How to Use Augmented Reality for Marketing

How to Use Augmented Reality for Marketing

by | Nov 2, 2018 | Augmented Reality

In order to expand their brands and gain visibility and profit, companies heavily rely on marketing tools and techniques. This ever-evolving industry has come a long way from the archaic newspaper ads and radio spots to today’s many online marketing methods. Can you think of the last time you surfed the web, without being bombarded with sneakily insightful ads that offer just what you need at the moment?

Much to the delight of both marketing experts and consumers, Augmented Reality apps are turning the exciting game of marketing on its head. While allowing users to engage with products in a new and exciting way, companies can stay true to their brand while promoting it in a revolutionary manner.

Augmented Reality Being Used by Wine Companies

Wine is a widely popular drink of choice among adults. When consumed socially and responsibly, it serves as the perfect vehicle toward a cheerfully good time. Three wine companies have decided to infuse their product marketing campaigns to new heights with AR apps.

19 Crimes, for instance, have opted to use AR to market directly to millennials. Their labels and company name have made them stand out from other brands. Each label has a different picture of 18th century convicts who later became colonists and committed one of the 19 crimes punishable by deportation to Australia. Consumers who download the AR app can put their smartphone up to the label and the app will reveal the hidden story behind these 19 convicts. The app allows consumers to be interactive with their product while learning more about it and the company.

Similarly, Treasury Wine Estates launched a line of wines called emBRAZEN for Women’s Equality Day. They created an AR app to go with these wines, to reveal the story behind the historical women they feature on each label. Three wines with three different historical women are featured on the label.

Artist Celia Crus is featured on the Chardonnay, journalist Nellie Bly on the Cabernet Sauvignon and artist Josephine Baker on the Red Blend bottle. Following the app download and holding your phone to the label, the famed ladies featured on them appear as they are talking to you directly, telling you their life story. In April, the company reported more than 1.3 million app downloads and more than 200,000 videos from various social media outlets were shared. Proof that consumers were blown away enough to share, which provided the brand with a built-in exposure.

South African wine company called Mensa Wines took a somewhat different approach with their AR app. They created a wine AR app to reveal a virtual reality storybook within each label and make the story come to life. The brand motto is to ‘Live a great story,’ which they wanted to echo in their AR app. Each label has a unique story attached to it when you download the app and scan the wine label within the app. They created an experience one has when reading a book wanted consumers to become literally immersed in their story and brand.

Food Apps Driving Sales by Using Augmented Reality

The food industry is also banking on using AR apps to market to consumers.

Some already established brands are taking the next-level approach of consumer targeting, with a fun way of engaging them and making them a vital part of the campaign itself.

To mark the start of their NFL kickoff campaign, Pizza Hutt created an AR app catering to football fans. With their Beanbag Blitz mobile app, users can unlock a beanbag toss game by holding their smartphone to a special edition Pizza Hut box. Teams of two can take turns tossing a beanbag into a cornhole board with a simple flick of their finger. All 32 NFL teams are included in the AR experience, giving every fan an opportunity to interact with friends or family while representing their favorite football team. This is the first time Pizza Hut incorporated an AR experience into their marketing efforts after partnering with the NFL to become the official sponsor of the organization. Zipporah Alleen, chief marketing officer of Pizza Hut said that, “incorporating this AR component into our lineup of new experiences is broadening our digital portfolio and engaging fans in a completely different way.” Pizza Hut wanted to combine an immersive game day experience for fans, while tying into their first-time sponsorship of the NFL.

AR apps are also being implemented in sit down restaurants. Burger chain Bareburger, mainly located in New York, has turned their menu into 3D burger models. Customers can access the AR experience via Snapchat, by opening the application and holding the screen over a paper with a scan code provided by the restaurant. You can hold down the square part of the paper that says scan and within seconds, a 3D model of a burger appears. You can zoom in and move the food items. Included within the application is a menu of items that you can click and explore on your phone. An interesting feature of this app is the ability to have the 3D model appear as you are holding the phone away from the scanned paper, giving users the ability to take pictures of people at your table with the 3D food in their hands or mouth. You can also hold the 3D image next to the actual food and compare the 3D model from the actual food item. It is a great way to interact with customers and give them a better idea of what they are ordering. Usually, when something looks good enough to eat, odds are, you’d want to try it.

