AR, VR & Interactive Print

We’ve been hearing the refrain for some time — print is going interactive. Not just with QR Codes, but with other technologies, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and near-field communications (NFC). Some of the applications are truly astounding, and while they capture the imagination, are they relevant to the printing industry at large? Or only to the handful of printers whose clients are massive consumer brands? 

First, it’s important to put some numbers into perspective. Grand View Research projects the global market size of AR at $340.16 billion by 2028 with a CAGR of 43.8%. Fortune Business Insights defines the market in a way that puts its value somewhat lower —$97.8 billion in 2028 — but with a very similar CAGR of 48.6%. Forecasts like these are being driven largely by enterprise applications, such as training, remote support and maintenance, and workflow management and optimization. Sales and marketing applications fall lower on the list. 

Yet use in sales and marketing is growing. With AR generating higher dwell times and memory response than non-AR experiences, AR is making its presence felt, and not just in social media filters and what many people consider “hokey” or forgettable moments. Marketers are starting to figure out what generates ROI and has a significant branding benefit and what does not. 

Also supporting the growth in AR for marketing is a significant technological shift: away from the use of apps to view AR experiences by scanning image markers to browser-based interactivity via the use of QR codes. While QR codes have received a lot of hate in the marketing industry for awhile, they allow marketers to provide gateways to AR experiences without using an app. 

“At a technical level, you can have better, higher level experience in an app, but people are realizing that it doesn't work in the real world,” notes Will Gee, CEO of Balti Virtual, a full-service augmented and virtual reality studio in Baltimore, Md. “Studies show that people don’t want to download apps. That’s why we’re focusing on web technologies and the in-between spaces, such as the social networks where you can build AR experiences that work inside SnapChat or Instagram that people are more likely to have installed.”

The marketing opportunities in interactive print — most of which are AR, but can also be NFC and VR, as well — span the gamut of client sizes. Despite the perception that these approaches are primarily for global and large national brands, anecdotal evidence suggests that small- to mid-sized brands are among the fastest growing adopters as they have the flexibility to experiment and have intense pressure to differentiate and compete against their larger competitors. 

There is another place where interactivity is playing a role. This is the anti-counterfeiting space, where QR-coded smart labels are being used for tracking, traceability and authentication. While printers may not generally be involved in developing these applications, they have the ability to tap into this growing market with the right investments, including cybersecurity and workflow tracking, tracing and reporting. 

AR for Marketing

So what’s working? In the advertising and direct marketing space, AR is being used for everything from entertainment to virtual portals to “in-room” product placement and gamification. What “works” depends on the client’s goals. 

Balti Virtual (BV) is among those with extensive experience with augmented reality. With clients ranging from small businesses to giants like HBO, PayPal and Under Armour, BV produces experiences in-house both using custom apps and its HypARlink browser-based platform. The range of applications it produces is vast. 

• For Hallmark Cards, BV created a series of children’s greeting cards featuring AR stickers that come alive when scanned. The animations — featuring a hot rod burning rubber, a dancing butterfly dog, a friendly dolphin and melty cheese pizza — can also be placed, photographed and recorded in any environment. The project generated over 50,000 scans within the first two months. BV created a similar application for Decalomania, allowing 3D models and animations of Marvel characters such as Captain America, Hulk and Spiderman, to come to life on children’s decals. In both cases, the value was in creating a unique product that entertained children in multiple ways and that would drive repeat sales. 
• For a collaboration between Bud Light and the professional ice hockey team the Washington Capitals, BV used gamification. BV created Tilt the Ice, an AR hockey-shooting game accessed through printed coasters. The Washington Capitals used the game to increase fan engagement by giving away tickets and other prizes for fans with the highest scores.
• For Under Armour’s team sports catalog, BV used 3D interactive product views. Users can scan clothing items from the catalog using AR to view them on simulated models in full 360-degree simulation. Shoppers can change colors and details as they can in a traditional e-commerce environment, just in full 3D. With 94% higher conversion rate for products viewed in AR experiences (see box), the value of the deployment is clear. 

Also popular with BV’s clients is the portal, which allows users to “place” a doorway in their environment and walk into another world. BV used this approach to promote HBO’s premiere of “Raised by Wolves,” allowing users to drop a portal into their living rooms and walk directly onto the show’s production set.

