As part of a new Innovation Initiative, Union built an office tour app to explore augmented reality apps in marketing. Learn more about the experience.

Augmented Reality Apps in Marketing | Union

Union Dives Deeper into Augmented Reality Apps

Aim a tablet at a sign labeled “Office Tour Starts Here” and watch it explode into a burst of confetti. See the multicolored words reading “Welcome to the Block Party” float into the air above it. That’s how you know you’ve begun Union’s inaugural augmented reality tour.
As a digital agency, we believe that innovation is at the core of growth in an evolving market. We launched an innovation initiative this year that's committed to monthly research and exploration. Our first exploration was augmented reality apps. While we have a history of developing immersive experiences, we wanted to go deeper into the technology that’s rising in popularity.

Through augmented reality technology, you can alter and enhance reality, and bring the real world and digital world together in new and exciting ways. Unsurprisingly, AR is gaining traction locally and around the world. AR experiences can hold users’ attention for more than <a href="https://luminouspr.com/ar-marketing-augmented-reality-in-tech-pr/">85 seconds</a>, and the economic impact of AR and virtual reality is expected to reach <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/vr-marketing-examples">$29.5 billion</a> by 2020. 
Fast-food behemoth Burger King already jumped on board. The brand <a href="https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/burger-king-sets-rivals-ads-aflame-with-ar-app/550980/">gained</a> media attention in March for launching an app that prompted users in Brazil to point their phones at rival ads and “burn” them, with the help of AR. The reward: a free Whopper.

The rise of augmented reality

To immerse ourselves in this topic exploration, we decided to prototype an AR experience of our own. Our deadline: the block party we would host at <a href="https://union.co/articles/introducing-the-new-union">our new Union office space</a> in just three weeks. 
We quickly landed on an augmented reality tour experience that we could lean on during any office tour, both guided and self-guided. Our prototype would aim to enhance visitors’ experience of our space, while incorporating a unique spin that played to the block party theme.
We made a few strategic decisions about what content to overlay: 
<ol><li>We chose to showcase images from office construction, placing them to depict the same vantage points from which they were taken. </li><li>We decided to sprinkle in an array of animated party effects just for the block party. This includes confetti, balloons and sound effects to match the celebratory mood.</li></ol>
Three weeks is a tight deadline — but we already had the right skillset on the team. Designer Jon Vargas and Developer Chris Weissenberger both have <a href="https://cms.union.co/services/branded-content/3d">3D</a> and game-development-related experience. They were up for the challenge.

A Union-branded AR experience

Jon and Chris planned to build the experience for Android and iOS devices. To get started, the team leveraged the Unity game engine for its relatively lower barrier of entry compared to other game engines (like Unreal), and stronger support for AR development. 
Before digging into the creative, they had to answer two questions: 
<ol><li>How can we accurately place virtual objects in the real world in a way that‘s consistent in a huge, 10,000-square-foot space? </li><li>How do we trigger the display of digital content in that space?</li></ol>
For accurate placement, they imported a previously created 3D model of the office building into Unity. 
To trigger the display of digital content, they considered two options: 
<ol><li>Marker-based AR, with which they could anchor the digital world to the real world using a physical marker, such as a picture printed on a sheet of paper. </li><li>Location-based/persistent AR, with which they could anchor the digital world to specific physical locations using recognition of physical objects or areas.</li></ol>
In such a large space, the need to scan an image marker for each piece of digital content in the experience wasn't ideal. So, persistent AR seemed to make the most sense. However, when actually testing persistent AR solutions, the team found a flaw: the reliance on ARKit and ARCore for tracking and plane detection. ARKit and ARCore are not yet built for persistent AR experiences of this scale. At certain distances, they’d easily lose tracking or original orientation. 
So Chris and Jon instead used a popular image marker platform called Vuforia, which added a persistence feature to image marker detection. With Vuforia, they found it possible to scan an image marker, lose track of that image marker, yet maintain position of objects by relying on ARKit and ARCore tracking and plane detection as a fallback. 
The team created zones, placing one image marker in each zone: the office lobby, the east side of the building and the north side of the building. They eliminated any possible tracking issues with persistence by strategically placing each image marker at a measured distance in relation to the others.

Building a large-scale AR experience

Based on user testing, the team updated the <a href="https://cms.union.co/services/branded-content/ui-ux-design">UX</a> to design an intuitive, first-person experience.
To make the path through the office obvious for the app user, Jon and Chris created a number of guiding elements. That included a black and white animated path indicating the route through the office, as well as an arrow with text that appeared on the image targets to indicate viewing direction.
They topped it off with a 2D interface that presented a series of directional prompts (like “look up”) throughout the tour. This enabled self-guided tours.

<h3>Refining the UX</h3>

The app was a huge success, creating an exciting conversation-starter for partygoers on scheduled and self-guided tours alike. The experience offered an engaging, immersive way to share a chapter of our story with clients, friends and colleagues.

So, should your brand dabble in augmented reality marketing? With this supportive technology on the rise, it’s worth considering:
<ol><li>Does your brand have a special event or product launch that could be showcased through an immersive storytelling experience?</li><li>Do you provide a product or service that could be better understood through virtual interaction prior to purchase?</li><li>Do you have an audience that would be open to this technology?</li></ol>
Need help answering these questions or a partner to bring your augmented reality idea to life? <a href="https://union.co/contact">Contact us</a>.

Should your brand try AR?

Our Innovation Committee’s monthly explorations continue! Our topics so far have included augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality and gesture technology. Stay tuned to hear what’s next.

What’s next?

Valtech Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.