“I reject your reality and substitute my own.” — Adam Savage, host, Mythbusters.
Imagine walking down the street and spotting a pair of fancy shoes in a store window. You really like those shoes so you point your cell phone at them. It immediately tells you that a store two blocks down carries the same shoes at a lower price. Cool, you think, so you touch your phone’s screen and up pops a map that guides you, in real time, to the other store where you purchase your awesome shoes, saving a few bucks, and go on your way.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. You can see it at work in the video above in which a phone pointed at the Amsterdam skyline immediately shows which houses are for sale. (Can’t see the video? Click here.)
Awesome, isn’t it? It’s called Augmented Reality and it’s coming very soon to a smart phone near you. In fact, it is available right now for phones running Google’s Android operating system (Layar) and phone maker Nokia is currently beta testing its Point and Find system in the US and UK.
What does this have to do with marketing your business? Everything.
If you’ve paid attention to technology and the web over the years you probably know that you as a business are not in control. You never were. There is no stopping negative reviews online, only dealing with them honestly and head-on. The best strategy is to make a great product and reach out to people who will hopefully spread the word. That’s lack of control if I’ve ever heard it.
The Bad News
Augmented Reality is lack of control on steroids.
Now I can just point my phone at the front of your restaurant and see your reviews and health board rating. No more wasted time digging around on the web to see what others are saying about you. Everything about you now comes to my phone quickly and effortlessly. I can decide on the spot whether or not to eat at your place.
Or I could scan the conference floor with my phone, identify you, and see those embarrassing pictures on Facebook or that nasty twitter fight you had with a customer. I’ll know your dirty little secrets before we ever shake hands. If you’re smart, you’ll look for mine too.
And that shoe buying scenario I described earlier? It’s not possible yet, but it will be very soon. Retailers should be shaking in their boots.
Scary, eh? Sure, but only for the unprepared. And you’re definitely not one of them. Augmented Reality stands to be a very powerful tool in the hands savvy marketers.
The Good News
There is huge potential to engage customers and extend brands with Augmented Reality. Admittedly, the Wow Factor is a major part of the impact these campaigns will make, but I believe that with care they can be developed into highly effective marketing tools. A few ideas:
- Digital ads or promotions that “appear” on the front of your building and are only visible through the screen of a phone.
- Beautiful high-def pictures of your food on the gadgets of passersby when they scan your restaurant (coupons too).
- Give customers who hold your product up to their computer’s web cam special access to exclusive online content like music, e-books and downloads.
- Get people together and talking by providing Social Networking info on local customers who also love your products (opt-in, of course).
- Finally, check out video of Disney and GE’s impressive early efforts with AR on YouTube: Disney’s Nightastic and GE’s Wind Turbine campaign.
Conclusion
Augmented Reality is here and I believe it’s going to be hugely popular in the near future, it’s just not widely distributed yet. But it will be. Now is the time to get ahead of the trend and start thinking about how you can best use it for your product and situation.
After the hype has died down I suspect we’ll find that the best way to use AR to market our businesses is the same as it’s always been: have a great product, be genuine, add value and, most importantly, remember that there are humans at the other end of the technology.
What do you think? How will Augmented Reality affect business? How can it be used for marketing? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.
Thanks for reading.
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