“What better way to get excited about a new show than to put yourself into it?” Gee said. 

Portals are highly effective for any application in which the client wants to show the environment—hotels, cruise ships, spas, concert venues, nonprofit missions and college recruitment applications as additional examples.

But while BV serves many large national brands, Gee said that the technology has advanced to the point at which freelance individuals can do things for a few thousand dollars.

“It isn’t just the P&G anymore,” he said.

As one example, Gee said that today’s smartphone cameras have LIDar sensors that, with a free downloaded app, will scan an object — say, a couch — and allow clients to create their own AR “in room” placement experiences. 

Ease of Entry

For those who don’t want to develop their own apps, off-the-shelf software such as BlipAR, Adobe Aero and RealityBLU provide lower barriers to entry. 

RealityBLU offers AR software that allows printers and creative agencies to design their own AR experiences. In January of this year, it introduced its WebAR Suite of products to accompany its AppAR products. With WebAR, Reality BLU allows users to view AR experiences through a mobile web browser rather than requiring an app.

“Every phone has Safari or Chrome,” said MJ Anderson, co-founder and chief experience officer for RealityBLU. “This has really helped AR to gain acceptance in the print space.”

While many of RealityBLU’s customers use AR for manufacturing and logistics, Anderson sees many mailers using it for acquisition and retention mailings, as well as to obtain postal discounts through USPS Postal Promotions.

“The use of AR for retention and growth is huge,” he said. 

RealityBLU offers a variety of AR creation and delivery products, including Portal Builder, which allows users to upload a 360-degree video and turn it into an AR experience through a wizard.

“You pick a doorway and the software marries it to your 360 file,” Anderson said. “You receive a downloadable QR code that can be used to view that experience.” 

RealityBLU also offers software that simplifies “in room” product placement, in which marketers deliver objects into the room with the user (say, placing a couch into the room to see how it will look before buying it), and for turning individuals into AR characters by shooting them against a green screen.

“In the ‘try before you buy’ application, photos are replaced with 3D object files that can be rotated in any direction, allowing for interactive engagement with the product or character,” Anderson said. “The new view includes a QR code that will trigger a view in a room feature when scanned with a smartphone.”

Among Reality BLU’s clients is Slate Group (Lubbock, Texas), which works heavily with colleges and universities. Slate sees AR as exploding in a variety of areas, but particularly in student recruitment, athletics and virtual campus tours.

“For the tours, we use the portal function to walk through the AR ‘doorway’ onto the campus itself,” said Trey Laverty, director of sales and marketing for Slate Group. “The same concept also works well for summer camps, such as football and basketball camps, hotel registrations — anything where seeing the physical location helps to sell the product.” 

Slate Group also uses AR with a variety of other markets, including grocery stores for which it is developing an AR application to entertain children while their parents shop. 

Printers as AR Clients

Tracey Archuleta, co-owner (along with Chanse Harris) of image8creations, also uses Reality BLU software to create AR experiences. Image8 was launched in February 2021 specifically to support and focus on AR education, creation and project management. 

While this sounds as if it might price out all but the largest clients, Archuleta said, the reverse is actually true. Off-the-shelf software brings AR within reach of even small clients. To show how even a small company can get a huge “bang for the buck,” she points to a small band for which image8creations designed a “reverse release” of their most recent album to drive concert and album sales. 

“We did a print deployment [coaster-sized promotional pieces dropped at local stores and venues serving a similar customer base], along with social media via LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram,” she said. “We reversed it out over four weeks, starting with the end of the song and working toward the beginning. Because we were going in reverse, people keep going back and rescanning to hear more.”

In addition to hearing the song unfold over time, visitors were greeted with 3D animated characters associated with that part of the song and could take their pictures with those characters and post them on social media. This gave the band a lot of secondary exposure.

The results? Scans reached into four countries (including the U.S.), more than 20 U.S. states, and more than 70 cities in less than 30 days.

“Nearly 20% (19.2%) of the band’s additional exposure can be tied directly back to the AR experience,” Archuleta said. “Those coasters are still getting scanned, and the band is continuing to get more bookings. We’ve also gotten eight additional clients out of it!”

