I absolutely love this time of year – two of my favorite holidays are just around the corner where I will be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with my friends and family. It is absolutely fabulous! One thing to keep in mind is during this time of year, everyone has certain things on their mind – what they are thankful for, what they would like to do in spending the holidays with their loved ones and celebrate Christmas, and of course – the various shopping deals and gift opportunities. Everyone is currently looking for the best deal or a way to uniquely present a gift a friend or loved one that adds a personal touch to it.
One thing I can say is – 2012 is going to be the year of augmented reality applications. 2009 was Twitter, 2010 was geolocation applications like Foursquare and Gowalla, and this past year was all about QR Codes. Many brands are coming together this holiday season to start incorporating augmented reality into their various products and campaigns for the end of 2011. Here are just a couple of brands leading the way in this area and setting this trend for the holiday season:
JC Penny: What has made Hallmark successful in their gift cards is their personalization in adding voice recordings to their cards for people to give each other. Now, JC Penny allows people to do this by scanning and personalizing a voice recording on their gift cards.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfEQT6AWQ3U[/youtube]
Starbucks: The coffee giant once again branches out into a new area within mobile marketing and integrates their new augmented reality app to turn their signature holiday cups into an interactive experience for users.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWwQXi9RG0w[/youtube]
Macy’s: The global shopping department store icon has launched one of their biggest holiday campaigns with their “Believe” campaign, focusing on supporting the Make-a-Wish foundation. Interacting with animated characters with a special application (available on iTunes to download), it allows users to interact and take pictures with these characters highlighted in the campaign.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvzRXy3J0Z0[/youtube]
As you can see – this is an emerging trend PR professionals have to be aware of for the upcoming year. Each campaign focuses on a specialized augmented reality application to offer uses to download – but each of these is specifically targeted for a particular purpose and audience member for the brand. These three brands have also done well in getting their new application noticed in some of the top social media and mobile blogs out there for users to look at and test. We will have to determine how these various augmented reality campaigns have done in terms of the set objectives they have set. If these are successful, we will see more of these implemented in the upcoming year.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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