Last friday Centraal Beheer Achmea launched a new campaign using augmented reality. Supposedly the first augmented reality campaign in the Netherlands. In various newspapers a full page was used for the usual slogans and stuff, but the main part displayed a logo. You’re encouraged to visit their campaign website. When you hold the newspaper in front of your webcam, the site displays a little guy climbing a ladder. By wiggling the newspaper you can shake the little guy or have him fall. Nice stuff!
Using newspapers you can reach a pretty broad audience, but not everyone reads newspapers. Really. Achmea thought of this, because the campaign site offer a PDF for you to print. Furthermore, wiggling a newspaper (or a piece of paper) in front of your webcam is a bit of a hassle.
How about making the object smaller and more manageable, like these great baseball cards. Maybe Achmea could have placed the logo on a pack of chewing gum, a deck of cards or a pack of cigarettes?
Or even better: have people MMS the logo to friends. I just opened the PDF and used my iPhone to photograph the logo on my screen. Next I displayed the picture on my iPhone and held it in front of the webcam. This worked fine! And everyone had a nice high-resolution telephone these days, right?
What do you think about this campaign? How could it be made more user-friendly and/or reach a broader audience?