Augmented reality, mobile apps make printing interactive.

By Erik Cagle

Case Studies: Augmented Reality and Mobile

Make Some Noise, Wisconsin!

Ripon Printers, Ripon WI

Carol Cluppert, marketing director for Ripon Printers, notes the intention of the campaign was to demonstrate to clients and prospects how a printed piece can come alive and be more interactive, allowing their end customers to learn more about the company and its products. In particular, she says Ripon wanted to show its customers how AR could bring new life to their publications and direct mail materials.

Campaign Description: “We looked at many potential options to demonstrate AR, from showing a video to creating a 3D image of an item. Since our previous postcard in an ongoing series made reference to our customers being ‘Rock Stars,’ we decided to play off that theme and incorporate music and animation into the new postcard. Once we came up with the concept, we enlisted an outside party to help us create the animation.

“We also felt we would have better response if we offered an incentive, so we provided the opportunity to download a white paper on the communications revolution, as well as receive a free CD of the musical group featured in the animation. Putting all the pieces together was fairly easy. Recipients scanning a QR code were directed to download a program called Junaio, which allowed them to view the animation and get the full effect of the piece.

“Our goal is to send out a direct mail piece monthly, so this campaign worked as one of the campaign pieces. We try to send a direct mail piece that will catch our customer’s or prospect’s eye and provide ideas they can use to make their own campaigns more effective.”

Campaign Performance: “We received several requests via a landing page we created for those who wished to download the white paper and order the free CD. Because this technology is so new, we feel it may have been overlooked by some people as just another piece with a QR code. Several of our sales staff have taken the piece on visits and actually demonstrated how the piece works. This has met with positive reactions and lead to more questions.”

Did the AR Spike Customer Engagement?: “Yes, I believe the piece has brought Ripon Printers into the spotlight a bit more because AR is fairly new and many people are still processing how they can use it in their printed materials. AR can definitely make a printed piece more relevant and keep it from landing in the trash.”

Did the Campaign Meet Expectations?: “Because this was our first AR piece, we weren’t sure what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised by the positive responses we have received. When we run our next piece, we will be sure to build more advance hype so that recipients will be on the lookout for the mailing and have greater awareness that we’re not simply featuring QR codes. But the entire experience has helped increase our own awareness of marketing with AR and will make us better advisors to our customers.”

The Retiring Type

Access Images (FLM Graphics) Fairfield, NJ

The Access Images (AI) team, led by Senior Vice President Alex Piqueira and Director John Gagliardi, worked closely with a large global investment, retirement and insurance group to help develop a series of interactive multi-channel engagement solutions that will add an interactive digital component to their marketing initiatives. These initiatives will be deployed and accessible through various company-sponsored programs and trade show events scheduled throughout the year.

The solutions will be developed in a way so that they can be edited and scaled to fit the needs of these sponsored programs and events in the future, reducing costs for later engagements. All components of the plan were developed by Access Images.

Campaign Description: Access Images developed a call-to-action marketing campaign and all of its creative in an effort to help drive prospective and existing customers to its client’s trade show booths. The idea was to stress the idea that it is never too late to start the retirement process, and that (end users) should contact AI’s retirement strategies client to learn more information.

Prior to the trade show, AI sent out a series of personalized e-mail blasts informing the client’s target database of booth location, seminar topics and location, and access to fun tools to use during the event via a mobile Website experience—all driving foot traffic and engagement back to the booth. All creative had the same taglines and message throughout to maintain consistency. URLs and QR codes were strategically placed within these communications pieces and could be tracked by Access Images’ analytic programs to measure the open rates of the segmented communication deployments, as well as show who clicked what URL or scanned what QR code.

Banners developed by AI, which included the creative and message, as well as separate URL and QR codes, were strategically placed throughout the event location. Access Images also created a mobile, browser-based experience that was programmed and optimized for all devices. This process, according to Piqueira, was supported by responsive Web design and device interrogation, making the Website experience uniform, regardless of the device. All of the URLs and QR codes used in the e-mail, direct mail and on the banners directed users back to this mobile experience.

The mobile engagement contained content regarding new promotions, planning for retirement information, contest entry form, FAQs, seminar information, requesting an insurance checkup, sharing with a friend, among other features, as well as the ability to download a pass from Apple’s Passbook or from Android’s Wallet.

Android and iPhone users were able to add a customer-specific branded Pass to their mobile wallet, which is pre-installed on the individual’s device. There were many ways for the attendees to acquire the Pass; clicking on the URL within the pre-show e-mail campaign, scanning a branded QR code at the event, or downloading it from the banner ad on the mobile engagement site. This process also gave Access Images’ customer the ability to capture consumer data and open a brand new communication channel specific to this event.

The creation and deployment of the Pass allowed AI to piggyback Apple and Android native technology to send “push notifications” and strategically place Geofences (virtual perimeters), keeping end users up-to-date during the show and helping to drive booth traffic.

“Using the pass, we were able to set a Geofence around the airport welcoming attendees to the show and around the participating hotel directing them to stop by the booth for a chance to win a prize and to talk to a professional insurance advisor,” Gagliardi adds.

Push notifications were sent throughout the event, alerting users of upcoming seminars and contest winners. Access Images also created a check-in capability at desired locations, such as the client’s booth, seminar or cocktail party. When the individual’s Pass was scanned, using an iPod Touch, and all three objectives (or check points) were complete, the user received a rewards Pass qualifying for the grand prize drawing.