Augmented Reality for Retail Industry

Another industry that this blog will touch on that has utilized the technology of AR is retail. Zara, a world-famous women’s fashion line, has created a new way to engage consumers. They developed an AR app that allows users to see the clothes on virtual avatars in the store. You point your smartphone toward an empty mannequin, empty store window or your e-commerce purchase and the clothing will appear on a model for several seconds. From there, you can shop the look. The app also features a way for consumers to share the avatars with the clothing on them on social media. With women on the go these days, this convenient method provides an alternative to trying on clothes and gives the company a way to close sales faster.

Like Zara, the clothing brand Gap created an AR app. Gap’s “DressingRoom” app allows consumers to try on clothes from the comfort of their home. First, you download the app. Then you input your height and weight into the application and it creates a 3D model that matches those values. With this 3D model, you can try on any piece of clothing offered by the brand. You can purchase the items directly through the app. This eliminates the need to make time to travel to the store and try on the clothes on site. Gap’s intention with this app is to one day make dressing rooms “obsolete.”

Conclusion

Several industries are looking at fresh and engaging ways to reach their consumers. These examples scratch the surface of how successful the implementation of AR can be, in an effort to connect a product to consumers, with the ultimate goal of higher sales and profit. We hope you enjoyed reading about this emerging technology. Perhaps you will try out these apps for yourself and see what all the talk is about!

Virtual Reality For Training

Virtual Reality For Training

by | Sep 25, 2018 | Uncategorized

With the many different and exciting ways in which Virtual Reality is now being implemented, it has well established itself as a bona fide asset to many in many industries. From retail and architecture, all the way to the medical field, VR is gaining some serious traction and has broken off its singular tie to the gaming industry.

This blog will spotlight the ways in which VR is being used as part of specific training programs. The myriad of benefits attached to this progress and foreshadowing of exciting new applications to come.

Virtual Reality Medical Training

We discussed the exciting new breath of air that VR and AR are introducing into the intricate and all-important field of medicine. Perhaps the most crucial benefit that stems from VR integration in the medical field is that it provides medical students a chance to practice real procedure, without risking the lives of real people. Oculus, along with The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) recently announced their partnership in creating a medical training program using Oculus headsets and VR simulation for incoming medical students. CHLA is requiring all incoming medical students to take a VR training program before they start working at their hospital. These training modules are being deployed to 11 other organizations including Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, to name a few.

Oculus is going as far as donating Oculus Go headsets to these organizations, in order to “allow for on-the-spot training without the need for the extra real estate.”  According to Oculus’s blog post, “VR can bridge the gap between medical school and hospital rounds by placing students and staff in realistic training scenarios that can replicate the stress, adrenaline, and time-sensitive circumstances of life-or-death situations — without putting patient safety on the line.”

Virtual Reality Enterprise Training

A creative way VR is being used to train is through Vantage Points sexual harassment training software. This software allows users to fully experience situations where they see someone being sexual harassed and measure and record the bystanders’ response time and how they would respond if faced with this unfortunate predicament. It helps the user be able to identify sexual harassment in the workplace, giving them visual learning and understanding of what constitutes as sexual harassment. The software algorithm allows one to get individualized training based on their level of “wokeness.” This type of training is a big departure from traditional sexual harassment training sessions where an expert would come in and talk about what constitutes sexual harassment and how to identify it when it emerges. A study conducted in 2001 evaluated how effective sexual harassment training is at a medium sized university. Psychology Today looked at this study and found that “men who attended the training were more likely to say that sexual behavior at work was wrong, but they were less likely to notice sexual harassment, less willing to report sexual harassment and more likely to blame the victim.”

