Will Pokémon GO spark a marketing renaissance in augmented reality?
Augmented reality has never quite fired for Australian marketers, despite several attempts to make it work. Mumbrella looks at whether the success of Pokemon Go will breathe new life into the technology for marketers.
If you are in possession of either a friend or an internet connection, then chances are you’ve heard about Nintendo’s new augmented reality game Pokémon GO.
Released on mobile Android and iOS in Australia, New Zealand and Japan on Wednesday, the app has taken the country and the internet by storm. Using the app, players discover virtual Pokémon in their real-world surroundings, then battle to win them.
These are not generated purely at random: geographical locations will harbour different varieties of Pokémon, enhancing the immersion experience. Water types will appear more frequently near water. Players can travel to nearby Pokémon gyms to do battle.
Indeed it’s been so popular it has raised some fears among authorities about people getting run over as they wander down the streets looking at their phones instead of where they are going, leading the Northern Territory police to issue a warning to users to be careful.
The phenomenon has not been missed by several brands, with the likes of Woolworths jumping on board and creating social content around the game, a virtuous promotional circle.
Woolworths is one of several brands siezing the opportunity to interact creatively with players.
Search the #PokemonGO hashtag on Twitter and you will be greeted with an immense and ongoing worldwide commentary. A large slice of this focuses on Nintendo’s servers: they keep crashing under the staggering number of simultaneous players.
And it just so happens that the majority of these players are millennials: the coveted, ad-resistant demographic that marketers the world over are increasingly desperate to snare. Already brands have leapt hungrily at the chance to reach the app’s players by integrating their brands into the gameplay.
There have already been a few forays into AR content from brands in Australia. McDonald’s launched its TrackMyMacca’s app in 2013 which displayed the production process of their food to combat negative perception of their supply chain. It enjoyed some success at award shows, but hasn’t made a follow-up appearance for the brand suggesting it wasn’t wildly successful commercially.
More recently, in March last year cosmetics giant L’Oreal Paris launched its free Makeup Genius app, which used facial recognition technology allowing consumers to virtually apply its products. While not unsuccessful, the audiences of both campaigns were intentionally niche.
Most of Australia’s major publishers have also given up on AR, with a series of ‘hover apps’ designed to be held over the pages of magazines unceremoniously scrapped after failing to get traction from advertisers and readers.
News Corp was among publishers to invest in AR with Plattar
But while more people have now been exposed to AR in the wild, Leslie Nassar, co-founder and innovation director of digital product studio Wrangling Cats, is doubtful of any immediate shift towards AR in the marketing landscape.
“I’m not sure if it’s going to change anything for brands,” he says. “I think brands will jump on the bandwagon regardless… [in the past] it’s been relatively unsuccessful and I think the reason for that is honestly that it’s a lot more fun to catch Pokémon than it is catching bottles of dishwashing detergent.
“If people want to play a game then they don’t necessarily want to play a game with branding all over it.”
Nassar suspects that the watershed moment for marketers will arrive when AR technology becomes “integrated at a system level… actually built into the platforms or built into the phones and the operating systems.”
The Dallas Mavericks players happened upon a wild Pokemon at the gym.
The problem, he claims, is the “installation gap”: where consumers are required to download and install an app before they can access AR services. This is the hurdle that has proven most challenging to overcome. Once AR capabilities are inbuilt, Nassar claims, we’ll see a shift.
“Then AR becomes analogous to the mobile web. Where in the old days you had to download a web browser for the phone, as soon as it was integrated with the phone… everyone was using it and now it’s the number one platform. That’s how people are consuming content. I think the same thing happens. If you had an AR renderer built into the camera of a phone you’d see some amazing executions.”
Venessa Hunt, head of mobile at media agency group GroupM, is equally cautious about AR’s immediate marketing potential.
“I think it’s probably a little bit too early for brands to be experimenting with augmented reality, just given that there’s not a lot of consumer-facing products,” she says. Virtual reality is a different story, as the necessary technology is already widely available to consumers in the form of products like Samsung Gear. Similar advances in technology distribution are crucial in taking AR mainstream, Hunt says.
“The launch of the HoloLens will most likely change the game quite considerably from a consumer-facing standpoint and actually getting devices or technology in the hands of normal, everyday people instead of just gamers and technology folk.”
Players are unwittingly interacting with brands as one spots a potential meal escaping from the local IGA.
However, Hunt is less optimistic about AR’s potential for mobile devices.
“If you’re talking about just general augmented reality inside apps and things it’s existed for a long time,” she says. Instead, she believes augmented reality will develop hand-in-hand with virtual reality.
“I think brand experiences definitely will be back on the rise for augmented reality, for sure. But I think it’s more about virtual reality and augmented reality rising together.”
It remains to be seen how marketers respond to Pokémon GO’s astonishing success. It is the first time, Nassar says, that augmented reality has gone “scaleable mainstream”.
“Google has had their own AR game out for years now… there’s a lot of people playing it but it’s still fairly niche. Certainly nothing like Pokémon GO,” he adds.
Snapchat may not agree with the idea that AR isn’t mainstream.
The Gatorade lens was viewed by 100 million people. Taco Bell’s lens did 220 million. Seems like decent scale.
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Love augmented reality or ar this has been a big test for this new technology and overall a big sucuss sure some teathing problems but to has a game hooked over the world havibg to be everywhere in towns cities etc amazing effort
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Agreed NH, Augmented Reality isn’t new and has wide scale – every thing from snapchat to real estate apps. And the tech isn’t new.
To move Augmented Reality to the next level and out of novelty and to utility at a wider scale – there needs to be a focus on hardware and content. And the new wave is coming very quickly, where we will have complimentary AR experiences with entertainment, TV and sport. There will also be a larger investment in AR in education and use to gamify learning. Exciting time to be in the industry.
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Lego has been doing augmented reality catalogues for at least a few years, they are pretty good according to my kids. I’d be surprised if anyone could say whether or not they sold a single extra box of Lego as a result, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5HhBdmUZgA
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6.....n-hands-on
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AR isn’t new at all. Japan has been using this technology for app games for years!
Only because it’s out in the US for the first time (for games on phones, since I do believe other venues have used it for other things before) doesn’t make it a new tech. It’s just new in the US.
A major problem we face with this tech in the states is the internet speeds we have because the US has the slowest speed in the world. To put that into prospective, third world countries that are in the process of industrializing and such, have faster and cheaper internet than we do!!
The US needs to upgrade it’s infrastructure if we plan on using AR, VR and all the other tech that’s finally making it’s way here.
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I’ve been a fan of this series when I was a child and now, I admit that I downloaded the game and got hooked to it. I really have no problem with incorporating AR/VR in my brand since I already did it once with my clients before . . . just in the form of VR/360 videos, not a game. But I would be interested in exploring more about this technology to further promote my brand if given the opportunity. And oh, on the side note, Pokemon Go motivates me to walk more to catch them all. Turning my lifestyle from a complete sedentary to an active one.
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We have also made an attempt to attract Pokemon Go players and make them familiar with the philosophy of our brand.
Just announced the Pokemon Go Green Challenge that gives players in London the opportunity to make their city cleaner by sending us a picture of rubbish found on the street while on the go with the promise that we will do anything necessary to remove it.
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