Is augmented reality now a marketing channel?

With the dust now set­tling after the mete­oric rise of app phe­nom­e­non, Poké­mon Go, is it time mar­keters start­ed pay­ing seri­ous thought to aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as a mar­ket­ing chan­nel?

Robert White By Robert White from MRS Digital. Join the discussion » 2 comments

On the news that earth­quake dam­aged pre­fec­tures of Japan have teamed up with devel­op­ers Niantic in a bid to use Poké­mon Go to regen­er­ate the area, it’s clear the aug­ment­ed real­i­ty app has a great deal of poten­tial in dri­ving con­sumer expe­ri­ences. Here’s the low-down on how and why aug­ment­ed real­i­ty could be imple­ment­ed by brands in the not-so-dis­tant future.


In case you’ve been liv­ing in a cave on Mars with your fin­gers in your ears for the past cou­ple of months, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty games (ARGs) are very much in the lime­light. Poké­mon Go has tak­en the world by storm, quick­ly sur­pass­ing the num­ber of users on Tin­der and Snapchat. The app is blaz­ing a trail in cap­tur­ing peo­ple’s imag­i­na­tions with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty.

Yes, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty has been around for years, and yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Poké­mon Go is just a geo­t­ag­ging app with a nice look­ing skin on it. But with tens of mil­lions of active users in its first week alone, you can’t ignore the impact the app is hav­ing.

So, what oppor­tu­ni­ties are there for adver­tis­ers with the rise of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ences?

Brand new consumer experiences

In a world where we are bom­bard­ed by adver­tis­ing 24/7, mar­keters need a way to stand out in the crowd. Great ad copy and a com­pre­hen­sive through-the-line mar­ket­ing cam­paign can be great, but not enough to stand out. Con­tent mar­ket­ing is pop­u­lar too. Blogs and gat­ed con­tent all play an impor­tant role too, but con­sumers are being more and more apa­thet­ic to typ­i­cal online mar­ket­ing.

The best way to reach peo­ple today is through mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences. ARGs give peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a unique expe­ri­ence in a way that requires noth­ing more than the device they use every day: their smart­phone. ARGs allow cus­tomers to become immersed in your world. You can take them on a brand new con­sumer expe­ri­ence with very lit­tle bar­ri­er to entry. A great exam­ple of this is how Star­bucks pro­mot­ed their Christ­mas cups:

One of the ini­tial ideas behind Google Glass was that with the rise of wear­ables tech, rather than car­ry­ing out a Google search for a prod­uct or restau­rant or any­thing else, users could just look around at a near­by brand logo and be giv­en infor­ma­tion there and then. It won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be long before a logo won’t just be a sym­bol of brand val­ues, but a direc­to­ry of open­ing hours and an ad-board show­ing the lat­est deals

Branded partnerships

Poké­mon Go is blaz­ing a trail in this direc­tion with its busi­ness strat­e­gy. John Han­ke, chief exec­u­tive of Niantic, who devel­oped Poké­mon Go in part­ner­ship with Nin­ten­do, said “spon­sored loca­tions” would pro­vide a new rev­enue stream, in addi­tion to in-app pur­chas­es of pow­er-ups and vir­tu­al items.

McDon­ald’s was the first com­pa­ny to make a deal with Niantic. Every McDon­ald’s restau­rant will be a PokéStop or gym, attract­ing play­ers to the Gold­en Arch­es. Com­pa­nies are being encour­aged to pay for their loca­tions to appear on the vir­tu­al map in order to increase foot­fall and dri­ve mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. They will be charged on a “cost per vis­it” basis, sim­i­lar to Google’s “cost per click” mod­el.

Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty allows brands to give con­sumers amaz­ing expe­ri­ences that reach right into their very lives. This tech­nol­o­gy allows mar­keters to take peo­ple on a jour­ney that tran­scends web­sites, ebooks, and email mar­ket­ing, to the very heart of your brand val­ues, mak­ing a last­ing impres­sion that they’ll love to share.

Robert White

Written by Robert White

Content Writer, MRS Digital

Robert White is a content writer at MRS Digital. He splits his time between professional copywriting, narrative design and dungeon mastery.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalised demo.