Augmented Reality: Where Imagination and Your Shopping Cart Collide

This article appears in the October 2010 issue of adMarks -- CADM's hard-copy member newsletter. For information about becoming a member, click on the link at the top of this page.

Augmented Reality: Where Imagination and Your Shopping Cart Collide

By Barbara Maldonado, Social Media Strategist, Legacy Marketing Partners

In my role at Legacy Marketing Partners, I am tasked with looking at digital extensions for client campaigns that create a unique spark of excitement merging brand information with an engagement opportunity, thus connecting consumer to brand and brand to consumer. Time and time again, I find myself returning to the unique possibilities of Augmented Reality technology. The words “Augmented Reality” may sound quite Hollywood and a far distant connection (if any) to Direct Marketing. In fact, some of the best case studies of Augmented Reality focus on database building, shopping cart engagement, and connecting circulars with relevant content for consumers.

Augmented Reality creates a consumer interaction that often ties print and virtual dimensions together to place the consumer in the midst of the product, puts the product in their hands, and in many ways creates a unique customizable experience tying consumer preferences to their virtual experience. In this article, we’ll focus on four examples of Augmented Reality and Direct Marketing. True to its format, Augmented Reality is best understood by example. I encourage you to visit CADM’s Blog to view demonstration videos and additional case studies.

ESQUIRE MAGAZINE
Esquire Magazine launched an Augmented Reality issue in November 2009 that brought the content of the magazine to life. By holding the magazine up to a webcam, the magazine’s featured actor, Robert Downey, Jr., jumped onto the screen to announce the issue via video. The issue’s Augmented Reality extensions were integrated into several of the magazine’s featured segments – including a fashion layout that the consumer controlled by moving the magazine, as well as extra footage and content unlocked via Augmented Reality.

BEST BUY
Best Buy integrated its Sunday circular with Augmented Reality to add another layer of product information. Consumers activated the Augmented Reality component on the circular via their computer’s webcam and were able to see three-dimensional views of featured products. At the upcoming October 13 CADM “Second Wednesday” luncheon, a speaker from Helios Interactive will speak to the Augmented Reality campaign they executed this year for Best Buy.

VAL-PAK / MARTHA STEWART
Earlier this year, Val-Pak launched an Augmented Reality campaign designed to increase its opt-in e-mail database. Connecting with the appeal of the Martha Stewart Show, Val-Pak activated a direct mail campaign that encouraged consumers to take a specially marked portion of their mailer to the Martha Stewart Show web site and hold the printed piece in front of their webcam to activate the instant-win component of the Augmented Reality layer of the campaign.

LEGO
Lego, known for inspiring the minds of young and old alike, launched an in-store demonstration that allowed consumers to activate an Augmented Reality image of the featured structure on the Lego box. The consumer could turn the Lego box to see the different images of the Lego structure. The Augmented Reality display was featured at the Lego store at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois.

As Augmented Reality makes its way into more campaigns in future months, companies will continue to harness this virtual, three-dimensional engagement that connects the product, shopping cart, and a technology-driven purchasing experience that the consumer controls and makes their own. As direct marketers, we will be challenged to continue to integrate these emerging technologies in ways that deliver a more relevant messaging experience, allowing us to learn more about our consumers’ preferences. Once we have that information, we will be empowered to tailor the brand message, product, and engagement to the insights afforded to us by technology.

Barbara is the chair of CADM’s Interactive Marketing SIG and can be reached at barbara.e.maldonado@gmail.com; Twitter: @bmaldonado; and, Blog: barbaramaldonado.com.

September 15 Luncheon at Maggiano's Restaurant: "The Allure of Emerging Media for the Multicultural Audience"

Alex Perez, Luncheon Moderator

Join us next week at Maggiano's Restaurant as we launch our 2010-11 monthly luncheon series! First up...a panel discussion on the role of emerging marketing media in multicultural groups. Beyond demographics, this session will be a panel discussion highlighting the success of emerging media in multicultural groups examined against standard cultural frameworks and ethnic identity models. Panelists will include leaders in social media, Web, and mobile marketing.

