Brands and companies in both New York and around the world have been scrambling to get on board with the rising trend of Augmented Reality. More likely than not, you’ve witnessed the mass chaos ensuing around the city as people are jumping behind dumpsters and running through Central Park chasing Pikachu and other Pokémon thanks to this. The success of Pokémon Go has caused serious waves in the AR market. Investments in this technology are sky-rocketing, especially since AR has planted its feet in Silicon Valley, as special-purpose venture funds are being formed to focus on its development. And earlier this week the New York Times acquired Fake Love, an experimental design agency who specializes in augmented reality and virtual reality platforms. To put it simply, everyone’s doing it. Now, you should too.Therefore, we’re going to break it all down for you by quickly explaining what it is, why you should use it, and how to best utilize this technology in your company’s marketing strategy. Ready, set, go.
What is AR?
It’s a technology used to digitally enhance views of the real world in order to create interactive and engaging opportunities for consumers through striking graphics, animation, video, audio, and 3D content. Watch VPM’s animated short to get a better sense of how exactly AR works, below.
Why use AR?
If you want the cliffs notes, then check out VPM’s animated explainer video below, or continue scrolling for a more in-depth explanation.
Differentiating your company from your competitors should always be a top priority. This technology acts as a way for you to do just that on various scales. Depending on the scope of a project, AR can be implemented to create a piece as minimal or complex as you’d like, while still achieving an impressive and unique result. While this fact alone should have you interested, AR’s ability to track analytics is one of its most appealing traits and can act as the clincher for those on the fence about investing in it. Imagine you send out 1,000 AR postcards in various parts of the world, or have an AR step-and-repeat set aside your company’s booth at a convention. AR’s analytical abilities allows access to see how many people actually took the time to interact with your materials and from where in the world they’re doing this. By retaining this and other data provided, your company can conduct an in-depth evaluation of your campaign’s success rate.
How to use AR.
One of the most frequently asked questions we hear from clients is “What materials can Augmented Reality be created on?” Images that trigger the technology can be printed on nearly any kind of material including lookbooks, magazines, post cards, invitations, t-shirts, bottles, vinyl, leather, banners, step-and-repeats, and large format posters. This information is most useful to our clients because they can then identify where they can use AR in their marketing campaigns.
As for coming up with exceptionally creative ideas to execute the final AR piece, well, we’ll take it from there.
Now, get the ball rolling and contact VPM’s creative team to get started on an AR project: creative@villageprint.com