I read a lot (which probably shocks those of you that know me) of articles, blog posts and the like on Augmented Reality (AR). And it’s interesting to me how much buzz Mobile AR is getting. In fact some articles seem to think that Mobile AR and AR are synonymous… that is, they seem to discuss it as if it’s the only type of AR. There’s some great work being done around the world with Kiosks and Online, yet everyone seems enamored with mobile. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have much of an issue with that (“a rising tide lifts all boats”), but the problem for me, is that the buzz/hype is disproportionate to the near term practicality of the medium. I feel as though you brand and agency folks reading this might be getting a touch misled. The fact remains it just doesn’t make sense for most of you to do a Mobile AR campaign today. In a few years, it will be different (hopefully. I mean remember how it was “the year of mobile” in 1999, and 2000, and 2001, and 2002, and 2003….). But we aren’t talking about 2015 right now, we’re talking about 2010.
Now before I discuss the reasons I feel this way below I just want to make it clear that if you’re doing something with mobile that’s incredibly cool and your main goal is to get press, then my points aren’t applicable. I’m really only focusing on the brands/agencies that want to engage their consumers.
Now let’s get down to it. I think the main reason Mobile AR isn’t practical comes down to primarily two reasons: Technical Issues, and Consumer Reach.
TECHNICAL ISSUES
I wrote at length last August (2009) about the Technical Issues, specifically the inaccuracies of Civilian Grade GPS and the Compasses that are installed on smartphones. So I won’t rehash that here even though the points are still valid a year later (If you want to read that post though, please click here). I would like to bring up a new point briefly though, and that’s Data Accessibility. Simply put, the networks aren’t fast enough yet and web content loads too slow to provide a reliable and satisfying experience for mobile users. That’s not just my opinion, according to an eMarketer report that came out this morning 29% of people feel that the biggest problem with accessing the mobile web is that sites load too slow. Do you think people really want to wait 15 – 30 seconds on a street corner with their phone pointed in a direction waiting for the content to load? I don’t… Will 4G be the answer? Maybe. But what’s the penetration rate of 4G right now? And that gets me to my second point… consumer reach.
CONSUMER REACH
There was a great infographic yesterday on Mashable regarding the popularity of the iPhone. There were some fascinating stats in there. I learned that 83% of Americans have a mobile phone and 25% of phone owners (i.e. that 83%) own a smartphone (both numbers are higher than the rest of the world. Those numbers are 68% and 17% respectively). Now, obviously you need a smart phone to interact with AR, so where does that put us? Roughly 1 in 5 Americans has the technology to interact with your mobile AR execution. Not terrible numbers (as I’m sure you’re targeting the “early adopters” anyways), but it’s not actually the full picture. According to an InfoWeek article “Nielsen reports that 33% of smartphone owners in the U.S. haven’t even subscribed to a data plan”. Obviously why someone would own a smartphone with no data plan is a head-scratcher, but apparently a large number of people do it (and let’s not forget, that was before AT&T and Apple began phasing out the “all you can eat” data plan so it will be interesting to see how people use their phone’s when data is a bit more of a “precious resource”). Of course, no data plan means that 1 in 3 smartphone owners can’t technically access your execution. The potential reach of your execution just got much smaller… Wait, you’re just creating an execution for the iPhone? None of the other smartphone operating systems? Again, your reach just got smaller.
Now, I don’t want to be a complete pessimist, so I wanted to point you towards two mobile AR executions that I really like. That’s not to say that the issues above don’t still apply. It’s just that if you plan on doing Mobile AR no matter what, these executions conceptually separate themselves from the pack:
1) A “Tower Defense Game” called “ARDefender”. Rather than try to describe it, I’ve embedded a video demo below. Once you watch the video, think about the potential of using product packaging to engage consumers in this way (are you reading this kid’s CPG manufacturers?). The possibilities are pretty exciting…
2) iButterfly. Now admittedly, this is an execution from Japan so we were unable to try it out. But as you’ll see in the video below, the concept is unique, and engaging.
As always, I’d love your to read your thoughts below, or you can contact me directly at twitter.com/jack_benoff
In the Adweek article, I was quoted a few times specifically when it came to how brands are currently trying to acquire likes:
And three weeks ago, Borders had about 50,000 fans. It then offered a 33 percent-off discount in return for a Like. Its community now has 265,000 members.
