ideaLaunch Blog

Image from Esquire Magazine

We mentioned recently that many magazines, like Gourmet, have folded because of ad revenue and readership going down – something that many believe is a result of competition from the Internet. So, what’s a magazine to do?

This month, if you’re Strategy or Esquire, you play with augmented reality (AR).

Augmented reality is a term used to describe the merging of a physical item with a virtual one for both in-hand and on-screen interaction. In the case of magazines, it’s when the pages you’re holding can act as a trigger or key to accessing online content.

This month’s cover issue of Esquire, for the example, features Robert Downey Jr. sitting on a box with a block code. Once you have the software downloaded, you need to hold the magazine cover up to a web cam. The block code acts like a secret password that activates your screen to come to life with online content (in this case, 3D video footage of Robert Downey Jr.). There are other AR codes in the magazine – some on ads, some on additional features – all designed to give the reader bonus material not otherwise accessible by website searching or reading the magazine alone. Since we’re a curious species, we’re betting people will be buying this issue just to check out what the fuss is about. Here’s a sneak peak:

So, how does this apply to you, presuming you’re not a magazine owner? The same technology can be used for brochures, flyers, business cards and books. Can you imagine people being actually eager to take your ad home in order to reveal the online content you have developed for it? As AR is still fairly novel, it’s a cool and definitely outside-the-box tool for content marketing that has real potential for early adapters. Of course, the content you develop will need to be very well done to live up to some of the hype. Video, animation and entertainment value need to be packed in … just the kind of thing a certain content marketing company knows a little something about.

Tags: augmented reality, content marketing, video

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under advertising, content marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.