Augmented Reality; a space where the really real combines with the nearly real to create the ultimate really nearly real experience!
Starting out as a way to combine real world images and video with generated content (e.g. architects creating 3D models in CAD and then placing in situ) it has now become the next tool in the digital marketers brand engagement and awareness tool box.
Imagine the impact of people being able to take a 3D model of your product and add it to an interactive representation of their environment. The car of their dreams on their drive, the watch they've coveted on their wrist, or the vision of the end of their ski's going down the pistes of a ski resort, far far away.
It's more than this though, it's combining technology with the real world to create experience lead marketing. Holding packaging up to various light sources to reveal 3D images of products (as Lego did) or how about filming your customers in their homes and then superimposing your products into their houses?
Augmented reality is a glossy wrapper over the world that we inhabit. It creates new digital channels to consumers by taking the ordinary and adding to it virtually. Think of Google maps and their ability to add real world insight to the locations on a map. Then consider the publishing house that used Google maps to keep a community of online readers up to date with the "real" time dealings of one of the characters in their book, all as the online readers read the book together - an online community all looking in the same place at the same time with a common interest. As a marketer, imagine the possibilities.
Author: Nick Towers
Director of Digital, Sagittarius Marketing