by Nickie Gray

At Mexia we fully embrace new technology that can create PR and marketing opportunities, so when we heard about ‘Augmented Reality’ we decided to take a closer look.

Augmented Reality (AR) put simply is the art of super-imposing computer generated content over a live view of the world.  This means that artificial information about your environment and objects can be overlaid on the real world.  AR is designed to supply information about your environment that is otherwise undetectable to your naked senses.  In order to make it work, you need a real time environment and a method to display the information, such as a mobile phone.

AR is a fairly new technology and the potential applications are still being developed.   You may be more familiar with AR in games (Microsoft Kinect for example), but businesses are slowing adopting the technology and experimenting with it.

A couple of examples of how AR is being used in communications:

• A big brand supermarket in the UK is encouraging its consumers to visit their website and download an app that allows them to scan their current location, which then gives them access to their nearest  store.
• A hotel service provider is allowing smart phone users to download an app to search for nearby hotels via their camera with distances, room prices and reviews all displayed in-app.
• A political party in Europe has been utilising an app that creates the illusion of an interactive billboard.  When scanned with the app, videos of political party appear on a mobile device, laid over the real-world billboards.  The second feature gives the user more input, allowing conversations to be conducted around their country, using virtual points of interest (POIs). With the app, you can actively participate in the real public space by posting or interacting with others on topics of interest, such as payable living space, education, energy consumption or production and public transport.

If AR looks like something you could use in your marketing, you will need a software developer to work with you to build your AR and any apps required.

Have you started using AR technology yet?  We would love to hear from you and your experiences.