But such ploys can backfire. Matthew Szymczyk, CEO of Zugara, says these aggressive strategies can pile up Likes from people who don’t have true brand affinity. In this way, he believes the Likes are tantamount to “false advertising” because a message goes out from the user who just wants to see a video or play a game-not because he’s interested in the brand itself.
Lionsgate, for example, is running a Facebook promo that requires liking the page for the summer blockbuster The Expendables in order to play a game related to the movie.
“You’re almost building a Ponzi scheme with Facebook Likes,” said Szymczyk. “Would you rather have 100,000 liking and broadcasting it or 5,000 who are real brand advocates?”
With that said, I’d like to explain a bit more with why I feel artificially accruing Facebook Likes to unlock content is a Ponzi scheme. When a user likes something on Facebook, this is then put in their friends feed and broadcast to their entire network that they’ve now liked something. After viewing the content they were forced to like to interact with, they might decide to unlike that brand/page or block any messages and updates from their feed. But when someone unlikes something, it in turn is not broadcast to their network in the same way a like is. So only positive likes are broadcast out which can artificially increase a pages number of likes. When you unlike a page, it only shows up as a decrease in overall likes. Compounding this is that the “Unlike” option is not easy to find and relegated to an obscure area on the bottom left side of the page.
This method of accruing a large number of likes of a brand or page is similar to a Ponzi scheme because it’s using previous people’s likes (positive and not negative) to then increase their overall numbers. So you now might have 10,000 people that have liked your page, but how many are in fact real advocates or even interested in interacting with you? They might have been forced to like your brand to view content. On the flip side, there are some very well done Facebook pages by brands that do a great job of engaging their fan base and allowing their page to grow organically. Vitaminwater is a great example of leveraging the Facebook community and their fans to full effect.
However, this current trend of artificially building likes is a slippery slope as brands look to embrace Facebook Pages over their own microsites. Clouding the issue even more is the weight put against likes and what their value is. There was a time when overall site traffic numbers were the main metric for interactive marketing. As the field matured, it became more important to track true engagement by a visitor outside of just a visit. With Facebook likes, it’s important that brands look at fan engagement much more than their overall numbers. Until then, the number of likes a brand or page might have is more akin to a digital pissing contest than to a true read of how many people are actively engaged with that brand or page.
Came across this video for an Augmented Reality game for the Android called Modroids. This is optimized for the Samsung Galaxy which is playing up its mobile AR capabilities on the Android-based tablet. Love the multiplayer aspect of the game and ability to play anywhere…
As Mobile Augmented Reality continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see (from a UI perspective) how these applications will show Augmented information integrated with the live mobile camera feed. Cities are one natural environment for this and we’ve already seen how Layar is allowing people to see how the Berlin Wall looked, where it was placed, etc. This is fine when there might be open space but how do you show the past on existing structures? While browsing my RSS feeds, I came across these amazing photos from English Russia (image above) which are combining imagery to show elements of the city in the past with the city in the present. An iPhone app called Streetmuseum, created by the Museum of London, already partially accomplishes this by showing historical images in select areas of London (image below.)
Will this ultimately be how Augmented Reality will overlay information, imagery and video on existing structures? I’m curious to everybody’s else thoughts on the matter so welcome comments below or on Twitter @Kobrakai.
With Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect and Sony PlayStation’s Move set to usher in the era of NUI (Natural User Interface) gaming, it’ll only be a matter of time until certain gestures become mainstream through popular motion-based games. Think the swipe of the finger on the iPhone now to interact with content but without touching an actual device. What was seen as the future in movies like Minority Report and Iron Man 2 is now becoming a reality and will help mature the Augmented Reality field even further.
Zugara’s Blake Callens had a previous blog post summarizing these new gaming systems at E3 and how they will usher in the NUI. But this post is more about the marketing behind these games and their respective videos. So below are a few videos showing Kinect and Move and the various games that will have your body and movements act as the controller.
Needless to say we’re excited about both systems and the evolution they represent for gestural interaction, the NUI and Augmented Reality.
I’m personally still on the fence regarding tablets in general, but it’s refreshing to finally see an electronics manufacturer (Samsung in this case) get it – and by get it I mean how suited AR is for tablets with front and back facing cameras. This is the new Samsung Galaxy tablet with more details from Crunchgear and from the Galaxy product site.
We Are Organized Chaos (WAOC) is Zugara’s (www.zugara.com) interactive marketing and advertising blog where we’ll be featuring some great projects and discussing upcoming trends in the digital world. Work — good and bad — will be critiqued. Hope you’ll enjoy reading our insights and thoughts on interactive.
