot.
In Japan’s fast-fashion clearance cycles, speed and novelty matter, and the web is a shortcut to scale.
The outcome is the part that makes this more than a clever demo. The widget was voluntarily installed on almost 5,000 blogs and generated over 2.8 million banner clicks.
A standard banner asks for attention. Lucky Switch gives the user a satisfying action with immediate, visible impact across the entire page.
This is the mechanism to why sentence. Because the viewer controls the switch and sees the whole page change instantly, the ad feels like a game mechanic, not a media placement.
It also reframes “click” into “cause”. The click is not a request to leave the site. It is a trigger that changes the environment.
This campaign is not just chasing CTR. It is building voluntary distribution. Every blogger who installs the widget is effectively turning their own site into Uniqlo media, and every visitor is invited to interact with the brand on someone else’s page.
Extractable takeaway: Lucky Switch is what happens when you treat distribution as the product. Make the interaction so satisfying, and the reward so clear, that other sites choose to carry your campaign for you.
A widget and banner concept that turns every image on a host page into a Uniqlo “Lucky Ticket”, making the whole page behave like the ad.
A page-level switch the viewer controls. Pressing it transforms the environment immediately, so the click delivers instant visible impact before any deeper action.
Because the user triggers a change across the entire page. The interaction reads like a playful hack, not a boxed-in ad unit competing with content.
It creates a high-speed, novelty-driven route to scale through voluntary installs, while driving sale awareness and competition participation.
If you want banners to perform, make the click do something “now” in the user’s environment, not just ask them to leave the page.