While enterprises may pay tens of thousands of dollars for deployments, Archuleta said, clients of image8creations are getting similar results for a few thousand dollars, without compromising creativity nor project execution.

“It just goes to show that you don't have to have a lot of money to invest in it to get the impact and the lift that it provides,” she said. 

Image8creations also does a lot of work with portals, including those for print shops.

“We actually have quite a few printers as clients,” Archuleta said. “With 360 video, the user can drop a portal on their floor, and once they walk through the door, it’s as if they are in the shop itself. Commercial printers are using it to show off their floor and how clean their shop is.” 

Image8 also deploys AR for both single play and multi-player games. 

How Do You Create ROI?

How do you know your AR campaigns are working? If you are using an AR platform, scans pass through the platform before people reach their experience. This allows you to know how many scans the experience is generating and compare this to previous campaigns. If you are deploying the experience through an app, you can add buttons that allow people to purchase directly through the app. 

For some campaigns, the ROI is not in direct sales but the ability to win projects based on increased value. BV was able to increase the value of Holo PopUp Books, for example, by adding AR animations to the pages of its children’s books to foster learning in an innovative way. The characters leap out of the page, living, breathing and speaking to the young readers. 

“The books started as an experiment to create a digital experience that complimented the physical books without detracting in any way,” Gee said. “We experimented with narration, translation and even having the characters jump off the page and into the room with the readers.”

Other brands are not looking to tie their AR experiences directly to revenue. They are using AR — particularly gamification — for brand-building instead. Games that allow users to play against one another, keep score and earn prizes are designed to strengthen the brand, whether there is a direct tie to revenue or not (although the ability to earn points that can be spent in a team store, for example, has a direct tie-in).

TrustCodes, which does a lot of work with anti-counterfeit and QR-code-based mixed reality/augmented reality, does a lot with gamification. It recently contracted with the food produce brand Big Apple to use AR gamification to drive its social media following. 

“The increased consumer engagement that came from that game was enormous,” said Paul Ryan, director of TrustCodes. “We get 30 seconds of consumer playing a game—throwing apples and growing apple trees using the simple elements of sunshine and water — and thousands playing at once. Once people get their score, they are encouraged to screen shot it and share it to the Big Apple’s official WeChat account.”

Big Apple has seen a “huge uptick” thanks to the game.

“The numbers are growing all the time,” Ryan said. “Now they have added Facebook and Instagram sharing, too.”

TrustCodes is also used to provide tracking and tracing of food in the anti-counterfeiting market. It uses QR codes with a combination of strong back-end algorithms and crowdsourcing to assure consumers that their products are authentic and safe. This, Ryan said, is a growing market for commercial printers willing to invest in the infrastructure to support it. 

10x the Impact

When it comes to lift, Archuleta said you cannot beat augmented reality.

“When you are talking about impact, our metrics show that our client will get 10x impact over traditional video,” Archuleta said. “They are also getting 5.9% higher clickthrough than Google ads. In the nonprofit world, AR increases donations and engagement time.” 

AR also has tremendous value in turning print projects evergreen.

“Direct mail tends to stay in houses 17 days, on average,” Archuleta said. “With AR, those projects stay relevant indefinitely. Think old school ‘top of mind’ magnets from auto dealers. Car buyers can scan the magnets to be walked through basic maintenance steps and tips, each step or tip changing weekly, such as how to change their windshield wipers, add oil to the engine, or check the tire pressure and do other preventative vehicle maintenance. So be creative in your deployment.” 

When you are utilizing AR, proponents say, get your ideation team involved early. Keep the client’s marketing unified, and leverage their spend.

“Our clients already print newsletters, catalogs, direct mail, large format and are on social media,” Archuleta said. “We tell clients, ‘Let’s add it to what you’re already doing.’ For just over $5,000 we can create an experience, URL link and a code. So let’s run and have fun with it.”

Does AR Really Work?

Does AR really work in a marketing context? You be the judge!

• AR has dwell times 2.5 times that of television or radio ads. 
• AR has the ability to boost conversions 40% over traditional video. 
• In an e-commerce environment, interactions with products having AR content showed a 94% higher conversion rate.