It produced the usual critic among marketers. As with all gimmicks, it may be engaging for a few seconds, but it doesn’t necessarily add very much to the conversation between the brand (E-ON in this case) and the (football fan) consumer. There is not necessarily any deep engagement going on. But hey, that’s why we call it a gimmick and making me smile!

For those who hate football, I have a good alternative: a (big) cup of tea. Yorkshire Tea might not be your brand yet, but they at least did their best to make you buy and smile about the brand. A musician called John on the box is performing for you, composing a new song while you drink your tea . Last year June, tea brand Yorkshire Tea launched a £3m integrated campaign to ‘inject personality into the brand’, centred around a website.

The design draws on imagery of the Yorkshire countryside from the packs and features comedy singer/songwriter John Shuttleworth, who you can visit in his shed via the site to view TV ads and outtakes. James Prentice, brand manager at Yorkshire Tea owner Taylors of Harrogate, said, “Online is a great medium for us to engage with tea drinkers. A lot of people already send us holiday pictures of them drinking the tea and we want to develop that relationship and have a two-way dialogue with customers.”

So, why not send your picture drinking tea with a football match in the background?

Stephen Mietelski, svp, group creative director at Mullen (producer of the Olympus gimmick), said “While using the camera, we came upon a simple and powerful idea: Rather than telling people “Look What You Can Do,” let’s show them what they can do with the PEN by using the camera to produce all of the campaign advertising visuals.”

Readers of the June print issue of Wired and the July print issue of Popular Photography will find an augmented reality tip-in card shaped like the Olympus PEN (actual size). The camera card peels off the insert and serves as a marker for use in front of a webcam. Simple instructions for the demo are included and direct users to the Olympus augmented reality site.

Although we know better, we allow Mullen to be proud and quote them as follows: “Augmented reality has been used by companies before, but more as a gimmick than as an actual, working, in-depth product demo,” said Mietelski. “This is as close to having the camera in your hands as you can get without actually having it in your hands.” I do agree with the statement that the end result is a campaign that ‘uses the medium as the message’. Check out the demo to see the intended result of this promotion.

And no serious AR gimmick without incentive – once you’ve learned about the features on the camera, you can even enter to win one of five E-PL1 cameras and $5000 cash! One lucky winner will be invited on an all-expenses paid trip to New York, where they’ll get to show their creation on a giant video screen at the US Open!

As part of the brand’s “Stimulate Your Senses” campaign, (production agency) Exposure’s challenge from the client was “to produce a sensorial experience online,” says digital director Sebastian Bench. The agency looked at the marketplace and “recognized several ‘for the sake of it’ and experimental AR,” Bach says, “but it was hard pressed to find truly interactive, exciting user generated applications of the technology.”

Exposure’s response to this was to create the 5 Mixer, which turns visitors into virtual DJ’s through a set of three different “flavor-inspired” orbs. By manipulating, adding or taking away glyphs (downloadable off the 5gum site), the would-be musicians can modify and mix 15 different tracks. The resulting audio visual mixes can also be recorded and uploaded to a public gallery or passed on to friends via Facebook or email.  Watch the video to see how the  5Gum AR Music Mixer works out. I’m impressed!

A few months later, right in the middle of the Winter Olympics, Red Bull tried another AR marketing piece this time closer to their product. Check out how Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn’s new limited edition Red Bull Six Pack talks to you! I think both executions are pretty cool.

The Red Bulletin magazine shows how you can blend static printed content with the extreme sport experience Red Bull wants to share with its fans. The six pack execution also oozes creativity in the sense that the box can be turned left/right, up/down which each time producing different video content.

Using digital media and the advert, one of the zoo’s tropical creatures is brought to life through webcam and screen with the Loris (cute little monkey) seemingly sitting in the reader’s hand. The 3D image of this small animal that usually only can be found in the India and Sri Lanka. Banners promoting the Rainforest Life exhibit appeared in various city publications such as Metro and Evening Standard.

Owen Craft, brand manager at the Zoo said: “This rather unique augmented reality banner gives anyone the opportunity to get closer to and engage with a ‘virtual’ slender loris. We hope this will entice them to come and see these shy creatures in their more natural rainforest habitat at ZSL London Zoo.”

