When it comes to packaging your product and amplifying your brand, options really are limitless. You have your choice of packaging materials, color schemes, fonts, images and more, making it more possible than ever before to design packaging that truly carries the message your brand represents. With the advent of augmented reality (AR) packaging, your customers can experience your branding in a whole new way.
What Is AR Packaging?
It may be easier to describe what AR packaging isn’t: it’s not your average, static, online shopping experience.
Instead, AR packaging offers your potential customers the option to interact virtually with your product with the use of an electronic device. Augmented reality is, in turn, the blending of the consumer’s surrounding environment with additional, digital aspects to enhance the experience.
Let’s suppose, for a moment, that your company produces a line of candies commonly sold in grocery stores. You could appeal to the tweens and teenagers who consistently purchase them by adding interactive elements to the packaging. When the consumer uses an AR app and directs his or her phone camera at your product, interactive games appear on the consumer’s phone screen. Alternatively, you could choose to provide nutritional information, brand history, or practically any other interactive feature you can imagine.
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Why Should You Consider AR Packaging?
AR packaging offers your brand the opportunity to connect with customers on a deeper level.
Whether it’s by providing access to enhanced information your customers crave, or engaging them through fun features like games and trivia, AR packaging goes the extra mile that a static packaging scheme cannot.
If your brand offers some unique feature not easily explained by traditional packaging, AR packaging could be the solution you’ve been looking for to educate your customer base about all those details you can’t fit on a box.
AR packaging also offers appeal and collectibility for the digital generation. Providing games or other unique features on each of a limited-edition set of packaging designs, for example, can help you engage a new group of consumers in purchasing your products.
Consider Coca Cola’s use of AR during the 2014 World Cup, or McDonald’s interactive packaging during several recent sporting events.
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What’s Next for AR Packaging?
Although it’s used by many larger corporations, the bounds of AR packaging have yet to be explored. Companies such as IKEA are experimenting with implementing AR features into their catalogs, allowing the user to virtually place furniture into their own homes.
Meanwhile, AR features on popular makeup brand products allow the user to test makeup in the company’s app.
How far could you take your brand with AR packaging? Really, the only boundaries are the limits of your imagination.
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Bring Your Packaging to Life!
Century Label is ready to help you take your traditional label and implement AR into your next print project with us. Our AR services are available as an add-on feature, and we can guide you on the best way to incorporate this technology into your existing artwork.
Don’t get left behind! Request a quote today to take your printed labels into the digital realm and bring your packaging to life by making augmented reality a reality.
