Clearly who ever made this augmented reality campaign didn’t read this post.
Not only are they repeating what’s been done a hundred times already, but the technology tie-in has absolutely no point. Star Trek Enterprise in your room, sure, I get that. Star Trek is science fiction and AR is a bit holographic so it makes sense. The GE campaign was neat because it was new. A few others have been so-so, but Always the feminine hygiene product company?Â
Really?!?!
I’m not even sure what the whole point of a white rabbit coming out of a white hat with a magic wand is. And if I start to figure it out, I’m going to bludgeon myself with a sock full of pennies until I forget.Â
Who ever recorded this video gets it right by titling it: Pointless Always (With Wings?) Augmented Reality Demo.
Let this be a lessen to all those marketing people out there. Just because you have a hammer in your toolbox doesn’t mean you need to use it, unless you have a nail, of course.Â
The only good that can come of this, is that it serves as a warning for other marketers not to use AR in the marketing campaigns, just because they can. Unfortunately, I know we’re in for a couple of years worth of pointless AR marketing campaigns. Buckle up, its going to be a bumpy ride.
I’d like to point out that OneZeroThrice has already created a tool to allow Flash developers to create fully interactive (read: not just gimmicky), browser based AR with no need to learn the inner workings of marker detection. Plus, it’s open source and 100% free. http://onezerothrice.com/artisan
I was just about to post it (but looked for the correct wording so I won’t offend anyone). Amazingly enough, this is not the first “lady product” to have an AR ad –
http://artimes.rouli.net/2009/05/kotex-augmented-reality.html
The magic part though is a reference that this new pad works like magic. I actually went and checked the site out.
@ Rouli – I’d forgotten about the kotex one that’d you posted. The referance to magic seems pretty thin on Always’ part though. Honestly, the rabbit in the hat distrubed me and I’m not squeemish about “lady products”. I have no problem picking up the wife’s products at the grocery store.
I so agree to every word you posted today, Tom! It’s gonna be a shame for a while to watch AR go down a road of silly, meaningless PR McJobs… But THEN it will rise! 🙂
But I don’t mind, every new technology starts off with silly applications… and for all those marketing guys (ladies included ;)) it’s still too fresh to understand its true power. 🙂
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