Augmented Reality and Interactive Out of Home – New Beginnings

Crossplatform has been delighted to announce a partnership this week with leading interactive display company, EyeClick^®

EyeClick’s stunning collection of digital out of home informational systems include EyeTouch^TM, window displays that allow customers to explore a store’s products both in and out-of-hours, to EyeStep^TM, floor displays that provide entertainment and information to visitors and EyeBoard^TM, interactive table displays that convey information within a retail, exhibition or business setting. The products, which are targeted at entertainment venues, exhibitions, retail and a variety of out-of-home locations, are equipped with MotionAware technology that reacts to human movement. By interacting with the projected images, people activate animations, trigger sounds, play games and interact with content applications in an interesting and enjoyable way. Clients are provided with an exciting way to convey information to their customers, and in addition receive detailed reporting on areas of effectiveness within the displays.

The partnership has arisen through the appointment of both companies as Ogilvy Digital Lab partners. Both companies are proud to play a role as ambassadors for Ogilvy, giving Ogilvy clients a window into the latest technologies available to leading marketers.

Between Crossplatform and EyeClick, there are opportunities to deliver some truly extraordinary interactive, augmented reality displays at various locations both in and out of home. We’ll keep you posted.

AR is Here to Entertain

Among all other applications, Augmented Reality is undoubtedly a superb form of entertainment. At Crossplatform, we have been exploring some of the novel ways that AR can be used to entertain and engage audiences.

The most common application involves encouraging people to hold an item – a voucher, book cover, magazine or even your face – up against a webcam to unveil a totally new experience. There have been some great uses of this type of campaign. Publishers of the new Harry Potter book created an instore experience by welcoming readers to a sorting hat chair in Polish bookshops. In this application, AR would recognise the customer’s face, crown their head with the infamous sorting hat and then appoint them a member of the Hogwarts houses. In Paramount’s Transformers II promotion, consumers sitting at home were encouraged to visit a webpage where their faces could be recorded with a camera and Optimus Prime’s image could appear on top of their features.

The only limit to this type of entertainment is the creator’s imagination – and of course, the commercial justification. However, it’s easy to see how the launch of a book, movie or videogame are the perfect reasons for an engaging AR experience.

Crossplatform is a fellow Ogilvy Innovation Lab partner with Audience Entertainment, an innovative US company who are using AR to create mass experiences in cinemas. It’s a logical transition: many of us arrive before a movie starts, and it’s great to find ways to entertain the audience. In addition, cinemas are increasingly being used for screenings of other content apart from movies, from concerts (not necessarily rock, but classical as well) to sporting events, ballet, opera and even religious services. This concept buys into two important trends in entertainment: the thirst for live events and the interest in group activities. This is probably natural given how cut off we’re probably all feeling after years of amusing ourselves in front of the computer alone. There is a real opportunity here to entertain audiences and at the same time promote brands.

With all these opportunities, there is such potential but it’s critical that the treatment passes muster creatively. It’s no good cramming a brand message inappropriately into an AR treatment. This will just alienate audiences and will not help build long term brand presence. We’re calling all creatives out there: get together some great concepts and we’ll help you bring them to life.

A New Kind of Football

News just out states that augmented reality will become huge in football with the Japanese proudly offering an immersive AR audience experience in their bid for the 2022 World Cup.

It’s interesting how different countries signify their commitment to this most significant of tournaments and how the USP of each country varies. Whilst South Africa is a great choice for political and social reasons, Japan has clearly identified itself as a technology leader.
AR is gradually becoming a part of everyday life. iPhone and handset users with Google Android are already using what are often erroneously called Augmented Reality apps and overlaying the view through the phone’s camera with information from the web. What we’d call ‘true’ Augmented Reality applications will be a step on from what these handsets are currently doing, and that’s going to make their view of the game even more interesting. It’s likely that within a very short time, spectators will be able to overlay their view of the game with information on player performance, goals, passes, and all manner of useful information currently only available on TV and the web.

