Activation Gallery: Augmented and Virtual Reality
Path to Purchase IQ’s editors provide a sampling of recent activations that are helping move shoppers along their decision journeys.
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- Mary Kay’s MirrorMe virtual makeover mobile application, powered by EnterWorks Enable PIM, uses AR to allow consumers to instantly try on different products (and shades) from the brand. Users can choose from a number of predetermined looks such as “Enchanted Gold” or “Cool Metals” or create their own custom look from scratch. Users can also adjust the brightness and color intensity, snap and save images, add items to their mobile shopping cart and share their looks on social media.
- PepsiCo’s Pepsi kicked off summer early through a collaboration with Instagram dubbed #Summergram. Launched May 20, the campaign brought hundreds of custom, summer-themed and AR-enabled filters, stickers and statements to the platform. Those features are accessible through special labels with QR codes on more than 230 million bottles and cups.
- 7-Eleven teamed with PepsiCo’s Cheetos to launch an AR-enabled experience and memory game within the retailer’s mobile app. The experience used a phone’s rear camera to anchor a miniature board comprising 12 cards in a user’s environment. Each card depicted a Cheetos shape before flipping over. Users were encouraged to match the four same-shaped Cheetos to win up to 40 7Rewards points. After playing the game, the experience gives users the option to “take a selfie with Chester,” the brand’s cheetah mascot. The mascot’s glasses, ears and mouth were superimposed onto a real-time image of a user’s face.
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- In collaboration with DreamWorks Animation, Walmart’s VR startup Spatialand (Spatial&) helped design an immersive virtual reality experience tied to the studio’s Feb. 22 release of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.” Parking lot events staged across 16 Walmart locations provided headsets and specialized Positron motion VR chairs to give shoppers a five-minute virtual journey through the world of the film with immersive real-world sound, motion and sensory cues.
- ModiFace powers an AR “Shade Selector” tool for L’Oreal’s Garnier that Walmart is piloting in 10 stores. Shoppers can scan product bar codes to virtually try on hair color, with shades laid over a live video image of the shopper displayed on an interactive screen. (The technology was reportedly also scheduled to roll out to 12 Meijer and five Wakefern stores in March, as well as 10 Walgreens stores in June.)
- The part warehouse, part test lab in Dallas known as Sam’s Club Now is leveraging AR on some of its shopping carts as a way to entertain and engage kids. When shoppers hold their smartphones (or a store-provided tablet) over a “magicart,” the cart turns into a spaceship or pirate ship, for example. Sam’s Club Now is also testing AR on certain products to provide preparation and pairing ideas and visuals.
- Mosquito repellent brand Para’Kito teamed with Atlanta-based display maker Georgia-Pacific to create an in-store interactive floorstand that uses augmented reality to engage, entertain and inform shoppers about its wearable products. To engage, shoppers scan a QR code on the display that directs them to a site where they can choose from a menu of three AR-enabled experiences: a 60-second, camera-based mosquito repellent game, a three-question quiz to determine the ideal product for their needs, or a short video starring professional surfer Maud Le Car wearing a Para’Kito product.
- Amazon is letting shoppers virtually try on nearly 500 lip colors with ModiFace, the beauty tech developer acquired by L’Oreal last year. ModiFace says its simulation of makeup shades is done automatically, based on an AI-powered analysis of information provided by beauty brands and images of the product on social media.
- Kiss Products deployed a festival-themed endcap display at Walmart inviting shoppers to try on false lashes virtually by downloading the brand’s “Lash Wardrobe” mobile application. (The brand also promoted the tool the prior year with an endcap display at Walgreens.)