Good things come to those who wait in augmented reality

In the late 90's I was fortunate enough to find myself working as an account director at AMV BBDO. With just the right amount of hard work, luck, and timing, I was assigned to the Guinness account which the agency had recently won, prized from the hands of Ogilvy & Mather, as one of the crown jewels of the agency world. The Guinness advertising account was renowned for its excellence and ambition in creativity. Walter Campbell and Tom Carty, unquestionably two of the best creatives of that era, devised an absolute corker of a big brand idea summed up in the strapline 'Guinness. Good Things Come To Those Who Wait.'

A perfect encapsulation and dramatisation of the product truth that could be brought to life in so many different ways. None more so than the Guinness Surfer TV ad spot (1999) which was named the best ad of all time in the UK in 2002 (by a poll of Sunday Times and Channel 4 viewers and again in 2009 by The Independent) by the British Public. It was an incredible piece of advertising history to have witnessed.

Why mention this?

Well, that strapline sums up rather brilliantly where we are with AR. It's been just over ten years since Augmented Reality made the leap from desktop to mobile, and well over 50 years since it came into being; four years since world tracking was announced with AR Kit by Apple and QR code scanning was enabled through the camera with iOS 11; three years since the advent of WebAR and mass distribution through the browser.

Throughout this last decade, phone cameras have improved; CPUs and GPUs have become more efficient; network connectivity and speeds have improved (from 3G to 5G now), and high specification smartphones have become more affordable the world over. Then COVID happened, and the whole world was taught to scan QR, everywhere. There's been a rising tide of technologies on our devices that have all increased the potential for AR.

Over the past ten years, the data around AR on how it works and what it can achieve as an engagement and sales tool has become more evident and compelling.

1. Neuroscience research has shown that AR doubles levels of attention and increases memory recall by 75% versus other channels;


2. Market research has shown that AR elicits a 55% uplift in happiness and surprise versus the ad norm;


3. Quantitative data analysis on scores of campaigns for connected product campaigns have evidenced consistent performance with 2-4% scan rates, 90+ second average dwell time and 2.9x scans per user as the norm;


4. Recent reports from McKinsey and Shopify showed just how powerful virtual product visualisation can be in yielding sales success and increasing propensity to purchase. The reports showed that conversation rates increased 250 percent for products supported by AR try-on technology and helped reduce the rate of returns;


5. Online retailer Farfetch found that product-share rate for footwear using AR product visualisation quadrupled for its 100-plus featured styles;


6. Facebook's most recent Emerging Trends Research amongst a sample of 12,500 people aged 18-64 conducted by IPSOS revealed that 78% of those surveyed said they considered AR a fun way to interact with brands whilst 74% say AR/VR can bridge the gap between online and offline;


7. Snap's latest report with trends agency Foresight Factory found that 40% of UK consumers use their mobile while browsing in-store to cross-check pricing. The report suggests that augmented reality will play an ever-increasing role in this habit in the years ahead. New technology will also carry benefits for online retailers, specifically by reducing the volume of returns by up to 42%, significantly reducing costs of as much as $7.5bn for e-commerce firms.

So here we are in 2021 and the waiting is over. AR has come of age. The technology is stable, ubiquitous, and proven. It's available to billions of people the world over on the device that matters most to them.

The data is irrefutable.

AR has found its purpose in numerous verticals: none more so than connected products and packaging and m-commerce as a sales enablement tool through spatial storytelling.

AR has turned passive packaging into an interactive, always-on digital discovery channel for brand owners, driving active engagement, dwell time and registration outperforming other digital channels. AR on pack connects consumers with inspiration in brand stories, relevant information, and product incentives at the all-important moment of use (typically a black hole for brand communication and data collection).

AR on pack helps bridge the gap between intent and action when it comes to tackling important issues related to brand purpose and education (required to unpack difficult topics around sustainability and recycling, for example), so that users can understand the role they can play in the circular economy.

AR as part of a connected platform strategy helps drive product trial, sales and repurchase. AR gives brands the greatest, direct, mass-market owned media channel and inventory through their product packaging they never knew they had.

As Paul Simonet, director of EIE rightly commented, "In five years time there will be no such thing as 'unconnected packaging'". I couldn’t agree more.

AR has moved from a minister without portfolio of technologies within an organisation to a fundamental, foundational facilitating technology as part of an always-on camera strategy for corporations.

I'd raise a pint of Guinness to that. It's been worth the wait. We are now entering a new age of spatial storytelling for brands, where AR is not just a technology but part of their joined-up communications strategy played out through a device's camera. Exciting times indeed.