How AR Filters can be impactful  in Marketing Campaigns

In today’s world, marketing revolves more around catering to the needs of consumers. With the progress of technology, those desires are increasing, and consumer behavior is changing. Marketers must thrive to keep up.

The rise of Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging trend that marketers believe comes with a set of challenges and opportunities in the digital marketing landscape.

Table of Contents

• Augmented Reality (AR) Defined
• Social Media Platforms that offer AR Filter Function
• What makes AR an impactful marketing tool?
• AR Filter: Case Studies
• Conclusion

Augmented Reality (AR) Defined

Augmented reality (AR) is not to be mistaken for virtual reality (VR). Augmented reality is when digital elements come into play along with a live view, often by using a smartphone camera.

Examples of an augmented reality experience would be Nintendo’s popular game Pokémon Go, L’Oréal Makeup App, Snapchat lenses, and many more for you to discover.

However, Virtual Reality offers a completely immersive experience, such as a simulated environment from a first-person perspective game action that blocks out the real world. With the use of VR devices such as Google Cardboard, Playstation VR, Lenovo Mirage Solo, and more where the users feel like they’re being transported into various real-world environments or beyond earth such as Astro Bot Rescue Mission in space, etc.

Augmented reality (AR) is trending and is being incorporated into marketing and sales strategies that allow brands to deliver a unique and out-of-this-world experience via a mobile app with convenience at your fingertips.

The mobile platform has become a widely used and significant aspect of the way consumers interact with brands and directly make purchase decisions. AR gives that added value that drives sales and increases your brand value through your mobile devices.

Augmented Reality (AR) makes it possible to make digital content come to life. It enables the users to interact directly with the brand or products by reaching out and is able to build a stronger bond with the user, enabling them to touch, views from different angles, and more features that create the wow factor, making the brand/ manufacturer stand out in the market.

There are AR applications, like Augment that enable users to view digital objects into real environments, which is where businesses come in to use augmented reality devices to enhance their products by blending their products into the real world — which can be super cool!

Brands believe that by applying AR, they will be able to engage more with their audience because it allows the users to see a world beyond reality.

Here’s how the AR app functions:

1. Get your smartphone camera ready.
2. Point at a specific marker or activate an event based on the GPS coordinates.
3. Enjoy viewing types of information displayed on the smartphone device. This can come in the form of mini-games, videos, text descriptions, etc.

Top Social Media Platforms that have AR filter functions

Snapchat:

Snapchat Lens Studio supports these features and utilizes a ‘Snapcode’ for sharing purposes. Their AR experiences have transformed the way you look. This includes creating snaps to add 3D effects, objects, characters, and some humorous transformations. Here’s a funny example of an AR Filter of different selfie filters.

Facebook and Instagram:

Most people use Facebook’s Spark AR platform to create impactful content for both Facebook & Instagram that has cutting-edge features like gesture recognition, plane tracking, and background segmentation for all mobiles. Facebook now allows anyone to make custom filters and many more effects on Instagram too. Here are some examples of Spark AR below.

TikTok:

TikTok’s AR Filters come in various forms such as creative effects, selfie filters, animated object tracking, environment change, branded lens filters for ads.

Take a look at the video below to understand how TikTok AR interacts with people.

TikTok Interactive AR interacts well with the audience and is good for campaigns like hashtag challenges.

Need more inspiration on the types of AR Filter for your campaign? Click here to find out more on Types of AR and some inspirations.

What makes AR an impactful marketing campaign tool?

Augmented reality (AR) is now trending across most industries, as every business must keep up with technological trends like augmented reality to interact with its consumers on another level. Many brands that want to stand out from their competition must leverage AR to leave a lasting brand impression, in turn taking their marketing campaigns to greater heights— so should you.

Here are 6 reasons why:

1. Enhance User Experience

The use of augmented reality in your mobile marketing strategy is a fantastic move to create a memorable and engaging customer experience like no other. A great example of this would be the Jurassic World Facebook filter which is so mind blowing because it looks like it’s a part of your reality. Check it out!

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2. Increase Engagement

Incorporating augmented reality in your marketing campaign strategy will give your brand a lift and will help drive engagement. The interactive nature of AR makes it addictive for users and keeps them hooked by allowing users to try on your products prior to their purchase.

For instance, L’Oreal’s “Style My Hair” app was created to help users visualize how their hair will look after using their products.

L’Oreal’s personalized augmented app had up to 2.3 million users, using the app to interact with stylists and customers. Here’s a video of L’Oreal’s “Style My Hair” app and how it helps simplify the process of selection.

3. Higher Retention Rates 

Increased customer retention rates are very flattering for marketers and brands because the augmented reality in marketing helps retain the users in your app for longer, making it useful to create brand awareness and generates revenue.

According to Sara Castellanos from Wall Street Journal, augmented reality provides “particularly useful tools for visualizing data because they engage the spatial awareness part of the brain that allows humans to understand complex concepts more quickly and promotes greater retention.” In today’s dynamic environment, brands need to focus on how to maintain high customer retention rates. The question is what can you do to make your customers want to come back? What drives them or motivates them to come back? This is how 7-Eleven makes customers come back for more!

Here’s a great example of smart retention tactics.

4.  Personalize the customer experience

With the collection of data, augmented reality enables marketers to understand their customers more and which ones to offer a personalized experience to. Plus, with this information, there are only 18% of mobile apps that are personalized so it’s time to get in there before it gets saturated— and to stay ahead of your competitors. One way to go is to experiment with fun AR Filters to maximize your customer’s personal experience while they’re on their mobile phones. For example, shoppers can now try Gucci Sneakers via Snapchat remotely as Gucci released a variety of filters for shoppers to virtually try out and make a purchase on the spot. It enables your customers to visualize how it would look and this creates a strong brand connection and makes the shopping experience interactive. Check out this cool example by Gucci in collaboration with Snapchat AR Filters.

