You Won't Believe Your Eyes...

KAREN SPENCER – 17/07/2019

YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES...

A PHOTOSHOOT TO 'LIGHT UP OUR CHRISTMAS'

AUGMENTED REALITY (AR) IS AN INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE THAT MIXES THE REAL WORLD WITH COMPUTER GENERATED ELEMENTS TO ALTER A PERSONS PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD AROUND THEM.

It has been around since the early 1990’s and commercially was first used by the entertainment and gaming industries but it has now expanded into many different fields such as education, archaeology, military, medical and tourism.

It has become mainstream and easily accessible through phenomenons such as the Pokemon GO app which has been downloaded over 1 billion times worldwide, Snapchat filters that cause most social channels to be filled with people with dog ears and even just this month Google has launched augmented reality walking directions for Pixel phones.

One field that is a particular interesting growth area for AR technologies though is the retail sector. With more and more people shopping online rather than visiting stores AR is being used by brands to try and allow consumers to engage and trial their products in a virtual way.

Some interesting examples of how this has been used is:

Virtual dressing rooms with full body scanning so you can ’try on’ any outfit from the likes of Gap or Tommy Hilfiger without getting undressed or leaving your home.
The ‘IKEA Place' app which allows you to choose from over 2,000 products to place wherever you like in your own home.
Virtual makeovers from brands such as L’Oreal and Charlotte Tilbury for you to see how you could look with their make up applied to your face.

It is fascinating to think what opportunities that could use this technology going forward and the many different ways it can be used to engage and attract consumers.

We've recently worked on a campaign for our client Liverpool ONE where they developed a dinosaur AR app to attract families to visit Liverpool ONE over the spring holidays.

It was a great project to work on as the AR and dinosaur subject matter really captured the imagination of the children and adults alike and was a roar-some success. Read more about this project here.