Event Postponed?

It is clear that businesses are suffering in the wake of Covid-19 and more difficulties are expected as stores are closed and big events and festivals like Coachella have been postponed and as the weeks roll on, many more are expected to follow suit. For businesses that spend a significant amount of their budget on experiential marketing, this is a problem.

For brands that use experiential marketing, (a strategy that engages consumers using branded experiences), it creates a memorable impact on the consumer and is proven to enhance brand salience and reinforce brand perceptions in a relevant and engaging manner. Removing experiential marketing can leave a large hole. However, we have a solution.

Bring The Event To Your Consumers Home

If your consumers can’t physically come to a store or attend an event, bring the event to them in the comfort of their own home with Augmented Reality direct mail. Direct mail has the ability to get your brand in the hands of your consumer, it also has staying power, being kept in a household on average for 17 days,  a single piece of mail can have a big impact and presents multiple opportunities to be seen over days or weeks. Direct mail can be a strong brand builder.

Forward thinking marketers can use direct mail to get their brands in front of an audience and to create an unforgettable experience, add augmented reality. Augmented reality is rapidly growing users, partly because it only requires a piece of hardware that most of us already own, a smartphone.

AR Home Examples

The global augmented reality market is forecast to reach a value of around $70 billion by 2023, it comes as no surprise that investment into augmented reality has rapidly increased in the past few years.

For brands, within the context of marketing, augmented reality allows them to offer their consumers a unique and immersive digital experience and to promote engaging with consumers in a memorable way.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the innovative brands, bold enough to create augmented reality home experiences for their consumers.

Ikea Place

Furniture giants Ikea created the augmented reality app ‘Ikea Place’ which allows users to walk around their own home and place virtual Ikea furniture into their own home to visualise how it might look once it is assembled.

The vision for Ikea Place is to inspire consumers to make decisions and ultimately purchase, especially during the pre-purchase phase when a lot of deliberation or uncertainty leads to an abandoned cart. Ikea Place helps shoppers to make more informed decisions, which could increase sales.

Dulux Visualiser

Another home interiors related app, comes from Dulux with their app Dulux Visualiser. The app uses augmented reality in a simple but highly effective way, which allows the user to change the colour of their walls to any colour of paint that Dulux has to offer.

Simply download the app and point your smartphone camera at the wall you want to visualise a different colour and select which colour you want to paint it. The Dulux app is a great way to visualise colour options, no tester pots required!

Converse

Converse has been using augmented reality for quite some time now, utilising a way to use the technology to both enrich the consumers experience and to drive e-commerce sales. Converse created the augmented reality app ‘Shoe Sampler’ which allows the user to point their smartphone device at their feet from the comfort of their own home and see how different types of Converse shoes might look on their feet. An innovative feature of the app is that it seamlessly integrates with Converse’s e-commerce platform, allowing for users to go from virtually trying on the shoes to purchasing them almost instantaneously.

Alnwick Garden

Alnwick Garden to create an engaging Spring/Summer Augmented Reality brochure to distribute across the UK. Inspired by Alnwick Gardens' breathtaking, picturesque scenery and position as a unique UK tourist attraction, the AR experience featured video of the stunning grounds. This created a both engaging & enticing experience that showcased what to expect when you arrive at Alnwick Garden. The experience featured a single Call-to-Action button to incentivise viewers to navigate to theAlnwick Garden’s website and book tickets online.

Boot Barn

Boot Barn had the brilliant idea to add augmented reality to their flyer campaign which introduced a new range of products. The flyer was then distributed to their extensive customer base alongside a special sale offer. By sending our flyers to their extensive consumer base, Boot Barn has created an innovative campaign to engage with their customers and increase brand awareness and sales.

Opportunity Awaits

Augmented reality is being utilised by brands around the globe, there is no better way to create an engaging campaign for you consumers to experience in the comfort of their own home, and given the statistic that up to a fifth of us could be at home at any one time due to the lockdown, an audience of around 13 million people are waiting at home for a distraction to come through the postbox.

If you're ready to get started you can get in touch with our friendly team, or you can learn more about our Web AR technology and view recent AR case studies.