The other day I spotted this video showcasing i-TAG augmented reality toys. It’s the result of a cooperation between toy manufacturer Mattel and James Cameron in order to support the launch of the motion picture Avatar coming in fall 2009.
These next generation trading cards comes with a 3-D Web tag, called an i-TAG, a technology developed by Total Immersion, With any ordinary webcam consumers can “scan” the i-TAG and it will reveal special content onscreen unique to the corresponding product. The content varies for each item, but can include biographical information, additional images and animated models of the figures. When the i-TAG for ‘deluxe’ figures, vehicles or creatures are placed under a Webcam, animated 3-D models will “come alive” and bam – there’s your augmented action reality. I love it!
We’ve already started to see a lot of buzz around augmented mobile apps. And last year car brand MINI known for new formats and innovative advertising campaigns took the first step in this direction already last year when they created an augmented reality campaign in Germany.
The MINI campaign was the first ever augmented reality campaign integrated with print advertising. Next up are flash campaigns. Digital agency Boffswana has developed a technology they call Releas3D. By customising Papervision they’ve created a new and exciting way to interact with flash content.
Release3D enables Boffswana to create campaigns where people can simply print a glyph and then interact in any kind of augmented reality. Apart from a series of experiments Boffswana has also released a campaign for the Royal Australian Navy where they let you control a Collins Class Submarine in 3D.
The possibilities with augmented reality are endless. One can only imagine what direct marketing looks like in a couple of years. Any brand with products that consumers crave for has a huge opportunity in building hype with technologies like this, at least for a couple of years. Imagine – what would your next marketing campaign look like if it was an augmented one?
Update!
I wrote in the beginning about how the i-TAG cards would be perfect as trading cards. Then today I found this video on YouTube.
There you have it!