American television station SundanceTV (part of the AMC Network) is using Layar and Augmented Reality to help better engage with fans of its new show “The Honorable Woman.” 

The spy thriller miniseries stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as an Anglo-Israeli businesswoman, and fans can use the Layar App to discover exclusive clues to the show’s mysterious plot. SundanceTV is using the show’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts to share images with the show’s followers that contain hidden information that can be accessed by scanning with Layar.

Monica Bloom, SVP Marketing, SundanceTV, stated, “‘The Honorable Woman’ is an intricate thriller that engages viewers with thought-provoking concepts, many of them centered on secrets and lies. We wanted to translate these themes into a marketing campaign that would rouse and delight our audience while driving engagement and conversation around this compelling series.”

Check out some of the example tweets below and scan with the Layar App to discover more about “The Honorable Woman.” Visit the SundanceTV website to view more scannable images.

Back in February we told you about our exciting partnership with Canada’s Glacier Media, which is using Layar in over a dozen local newspapers on a regular basis. To help promote this partnership, Glacier has produced a 30-second television ad to show off the power of interactive print.

“Imagine being able to interact with your newspaper, purchase what you want whenever you want it, investigate your interests, look past the surface,” the ad says. “Don’t just read your newspaper, experience it.”

It’s a really well-made ad and it perfectly explains the core benefits of interactive print - being able to bring the digital interactivity we know and love from the web to print materials.

Last month our very own Maarten Lens-FitzGerald was invited to speak at the Eurovision TV Summit 2011, the world’s “leading event for public service media professionals.” The event features many forums for discussion among contributors and decision-makers in the public service media field, but is capped off with its keynote event, the Common Focus Day.

The Common Focus Day featured discussions ranging from engaging and entertaining younger viewers to how public broadcasters can adapt to the fast-moving demands of a more connected audience. Several speakers addressed Social TV and Interactive TV, and encouraged public broadcasters to create content that could be used to this end.

This year’s focus was on television stations as “multi-platform media services,” so Maarten stood up to talk about the next great media platform: augmented reality. It’s an interesting take on how an existing media platform can expand its capabilities with this up-and-coming industry, and worth a watch. Check out the video on the Eurovision TV Summit website (Maarten’s talk is video #7 in the player), or by clicking the player link below!

Wait, a Layar TV show? That’s not a typo, I assure you, but allow me to explain a bit.

A Dutch broadcaster, AVRO, is researching new reality TV show ideas for the Netherlands. One of the ideas is a show concept called “MeesterJacht” (or “Master Hunt”) where contestants would use Layar to search for clues about the secret pasts of historic figures and artistic masters.

This actually wouldn’t be the first time AVRO has come up with a unique show idea centered around mobile technology. In 2007 the broadcaster launched a popular show called “The Phone” in which two cell phones were placed in random locations in a city and those who chose to answer them would be immediately launched into a cooperative mission to win a cash prize. Kind of like Die Hard III but without the bank robbery and threats of violence.

“The Phone” has won several awards and has been sold to networks in 52 countries so far. Will “MeesterJacht” and augmented reality be the next international mobile tech reality television sensation? Wouldn’t that just be something?

Here’s a pair of videos (the second after the jump) that describe what the show is all about, but as you may have guessed, they are in Dutch. For the non-Dutchies out there, still give the videos a watch; you can get the gist of it, we promise!