The article concluded that “most sexual harassment training is effective at increasing employees’ knowledge about sexual harassment, but not necessarily changing their behaviors.” While traditional training has been proven to bring awareness on sexual harassment, it is somewhat lacking in solving the underlying issue of pinpointing when sexual harassment occurs, reporting the issue, and changing the behaviors to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Vantage Points founder Morgan Mercer is hoping to change that by immersing people in real life situations to help them recognize and prevent these situations rather than just being notified and not fully comprehending it. Corporations have already shown interest in leveraging this technology, seeing major potential in this software for their companies.

In July, KAEFER Group, a specialist in insulation, announced their partnership with Luminous Group to provide VR safety training for their staff. They worked on producing three scenarios for the VR headset: personal protective equipment (PPE) training, working in confined spaces and height training. KAEFER set out to create a more hands-on approach to training that is safe for both the trainees and those around them. In this sense, employees can be trained to handle and respond to dangerous situations that can potentially come up when doing their job. Those who are training the employees can watch and see how the employees respond and give feedback at a faster rate than with traditional training methods. Consequently, this use of VR can help potentially save lives and train people to know what to do if faced with such a circumstance in real life.

Virtual Reality Government Job Training

The United States Air Force is trying to reduce its pilot shortage by using VR simulators to speed up the training process of new pilots. They conducted an experiment using 20 Pilot Training Next (PTN) candidates, five enlisted personnel and 15 officers to measure the impact of VR training compared to basic flight training. The participants were given unlimited access to the realistic flight simulators, allowing them to practice and train whenever they were able to. In conventional pilot trainings, students are limited to how much they can practice. Using the VR supported mode of training, instructors were able to monitor two students at once, allowing more efficient oversight and quicker determinations on what the students are doing. It also gave them an opportunity to provide hands-on-feedback to multiple people, reducing the time it takes to give each student feedback on their training. Capt. John Joern, a T-6 Texan II instructor overseeing students in the study, stated, “we’ve seen leaps and bounds increase, especially at the beginning of the program,” when reflecting on how quickly the students were learning in the program. The deputy director of the program said it took about half the time than what other pilots go through in the same check ride that the simulators provided, supporting the notion that students were learning quicker when using the VR simulators than common training programs.  Out of the 15 officers, 13 passed. They are using the successes and failures of this experiment to implement another version in December, but feel encouraged with respect to how successful the first training program performed, with founded hopes that it will continue to improve.

One of the most dangerous and challenging government jobs out there is firefighting. While most people run away from fires, these brave men and women valiantly run into burning buildings, risking their own lives to save the lives or others. Training firefighters can be dangerous and costly, not only financially but to the environment and surrounding neighborhoods. One way to help make training easier and more affordable is to utilize VR into their training regimen. A new VR training simulator called FLAIM Trainer has been created to address these valid issues. It consists of an HTC Vive headset, haptics systems and a vest that tracks the user’s vital signs. The Vive headset also comes with a custom breathing apparatus to mimic one’s own breaking tank they would have to wear in real life. While in the virtual world, firefighter trainees use real life equipment to put out fires by having a tracker attached to the end of their hose, essentially allowing them to put out fires in the virtual world using real equipment. The haptics system imitates the real force of water and the clothes they wear have heat packs in them that warm up when facing the virtual fire. All of these details make the trainee feel they are fully immersed in a real-life fire situation. The vest they wear captures their vitals, recording their physiological responses and performances. This data is stored in a cloud that can be reviewed and help instructors monitor progress over time. FLAIM provides a great alternative to training firefighters and makes it possible to put them in the best position possible when real situations emerge.

Conclusion

The list of ways in which VR is being used as a revolutionary training vehicle in many industries is growing. More than that, this game-changing trend is providing companies with an opportunity to gain a competitive edge.  By heightening the level of safety when it comes to training new employees they’re also increasing the prospects for purposeful engagement and learning.

A win-win, on many a level. We hope you enjoyed this informative blog on a developing trend we’ll be following closely.