Although these concepts will start with phones, it’s likely that this will transition into video goggles which can be used either at home, or more likely at the match itself. AR will make the spectator the editor, with the ability to watch the match in slow motion or replay key moments of the game. There will be intergame communication between players enabling commentary, mass tweeting and karaoke style chanting. There is the possibility to integrate nanotechnology alongside AR to give managers, entertainment companies and spectators absolute data on the game, player by player. The technology will be a boon to entertainers and marketers alike – and a potential security issue as well.

We might think that there are already endless forms of entertainment linked to football. It will not be long before this data transitions into Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) giving a new sense of community to the football world.

All of this gives us the team at Crossplatform plenty to consider over the coming months. Crossplatform’s CTO, Andrew Elia believes that it’s about having the right team to embrace technology as it evolves. “We’re working with marketing departments right now on some very exciting new concepts. It’s our role to help companies reach consumers in new way and provide the very best in technical delivery. It’s about having the vision – and then making sure that the technology matches the dream in our heads.”

It’s a Cruise, but Not as We Know It

As Disney unveil their new ‘Dream’ cruise liner, it’s clear that augmented reality has a very real part to play in the future of entertainment and leisure.

Visitors to the new Disney ‘Dream’ ship will have portholes, regardless of whether their room is on the inside or out. In fact, the portholes on the inside, created from high definition screens, will give a similar effect to nature, with a few Disney sea life characters for extra fun. OK, this is still not AR but you can see how the experience is being built up throughout the ship.

The interesting use of AR happens across the public areas of the ship, with 20 screens around the cruise liner changing depending on the time of day and location of the ship. The screens will be able to sense when people are standing in front of it and start animations. What’s more, the screens will lead their young visitors on a detective adventure using barcoded cards to unlock secret animations on screens throughout the ship.

We think that this type of entertainment is amazing, and a long way from the rotating animatronics of our childhood entertainment centres. What’s more amazing is to think that AR can be used for code-breaking, informative purposes too. We’re looking forward to hidden messages for serious purposes too. Messages in a screen that can educate, provide secure information, maybe even save lives. Now that would be worth dreaming about.

It’s About Moving Content, and it’s Definitely Cross Platform

Digital publishers last week announced they expect video to lead growth in display ads in 2010.

The findings, released by the Association of Online Publishers, have been gleaned from our friends at Northcliffe Digital, Bauer, BskyB and Channel 4, forecasting growth in excess of 10% this year.

While this is not foot-to-the-floor, hold-onto-your-hat kind of growth, it’s certainly significant enough to cause ripples throughout the advertising community. And so it should. 75% of respondents said they would be investing in mobile this year while 53% would be investing cross-media.

The reason we’re called Crossplatform is that we really believe the world is moving in this direction – great video content will breed sales for major, and then not-so-major brands – and it will be viewed in many ways. It’ll be interactive, in some cases augmented reality, and certainly content that can be watched at home, in the street, in airports, shopping centres and yes, the cinema too. And watched on many different platforms, from mobiles to iPhones, to digital outdoor advertising and TV.

We were interested to see that publishers including Condé Nast, Economist Group, Financial Times, Guardian Media Group and Haymarket Media Group took part in the survey too. Surely it’s publishers who can become the major beneficiaries of cross platform activity. For those who are dealing with issues of print versus digital, the multiplatform approach adds value and helps with the transition to digital. Of course the price has to be right, but why would we offer anything else? OK, a shameless plug for our services, but we’re here, we’re Crossplatform, and for those with a business to build, you know who we are.

Reinventing Personal Identity – How Augmented Reality and Social Media are a Natural Fit

The recent news that Facebook is now a more common route to news than Google Search has sparked new discussion about the importance of social media. At Crossplatform, we’ve been considering where this might lead multiplatform media, and of course, augmented reality.

It’s possible that a few years from here, we’ll visit a trade show to find that people are holding mobile devices in our direction to view our key business offerings.  This is Facebook and AR in perfect synergy, or Linked In if we’re to sound business-like about it. This type of application also feeds into our belief that AR has a long way to go, and the fact that AR is, well, useful, and certainly not a gimmick.