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5. Helps your brand stand out

There are so many brands that are active on Instagram right now and by adding an AR filter, it can help highlight what makes your brand special and give it more personality to help your brand stand out.

6. Increase Brand Awareness and Customer Loyalty

Last but not least, augmented reality is more dynamic than we think and helps increase brand awareness and customer loyalty because it is suitable to be shared on social media platforms. Let’s take the Malaysian popular chip brand, Mister Potato for example when they launched their animated Syok Wave Campaign to introduce their all-new Syok Wave Crinkle cut with the Syok Wave Amigos.

The campaign targeted younger users and appeared on TikTok followed by a #DoTheSyokWavePose challenge where the users were invited to do superhero poses according to the AR filters set in order to win prizes like a Nintendo Switch. When it comes to social media hashtag challenges, no platform gets more traction than TikTok.

This shows that augmented reality is an impactful way to create brand awareness which allows you to build a loyal following on social media, simply because it’s highly interactive and fun for your audience to participate in.

If you’re looking to create impactful digital content like this, you’re reading the right blog. Let’s get in touch.

AR Filter: Case Studies

i. L’Oréal Paris Makeup 2014 Case Study

SOURCE:  L’Oréal Makeup Genius App video.

The Challenge

When it comes to the makeup industry, most female customers prefer to try on a product sample before purchasing your product. However, at times the samples are limited when browsing the store, so those interested customers don’t get to try on a sample — they don’t get to try or buy the product. Normally, makeup brands are being promoted via magazines, but they were limited to only a few ranges. Hence, L’Oréal thought of a way to revolutionize the makeup buyer’s shopping experience by creating the AR app Make-up Genius. This iOS app allows the users to scan their facial features, browse their catalog, and virtually see what they look like with the make-up on before they make their purchase. The customers can also scan their selected product bar codes in-store to test it out with the app.

The Solution

To combat this issue,  L’Oréal then merged with facial recognition software company Image Metrics to create the AR app, Make-up Genius which uses your mobile phones front to act as a mirror, detecting 64 data points on the face to determine between the skin on your lips and your face, as well as facial contours. The innovative part is that users can virtually apply the L’Oréal make-up to see what it will look like, then they can share their images on their social media or can be saved straight to your mobile camera roll. If users are interested in your product after a virtual application, they can purchase it directly from the app.

Analysis

L’Oréal’s Make-up Genius app helps ease the anxiety and tension of the consumer buying process, allowing them to try before they buy, making it more efficient for L’Oréal to upsell their products and be actively available for their consumers by marketing a wider selection of their product ranges. L’Oréal was able to collect data to deliver more accurate marketing efforts to consumers. For instance, the data indicates there’s a demand for “smokey eye make-up” so they present the consumer with smokey eye-related products.

This digital AR strategy is proven to drive active sales and to boost awareness for L’Oréal based on these findings:

• Strong consumer insight.
• Finding the perfect solution to meet the consumer’s needs and creating brand value.
• Creating a long-term proposition for both parties.
• This method can be applied across dozens of markets.
• Propels their CRM program.

The Results

The L’Oréal Make-up Genius app is a total game-changer and has transformed the nature of how consumers try on their make-up. Which allows women to discover more makeup looks they can try.

According to statistics, this AR app has generated 260 million virtual product trials and 1.4 million app downloads.

To summarize this, L’Oréal has completely revolutionized the way consumers try their makeup on and has found a solution to speed up the buyer’s process. This campaign was based on solid consumer insights which led to the success of the campaign.

ii. QV Case Study

Objective

The Health and Beauty brand, QV aims to create a campaign that has both creative and engaging aspects, targeting parents. At the same time, they would like to create awareness and hype that will lead to conversion in Malaysia.

The Strategy

QV teamed up with a digital ad agency, Synergy XYZ with the idea of applying AR effects on social media to make it fun and interactive to engage with the parents.

The agency decided to create several AR effects for the “QV to run” and “QV Baby Playtime with Tim” contest.

The mechanics of the contest:

Get parents with the most creative photos using QV’s AR effects will win a cash prize and QV Baby products.

The Solution

The agency created a campaign name for the contest, urging the parents to join the contest and take the most creative picture of their child with some interactive AR effects.

The idea of the agency’s content creation on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram was meant to shine some fun and light on the brand.

The agency was also very hands-on and managed the entire contest throughout the entire duration of the campaign.

The Results

The QV campaign was a social media success and generated over 3,200 participants on Facebook and Instagram. The agency also managed to create hype with the use of QV Baby’s AR Filter among a large community of mothers during the 6-week campaign duration.

Conclusion

To summarize this, augmented reality is dominating social media now, it’s a chance for marketers and businesses to start expanding their creativity in order to make the most out of it.

There’s so much untapped potential in AR and so many types to experiment with to entertain your audience. It can be risky to be perceived as outdated by your audience as well. So, as a marketer, entrepreneur, or business, you need to explore your creative options and how to leverage it while it’s still fresh.

I have defined AR, going through the list of AR types, and the killer potential behind every one of them, take L’Oréal’s Make-up Genius success as proof that AR will soon become a life necessity. Don’t you want that for your business?  That time will come, but your brand has to start as soon as possible before your competitors discover its potential and create a mind-blowing campaign— so time is ticking.

I know it can be tough to think out-of-the-box most of the time, but don’t worry, you’re not alone in this.

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