The Beauty of Augmented Reality
Posted: Tuesday 23 November, 2010
Alex Smith
Following my week of holiday, in which I’ve “pottered” around (48 hour Harry Potter 6 film marathon) and done various jobs around my new abode, I’ve come back to the usual mountain of emails, so I’m very much playing catch up right now. However one thing has caught my eye this morning, and a very interesting thing it is indeed.
Sky Sports has just launched a new “Your Team Your Dream” campaign, which uses augmented reality technology to create a personalised video of each individual user, depicting them as a rising star in the Barclays Premier League. This is a very similar idea to the “Hero” concept created in Sweden, which also used an image with augmented reality to depict the user as a public hero.
It seems that the use of augmented reality is becoming increasingly prevalent in brand marketing campaigns, and I feel that this is a great development, particularly when it comes to their social media visibility. The highly personalised videos that are produced as a result of such applications are highly appealing to users, as they obviously relate directly to each individual, portraying them as a star, and instigating an almost instinctive desire to share the content with their networks. It also gives users a great piece of media that they (in the majority of cases) wouldn’t have the ability themselves, further increasing the intrinsic value to internet users.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we were to see many more of these sort of initiatives moving forward, particularly when it comes to brand acquisition within social media. Housing such an app on Facebook for example could serve to bring in vast amounts of traffic through impressions and shares, such is the viral nature of the concept. Either way, I think that augmented reality apps like this are most definitely here to stay.