The panelists will analyze topics such as:

· Understanding degrees of acculturation when creating Hispanic mobile marketing campaigns

· Exploring the importance of collectivism in Asian culture for social networks

· Web strategies that include immersion-emersion messaging that appeal to the African-American market

Moderator:

Alex Perez, NBC News Reporter

Panelists:

Michelle Lanter Smith, CEO at Hi Impact Marketing and Principal of Strategy at Brillante Multicultural

Dean Delisle, CEO of Forward Progress Inc.

This event is open to the CADM community as well as guests, clients, and non-members. Click here for details and to register online.

Seven Key Copy Drivers for Direct Mail Success

The following is the "Ask The DM Experts" column from the September 2010 issue of CADM's hard-copy newsletter, adMarks, written by Professor Susan K. Jones of Ferris State University. Only current CADM members receive adMarks, so please consider joining via this link!

Q. With all the talk about USPS money problems and the supposed demise of direct mail, I need reassurance that this classic direct marketing medium should still be part of my marketing mix. Can you help?

A. Who better to call upon for this answer than Denny Hatch, author of a new book called The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button Copywriting. Denny also is a regular columnist for Target Marketing magazine, and editor of the e-newsletter Business Common Sense. In the introduction to his book, Denny pulls no punches with his answer to the question, “Why bother with direct mail in this digital age?” He says:

“Direct mail goes back 800 years, to June 10, 1194, when Chartres Cathedral burned to the ground. Bishop Regnault de Mouçon wrote letters to all the rich aristocracy in France, Spain, and England asking for help to rebuild Chartres. This was the first recorded direct mail campaign, and was hugely successful, as any visitor to Chartres today will tell you.

“Since then a vast canon of direct mail know-how has been built up – the art, science and arithmetic of intimate, one-to-one communications that enable marketers to change behavior over long distances. All of it is directly applicable to the Internet.

“Put another way, one reason for the dot-com bust of 2000 that caused $5 trillion to evaporate was that the smartypants 20-something geeks that set up the systems and protocols of the Internet did not know squat about direct marketing, tapping human emotions, nor how to monetize a business model.”

So there! Denny goes on in his book to provide a list of seven “key copy drivers” that make people act in response to direct mail solicitations. These were identified by Swedish direct marketing genius Axel Andersson, and Seattle guru, Bob Hacker, who told Denny, “If your copy isn't dripping with one or more of these, tear it up and start over.” Here is the list of seven “drivers,” with examples from Denny’s archives of how each can be turned into a copy appeal.

1. Fear – That you’re missing out, that you’re being kept in the dark, that there’s a threat to you or your family, that you may be in financial jeopardy.
2. Greed – Ways to get, win, or save money, achieve the American Dream, get in on the ground floor.
3. Guilt – Assuage your guilt by helping hungry, lonely, or oppressed people, providing peace of mind for yourself and your family, saving innocent creatures.
4. Anger – Turn your anger into action against political opponents, oppressors of animals and people, defilers of the environment.
5. Exclusivity – Be among the few who measure up, be in elite company, be among the first, be accepted for membership.
6. Salvation – Get cash to bail you out, find a lucrative and intriguing vocation, gain skills for success, get help from an expert.
7. Flattery – Acquire, join, or do something that bespeaks your elite status, take advantage of something you’ve earned.

Now that you know the seven “drivers,” Denny offers some additional advice for putting them into action. He suggests that you become a true expert in the thing you are selling, then make a list of its features (product attributes) and rank their importance. Next, turn these features into benefits – the answer to the buyer’s question, “What’s in it for me?” Then determine the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your product or service –the one thing about it that is both wanted by your target market and available exclusively from you.

When you start to write direct mail copy, Denny suggests that you “liberally sprinkle” it with the “12 most powerful, most evocative words in the English language”:

You
Save
Money

Easy

Guarantee
Health
Results
New
Love
Discovery
Proven
Safety
…and to make it a baker’s dozen, he adds what the late Richard Benson called the “magic word” – FREE.

For more of Denny Hatch’s direct mail wisdom, get hold of your own copy of The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button Copywriting. Contact Denny at dennyhatch@yahoo.com.

"Ask the DM Experts” is a monthly adMarks feature. Professor Susan K. Jones draws on the knowledge of CADM members and other authorities to answer your questions – so tell her what you want to ask the experts! Send your questions to CADM: E-mail: info@cadm.org.