In Part I, we discussed examples of augmented reality best practice in any general retail environment. This post will now address Part II: How to tackle retail challenges, specifically food retail marketing, with augmented reality. Much has been said about how technology can help bridge the growing gap between retail and digital, however this will be taken to a new level through the incorporation of AR.

If used correctly, AR marketing will do wonders for your business. Not only does it promote the notion that your business is at the forefront of technology, but it also creates a more efficient, effective and engaging experience for your customers.

Aside from the previously mentioned points in Part I, the following are specific ways to use augmented reality in food retail marketing.

Recipe Calculator
An obstacle that many tend to face when cooking a meal, especially for a dinner party, is knowing the necessary amount of ingredients for a recipe. Augmented reality offers a solution to this.

When a customer sees a delicious recipe in a supermarket magazine, they can scan the page and select the number of people to cook for. This would display the exact amount of ingredients needed to suit the party. Not only does this make the whole shopping experience easier, but it saves time, money and prevents waste.

Suggest A Meal
Have a favourite vegetable? Customers can use the Layar app on a particular product, and see complementary products that pair well with it. For instance, scanning a page with a red pepper will bring up delicious compatible ingredients, like sun-dried tomatoes and chorizo.

This allows individuals to spice up their usual recipes and ingredient pairs in an innovative and fun manner. Similarly, this encourages customers who have little experience in the kitchen to explore and experiment with new foods and products.

Helpful GIFs
You should also embed helpful GIF animations into your food publications. For example, scanning a recipe page with onions as an ingredient will lead to an animation demonstrating a method of cutting onions without tearing up. This would help those with little experience in the kitchen to master the basic cooking skills, essentially making the whole process simple and fun. Additionally, it adds value to the AR content and diversifies it from promo videos and discounts.

South African food magazine, Food & Home Entertaining, is a prime augmented reality case study. For their Christmas issue, scanning each page provided customers with animations on how to recreate delectable treats - making the festival season that much more fun and interactive.

Price Comparisons
Shoppers like to know that they are getting the best price for what they are buying, and augmented reality is an ideal way to demonstrate that. You should incorporate an HTML widget which clearly displays the price of a specific product compared to other brands, which will easily sway consumer decisions. This would allow your business to position your brand as more affordable than others, thus establishing yourself as the price-leader. It also adds to transparency and openness in communication with stakeholders.

Special Deals Around You
The best two combinations to customers are “food” and “special deals”. If you’re running special deals or discounts on specific products - advertise it! This would promote customer reach and push customers to your store, giving you an advantage over your competitors. This would make it both more efficient and intuitive for shoppers to find the best deals at any given moment, wherever they may be.

Stay tuned for the last part of this blog series discussing augmented reality best practice. Part III will address how to use augmented reality to increase social interactions and brand loyalty, as well as trigger customer feedback flow and communication.

Interested in adding a layer of augmented reality to your campaign? Contact us here.

This weekend marks the launch of a new and unique festival.

This Saturday, Amsterdam will see the first ever virtual reality festival. Named “Zo Niet, Dan Toch” (Dutch for “If not, then anyway”), the festival promises to put “augmented reality and location-based virtual projects on the map.”

“The festival allows visitors a new way of experiencing visual arts, entertainment, film, architecture, theatre, dance and music,” the event says. “The festival explores the virtual stage where nothing is impossible and everyone has access. The ticket is already in your pocket: your mobile phone.”

Visitors can wander around the festival area in the north of Amsterdam and view various VR and AR works with their mobile phone. There are even guided iPad tours for those without a smartphone.

The festival was started by former Layar employee Klasien van de Zandschulp in collaboration with artist Sander Veenhof, whose Layar artwork you may have seen here on the blog before. Many of the festival’s projects have been built using the Layar Creator or Geo Layers.

One of the featured projects is “Pont,” a fun boat docking game developed by Layar developer Blaise Kal. Layar’s R&D lead Ronald van der Lingen will also be at the festival giving tours and demos of Google Glass.

