I attended the 2nd AR meet-up for NW/Manchester (@augmentedmanc on twitter) last night.

There were some great examples shown of what is possible now with the basic toolkits. And it was a reminder that AR technology will be ubiquitous in the way we interact with the world in the future (at least those of us lucky enough to have access to the technology).

Layar have stated that this is the year they are making their mobile browser tech available in a massive ramp up strategy:

(from their site) : Layar will enable  ".. the possibility for producers and publishers of AR content to offer their experiences for sale. In addition, Layar reached agreement with one of the top 3 mobile handset manufacturers for a global distribution partnership, which will bring Layar capable phones to the mass market. This will enable tens of millions of people to experience Layar AR content on their mobile phones in 2010."

I think they will be back in the iphone App store soon?

That is mobile but last night we also saw desk based / at home instances and the hint of what could be done with AR in marketing with sales -promotion tie-ins.

I've already written about the monster Doritos campaign but we saw what Citroen have started to do with printed brochures :

example of AR in automotive brochureware with Citroen

There was also a nice example of adding AR to trading cards for kids. Created by Total Immersion, who sadly couldn't attend last night but the demos were nicely shown by Matt Trubow from Hidden Creative.

The example used was Wayne Rooney .. but I cant actually find a link to that. So here is (from  the same card company I think) an eexample using Baseball stars in the USA (turn down the sound, the music is awful):

For me it isn't just the technology which will decide what works well in marketing.(there are of course other applications for AR but I'm in marketing services mode on this blog).

The technology has to work with a creative campaign idea, fantastic interaction layer design, compelling reasons to interact as a consumer, compelling reasons to refer it on - to provide product up-sell, cross-sell, brand building or data generation for future activity.

Sounds familiar eh? AR will definitely revolutionise marketing opportunities and advertising but the old marketing fundamentals /  best practice will be ignored at your peril. Otherwise you just have a very faddy / gimmicky campaign on your hands that damages the brand and looks 'trendy' and me-too.

in my view that is what the latest Adidas range of AR -enabled shoes does.

It has the 'huh?' factor. not the Wow factor.

More of that in a later post I think..