*supercollider

The number of augmented reality campaigns launched this week alone is, to the best of our knowledge, well into the double-digits.” Contagious via Twitter

I’ve been meaning to post this since last week, after I saw the Eminem augmented reality execution and thought “I have a bad feeling about this”. Ilya from AdLab has since beaten me to the punch, and as I doubt we’re the only two people sharing these concerns right now, I think it’s worth helping hammer this message home as our industry struggles to be taken seriously and move towards delivering real value.

Let’s first be clear that Augmented Reality is going to be pervasive. It’s not a gimmick, it’s a long-standing concept that is just now becoming a consumer reality.

It’s a catch phrase that seems to be covering a lot of territory right now, but I think the key is the blending of physical and virtual environments in a useful way. That’s the “augmented” part of the reality, it’s enhancing your physical world with a layer of information-based or experiential value.

The concept has been around for ages, at least as long as Arnie’s HUD display in “The Terminator”.

But now we’re starting to see real, consumer-focused practical applications such as this ING Google Android application. It not only helps you find the nearest ATM, it shows you visually how to get there, even showing where you need to take the first steps in the right direction.

You can imagine thousands of useful applications for this. But before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s worth having a quick refresher on the Gartner Hype Cycle, introduced in 1995 and still going strong fourteen years later:

Here’s Gartner’s description of the first two phases:

1. “Technology Trigger”
The first phase of a Hype Cycle is the “technology trigger” or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.

2. “Peak of Inflated Expectations”
In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

Augmented Reality is in the process of transitioning from #1 to #2, in record time. Which leads us, unfortunately, to stage #3.

3. “Trough of Disillusionment”
Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.

And that was, and two years later still is, the fate of Second Life.

Marketers who didn’t understand virtual worlds rushed in and did all sorts of wasteful things, either out of fear of being left behind or out of greed to grab a few the nuggets from the publicity gold rush.

Unsurprisingly, the bubble burst due to the lack of any consideration for ROI or even whether the applications made any sense at all. And now, virtual worlds have been written off by many in the industry, without any real consideration as to the massive marketing potential of virtual worlds for many brands. Which is a shame, as that makes it a waste on two levels, as well as a scar on our industry’s reputation.

So are we about to do this all over again with augmented reality?

As our techno-savvy friends in Radiohead sang, we do it to ourselves and that’s why it really hurts.

The good news is that ultimately, useful technologies and innovations survive and prosper. And it’s the companies that really take the time to think about how to make them work rather than jumping on the bandwagon that come out on top.

4. “Slope of Enlightenment”
Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.

5. “Plateau of Productivity”
A technology reaches the “plateau of productivity” as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

So how about we agree here and now not to overhype augmented reality, and instead only focus on truly useful applications of the technology, shying away from pointless gimmicks only really intended for trade press anyway.

No?

Ahh well, worth a shot. Please resume your regularly scheduled PR activity…

UPDATE: More thoughts on the subject of AR and value from Martina at Adverblog along with an interesting example from Brazil. The QR code comparison is spot on. The promise of the technology is there, but it’s all too easy to get caught up in the hype.

Very interesting inside story from Whit Scott, one of the guys selected to be part of Ford’s Fiesta social media marketing campaign.

If you’re not familiar with premise of the campaign, Ford had an initial competition where 4,000 people applied with a video to win the chance to drive a Fiesta for six months. Everyone that wins then creates content around his experience with the car.

Although the premise is intriguing because of the scale involved, I haven’t been hugely interested in the campaign so far, mostly because nothing has grabbed my attention in terms of the content being created.

However as Whit Scott reveals, the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the campaign are very interesting, especially that the people involved are being directly rewarded via a points system for the quantity of their Ford-related activity in social media spaces.

Selection criteria was based on the participant’s social media influence and reach

The first interesting point is that the people selected are social media micro-celebs, or the people with the tools to become them. This might not be surprising, but becomes more important when we get to the second point below.

What I quickly learned is that we seemed to have two types of people here. The first were Internet celebs that have their own global micro-brands. Examples of this type were MoonCricket and his followers on Justin.Tv; Olga Kay who has over 8,000 followers on Twitter and 26,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel; Alison Haislip who hosts Attack of the Show on G4; and Danny with gradualreport who has 44,000 subscribers on YouTube and seems to just be an all around hilarious guy with a decent online presence.

The second type of person comes with more traditional media skills. For example, Jonathan 360 has a master of photography and over 62,000 twitter followers; Menace is a DJ in SF with Live 105; and Thomas and I are not web celebrities but have connections all around the web and in the Valley, as well as decent editing, filming and writing skills.

What we all seemed to have in common was a relatively large online ego.

Ford Fiesta Movement’s formula for rewarding social media participation

Now we get to the good part. Ford has assigned relative values to different types of social media content generation, and is rewarding the agents based on the quantity of their activity in these spaces.

Each Fiesta Agent (or team of agents) gets an Agent page at fiestamovement.com. Check us out, we’re agents #89. On top of being given a car, we were also given a little Sony camera to take video with. Now comes the genius. For every Twitter post you do with the hash tag (#) Fiestamovement, you get a point. For every YouTube video you post, you get 5 points and for every view, comment and rating you get on YouTube, you get a point. For every photo posted, you get a point. I think you get the picture. Points put you on the board, the leader on the board wins a prize. What the prize is… we just don’t know.

And, as if this isn’t enough, we are given missions. We don’t really know what a mission looks like yet, but we know they’ll happen once a month, and it’s our one single responsibility to accomplish a mission, and post a video about it. Points aside, missions must be accomplished. We find out our first mission in about 4 days—we’ll keep you posted.

So needless to say the Ford Fiesta went from having nearly nothing about it online in the United States to having 100 x Web Ego + points x 6 months. Brilliant idea.
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Why this matters

There’s a lot to talk about in the above, but what I’m particularly interested in is the idea that Ford has basically just co-opted 100 social media personalities and their subscriber channels, and is directly rewarding posts into their social media spaces on a points-per-activity basis.

That’s a really interesting, if slightly dark, concept.

I think while most people in social media are agreed that pay-per-post schemes are a bad thing, this activity seems to transcend far beyond that into a whole new realm. Ford has not just sponsored but completely co-opted the lifestreams of these 100 people for the next six months.

Not that the ‘agents’ mind, in contrast they know exactly what they are doing and why:

Ford has chose their agents very wisely. All of us seem to have an agenda, and for the most part it has little to do with Ford and a whole lot to do with ourselves. We spend the next 6 months having our brand pimped online by Ford and 99 other Internet-famous Fiesta Agents. Why would we do this for Ford? Because it gives us easier access to exposure—plus we get to win stuff!

I suppose this is just another form of celebrity sponsorship, it’s just being done here with minor social media personalities. I guess the question for me is what happens when you apply this on a micro-scale, if you applied that same points-criteria to your consumers as part of a loyalty programme?

Is this the future of word of mouth, and are all our social media channels going to be for sale to the highest bidder, or at least to the prom king brands we don’t mind talking about a little bit more?

Makes me slightly queasy, but there would have be a natural balance enforced in social media land by the users themselves. You may be my friend, but if you spam me about Charmin toilet paper for the next three months I will hit the block button faster than you can say “squeeze”.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on whether this type of points scheme has legs, and how it might play out on a wider scale in the future.