The program for the event has been enhanced with Layar as well, including a special final page which allows for additional content, so the reader can keep reading. In one case, an exhibitor changed the location of her project, so the program was updated with the Layar Creator to show the correct information.

Looking to attend? Here’s everything you need to know…

DATE: September 7th, 2013
TIME: 13:00 to 21:00
SPECIAL EVENING PROGRAM: 18:00 to 21:00
LOCATION: Various locations in Amsterdam Noord - Info desk : Tolhuisweg 5

Make sure your bring your phone, charger and headphones!

The following blogpost is from Claire Boonstra, co-founder and head of BizDev at Layar.

Recently, Layar has set its focus squarely on making print interactive with digital content by activating the pages of magazines, newspapers, flyers and posters with videos, links to websites and the ability to share to social networks.

In case you are not yet familiar with the possibilities of interactive print, have a look at some of our recent campaigns with VPRO, LINDA., What’s Next and vtwonen.

Interactive print creates a new business opportunity for organizations that use the paper medium, such as publishers, advertisers, and brands with their own catalogues. As these organizations define the business case for interactive print, a new demand for detailed metrics is emerging.

We have crafted a whitepaper, titled Layar shows significant reach, conversion and click-through rates from paper to digital content. In it we include the key metrics defining the market potential for interactive paper, gathered from both external research agencies and our own internal metrics.

We provide figures for how many people are…

• able to use Layar - The number of people who have a smartphone capable of running Layar.
• using Layar now - The number of people who have installed and use Layar.
• using Layar with print - The number of people using Layar to view content on a print publication, or as we’re calling it, “conversion.”
• using Layar to click through - The number of people clicking through to the digital content from the paper, also known as “click-through rate” or “CTR.”

Highlights of our research include:

• Depending on the region, 8% - 38% of the global population currently owns a smartphone capable of running Layar. This is expected to grow to as high as 60% by 2016.
• The Layar application leads the market with over 20 million installations and between 2 and 3 million users who open the application each month (active users). Other AR apps see lower penetration figures on both Android and iPhone platforms.
• Magazine and newspaper campaigns see roughly 1% of total readers interacting with digital content via Layar.
• Of all digital content displayed in print, roughly 20% are clicked through to the underlying action (e.g., video, web-shop, mobile site, Facebook page, etc.).

To learn more, download the full report and dive into the numbers!

There aren’t a lot of publicly available statistics on the use of mobile augmented reality, let alone its use with interactive print. There has been a lot of hype around the subject and it’s time to just talk numbers.

With this document, we are aiming to kick-start a discussion about metrics and results achieved both with AR and with interactive print. We would love to hear your questions and remarks, so please leave us a comment below!

Click here to read the Dutch press release!

Layar is very proud to be a part of the 2011 De Tegel journalism awards. Each year the event honors various achievements in journalism - it’s basically the Dutch version of the Pulitzer Prize.

This year, De Tegel is using a unique, new newspaper design to announce the winners, and they’ve given it a digital twist with Layar.

Today in The Hague, De Tegel holds its annual awards event, where the new paper design, filled with info about the winners and nominees, will be passed out to attendees. The paper was specially designed with tabs, an invention by Koos Staal (Staal & Duiker) and Matin van Ee (BDU). The new design aims to be easier to handle and read while remaining attractive to advertisers.

Each nominee has a photo and description which have been augmented with digital content. Readers can scan the images to view videos, hear more information or read the nominated works.

Have a look at the example pages after the jump and scan them with Layar to check out the project!

Read more »

Today in the App Store and Android Play Store you’ll find our latest update: Layar 6.2!

You may not notice any changes right away, but there is one significant addition. In this version of Layar, we’re introducing what we’re calling AR Video.

Essentially, now items around you that are normally augmented with Layar Vision content (magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, brochures and other print media) can now come alive with video right on top of them!

Imagine reading the newspaper on your way to work and watching as the box scores on the sports page turn into video highlights to catch you up on the game! With Layar 6.2 and AR Video, this is now possible.

Developers making Layar Vision content can now easily add videos to these experiences quickly and easily. Check out the video below to see a quick demo of the power of AR Video!