As AR continues to heat up, we’ve been lucky enough to speak all over the world on the topic. Yesterday, the good folks at GSD&M Ideacity were nice enough to have me as their guest. And I thought, what’s the point of making all these presentations if I can’t share them. So I’m hoping those of you that follow us for our AR work might find this interesting, and if you do, that you share it. It’s titled, “Augmented Reality: From Marketing Buzzword To A Better Consumer Experience”
This post originally ran on ReadWriteWeb on Friday, May 7th. You can view the original article here.
I’m starting to think that the Augmented Reality industry is very close to developing a Jan Brady complex. If you know what a “Jan Brady complex” is, then skip to the next paragraph. For those who didn’t grown up with the 1970s-era television show The Brady Bunch, a Jan Brady complex refers to the middle sister Jan Brady who constantly complained that her older sister Marcia received all the attention. Still with me? Good.
Guest author Matthew Szymczyk is the CEO and founder of Zugara, an interactive marketing agency that consults Fortune 500 brands – including Lexus, Sony PlayStation, Reebok and Toyota – on their strategic utilization of emerging media and technology. Zugara also develops its own proprietary Augmented Reality solutions and technologies. Video demos can be found here.
This idea came about through conversations with people in the AR industry, and also watching presentations and discussions from just about every high profile name in the biz. Some of the thought leadership and insight into AR and its future is just mind blowing. But therein (partially) lies the problem. People in the AR industry (ourselves included at Zugara) tend to talk more about the what ifs than the how and when.
How can AR be monetized right now? If not now, when?
When will AR start showcasing true utility and practicality over endless gimmicks?
How and when will AR become integrated into our daily lives?
Most of these questions are discussed from the what-if end, which results in a lack of investment into the AR industry. Despite the hype for AR, social gaming services like Zynga, location-based-services like Foursquare, and a host of other emerging media and technologies are garnering all the VC and startup capital. So why does AR still have so little respect from the investment community while these other emerging technologies get all the monetary love? Why is Marcia getting all the attention while Jan isn’t? Having met with a few VCs, here are my thoughts:
AR overall is cool but also seems very gimmicky. This hasn’t been helped by the recent onslaught of marketing-based AR initiatives that have no long term value and are really just quick PR grabs by brands. Though there is value in owning the proprietary tech – and, in turn, licensing revenue – it’s not sustained revenue that will attract major investment.
Despite AR being a hot technology for almost two years now, there’s very little in regards to stats, analytics or other measures to show that AR itself is a technology that helps to increase purchase intent and decision-making, raise brand awareness and so on. Where are all the AR leaders with case studies on past campaigns and general AR stats?
In VCs’ eyes AR is still struggling to break from the academic and research realm and into bona fide businesses. As a result, you’ll commonly hear this from VC’s: “AR is still too early stage.” Really? More early stage than Foursquare?
To break out of the Jan Brady complex, the AR industry must be able to define, from a investor point of view, what Augmented Reality is. Is it a technology that will be integrated into location-based-services platforms like Foursquare, or is it a platform that will incorporate location-based services and real-time ads? Or will it be a hybrid of the two? That is a key question since there’s quite a big difference between a technology that’s cool and a technology that can be monetized.
Searching for other emerging technologies and efforts to monetize them garners the following results:
Do the same search on Google for “Augmented Reality Monetization” and you get 28,000 results – most of which direct you to general mobile marketing-based monetization efforts. The only recent article of note is around Layar and its plan to monetize its technology through a store.
I’ve never seen more passionate people at conferences than those who are 100% behind AR (and I’ve been to a lot of conferences over the years for new and emerging technologies). But what we as an industry need to do is to start connecting the dots better for not only investors, but for companies that are looking for more than a spinning 3D model off a marker. Once companies start seeing the true value and utility in AR then there will be kind of long term investment that will connect the dots for VC and jump-start investment capital.
Until the AR industry can start proving that it’s an emerging technology of the future that can be monetized in the present, every time someone complains about the lack of respect all I’m going to hear is “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”
Comments right now are not working on AdAge.com so I wanted to post my reply to this article by Winston Binch from CP+B entitled, “Give Shops More Credit for Work That Bridges Digital Divide.”
Though I disagree with the general approach and intent of ‘full-service, one stop’ agencies, I think Winston articulated a very well thought out viewpoint from the traditional AOR end. There’s definitely arguments to be made for the traditional AOR owning the idea and all integrated efforts. You can read the full article here and I’ve included the main area I disagree with and my response below. (Winston – if you do read this, I’d be pleased to hear your thoughts in the comments section.)
AdAge Article
In the post-digital future, there’s room for a variety of business models. But to be relevant, agencies will need to be able to develop powerful business and strategic insights and tell brand stories. They’ll need to be able to start and curate pop-culture conversations and build scalable digital platforms that allow for long-term engagement and the generation of real-time business results. And of course, they will have to always have technological thinking embedded in their core.
Right now an important step is once and for all ending the conversation about the traditional and digital divide. The best agencies have closed it and now provide one-stop shopping for everything from Super Bowl commercials to digital platforms to mobile apps to social-media conversation management. (Rest of article here)
My Response
Winston,
First off, congratulations on the partner status. It’s well deserved…
Second, while reading your article, I was reminded of a saying, “Jack Of All Trades, Master Of None.” I have to disagree with some of your assumptions and overall thoughts in your AdAge writeup. I think that ‘full service, one stop shops’ will not survive in this new fragmented, digital environment. Though you might have an internal interactive production department, to say that you would be able to handle everything from CRM to social media to interactive video to mobile marketing and so on for a client is not going to be practical or cost effective in this new era. Nor will it be for any agency. Everything is fragmenting too quickly in the interactive ecosystem.
