air force ones shoes:Adidas does Augmented Reality now in First Person

Normally air force ones shoes up to now has been what I can best call a ‘Third Person’ experience. We did not see ourselves in the AR environment. We saw someone or something else. So it was like a movie that was designed by someone else, with actors, and we just observed it. Cool yes; Augmented Reality was something magical that happened near us but to others or to the environment ‘out there’ as seen through our mobile phone viewfinder. This new idea is I believe the world’s first use of AR in the first person, where the AR benefit is seen directly upon the viewer himself/herself. So it’s a ‘first person’ Augmented Reality experience, air force ones shoes a bit like ‘first person’ shooting games and race car driving games.

Adidas AR T-Shirt

I know AR is a difficult topic to try to explain without video and very cumbersome only in words. I will start today with this written description. But please read this verbal description of this magical experience in mobile marketing, and if it’s not clear to you, please leave comments and I will of course respond to the comments and also try to explain more where there may be confusion.

So here is how it worked. Adidas in Singapore [and four other Asian cities] ran a campaign with three primary interests. First, to drive ‘foot-fall’ into their stores i.e. get visitors. Secondly to promote their new line of very cool colorful T-shirts. And thirdly to also drive individual store-visitor sales spending up per visit. They set a very lofty target wanting to get some store-visitors to breach a 500 Singapore dollar spending level [360 US dollars] which is obviously spending much more than just buying one or two Adidas T-shirts.

So they created a new user-experience asking prospective Adidas customers to come and try their new augmented reality T-shirt experience. The campaign ran in the local newspaper which included a picture of the Adidas logo. The customer was asked to take a picture of the logo with their cameraphone, and bring that image to the store. For those Singapore customers who might not have a cameraphone [something that is becoming very rare in the city where air force ones shoes already has a 3G mobile subscription], they could also cut the image out from the newspaper and bring the paper cutting version of the Adidas logo to the store. At the big Adidas store in the big shopping mall, there were more posters inviting visitors to take part.

When the customer came in to the store, they found a digital mirror. A digital mirror uses a camera and flat screen display, showing you your image just like a mirror would. The picture obviously is ‘mirrored’ so if you move your left hand, the camera switches the view, so in the digital mirror you see yourself but as if your right hand had moved – exactly like a mirror. But the benefit in a digital mirror is that we can add digital elements from taking pictures to various virtual reality elements, including augmented reality.

So there is some software in the digital mirror at the Adidas store, which detects the Adidas logo in the cameraphone screen [or the paper printed version of the Adidas logo]. Then the digital mirror would project an overlay image, super-imposed over the ‘mirror image’ of the person in front of the camera. Where we held our cameraphone and the Adidas logo, there appears instantly one of the new Adidas T-shirts.

But this is of course already ‘contoured’ so it looks like ’somebody’ is ’wearing’ that T-shirt [but has his or her head and arms cut off]… When this image is moved over your body, your head and arms show underneath the T-shirt, and it looks just like you are wearing that T-shirt. Beautiful, magical. If the T-shirt is ‘crooked’, so for example your right shoulder is visible underneath the T-shirt, then you just move your cameraphone a little bit in front of the digital mirror, and it will adjust the T-shirt. Very easy, simple and intuitive.

Now, for one T-shirt this might seem excessive technology to ‘try one T-shirt’ but now we get the fun of AR and digital. Of course Adidas had created a whole series of cool T-shirts in funky colors and designs. Where if they were hanging on the rack in the store, not every visitor to the store bothers to look through all T-shirts. And not all will want to ‘bother’ to try on T-shirts. But now whenever you lowered your cameraphone down out of view of the digital mirror, and then brought it up again, the system swapped the next T-shirt for you. So just by flicking your camera out of view and back, you had the next T-shirt to try on.

It was magical. You could instantly try on new T-shirts. By tilting your cameraphone the image tilted in the mirror so you could see the T-shirt ’move’ in the digital mirror just like in the real world if you actually bothered to try on the T-shirt. And to replace it with the next, just flick your cameraphone out and back. The same Adidas logo still on your phone screen, now the digital image had replaced the T-shirt with the next. Instant ‘test-drive’ of every new T-shirt in the spring fashion catalog, without the hassles of the changing booth. Magical!

I heard a little bit of the success rate when my friend Colin Miles of air force ones shoes presented in Singapore. The users of the AR-enhanced digital mirror were so delighted many actually exclaimed their surprise and amazement out loud [Colin showed video of some actual customer experiences in the store]. We don’t usually hear that when clothing store visitors see themselves in the normal mirrors. Better than that, 75% of all who used the digital mirror liked the experience so much; they took a digital picture of themselves in the mirror wearing one of the new Adidas T-shirts.

As to the 500 Singapore dollar purchasing experience? Adidas set up a related offer of exclusive tickets to a major rock concert in Singapore where anyone who made more than 500 dollar purchase at one visit would get the custom invitation by Adidas to the rock concert. 74 people who visited the Adidas store to try on the augmented reality T-shirts also ended up spending over 500 dollars on their shopping visit. Adidas were extremely happy with the campaign.

Start of Something Big

This is evidence of how much the innovation in advertising is starting to appear in mobile. It is a wonderful application of Augmented Reality for marketing, and to me, I think we’ve crossed over into a new area of AR based marketing, from ‘third person AR’ to ‘first person AR’. Obviously we, the consumers, think the world’s most important person or brand is ‘me’. That is why direct mail two decades ago wanted to send junk mail to us but by personalizing it by using our names. Now we get to see ourselves inside an AR experience. This is why I call it ‘First Person AR’. Now it is ‘me’ who is experiencing AR. Very very cool. Congrats to Adidas and air force ones shoes.