If you don’t know anything about augmented reality marketing or AR, read this article now to stay ahead of the competition!
AR marketing, or augmented reality marketing, is the newest type of marketing that is largely involved with technology. Augmented reality marketing can keep the audience engaged for 85 seconds and even shock them, increase the engagement rate by 20%, and finally increase the purchase rate by 33%. This technology is still in its infancy and therefore not used by all brands and there is little competition in it. This issue shows that you can easily use this technology with a simple campaign and be a leader in your industry. What is augmented reality technology or AR and how does it help us in advertising? What are its implemented examples? Read this article.
To know all digital marketing channels such as social networks, SEO, etc., read the digital marketing article.
Table of Contents
What is Augmented Reality technology?
Simply put, augmented reality is a type of technology that shows us virtual agents in the real-world environment. A very simple example is in all of your phones, you may have seen Snapchat filters that put rabbit or cat ears on your head, or the most practical example is applications that show you household items, such as a table in your room. they give. The prototype of Augmented Reality was the fascinating game “Pokemon Go” which entered the market in 2016 and through this game, you could see the character of Pokemon running on the streets and even interacting with real objects or people.
But what is the role of this technology in marketing and advertising?
The role of AR technology in marketing and advertising
With AR technology becoming a trend, big brands thought of using this attractive and entertaining technology for the benefit of their business so that they can engage more customers with their brand. Some of these businesses used this technology in their advertisements, and some businesses made AR technology a permanent part of their business.
For example, some eyeglass brands have used this technology in such a way that the customer can try on the desired glasses on his face before buying, and then order it virtually without even coming to the store. This issue both increases the percentage of customer satisfaction and greatly reduces return costs.
In the following, we will examine 8 interesting examples of different brands that have used AR marketing together.
8 interesting examples of augmented reality marketing
1- Home Depot brand
Home arrangement and interior decoration are some of the most difficult tasks. Especially when we intend to buy online, for example, how do we know if the yellow wallpaper that looks very beautiful in the picture will fit our room or not? Or does the table we fell in love with fit the size of our office or not?
It was 2015 when the Home Depot brand released its augmented reality app called Project Color. With this application, you can try all the colors for your walls and furniture, and interestingly, this technology is so accurate that it takes into account the amount of light, furniture, and even shadows so that it can show the audience the most realistic possible state. This is where you can see your wall with yellow wallpaper before you pay.
In 2017, Home Depot went one step further and today you can even draw different home accessories in your room and see how they would look in your room. Of course, this brand is not the only home decoration brand that uses AR marketing. Other big home appliance brands like Ikea and Lowe’s are also using AR technology for their customers.
2- Timberland brand
How many times has it happened to you that you wanted to buy a dress and because there was a long line in the salon, you said this to the seller: “I will buy this dress and if it doesn’t look good on me, I will return it tomorrow.”
Maybe many times you give up on buying clothes because you are tired and don’t feel like shopping. The Timberland brand is one of the leading brands in augmented reality marketing that used AR technology since 2014. Timberland has designed a Peruvian room where you choose any clothes you want and in the mirror of augmented reality, an image of yourself with the clothes of your desired size is shown on your body.
Isn’t it wonderful? You can customize 10 different clothes in 1 minute! With this marketing method, Timberland not only solved the problem of its customers and made their shopping process easier, but also created a kind of entertainment for them that makes them spend more time in the store and ultimately leads to more purchases. Just identify your customer’s problem and see how you can help him with AR technology.
3- Sephora brand
One of the reasons that discourages women from buying cosmetics online is that they cannot test the products. Especially a product like lipstick, which is a bit risky to buy and you don’t know if this lipstick color matches your skin color or not. Sephora is one of the biggest cosmetics brands that has solved this challenge for its customers. Sephora’s two augmented reality apps, Modiface and Virtual Artist App help customers try different makeup products on their faces using their phone’s camera.
Even with the Modiface application, you can see the effect of different creams on your face skin, something that cannot be applied physically in the shop. Sephora’s use of augmented reality has not only been very useful and helpful for customers but has also caused more brand awareness and encouraged other users to buy from this brand. Customers publish the videos they take of themselves with this application on their social networks and somehow become ambassadors of this popular cosmetic brand, which ultimately leads to an increase in purchases from Sephora.
4- AMC Theaters brand
One of the most important principles in marketing is to deliver your message to the customer where it matters, that is, at the right time and place. It is the same with augmented reality.
The AMC brand, which is active in the field of shows and theaters, knows its audience well and knows that when it goes to the cinema, its audience is probably looking for previews of other movies. In this way, when a person is in the cinema environment and sees the poster of a new movie, he can scan the code of that poster with the AMC augmented reality application and see the trailer of the movie or the list of actors and all the information about that movie.
More interestingly, if the audience likes the movie trailer, they can easily buy the ticket directly from the AMC application itself. Of course, the audience can follow movie trailers on networks such as YouTube, but the AMC application is exclusively dedicated to movies, and the audience can access all the movies that are being released at once without confusion.
5- Taco Bell brand
Taco Bell is one of the Mexican food chain brands that exclusively serves taco sandwiches. It was in 2012 that Taco Bell used augmented reality technology in its food packaging. When you ordered a sandwich at Taco Bell, there was a code on the packaging of the sandwich or the glass of soda that if the customer scanned it, one of the contents related to the product would be shown to the customer on Twitter or Facebook.
Naturally, any customer who entered Taco Bell’s Facebook or Twitter content might follow it or leave a comment on that content. Overall, the strategy adopted by Taco Bell made the base of its social networks stronger and established a stronger connection with its target community. At that time, this method was unique in the fast food industry.
6- StubHub brand
Augmented reality technology performs two basic functions:
It draws a virtual space for you in a real way
It creates more interaction
It worked the same way for StubHub. This brand is one of the companies that offer tickets for various events such as sports, art, cultural events, etc. StubHub maps the experience using AR technology. In this way, before buying a ticket, you can see exactly where your seat is located and how far it is compared to the age, what equipment is around it, and even if it is comfortable under your feet or not.
The director of StubHub says: “The reason we use augmented reality technology is to really solve a problem from the customer and not just once we have used the technology. Today’s customer no longer just wants to attend a show, but wants to have a good experience and feel comfortable and satisfied.” This brand used AR technology in 2016, and at that time, the engagement rate of its application reached about two times within a year.
7- Netflix brand
One of the popular Netflix series is “Stranger Things”, which happens to be a product of Netflix itself. To make this product more popular, Netflix offered a series of augmented reality and virtual reality lenses on Snapchat to the audience, with which the user can walk inside the scenes of the houses of this series and have a 360-degree lens. In addition to these lenses, Netflix also introduced filters on Snapchat to make its content more viral. In these filters, the user can become one of the strange giants of the series called “Demigorgon”.
8- Pepsi brand
It was 2014 when the Pepsi brand used an augmented reality stand at a London bus station. In this stand, the street space was shown along with virtual agents such as a flying saucer in the sky or a lion walking on the street.
The use of this technology showed the character of the Pepsi-loving game better and created an exciting experience for the user. In addition, a video of this exciting bus stop was published on YouTube, which received more than 6 million views. You might think to yourself that Pepsi is so well known that it didn’t need AR technology to introduce and advertise its product. But don’t get me wrong, with this, Pepsi had been on the tongue for a while and his videos were going viral and that was enough for him.