I love the idea of Augmented reality. I think it is in the very early stages and not a lot of people really understand the usage behind it, but I believe this will become a huge way we interact with technology.

As we have
mentioned previously, the success of augmented reality depends partly on its exposure through major mainstream brands. Late last week, the
Ben & Jerry's ice cream empire took its first steps into the world of AR by adding the functionality to
its iPhone app - but not in the way you might immediately assume. Today, I had the opportunity to chat with Katie O'Brien from Ben & Jerry's about the app and how a large brand approaches unique and niche emerging technologies.
Usually when a large brand experiments with mobile AR, they immediately think to provide the heads-up navigator that helps people find store locations. We saw this earlier this year when the popular sandwich chain
Quiznos partnered with
Layar to
provide this exact functionality, but the company peppered in a bit of its own brand of fun as well.
The AR Decision

Ben & Jerry's, a brand with hundreds of shops around the world, could have easily followed a similar path, but instead it has taken things a bit further. Katie O'Brien, manager of Ben & Jerry's global digital marketing initiatives, says the company first became excited about AR when it was "blown away" by
General Electric's Smart Grid Web-based AR campaign. "Wow, one day we should do something like that," O'Brien remembered thinking.
Earlier this year, that day came. Ben & Jerry's began planning for a campaign that highlighted the fact that many of its ingredients come from small family farms. The campaign, named "It's what's inside that counts," was to feature rich visualizations and was the perfect opportunity for the company to finally jump into AR, O'Brien says.
New Tech, New Opportunities
Taking what it had seen from GE, the company originally began planning for a Web-based experience, but shifted to mobile when it learned that iOS 4.0 would allow for natural feature tracking within AR apps. The company originally struggled with the idea of how to get a special AR marker onto its existing ice cream carton designs, but the shift to mobile natural feature tracking (which could have also been accomplished on the desktop) eliminated the need for these markers.
No comments:
Post a Comment