out of the box :: The awesome world of digital

Track My Maccas brings Augmented Reality to restaurants in Australia

Have you ever been sat in Maccas late at night, staring longingly at your empty food carton and thought to yourself, where did this delicious morsel come from? How on earth did it come to be? For the love of god won’t somebody tell me!

…. So have I, you’re not alone. And that’s exactly why McDonalds in Australia have brought us the TrackMyMaccas iPhone app. The app uses your location, data about the food you have just popped in your mouth and a vast database of knowledge to whow you real time information about where exactly your food came from. The beautiful part? It’s all brought to life in front of peoples eyes in glorious 3D using Augmented Reality. The animations are slick and the character style adorable. It’s beautifully executed and a really nice combination of technology to bring to life a product story. Nice work from DDB.

Wonderbra ask people to ‘Decode’ their ads

Here’s a cool idea from Wonderbra in the UK and France. It’s called Wonderbra DECODER. People download the app on iPhone or Android and then they can interact with the campaign across a number of channels. Hold your phone up to the print ads, the window displays or even the YouTube video and see the model in her underwear. It’s a clever use of Augmented Reality, especially in the YouTube experience, as it reveals video content that is otherwise hidden.

For those of you like me that are not lucky enough to live in the UK, you can download the ads here and try it for yourself. And if you have the app installed, check out the YouTube video, it’s pretty cool.

Muppets virtually heal kids boo-boos everywhere

Here’s a smart little app from JWT London. Muppets Magic-Vision brings Band Aids to life. Simply put your band aid on (or plaster if you speak the Queens English), hold up the Muppets app and watch it come to life in glorious Augmented Reality. The Muppets then sing a song to make it all better. Lovely use of technology that the kids are going to love.

Sony launch ‘Wonderbook’ - Augmented Reality books for the home

Since Sony launched their Move platform a couple of years ago, some might argue that it hasn’t quite lived up to the potential. Yes, it’s like Wii…. but so what? What makes it different? It seems Sony are trying to address some of these concerns by launching a new content platform on PS3. Wonderbooks brings real-world books to life in your living room, thanks to a combination of EyeToy and Move. 

People can turn pages and interact with the stories, perhaps even changing the outcome as they progress. It’s like ‘choose your own adventure for a new generation. What will potentially propel this new platform into the stratosphere, is early support from nine other than J.K.Rowling. She will be bringing the Harry Potter universe to the platform with a new game called Book of spells. This new book integrates with the much anticipated Harry Potter digital platform, Pottermore. With some unique features, and one of the worlds biggest franchises launching it, I am extremely excited to see what other wonders await this new interactive storytelling platform.

Nokia bring Angry Birds to Sydney in Augmented Reality

I’m a big fan of these large-scale installations at the moment. When executed right, they really can give the user a great experience. Nokia are the latest in a long line of people using this tech. We have seen great examples recently from the likes of National Geographic and Disney in Times Square and this variation brings to life the most popular mobile game (probably) of all time. It’s a nice execution in a high footfall area, and it’s great seeing this sort of stuff down-under. Produced by VML.

Starbucks Cup Magic is back

This Valentines day, Starbucks is bringing back it’s cup magic app. By pointing the app at specially marked cups, users can send and receive Augmented Reality messages to one another. Can you think of a better way to say I love you this Valentines day? And who said love was dead.

NET-A-PORTER launches new window shop

We’ve all been there. Stood out on the street outside a shop thinking ‘what the heck should I buy when I walk through the doors?’. Well, NET-A-PORTER seem to think they have solved this age old conundrum. By installing an interactive window globally in their key stores, users can download an app and view the contents of the store… right from the window! Yup, you heard it right. No longer do they have to physically walk through the door to buy that new dress. They can make their selection while outside!

Is it me, or does a window installation such as this completely miss the mark? You could argue that you have already got the consumer to turn up at your outlet. Why add another barrier to stop them actually walking through the doors? On top of that, why wouldn’t I simply use the specially made app from the comfort of my home, instead of waving it around outside the shop like a bit of a prat? Of course, there’s some nice tech going on here, and I’m sure a handful of people will find it useful, but the locality of the installation is completely wrong. The reason that the Tesco Augmented Reality posters were so successful was that they took shopping to where the consumer is, in subways across Korea, not simply at the entrance to the shop.

What do you think? The future of shopping, or something many will simply fail to see the use for?

American Express Mobile game explodes into Singapore

Augmented Reality, location-based games are nothing new. In the past year, we have seen a slew of them; from Citroens DS4 seekers to New Balance’ Urban Dash, Augmented Reality ‘grab em quick’ games are a craze unto themselves. This new game from American Express has people competing across the streets of Singapore for 10 days grabbing virtual points. The more you can grab each day, the more chance you have to win.

The unique thing I have spotted, which may make it stand out from the crowd is that it shows the location of competitors around you on the map. Beat them to the location to nab the points before them. I must admit it looks pretty good fun, and the prizes seem worth getting involved for. The watch out for me would be that the winner is the person that gets the most points throughout the ten days. That’s all well and good, but what about the people that join on day ten? What can they win? With no daily prizes, they could alienate the latecomers to the campaign.

What are your thoughts on brands running activity like this? Will people get involved?

Sony Playstation re-invents mobile Augmented Reality

With the new PlayStation Vita launching here in February next year, people are wondering about some of its new features. One such feature, and one I hadn’t really considered to be ‘groundbreaking’ until now is its use of Augmented Reality in games. With mobile phones we have seen many iterations of Augmented Reality (and also with Nintendo’s latest handheld the 3DS). But with the power of Vita, Sony could really be set to kick all of the competition out of the water. Even these early games look like they will be offering something a little different, with great graphics as well as seamless interaction with the surroundings. 

Whether the reality will live up to these demos remains to be seen, but if they can, we could finally see high end graphics, and some unique executions in the Augmented Reality field. It is still unclear if Sony will work with brands to offer things to consumers other than the current game line-up. But it will definitely be interesting if they do open it up, as the added hardware could massively benefit the types of executions that you can do. Watch this space I guess.