Ogilvy London, with whom we’ve become a Labs Partner , are certainly of this opinion. They view Augmented Reality as a ‘branded utility’, certainly able to help consumers as well as sell products, and in this way, a core part of everyday communications.  In order for this to work, it is of course important that AR is dead easy to use. We’ve already found ways of working with markerless technology, but now we’ll be looking to make every aspect of the experience as seamless as possible.  Imagine the opportunities that this presents companies to interact with their customers – to inform, entertain and elicit survey information.

We’re really at the start of something extraordinary, and this link with social media sites is very exciting. After the fragmentation of society that’s occurred in recent years, at last technology will give us a way to regain a dialogue with the people who supply our everyday goods and services. We’ll be taking our Facebook selves into virtual stores and interacting with our favourite brands – and the brands will know exactly what we want. We think that’s how it should be – and we’re glad that AR is going to take us there.

Why Magazines and Rich Media Can Make Good Bedfellows

In a thoughtful recent blog, Mediaweek was seen debating the iPad’s potential role in ‘saving’ magazine publishing. The tenet of the article is that whilst the technology is available to intercut text with video and all sorts of rich media content, the pricing model may fall short.

They make a valid point. Just because something’s possible, doesn’t mean to say that it’s affordable – viz trips to the moon for all of us and fully digital advertising throughout the country.

The answer lies in the price. A radical shift needs to take place through realistic pricing of content and programming. It’s similar to the music industry’s decision to move from selling albums on CDs to selling tracks through iTunes. Content providers need to make this type of footage affordable – and editors and programmers need to supply their services at high volume prices.

Exactly the same applies to Crossplatform as we seek to provide augmented reality for more than just an occasional high value promotion. We’re working with the magazine industry to develop an ‘off the shelf’ model and this has involved working on our pricing too. We’re not talking one hit wonder here; we’re talking sustainable growth that only makes sense if the client can make money too.

Our work with magazine publishers has proved that they’re a bunch of people who really know their game. We’re not witnessing the extinction of the dinosaurs here, but the re-emergence of a publishing industry for the 21^st century – as editorially driven as ever, commercially savvy and above all, priced just right for the customer – that’s you, me, and those people who’ve just been to the moon.

Augmented Reality and Where it's Going Next

At Crossplatform, we’ve been considering how augmented reality will fit into our future lives. A number of commentators believe that AR is no more than a ‘clever innit’ one hit wonder, the technological equivalent of those terrible luminescent shirts everyone wore circa 1994. But we’re really sure that augmented reality has a bigger part to play. In fact, we think it has a day-to-day role as significant as the printing press, the mobile phone or Facebook .

Of course, there’s a lot of fun to be had with AR. We’ve witnessed and produced some of the most outstanding AR experiences of the last couple of years, including Paramount’s Transformers 2 promotion (http://www.weareautobots.com/uk) – which used face tracking to superimpose Optimus Prime’s head onto the unsuspecting public. However, there’s a broader business case to be made for AR. What if AR became a regular way for companies to communicate with consumers? Possibly even a way of maintaining exclusivity for a brand? Last December saw a rush of shoppers descending on the Hugo Boss store in London’s Sloane Square because Hugo Boss’s agency, SimonandJohn, had employed Crossplatform to create an augmented reality experience you could only access with an ad from magazines or a card that could be picked up at the store (http://www.doctor-retail.co.uk/hugo-boss-uses-augmented-reality-in-window-display/). Now we’re really cooking. A link between print and the web, video and the stills image, a way of increasing footfall in a store by getting people to leave their armchairs. Genius.

We’ll be working with a lot more visionary companies over the next few months, and you can be sure of something: creative and sustainable use of augmented reality is only beginning. We’ll try to keep you posted on this blog and let us know if you’ve got something to say about it too. We might even give you a guest spot! Enjoy your day and watch out for more augmented reality… you’ll be seeing it everywhere.