Augmented Reality: Revolutionizing the Value of Print

Augmented reality, or AR, has played a somewhat limited role to date in the world of print and packaging, with its largest footprint in the digital world. But that may be about to change.

AR allows you to overlay alternate or enhanced reality on top of the real visual world using a smartphone or smart glasses to achieve the effect. For a quick introduction to the world of AR, try this fun exercise:

Type an animal’s name (try tiger) into the Google search bar on your iPhone or Android and scroll down to where it says “Meet a life-sized tiger up close.” Press “View in 3D” and “View in Your Space.” 

Voilà! You have a virtual tiger in your home or office! You can tell this is a virtual tiger because the dog is ignoring it. Have fun making photos and videos to your heart’s content with a variety of animals.

Of course, this has limited, if any, commercial value. It just serves as a quick introduction to AR. But keep in mind that there are some 3.4 billion smartphones in the world today, and most of them are enabled with AR.

Augmenting the JouéClub Christmas Catalog

We are starting to see real-world, commercially valuable AR implementations enabled by smartphones. There is an Increased understanding among consumers about how to use things like QR codes, and creative software developers are helping brands turn the hype of AR into pretty remarkable financial results. One example I recently learned about comes from Aurélie Cayla, responsible for digital marketing and e-commerce at France’s JouéClub.

JouéClub is a network of physical stores throughout France. Each year, the company produces a Christmas catalog with a print run of more than 12 million. While the company has a web catalog as well, the paper catalog is important because it is geared to the entire family, and it is easier for children (or adults) to cut out images of desired purchases than it is to save those images from a digital source. The paper catalog is also an important element of JouéClub’s brand positioning.

 Caption: JouéClub Catalog Featuring AR on the Cover

JouéClub wanted to do something different and fun with its catalog, also to demonstrate that the company was up-to-date with technology in an increasingly digital world. To that end, the company worked with AR specialists ARGO, based in Paris and Montreal, to enhance its Christmas catalog.

The catalog is quite extensive, with about 400 pages, all of which are clickable; in fact, each and every product in the catalog is clickable so that customers can get more information about the product, its use, and even how it will look in home. It includes clear pictograms throughout the catalog that explain how to use the AR function, and the objective is to have fun while shopping, with a number of gamification elements throughout the catalog while creating more engagement ultimately leading to more sales. A key feature of last year’s catalog was a Harry Potter treasure hunt. Readers could scan various page elements throughout the catalog searching for a hidden PIN that could enable them to win a trip to Scotland, as well as win other prizes.

 Caption: JouéClub Treasure Hunt

“I think augmented reality is becoming very natural, especially with digital natives," said Aurelie Cayla, digital marketing and e-commerce for JouéClub. "Some of our target audience is very young, 4 and under. But they can use a smartphone, and it is quite natural for them to interact with the smartphone and connect it to the catalog. The catalog therefore benefits from an innovative image because it is augmented with ARGO’s solution and it helps rejuvenate the brand. We want children to spend a meaningful moment with us, and we want to add a little bit of magic and imagination to the experience. It makes the experience more interesting and helps to answer questions and close a sale.”

With an augmented reality application like the JouéClub catalog, brands can also collect a great deal of information; they can see which images were scanned, and they can tie that data back to actual sales, helping them to perfect future campaigns and look for ways to improve their product portfolio. The catalog is meant to work in conjunction with the in-store experience and the e-commerce site as a unified experience.

The 2019 JouéClub catalog with AR was a great success. The company recorded more than one million scans, with 800,000 of them occurring in just two months, and more than 100,000 clicks, driving readers from the printed catalog to the web.

“This amount of traffic was huge as compared to previous years,” Cayla said.

Democratizing the AR Experience

One thing ARGO realized as they worked to develop their AR solution was that the need to download an app was often a barrier.

“With that in mind,” said Pierre Addoum, CEO of ARGO, “we created a software development kit that uses Web AR, a proprietary technology that offers the same AR experience as a native app, but in a browser.”

Founded in 2014, ARGO currently has 32 employees and has generated €1.3 million in revenues in 2019. It operates in a software-as-a-service model with access to ARGO Manager, a single platform that allows users to create, update and manage augmented document projects, for as little as $340 per month.

  Caption, Pierre Addoum and Christophe Bossut

Education about activation can also be a barrier, although probably less so now than only a couple years ago. In the JouéClub example, pictographs are used to stimulate scanning, but a QR code, which most people now intuitively know means something is scannable, can also be used as an entry point. Addoum cited an example of a French furniture manufacturer that sends a catalog monthly.

“At first, they used text informing customers an item was scannable, but now as people are more familiar, they don’t need to do anything, and the amount of scanning has not appreciably decreased.”

 Caption: Augmented Furniture Catalog

PDF as the Entry Point to AR Creation

According to Addoum, the company has always been focused on print; in fact, its founders all had some link to the print industry in their backgrounds.

Christophe Bossut, the company’s head of partnerships and strategy, has been in the prepress and print industry for more than 30 years. He points out that human experiences have increasingly been augmented, with things like GPS, assisted driving, automated translation, ratification intelligence assisted decision making and more.

“Packaging won’t escape this digital tsunami and will become increasingly intelligent and a communications channel that can interact with humans," Bossut said. "Today’s camera-equipped smartphones and tomorrow’s connected glasses will expand the possibilities afforded by an open internet where information systems can be queried real time via APIs without the user needing any special expertise. Our phones are becoming the entry point to acquire information. Instead of Googling, we’re starting to scan our environment to gain access to additional information. And with the adoption of scanning applications like Yuka, which provides access to the Open Food Fact database with a score given to each product and which has been widely adopted in Europe with more than 17 million users, and with native scanning increasingly built into smartphones, I believe we will begin to see a rapid adoption curve for augmented reality. And packaging will increasingly need to integrate all of these dimensions for brands to stay competitive.”

Possibly use Augmented Packaging image here

With its focus on print, the ARGO process begins with a PDF, which Bossut notes is the starting point for print production.

“Today PDFs encapsulate all of the information and data necessary for printing: color specifications, color separation and content layers. What we do is add a virtual layer to the PDF as an access point to augmented content via a simple scan of the printed piece, making the printed piece an even better communications tool.”

Are You Sold Yet?

Do the examples included here inspire you to investigate how best to include AR in your services and to add extreme value for your customers? It should. Like many new (relatively) technologies, we are still on the low end of the adoption curve. But that curve is likely to see rapid acceleration, especially in light of the post-pandemic “new normal” we will find ourselves in. Marketers need to find unique ways to communicate with customers and potential customers, especially when in-person, and even in-store, interactions are stifled by the pandemic, but also, as JouéClub’s Cayla points out, to put an “innovative” stamp on the brand. 

[can Bobbi do something with an image showing an innovative stamp on a brand???]

There are a number of companies out there building AR applications, and both Google and Apple have aggressive projects underway as well. Unlike virtual reality, which seemed to hit a roadblock to consumer adoption, we join Tim Cook in believing that augmented reality won’t hit those same roadblocks.

Are you prepared for an augmented future? Are your customers? Will you be the partner that takes them there? 

We’ll continue to cover this topic to keep you up to speed. We hope you’ll share your AR stories with us as you get more experience under your belt.