Revenue from traditional advertising venues are on the decline. Marketers need to adapt if they’re going to maintain brand awareness, engagement and keep driving sales. They can do so by looking to emerging technologies with consumer applications.
Augmented Reality for Marketers: The Basics
Specifically, they should be looking to augmented reality companies. The success of Pokemon Go! was just the tip of the iceberg for this technology. In the near future, augmented reality is going to dramatically change the overall consumer experience. Brands that leverage this technology early will have a major advantage over those that neglect it.
By leveraging the most basic part of AR, marketers could use it to add virtual objects to a user’s environment. For example, they could create an app that displays “secret” ads for their favorite companies in public places. However, there may be even greater benefit in augmented reality applications that remove (or at least hide) certain items.
The Expanding Potential of AR Marketing
Imagine strolling through the mall with a pair of AR glasses. You could theoretically use an app to “highlight” your favorite brands whenever you see them, while dulling all surrounding products. Maybe you’re only interested in Nike sneakers. When you see a pair, they’ll stand out in vibrant color. Other company’s shoes will be either invisible to you, or much less noticeable.
This approach solidifies brand loyalty by getting consumers to focus entirely on the products that they love. Competing brands won’t have much luck attracting new customers in this scenario.
The Technology Already Exists
It’s not as far-fetched as you might think. Already, Google is developing technology that would allow Google Lens to accurately identify a wide range of objects on your phone’s screen. The potential marketing applications of such a technology are clear. A consumer wearing AR glasses might see special offers or deals pop up when they so much as glance at a particular company’s products.
With GPS, the company could even offer location-specific incentives. A customer looking at a designer garment in a department store could get an alert, telling them about other items in the store from the same designer that would complement the item they’re already looking at.
Alibaba successfully tested a similar scenario with their AR headset, Buy+. They launched this hardware at the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival in China. It allowed users to place themselves in any one of many international shopping destinations, browse products, and buy directly on the spot. This experience not only let shoppers visit locations they couldn’t otherwise travel to, but also engage them more effectively throughout the entire purchase process.
Thanks to Apple’s ARKit developer software, which lets developers link reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence seamlessly, these various concepts for integrating augmented reality into marketing schemes are becoming even more feasible.
AR’s Applications Across Industries
Apparel brands are far from the only ones who will benefit from augmented reality. In the grocery store, items that fit a customer’s diet and tastes (based on purchase history) might pop out in ways that surrounding items won’t.
An automotive company could create an AR experience in which pedestrians walking down a street are alerted to the attractive features of a passing car. While browsing for furniture and fixtures, consumers will be able to use augmented reality to see what a particular item would actually look like in their own homes.
Of course, there’s a potential drawback to these possibilities. If AR glasses ever become as ubiquitous as smartphones, the average person could find themselves utterly bombarded by ads all day, every day. Eventually, those ads will start to crowd each other out. Advertisers will have to provide delivery platforms that prevent that kind of overlap and excess. Investment in such technologies is already accelerating.
Be Unique
Brands can’t just offer AR features; they’re going to need to differentiate their experiences. It’s just like advertising on the internet: Most consumers never cared for pop-up ads. Marketers had to find ways to offer valuable, recognizable advertising without over-complicating the user experience.
With 88 percent of mid-market companies already implementing augmented reality technology to some degree in their operations, the time for merely considering its marketing potential has passed. Marketers need to start thinking very seriously about how they’ll use these tools to put their brands front and center.
Jenn Ryan is with Scully Creative Labs, which offers consulting, rapid prototyping and full product lifecycle management services to companies looking to leverage augmented reality to improve their core business functions.
