Augmented reality

Augmented reality has been on the fringes for some time now but it has only come to my attention over the past couple of months. When I bought my first Smartphone, the G1, back in 2008 I was one of the first customers at the T-mobile store to walk away with one of the converted handsets. On the way on home my best friend asked me why on earth I would want a phone that could do all of these things when I had a perfectly good laptop at home. In short I couldn't answer him, I just knew that it was the way things were headed and it just so happens I was right.

It was a few months after I first bought it that I was introduced to my first Augmented Reality app and I was far from blown away. It was slow, clunky and I couldn't understand why someone had gone to the trouble of producing something that clearly didn't have a future. Well in this case I guess I was wrong. Over the past few days I have been investigating the new and improved Augmented Reality software now available and this time I was amazed. Technology has come far from my last encounter with AR and my word it shows.

OK so some people are still using AR for stupid gimmicky stuff that is never going to sell or appeal to the wider audience but the video of the Toyota iQ above shows a real potential for marketing success.Over the years some of the big car manufactures such as Audi have done very clever and innovative things with direct mail but surely the future lies here. If you could send out an appropriately appealing piece of direct mail with a marker that would allow you to do that then surely it would be a winner?

I remember seeing the Back to The Future films as a child and thinking that the advertising show for Jaws 19 and the new hover cars would be something for my children to enjoy but maybe this billboard will become common place in my life time.

In my research I stumbled across Ikea's new development, My Ikea. My Ikea is an online service where you will be able to print out markers and place them around your room. Each marker will be linked to a certain Ikea product and when viewed through your My Ikea webcam the markers turn into fully three dimensional pieces of furniture. The idea behind this is so that you can "try before you buy". Well this seemed too good to be true for me and had to be tried. My Ikea is still in it's infancy and currently there are only three demo products available but it gives you a good idea of things to come. Although I struggled to make the sofa work, the lamp and side table were excellent. Give my Ikea a go yourself here.

So does AR have a future and can it help service delivery day to day? Well in it's current form I would say no. Who is really going to walk around town viewing life through the small screen of a Smartphone? I love some of the ideas popping up with new and interesting ways of using AR but I personally believe it won't be truly successful until we can use it in innovative marketing or condense the technology into a pair of normal looking glasses.

Is there a future for NFC in the UK?

Near field communication or NFC chips are nothing new to the average London commuter, whether they know it or not it is the NFC chip in their Oyster card that allows the contact less payment when passing through the station barriers. Since the London launch of the Oyster system in 2003 it has now become second nature to those that posses cards, it is rarely thought about and I must say that when I was working the city last year I was introduced to the joys of contact less ticketing and wouldn’t have it any other way.

NFC's are currently used in Asia in all sorts of technologies but the most notable development must surely be the electronic wallet. An app that allows you to put credit into a digital wallet on your mobile and then pay for daily items as and when surely is something that we could all make use of. Have you ever been stood in a queue in the local supermarket when the person in front of you whips out their Visa card to pay for a packet of crisps? Whatever happened to carrying cash? Well I guess that the dawn of the eWallet may signal the end of transactions as we know them.

Barclays were the first major company in the UK to invest in the technology and according to Silicon.com, all future Barclay debit cards will feature an NFC chip to enable contact less and Pin-less transactions on all purchases under £10. Nokia and Blackberry are the first major handset manufacturer to commit the incorporation of NFC chips in all new handsets from 2011, despite there currently being little or no demand for the technology in European markets. Although many networks are looking at the technology as a source of future business, many say that they will "follow the market rather than lead it"

So the technology may be up to standard but is the demand or infrastructure there to support it? Well if you think back, was there ever any demand for phones to have cameras, MP3 players of Bluetooth? Probably not but because the technology exists we use it. If the latest Smartphone featured an eWallet that could use in conjunction with your PayPal app, would you use it? I probably would! Do we think then that this is the future of mobile and money? When I go out to the shops all I will need is my phone and nothing else? Will the advent of NFC eWallets spell the end of days for cash and cheques? If I can send virtual money to my friend through PayPal or through the “bump” of a phone, why would I need to use cash or a cheque?

There are certainly those that believe NFC's are dead before they have even really started. Many claim concerns over security and safety but who's to say that PayPal or one of the larger banks won't find a way around this? I personally believe that over the next couple of years we will see a huge uptake in NFC driven transactions, machines on street corners or supermarkets that allow you to top up you phones eWallet in seconds. Four years ago I didn't think I would ever be able to internet shop on my phone but in the next four years I am almost certain that all I will ever need is my phone.