Destination Marketing – eat your heart out! Why go diving all the way in Australia when you can get the same underwater culture in your local swimming pool! And you can simply choose where you go diving – Egypt? Seychelles? Great Barrier Reef? It’s only one push of a button! Divers can see a coral reef with shoals, mussels and weeds, instead of a plain indoor pool. But you can also organize underwater games (treasure chest search?). “For the player, our game combines the fascinating sensation of weightlessness under water with the fascination of advanced AR technology, creating a unique exciting experience that may become a new special attraction for water parks,” explains Ms. Lisa Blum, one of the researchers involved in Fraunhofer FIT’s research on Collaborative Virtual and Augmented Environments.

I think they should give BP a call – this technology might come of handy in the Mexican Sea!  FIT says they are studying the chances of bringing this potential use of the submarine AR technology to support professional divers, e. g. in the maintenance of bridges, offshore oil rigs or dams. It’s pretty dark down there!

Proof of that and an interesting new execution is done by Hotels.com – the latest big brand to test the AR-water, just two weeks ago. According to their own press release, their goal is both customer acquisition and retention. “We are giving our loyal customers a new and entertaining way to engage with the brand, but we are also exposing the brand to people who may not have used us before,” said Vic Walia, senior director of brand marketing at Hotels.com.

The campaign takes the form of a virtual travel guide who helps you find the ideal vacation or short break in up to 10 cities in the USA. Your guide gives you helpful advice on where you may want to travel based on a short questionnaire and then helps you explore the cities.

Once you are ready you can hold up your marker to the screen and view the city in 3D as well as get up to date information on the weather and events taking place around the city. Your guide will give you highlights on things to see during your real visit as well as things to do during your virtual visit.  These take the form of interactive activities such as taking pictures and sending them to your friends or renaming the Hollywood sign (lucky it didn’t get sold). A particularly nice touch is the microphone interaction where you can clap to set off fireworks. If you don´t have time to do it yourself, check the entertaining making-of video.

T-Shirts. For a real fun experience, try this website with AR T-shirts. It was built by a Swedish magazine called T-post and is calling itself the “first wearable magazine”. Why? Well, simply because it’s in the form of a t-shirt. This is how it works: Every 6 weeks, subscribers get a t-shirt in the (snail)mail. The news story – one per issue – is on the inside, with an artist’s interpretation of that story on the front.

The latest copy – issue 51 – is about college education and how it’s being trivialized. When you have your t-shirt on, you can play rock,  paper, scissors against the computer with a web app on T-post’s website. There’s more about T-Post and how it works on the “about” page of its website.

In case you are in London – just stroll down Oxford Street to Selfridges and you might bump into a couple of people hanging around a window wearing paper watches. Yep, it’s Tissot’s latest promotion for its T-Touch watch collection! Passers-by are handed out paper wristbands. After “wearing” one of these paper watches, you can try on any of the 28 different watches via AR, or even play with the functions of the watches. You might even be lucky enough to win one of the watches, as one will be given away each day during the two week promotional period. For those who don’t live in London, you could still download the software online and print your own paper watch to try it out with a webcam.

Transformers2 – shortly after StarTrek, the movie Transformers2: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount) arrived in the movie theaters, and used AR in their interactive marketing. The latest website they launched involves AR which allows you to wear a virtual Optimus Prime mask, watch footage from the film with a mini-virtual Bumblebee, and more.

Avatar – in December 2009, the 3Dmovie Avatar (20^th Century Fox) was launched with the help of two major FMCG brands as promotional partners: Coca-Cola and McDonald’s (+ toymaker Mattel). For the film promotion, they both integrated AR in their products and launched campaigns that tie in with the film. McDonald’s, for example, promoted its Big Mac and Happy Meals through “Pandora’s Quest,” a series of online games that can be played when using a webcam.

The most remarkable campaign in my view, was the slick Coke Zero promotion where Coke says they produced marked Coke cans, that, when held up to the webcam, becomes a Samson helicopter (as used in the film) taking off onscreen and could be controlled by moving the can. It’s weird though that hardly anyone took the effort to make a real-time demo of this Coke can changing into a helicopter. Luckily I found one eventually, which at least gives me some consolation not being cheated by what appeared at first to be just a smart and cool viral marketing campaign!

Ironman2 – another creative way to use AR was done very recently (April 2010) by Paramount UK. It has launched a new AR web app for Iron Man 2, which allows Ironman-fans to envision themselves in either the Iron Man or War Machine mask. Or better: how does it feel to be Ironman? The viral marketing effect should come from the option to record a video of yourself inside one of “Tony’s toys” and share it with your friends through Facebook, Twitter or embedded into your own site.