Augmented Reality & QR Codes: Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

Above are graphics that are used to trigger augmented reality. The idea is to hold these up to your webcam while you’re watching yourself on your computer through a specific website and the item will come to life. (Video example below.) The first icon is from GE for their Smart Grid campaign and the second is from something Colle + McVoy are calling “Twaugmented Reality“. The thought for marketers is for potential customers/customers to take them home, not knowing exactly what they’ll see, and the interaction will deepen the business’s brand and create another type of engagement. A type of discovery.

Above are examples of QR codes. The idea is to scan these QR codes with your mobile device and gain some additional information about that product/service.  The first QR code is the URL for this site and if you have a scanner on your mobile device (which is free) it would pull up that URL when you scanned it. The second is a stylized QR code created for Louis Vuitton by Takashi Murakami and it is still a valid QR code. The thought for marketers is that potential customers who frequent specific locations would scan the QR code out of curiosity and find their business/brand. Again, a type of discovery.

I would like to see a stylized QR code that also acts as a augmented reality trigger. A potential customer could get the URL from scanning it and then view the QR code through the site and view a compelling interaction that creates brand depth; this would be on terrestrial Internet. Or a user could view the QR code through their video camera on their mobile device and view the brand interaction/animation. This would be more limited given screen real estate but it is easy to see scavenger hunts as one of the ways to utilize this service.

Below are examples of GE’s augmented reality and QR code scanning.