You’d have to be living in a cave to have missed the massive impact that online and social media is having on the PR landscape. While we’re already supporting clients with listening and engagement approaches, much of our time is spent in considering how the new principles of conversation-based communication and the tools that enable them are evolving.
Our favourite plaything at the moment has to be augmented reality. If you’ve not tried it yet, it’s the most fun you can (legally) have with a webcam or iPhone.
We started out about a month ago with Yelp. It’s an online service where uses review bars, restaurants and local services . So far, so what? But the iPhone version has a very cool little Easter egg call Monocle. Shake the iPhone three times and it appears.
It then uses the camera to overlay information over the real world as seen through the iPhone. Stand in the street and point the camera and details of bars and restaurant float over the real picture. Click one on-screen to see a review – and it’s not just big US cities, much of the UK is covered.
Think about that for a moment. You’re wondering where to eat – you could always Google it before you go out – but how much easier to just point your phone at down the street. In the time it takes you to read the menu in the window, you can see what past diners thought about their meal.
There’s a few similar one’s we’ve been playing with. One shows you which Underground line you’re above (more fun than useful) and a few that overlay tourism or historical information over buildings.
Thinking about it, you can see lots of applications here: could it tell me if the train or bus I’m looking at is going my way or show me how the landscape looked in Roman times? Could I point it at a street to see which bars any of my Facebook friends are in or give me a LinkedIn profile of people as I scan a room at a networking event.
From a PR perspective, it underlines the importance of monitoring the conversations that are happening about your business. For me, it also demonstrates the increasing importance of focusing on local relationships. There’s an opportunity here for PR support which is embedded within these localities and communities to develop and deliver content that is more relevant and engaging.
This overlaying of the real and online worlds give us the ability to use simple graphic devices to trigger 3D animations, sound and video that appear to be in the real world when viewed through a webcam or phone.
This is pretty mental. One of our favourite examples is the living Sasquatch. It’s a great marketing trick which is engaging people by giving them a star for their own videos. It works from a printed image which proved the real-world anchor point for the online animation.
But if you put the graphic on your iPhone, you get a Yeti you can work round with. Even more entertainingly, if you blow the graphic up, the animation scales with it. We’ve pretty much got it up to lifesize now – my next ambition is to have one in reception to greet people or sitting on the sofa next to them. Can’t see it in real life, but when you look up at the plasma screen, you’re sharing your seat with a Sasquatch.
This is already being used in advertising, predictably in technology and games, and the first AR magazine cover is very impressive. It’s real Harry Potter stuff – if you make this mobile so that the iPhone can do it, you could be scanning a whole shelf of magazines to see video or animation of their content. It’s going to bring a whole new meaning to pop-up book too.
Where else to we think we could use it?
It’s being used by product designers to see what their work looks like in situ. It would be very useful for, say, Ikea to launch an app which drops a piece of furniture into a room. Drop a logo sheet where you want your new furniture to be then look through the phone as assorted sofas appear to see which fits best. You could decide which car looks best on the drive, layout your garden or even try on clothes.
Or what about AR business cards? Print the anchor graphic on the reverse of your card so that when it’s viewed through a camera you pop out, standing on the card to introduce yourself. This is one we’re definitely working on.
It’s taking us in all sorts of directions and we’re working with our digital video team on lots of possible ideas.
How about virtual pets for kids with the anchor graphic on a keyring? Throw the keyring into the middle of the room and view it to see the pet appear (could even be modelled on their real pets). Or how about wallpaper covered in the graphics to make different works of art or photos appear? Video of your favourite live gig tied to the logo you wear on the band t-shirt or even tattoo.
The merging of real and online worlds present exiting opportunities for communications, engagement and marketing – we’ll keep you posted on where we take it next.
Matt Appleby, director, PR Wales
www.twitter.com/mattappleby
October 14th, 2009
