Here’s the key question marketers face when it comes to augmented reality (AR): What kind of reality wants to be augmented, and why?
Certainly, there are many ways in which reality can be wowed up, the equivalent of lasers in a shopping center parking lot. Pokémon Go, for instance, is an instance of wow, but how often can marketers create such a find-it-yourself phenomenon?
You could create a virtual Super Bowl using AR, as The Thinkwell Group has done, or some similar museum-like attraction. But after people get over the novelty, it pales compared to the real experience.
If AR is going to become a long-term tool for marketers, it needs to find some reality that wants to be augmented day after day.
“Solve a real problem, if possible,” Thyng founder Ed LaHood pointed out to me via email. His company offers AR tools for adding anything as a virtual layer on top of a real space.
Although directly from the Department of Obvious Advice, his wisdom is nonetheless essential for AR. He added:
“When IKEA launched its [Place] app that lets people put virtual furniture into a customer’s realworld space – be that an apartment, home or office – they created the AR app to solve a real problem: before you buy a piece of furniture, it helps to be able to visualize what it will look like in your place after you buy it.”
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There are also AR “magic mirrors,” where shirts and other clothes are shown on the actual individual, but they begin to cross a threshold where the depicted experience is not exactly like the real thing. After the wow factor has worn off, the AR version might actually do damage to sales.
How well a shirt fits, for instance, also involves the feel of the fabric and the hang of the clothing, a unique adaptation to your body shape that AR can’t always replicate. Similarly, AR experiences that purport to give you a preview of a new car or a trip to Hawaii are — at least with foreseeable tech — destined to fall short of the actual experience.
Someday, when AR applications are as old hat as your brand’s once-shiny website, they can still show the kind of utility that your venerable site has. But, to get there, they will first have to earn their keep by doing something useful.
Source: MARTECH TODAY