Augmented Reality comes to Zehnder

Reality has been pretty good to me the last few weeks (though it might not have been without technology). I was able to visit my old stomping grounds in New York City where I took in a Yankees game at the new stadium (with free tickets from a friend I reconnected with on Facebook), ate Lobster Roll in the West Village (a place I went to years ago and had to find using my iPhone GPS) and last but not least attended the Creativity and Technology Conference (CAT) hosted by Creativity Magazine (yay technology!). There were plenty of old friends to see and amazing presentations at CAT that I will talk about in another blog posting. For now, I'd like to focus on one idea that is blowing minds around the world: Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality (or AR) deals with the combination of the real world and computer generated data in real time. Imagine visiting Paris and holding your cell phone up to the Eiffel Tower and getting a complete history on the monument as an overlay on your cell phone screen. Or perhaps your child gets a pack of baseball cards where players will jump out of the cards in 3D on his computer screen and play a game of baseball if he holds them up to his computer camera. This technology is available to us right now and is a powerful tool that narrows the space between the physical world and the digital one.

Before I get into how this can be used to powerful effect in advertising, I've set up a demonstration of Augmented Reality. This example uses Flash Augmented Reality.

Here is a video that shows us playing with our Augmented Reality experiments.

What I find so powerful about this is how it makes the physical object come to life IN YOUR HANDS. The power of somebody holding your product (whether that is a direct mail piece, a bag of coffee or a box of cereal) and getting more information or entertainment value from it should not be overlooked. The Augmented Reality examples we are creating at Zehnder have us acting like little kids. It's hard to put down the object that is being enhanced by the digital world. So just think about the impact of someone using your product in a new way and giving someone that experience, being the first to make them go "Wow!"

Brands need to start considering not only how they exist in the digital world, but how that digital world ties in to their tangible products and print advertising. The possibilities are as endless as they are exciting: a product box that you take home and hold up to your computer to watch a video right on the box. A newspaper print ad for real estate can contain a pattern that your cell phone interprets into a 3D model of the home you may want to buy ("check out the pool!"). People already walk around in stores with their noses stuck in mobile devices, checking prices online to see if they are getting a bargain, searching for reviews of a product they want to buy. Soon people will be holding their phones up to bar codes and getting information on products, ingredients, videos, animations, reviews, you name it. But why wait till everyone is doing it to get started? The technology is here and it's your brand's opportunity to stand out as an innovator while giving people something to remember you.

The first company to bring Augmented Reality to market in any significant way was General Electric with their "Smart Grid" Campaign. It was great to interact and went viral when people began creating videos while using it. As fun as that was, and you can take it from me that it was fun, it's way more exciting to create your own. GE was the first, and as an interactive creative I am grateful to them for taking it to mass market. But like all firsts it will be improved upon, moving out of the novelty into more useful areas. At Zehnder the creative and interactive teams are buzzing with ideas on how to use Augmented Reality to improve brand communication. We can't wait to bring these new ideas to our clients and together shape the future of our industry. In the meantime, I'm having a blast showing the new technological magic to everyone. At the CAT conference I kept hearing the phrase, "The future is now," and I believe it. Heck - I can show you.

Here is an example that you can play with on your own. It requires Flash Player 9 and a web cam.

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