Like us, many of you are passionate about Augmented Reality. And since news waits for no man/woman, we decided to create an iPhone app so you can always get real-time access to the latest AR related news and conversations.
AR PEEPS: Tracks the tweets of people and companies involved in AR (via @ChrisGrayson).
AR TWEETS: Searches Twitter for “Augmented Reality” to show you what people are talking about right now.
Additionally, you can share the content above via whichever channel is right for you. Email, Twitter and Facebook are all integrated into ARWire and only one touch away.
Check it out (we’d love to hear your thoughts below), and please spread the word. Currently, there’s a free version up in the iTunes store, but a premium version (with ads removed) should be going live soon.
UPDATE: ARWire Premium is live, and can be found here.
iSites Will Let Publishers Build Apps For iPhone And Android….we have tried the service and already have a live app in the store. Look for full review sometime in the next week..
One of the drawbacks to the always evolving real-time web is the constant integration of different hubs that utilize real-time content. The most recent? Google allowing for real-time search that pulls in tweets from Twitter (and soon to be even more Facebook content.) You would think that having all this information at your disposal would make you feel like you were on top of Mount Olympus. But, alas, this wealth of information at your disposal quickly becomes a burden versus a blessing. Put quite simply – there’s too much information now to sift through and all that indexed content is getting less and less relevant.
I’ll walk you through one such instance of how the “Old” Real-Time Google Search was quite effective:
MY GOOGLE ALERTS SCENARIO
Google Alerts is a god-send when it comes to finding up-to-date info on yourself, clients, competitors, and just about any person, place, thing that is identified by a keyword. If you’re not using this function on Google, you should be It’s a great resource to have search results on a predefined topic delivered to you daily or in real-time as it’s indexed by Google.
Previously, I was content getting a nice little email that summarized all the relevant keyword search updates for that day. Over the last few months though, I changed a few of my alerts to ‘as they happen’ to tap into the more real-time nature of Google search indexing. However, this still wasn’t ‘real-time’ in the same way Twitter and Facebook updates were.
Then, over the last few weeks, Google decided to get serious about ‘real-time’ and started to integrate Twitter and Facebook into the search results. Sounds great right? All real-time data delivered right to your inbox. Well unfortunately what sounded great on paper absolutely sucks in practice. Here’s why…
When I was using Google Alerts, I was getting great info from brand sites, news outlets, etc. I’m going to assume that most people who use Google Alerts use(d) it this way as well (if not, call me crazy in the comments…) I was searching for information that I felt I could trust or at least get a link to a site for to get more information as needed. However, now my Google Alerts are being infiltrated by tweets, Facebook posts, etc. that are just mentioning a keyword and don’t have any real relevance against my initial Google Alerts keyword intent. The way I’m looking at it is that I’m now getting the ‘conversation’ along with the ‘research’ and I’m not digging it.
I used to have a very clear separation of church and state:
For ‘official’ research, I would trust Google Alerts to index blogs, sites, etc. for the content I needed.
For ‘conversation’ research, I would just search Twitter and used Tweetdeck or Twhirl to track what I wanted.
Now, everything is a mess. I’m getting almost 3X the volume of Google Alerts delivered via email and most of them are filled with nonsensical partial tweets, status updates, and incoherent babble. Unfortunately, now I don’t even bother checking most of the alerts I initially setup as it’s too time consuming to even start going through them all. Keep in mind, I have about 75 alerts setup and whereas I used to get maybe 25-30 emails with relevant info daily, I’m now getting over 100 because some searches are pulling up multiple times throughout the day when someone ‘tweets’ a keyword I’m tracking. Am I the only one that thinks this is a mess now?
I’m a huge proponent of the real-time web and feel that the way we find and interact with information now has fundamentally changed forever. It’s exciting to see how this evolution will continue to occur but can somebody please bring my old Google Alert functionality back? If not, I’m going to have to go back to getting my information the old school way…
So, your agency is pitching you on an Augmented Reality (AR) execution. And as much as you’d love to move forward with something, the fact is you might not know that much about AR. And why should you? It’s rather “cutting edge”, especially in terms of its marketing implications, and you have a ton of other things to worry about.