Even if a brand did trust their agency to handle all of these different interactive channels, this will ultimately lead to further outsourcing by an agency. Why should a brand pay a 15-20% fee on top of outsourced services to this one stop agency when they can deal with the specialized agency direct for less cost? We’ve been involved in quite a few collaborative efforts like this as of late and seem to be much preferred from the brand. Needless to say the projects run smoother and we’re still in constant communication with other agencies working on the project. Sure the full service, one stop shops can own the idea and marketing plan but should it own all the interactive components and relationships as well? I definitely think this old school way of thinking flies in the face of the new era of collaboration that agencies will need to adapt to for everybody to survive.
Too often traditional agencies come to interactive agencies or specialized vendors with ideas they’ve gotten buy in from a client on that just aren’t practical or even doable. Then by the time the feasibility of the idea is figured out, the time line for the initiative has been cut in half. Not to mention, what is often communicated from the specialist to the agency is not in turn communicated back to the client which often leads the blame game and further animosity between traditional and digital shops. With open collaboration and clear cut responsibilities spearheaded by the brand, think how more efficient this process can work. I hate to say it, but in most instances, agencies and their ‘one stop shop’ mindset are really, in effect, middle men that need to be cut out.
I do agree with your terminology in regards to ‘marketing agencies’, but I do think that outside of creating the idea and the actual marketing plan, most digital efforts and relationships should be left to the brands and the specialists. At the end of the day, it will save both time and money and help the brand get the best services available for their integrated effort.
Once in awhile you come across a very innovative use of interactive media.
Once in a blue moon you come across a very innovative use of integrated media using emerging media and technology.
A blue moon just appeared.
Take this McDonald’s promotion for example where a consumer needs to use their mobile phone to take a picture of a menu item moving on an interactive digital billboard to get the item for free. This is just an ingenious promotion since it’s not only creating awareness via the interactive billboard but also helping to push people in-store.
Great use of emerging media and technology. Just one thought though – if you take video of the billboard, you could theoretically just take a frame of the video that captures the actual menu item and so could win every time…but that’s splitting hairs. (By DDB Stockholm via Adfreak)
I was originally intending for this post-Coachella entry to be about all the cool emerging media and tech at this year’s Coachella festival. Instead, it’s going to be a rant against AT&T. Not only was cell service non-existent for basic calls, text messages and even email but trying to use the mobile web was an even worse nightmare. What makes this ironic is that the festival ran out of paper schedules by early Saturday and directed people to the Coachella iPhone App which didn’t really help you find your way around. So not only could you not contact friends to meet somewhere but you also had to rely on the sparsely located stationery “Here you are” map areas to locate certain stages. And that’s if you happened to already have the app installed – there was no way you were going to be able to download the app with non-existent service.
What about the advanced emerging media and tech like mobile marketing with QR codes, livestreaming and social media updates? Not a chance. I only found out after the fact that most of the tweets I was sending out at the fest weren’t actually going out. And I didn’t even bother to livestream any of the bands knowing that the AT&T network was useless. You would think with 75,000+ people at Coachella every day that someone would have thought, “maybe we should get some mobile cell towers in there like we did for SXSW to improve service for our customers.” Nope. And I don’t seem to be the only one that’s frustrated with this clear lack of planning by AT&T.
So there you have it. I’m not sure how Apple can continue to market livestreaming and other advanced features and apps for the iPhone when it’s pretty clear that AT&T cannot keep up with demand. With projections of mobile web usage continuing to skyrocket, I think the upward trend on this graph will clearly outpace the time it takes for AT&T to get it’s act together or just render their entire network useless. And as long as Apple is tied to AT&T, I don’t think mobile interactive video will take off this year as hoped with the rumored iPhone 4G coming out. Another post for another time though…
In closing, if you want to know how the overall festival went (sans any cell or internet service), there’s some good footage on both YouTube and Ustream. RFID technology continues to gain ground at events as you can see from the picture above of the Coachella wristband. You can also see some of the praise and complaining on twitter with hashtag #coachella. And if you are still not a fan of Muse, you have obviously not been enlightened yet!
Coachella is almost upon us – at least for those of us in the Los Angeles area! This 3-day concert/festival is a huge event out here and it’s always interesting to see how emerging media and technology is used at this forward thinking musical event.
I’m going to test out most of the standard techs while there such as Livestreaming with Qik, Ustream and maybe even Twitcasting. Pretty sure there will also be quite a few campaigns from bands and brands using QR Codes, Stickybits, and other mobile marketing efforts. And of course, I’ll update this post after the fest with any pictures/videos from the event itself.
With all that said, I did want to take a chance to list out many of the ‘new media tools’ you can prepare yourself with before heading to the fest (or to interact with from home):
MOBILE APPS
Pretty standard but always helpful – especially the Interactive Field Map, Band Chooser and Find My Car functionality.
Happy Coachella also has a feed aggregating band tweets here.
VIRTUAL TOUR (360 degree Interactive Panormas)
2010 Virtual Tour is not live yet, but you can view it (and 2009) here.
WIDGET
After the event, I’ll post some of the emerging media and tech from the event in a post-event update. Until then, if you’re heading to the show, hit me up on @kobrakai – you can probably find me wandering about or close to the beer tent
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.
I’m starting to think that the Augmented Reality industry is very close to developing a Jan Brady complex. If you know what a “Jan Brady complex” is, then skip to the next paragraph. For those who didn’t grown up with the 1970s-era television show The Brady Bunch, a Jan Brady complex refers to the middle sister Jan Brady who constantly complained that her older sister Marcia received all the attention. Still with me? Good.
