Augmented Reality: Viable Channel or Virtual Pipe Dream?

Last week I went to a breakfast presentation by one of our suppliers.  It’s a nice thing to do occasionally, especially as it starts at 8.30am so you get into work at a reasonable time.  They showcase some of their new handy services and their customers get free croissants, coffee and networking opportunities.  This one was on Augmented Reality.

Augmented reality (in marketing terms) is where you use technology to give a real life interaction/touch.  It usually involves an App and a Smartphone or equivalent where you scan something in real life with the camera on the phone, which then gives you additional options/interactions in the digital arena.  QR codes were a form of basic AR, as was Blippar. These generally took you to an additional website or video with more information.  Blippar was slightly more advanced in that it offered 3D images overlaid onto camera images, but was confusing as no-one ever really knew what they could scan.

AR has moved on since then, and now is a lot more interactive.  It’s also starting to get embedded

The IKEA App promotional images

into standard media so you don’t need things like special codes.  One of the best examples is the current IKEA catalogue.  Firstly, you download a free App of the app store, and get a paper catalogue as well.  If you then hold your smartphone over an image of the product in the paper catalogue, it will create a 3D rendering of that product on your phone screen, whilst allowing the camera on the phone to show whatever you are looking at even when you move away from the catalogue, and say, look at the room.  The product is then superimposed on the background.  The idea is that you can see exactly what the sofa you’ve picked will look like in the corner and if it matches your curtains.  

Red nose day is very much in on the action as well, assuming you have the Taggar App: if you scan the 2015 badges, you will unlock Harry Hill showcasing additional content including jokes, real time photo additions and games (you can see a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EdiH0i2-po).  

But you can do more than that, oh yes!  You can augment your business cards so that a little miniature avatar of yourself appears standing on the card doing a pre-filmed presentation (you do it on greenscreen) when your card is scanned.  You can run sneak previews of products when KOLs get certain ‘toys’ in the post or at KOL events (scan this engine, and see a 3D rendering of the new car due to be launched in 4 months).  You can embed games into postal mail, so that when a client opens a brochure, they can run their phone over the images and voilà, a game appears!  The possibilities are, as they say, endless.

Lots of the audience really bought into this, and were asking for more information, got really excited, and started uttering the classic buying signal that most sales people dribble over: "I have a project this would be perfect for!"  And yet, I couldn't join in.  It felt like I was alone on an island of cynicism, the Grinch in the room, because no matter how I thought about it, as a useful communication tool for my industry, it's just not going to work.  

What you are looking at isn't a shiny toy.  Instead you're changing people's habits: essentially, you're looking at a possible game change changer.  Due to that you have to consider:

1. The Adoption Curve 
2. The propensity of your target audience towards a new thing in this arena
3. What are your targets' current habits?
4. Does this fit with the image/brand you want to portray?

1. The Adoption Curve

The Adoption Curve

What is the Adoption Curve?  This is another of those Marketing 101's, and was mentioned in fair detail in the video in the last post.  What it demonstrates is that people do not take on new innovations or products at the same rate: important and because each group needs different messages and support within your campaigns.  

You'll notice that very few people buy into new things when they are first available.  Not everyone queues outside the Apple Store for that new iPhone; and how many people have an Apple TV?  Newness will appeal to less than 15% of your audience.  The rest want variants of reassurance, recommendations and solid proof of having seen the product in use.

And AR is definitely in the Early Adopter, if not Innovator phase.  You see that mass of people cowering behind the sofa from the scary new thing?  That's the rest of your target market who will never see your beautifully crafted AR content because by the time they are comfortable with it, it'll be out of date.

2.  The propensity of your target audience towards a new thing in this arena

It's also worth bearing in mind that people have different Adoption Curves for different areas.  If you're working for Apple, well, your key opinion leaders are going to be technological communication innovators anyway.  But you might find your surgeon who is willing to use the very latest surgical developments and tools can't programme the annoyingly spangley TV the kids demanded, or the environmentally conscious driver who insists on buying the newest hybrid car isn't fussed about the newest forms of social media.

Just because you sell new products in one area doesn't mean that your customers will be willing to adopt new methods of communication, and if you work in a more traditional, conservative industry you're going to hit that barrier twice as hard.  This is why you need to consider who your audience is, and what their preference is for communication.  Obviously, people are individuals, but certain personalities tend to be disproportionately drawn to certain industries: your average regulatory manager isn't going to be a wildly creative adrenaline junkie.  There's no point in making amazing materials if no-one ever sees them.  

3.  What are your targets' current habits?
So what does your target audience do? What are their communication habits?  And how similar is it to what you want them to do with Augmented reality?

How habits are formed: the reinforcing habit loop.

Habits are an evolutionary short-cut to cut down on the need to think and analyse every situation.   It takes around 60 days to form a new habit, and is a little like self-conditioning based around three stages: the cue, the behaviour and the reward.    One formed, habits get imprinted on your neural pathways and are incredibly hard to change.

Within marketing and PR, the most successful communication tools are those that complement what you already do because it's a habit.  So if your audience checks FaceBook every couple of hours, then working on social media is a good way to go.  If your audience always checks their physical post, then you're likely to use a postal mail campaign.  Does you audience watch a medical dramas?  Then put a TV advert into the middle of House (if you have the money).  It seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people forget this.

In order to use AR, you need to do a number of things outside of your normal habits:

• Get the App: this is a barrier in itself as it involves going to the relevant App store, finding the right App, downloading it and working out how it works
• Scan things using that App that you wouldn't normally scan like a business card and brochures etc.

You can already see the problem, can't you?  You're asking your customers to do complex processes which are totally outside the scope of their normal practice just to push a marketing message: to make a new habit.  Yet seeing marketing materials probably isn't enough of a 'reward' to be habit forming unless they get a real kick out of seeing something new and exciting (then the reward is linked to self esteem at being at being a pathsetter).  The only people that might are your "innovator" group in the adoption curve above, which is only about 2.5% of your audience.  This is why QR codes and Blippar failed: they didn't get people into the habit of using those apps by default, so when the audience did, it was a conscious effort, and easily ignored.  

I will add a coda that due to the nature of the adoption curve, the one exception is in the teenage market, because the very fact that most of the adults around the technology will not be interested or able to access it (due to having to get a new app) makes it instantly appealing.  But apart from that?  Not ideal for a mass market.

4.  Does this fit with the image/brand you want to portray?

Everything, ultimately, comes down to your brand and brand image in your communications, and this goes for channel/location as well as what's actually in it.  Want to be see as a family friendly drinks company?  Well, you're probably not going to give away samples in a strip club.  Want to be seen as eco-friendly?  You're probably going to use recycled paper if you do have to do a mailshot.

So if you want to be seen as technologically advanced or cutting edge, then yes, you could develop some AR materials as long as they came with huge rewards (such as prizes only winnable through the AR medium), as long as you did a lot of marketing on the side to get people to know it's there and how to access it.  But you're marketing the concept of AR and using it to boost your image rather than having it as an enhanced communication tool.  If it's for a more conservative industry?  I'd be wary. 

Overall, I like AR as a concept.  I think it's pretty cool as a toy and a way to stand out if you work and are pitching to a technologically innovative audience, or one who particularly like to feel like part of an elite sub-culture, but right now at this point in 2015 it's not ready for mass use as a standard communication tool.    

And, much as I like them, no amount of free coffee and croissants is going to convince me otherwise!