As a marketing agency (Zugara) that also develops our own proprietary AR technologies (and seeing as how it’s the holiday season and all that jazz) we thought it might be nice to arm you with some important questions to ask your agency. This way, you hopefully don’t end up paying for an agency to simply have an AR execution that looks great on their reel, but never actually engages a consumer. Noted below, are a few questions/issues you should be cognizant of, and the reason they should be included in your thinking. HAPPY FESTIVUS!
The Question: Will this be built in Flash (if online)?
The Reason: One word: “Downloads”. We’ve harped on this before, proprietary technologies require downloads and a significant number of consumers drop out of a process when faced with one. So why do it? Flash’s install rate is nearly 100%. If you’re going to put your budget and time into AR, the least you can do is give your consumer the opportunity to enjoy it. Below, you’ll see a tweet that was sent to me. I track the term “augmented reality” on Twitter, and whenever someone tweets that term, I see it. @woscholar tweeted about an unpleasant experience he was having with a Avatar cross-promotion that McDonalds is running. I engaged him in a conversation, and here’s his feedback regarding the download that AR execution required:
The Question: Why aren’t we just creating this experience within the browser (i.e. Why isn’t this just a traditional web site?)?
The Reason: Is the idea you’re being pitched to just have a 3-D model pop out of a marker and essentially push your message to the consumer (be it via a key-ed out video or the like)? If the AR doesn’t truly add anything to the experience, why put the budget against it and limit your campaign’s potential reach (due to the need for a web cam)? Ask your team if you’re using this technology just to use it. Think about your goals. Think about your objectives. Think about your consumers. If AR can be a natural extension of the story you’re trying to tell, then perfect! If not, just keep it in your arsenal/thinking.
The Question: Will you walk me through the entire consumer experience?
The Reason: Taking the time to answer this question can expose fundamental flaws with the concept. Sometimes an idea can sound fantastic on the surface, but when you go step by step through the consumer experience you begin to realize something: no consumer would ever do everything it takes to participate (e.g. you may realize that the user would need to put their computer or web cam on the floor to get the necessary camera angle). Seeing as how you want consumers to “do stuff”, this can be a good way of vetting ideas.
The Question: Why do you think a consumer would do this? What is their payoff?
The Reason: Obviously, the days of the consumer sitting there patiently listening to your entire message/ad are long gone. It’s the consumer’s world, and we’re just living in it. They need a compelling reason to interact with your engagement… to give you their time. One good litmus test is to put your “consumer hat on”. Odds are (unless you’re working for Nike, Apple, or a few others) most of your consumers “like” your brand, but aren’t passionately fanatical about it. So, think about a brand you “like” (not yours), and think about whether or not you would interact with it if they launched an execution similar to the one you’re contemplating. If the answer is “no”, then think about what it would take to make you participate. If you can’t find anything to make the offering compelling, perhaps this execution is not “the one”.
The Question: Why are you pitching me a mobile idea, versus an online idea?
The Reason: A mobile execution would be cool and cutting edge, granted. But for the near term, it’s limited in its reach (do more people have computers or iphones/blackberrys?), and functionality. Although not widely publicized, the fact is the hardware running on smartphones is not ready to deliver the consumer experience you’re expecting (I wrote more about this back in June), and the much beloved iPhone’s API still remains mostly closed to developers (which means you can’t have an iPhone read a marker like online unless it’s been jail-broken – which most consumers would never do). Not to mention, there’s apparently no rhyme or reason as to how Apple accepts/declines apps for the app store… so there’s the potential for your investment to never see the light of day. To be clear, in our opinion mobile AR will be huge in the future, it’s just not there yet.
The Question: What’s the experience for the consumer that doesn’t have access to a webcam?
The Reason: There aren’t any publicly available, industry standard metrics on web cam penetration rates. This much is certain though, as of today, a significant number of your audience doesn’t have a webcam and you can’t ignore them because they will come to the site looking for an experience.
The Question: Are you sure this is even possible?
The Reason: Odds are, you’re being pitched by someone who’s not an expert in the technology. They’re creative, and smart, but most of the time their ideas just flat out aren’t doable (either in the near term or without a ton of R&D). Before you get your boss excited about the idea, it’s probably prudent to make sure that it’s technologically feasible.
So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Are there other questions that brand managers should be asking their agency? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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.