Campaign Performance: “Traffic to the booth far exceeded the previous years,” he notes. “Traffic resulted from all of our marketing touch points and was tracked in real-time through our analytic platform. The customer reaction: Next year, we’re going to need a bigger booth.”

Did the Campaign Meet Expectations?: “Yes, it exceeded expectations and we were able to deliver what the client was expecting, driving more users to their booth. Enhancements to future campaigns could include augmented reality. Make an insurance agent come alive and walk off the printed direct mail piece...now that will grab some attention.”

There's a line of thinking that has become attached to augmented reality (AR). One is that it is just a marketing fad, empty calories accompanied by a sugar rush—technology's answer to cotton candy. It's neat, it's cute, but from a practicality standpoint, it's not built to translate into dollars and cents.

Another viewpoint contends that AR has an indefinable value, limited only by the imagination of the creative people behind its genesis. Yes, it has great potential as a lead generator, collecting pertinent data from the people interacting with it. But it can go far beyond that, engaging people wherever they may be, as long as they have their smart phones with them.

And where can people be found with their phones? Let's be honest...you're quite aware that people take them into the rest room. In fact, that may be you.

That's the point. If you have a message to convey, a product to sell, an idea to share, there are no limitations as to how you can take someone else's reality and substitute your own. Best of all, printed media is a critical launching pad for many AR applications.

There's no need to sell M.J. Anderson on that notion. Anderson is chief marketing officer for multi-channel marketing agency Trekk Inc., which has weaved together a number of exciting, sometimes intricate but never boring, campaigns for a number of clients, including actual printers and at least one manufacturer of printing industry equipment and software.

Anderson is well-known in the marketing circles and somewhat of an evangelist on the topic of AR—having done a number of Webinars on how these experiences are beginning to change the way we use, and our expectations from using, mobile devices out in the world. "We're using AR to change the way people interact with content. In many cases, it has ramifications beyond just promotion and marketing," he says. "There isn't a vertical market that we've seen yet that couldn't benefit from the technology."

With the growth of AR, mobile device manufacturers are building the functionality into the chips of new products, from Google Glass to the Project Tango, the latter of which is aimed at giving mobile devices a human scale understanding of space and motion. Besides Google Glass, there are other wearable technologies in varying stages of development, and Anderson sees them as boasting game-changing possibilities.

Game Changers

As for Trekk, the company is working on projects it feels will change the way marketing folks and the print-for-pay space create and deliver information. Anderson sees huge ramifications for the printing industry, as it offers intriguing possibilities.

For example, Trekk designed and monitored a campaign for Canon Solutions America during the Xploration 14 Conference in Orlando, FL, back in March. Trekk constructed table tent centerpieces for the tables that attendees would sit at during breaks in the presentations. The three-sided tents featured an AR experience on each panel, aimed at simply engaging the attendees in a fun way. The table tent asked users to scan all three sides in order to be entered into a drawing to win Canon consumer camera products.

On one of the panels, a set of books opens to reveal a Slinky walking down stairs. Another panel shows a small, pink elephant jumping out of the screen, and the little guy trumpets when tapped and can be made to run around. In the third panel, a pop-up book opens to show children holding balloons, which then rise in the air and can be popped when tapped. (Using your smart phone with the Layar app, scan this page to see examples from each of the three panels.)

In conjunction with the tents, Trekk had a person on the floor at the show to monitor its progress, while a social media drive, via Twitter, encouraged attendees to look for the tents. "The idea of engaging in a casual way with someone while they're eating lunch or breakfast is not intrusive," Anderson says. "It's a way to start a conversation with the person that's sitting next to you. In this case, (Canon) sought whimsical and fun. It's very light on brand message, more fun than a hard sell. Underneath the hood, we're collecting name, address and other (user) pertinents."

The results were impressive. Of the 350-plus attendees at Xploration 2014, 35 percent engaged with the signs and 12 percent entered to win a prize. Furthermore, 75 percent accessed the experience with an IOS device, while 25 percent used an Android.

In another project, conducted for an overseas client—sort of the Kinko's of Norway (Allkopi)—Trekk created AR markers on interior design card packs. The packets feature 10 to 15 cards, and by sticking one of the AR markers on the wall, users can see what the image would look like if it was printed large, and with different framing options. It's the virtual equivalent of taking a piece home and hanging it on the wall. Once you've selected your modern art motif, for example, you can click on the order button.

Allkopi is partnering with various Home Depot-type retail chains and upscale design centers for furniture and fixtures, and will private label the design motifs—fine and modern art, sports and nature, to name a few—to be offered at US$10-$20 retail. Trekk is playing a large role in the design, building the mobile app and the AR experience. The project was still in process at press time.

Anderson says, it comes down to creating an experience worth engaging with, one that offers solutions, and is perhaps a little bit fun. Given the general failure of QR codes to capture imagination in the land of mobile apps, some marketers are viewing AR as a gimmick—today's trend—and not a viable, sustainable manner to reach out to customers. As a result, he says, some marketers give the alligator arms to augmented reality and won't budget the necessary money it takes (and it's relatively inexpensive) to effectively deliver a message.

Anderson is excited about recent and upcoming technologies, including the new Samsung Galaxy 5. Trekk is also participating in the Google Glass Explorer program and is evaluating the technology. "At the end of the day, it still comes back to content—creating something worth engaging with," he says. PI

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Augmented Reality, Mobile Apps Add More Life to Print