I will leave you with a short clip of Jeremy Belostock, Nokia's head of NFC's telling us why Near Field Communication are going to be so important.

Interactivity and Advertising

Audi - The Art

                                                 of the H3ist

As discussed previously, the internet has provided consumers across the globe the power to interact with everything from friends, brands and content, but how can companies exploit the new wave of interactivity to their own marketing advantage? Transmedia storytelling has provided a basis for some stand out figures over the years such as the Dr Who franchise, The Matrix and even Coca Cola but the example that caught my eye was Audi USA's 2006 campaign to launch  their new A3.

Known as the Art of the Heist, the story centered around the real life theft of the first A3 from a dealership on Park Avenue, New York.

Following the initial theft police were called to the scene handing out wanted flyers and closing off the crime scene with police tape. The hoax now moved into the digital realm with Audi USA hiring an internet based company known as Last Retrieval.com. The fake company could be traced back several months as they had been advertising on blogs and in the classifieds as a company specializing in the retrieval of stolen art work.
Wanted signs were erected all over NY asking for information on the incident and a billboard in Time Square offered a hot line for witnesses.

The curious citizens of New York that could not make head or tail of the incident started to blog about the events sparking discussions about the mysterious disappearance. Next came a wave of mass media coverage including newspaper ad's and the following TV commercial.

The emergence of Virgil Tatum, a video game designer offering to help in the search for the A3 if he could document the events in an online game featuring Audi vehicles, and so an online game was born that the ever growing consumer base could interact with. The actor that played Tatum then made an appearance at the E3 gaming expo and gave live interviews (in character obviously) to the bemused public.

Short Viral clips embedded in emails and micro sites allowed those interested in the action an opportunity to investigate parts of the puzzle for themselves, those who uncovered vital evidence were invited to live events.  Through out all of this, one influential blogger known as Todd provided running updates of events to ensure that the interested parties didn't miss any of the action. This detailed and elaborate hoax was drawn out over a three month period and climaxed at an event in Santa Monica's Viceroy Hotel, I will leave you to find out how it unraveled.  

There's no doubting the time, effort and planning that went into this fantastic interactive campaign but was it worth it? Yes, of course it was, throughout the run of the campaign Audi generated 500,000 story participants that followed events and searched the web for information and clues. A total of 45 million PR impressions were served, 2 million unique users visited the Audi USA website and there was a staggering 10,000 leads to dealers.

The Art of the H3ist was a masterclass in how to use an array of different media and technologies to target and involve potential customers in the world of the new A3. A spy movie that came to life, it was and still is "one the most experiential reality blurring advertising campaigns ever attempted".

The Cult of the Amateur

We all know the rate at which technology has advanced over the past few decades, from the first email sent in 1971 to the email I just received on my Smart phone a second ago, but what are the implications and uses for these new platforms available to us? The dawn of Social media has been a huge turning point in technology and has forced the world to look at everything in a new perspective. Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Phone Apps, to name a few, mean that we no longer view media in the same way. So are these new technologies a step forward or are they in fact, as Andrew Keen suggests, damaging our culture.

Unlike Keen, I do not believe that the ability of the masses to voice their opinion is a bad thing, on the contrary, however I can see his concerns when people start to take themselves to seriously and become disillusioned with the power available to them. Some platforms have shown their worth as talent scouting sources with successes such as Justin Bieber, who would probably still be your average talented 16 year old were it not for YouTube. On the other hand YouTube is also over run with video blogs and amateur news channels that have little or no credibility in academic terms.

One of Keen lectures on the cult of the amateur is available on YouTube and a beautiful irony in this is that a young American blogger has posted his response to the topic in a video blog just bellow. It would seem that the young man involved has not realized the irony of his post, possibly suggesting that he doesn't fully understand the themes of the topic and thus reinforcing Keen's claims even further. I, However am no different, by posting this blog I am only adding fuel to fire. What makes me so special that I can have my say on the subject and believe that anyone should care about my opinion. Well I suppose it boils down to the fact that although I can put my point across it doesn't guarantee that anyone will read this and if they do they may not take it seriously.

Freedom of speech is a right and one that we all should have however I do share Keen's concern that the line between credible and non credible sources is becoming increasingly blurred. What is to say that in a few years time, University students such as myself  will struggle to differentiate between credible academic material and irrelevant content from unknown sources. "The Cult of the Amateur" may indeed exist but is it destroying culture or is this just the natural progression for culture given the new and changing forms of technology? What do you think?