(6 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
Have you seen the new Volkswagen Beetle? At first glance it’s actually pretty cool and decently aggressive. A major shift for Volkswagen’s Beetle. So how did they launch the biggest ever re-vamp of a classic old car? Well, through a series of standard billboards, bus shelters and just about every other traditional print-based media property they could buy…
Weird for Volkswagen right? Who launched the Golf with a custom version of the most popular iOS racing game app called Real Racing. Well, there is a slight twist, every ad is housing an Augmented Reality experience (by Red Urban) that is waiting to be unlocked… The only catch is, you have to download a custom app and then hold it up at the various advertisements to activate it…
I love most things AR, and the concept of using it to bring a whole series of ads to life is very cool, but I just wonder what the interaction/adoption rates are like? What do you guys think?
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October 24th, 2011 at 9:34 am
Pretty cool idea. I think the only people that would have actually used it would have been the people doing it for the above video. A very expensive, but fun idea.
October 24th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
I agree with your closing comments. I think this is all exciting stuff, but wonder who has the time and inclination to want to interact with billboards in this way? I think there’s a fair amount of assumption by brands that simply by doing something like this they will find a willing and fully participative audience. It’s one thing to casually Like something on Facebook, but to actually wander out into the street and hold your device up to a billboard? Would be good to chase down some effectiveness stats on this type of activity.
October 24th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
Yeah I kinda wonder aswell, I mean it has to make people want to go out and explore it…not sure if thats the case here. Neverthless, I Love AR
October 25th, 2011 at 6:17 am
Very Cool AR… Any freelancers out there that have experience doing AR for a print ad?
If so we’d love to talk to you… thanks.
October 25th, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Boring films. CGI cars sort of doing stunts. No one will do it. Asking people to download an app to stand in front of a billboard to be made to watch a car ad.? Forget it.
October 27th, 2011 at 4:32 am
I have watched it a few times and also wrote a german article about this. What I am missing is the call for action. Hardly anyone would go outside and check them out. But its still a nice Idea, nevertheless I feel potential has been wasted here.
For anyone knowing german: http://www.superior-is-digital.de/mobile/augmented-reality-volkswagen-beetle