Augmented Reality Systems Trends - Assignment Example

IT Investment Proposal IT Investment Proposal Introduction Quick response (QR) s are somewhat out d right now. At present, seems to drive mobile brand-to consumer interaction a notch higher. Through a mobile visual search, an app could identify products through a mere look at them. One organization that identified this potential is Blippar which is a mobile startup company seemingly bringing about a series of changes in the advertising world. Blippar is a mobile app and a mobile platform capable of connecting brand with consumers that are most targeted. The app simply takes a daily product then will have it transformed to content rich plus consumer-centric interactive encounters. Blippars work through conversion of mobile phones to augmented reality devices. A blip will often constitute individualized customer interactions alongside brand’s product and print advertisement. Blipps include 3D overlays, m-commerce and mobile coupons among others. Business Scenario Hershey Background Until 2005, Hershey Company was known as Hershey Food Corporations. It is the greatest chocolate manufacture within North America with its headquarters based in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Other than chocolate, the company also produces chocolate-related grocery products and non-chocolate confectioner. Other than being the lead producer of chocolate, non-chocolate confectionery plus other grocery products within North America, the company gets maintained on a meaningful international presence and its operations take place in over 90 countries. It was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 as a subsidiary of the Lancaster Caramel Company which was also owned by. Products from Hershey are sold in nearly sixty countries all through the world. Besides, Hershey has some membership with World Cocoa Foundation. The company happens to form part of the oldest chocolate companies situated inside United States and is an icon for American chocolate bar. World Travel Retail Background The Hershey Company happens to be on a worldwide mission to have its sales turned over to US $10 billion within the next three years and have the travel retail sales doubled in the next one year. Steve Bentz, World Travel Retail General Manager, has the belief that every strategy is in place to work towards Hershey’s 3.6% share of the confectionery market of the travel retail him (Gerzema & Antonio 2011). Based on information from the staff at Hershey, it is evident that Milton Hershey’s legacy remains to be a source of pride for the company. The intention of the company is to build up communications surrounding Hershey legacy Opportunity Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were made available in Europe by 7-Eleven and Hydro Texaco in 2008. However, consumer’s level of familiarity with this given product has not been exploited to the fullest. This is one avenue that needs to be exploited through advertising campaigns with the hope that the prospective clients in Europe. It is worth noticing that technology now ensures that brands ought not to initiate an advertising campaign prior to acquisition of full range of insights or data that lets them engage, interrupt or adapt while the campaign is in progress. Blippars will help create experiences and concepts that would otherwise be deemed impossible. Hershey having identified the market opportunity in Europe for hersee’s brand is go to go the blippar way. Blippar will provide products that are distinct from the QR codes in that the phone application is capable of using an ad or entire image as a response mechanism other than a particular QR code. The blippar will help in engaging consumers with a set of powerful features which they will be able to pull content from. Examples of content are videos and images of exclusive offers. The consumers will then be able to instantly unlock contents while bringing the physical world to life. Videos could turn helpful in introduction of new product brand. On the hand, competitions and images of exclusive offers can prove helpful for purposes of introduction of new products. Blippars will help in attracting, retaining and engaging with the prospective consumers via an awesome experience. Using a single app, Blippar will turn to be a lens via which the real world is unlocked then transformed to interactive and content rich experiences. With the new set of technology platforms, Reese’s brand could use the already existing marketing and sales collateral in creating deeper and more engaging consumer experience (Alem & SpringerLink 2011). Again, individuals who make use of their smartphones could discover hidden tricks within the gift guide to winning prizes thus promoting this brand. Business Case Investment Expected Results In view of their capability to reach out customers everywhere, introduction of blippars in this sector is hoped to bring both static and physical world to life whether the targeted consumers will be at their respective residential places or on move. Given that Europe-based consumers are likely to more technology savvy, traditional advertising approaches risk being neglected. They could be in search for rich media content alongside a means to keep them engaged with a given product. Blippars will provide this by availing meaningful content alongside creation of two way interaction with the targeted consumers. Augmented reality in Bippars will allow daily marketing materials multimedia and GPS locations to be integrated into greatly interactive multimedia experiences such as 3D models of products and videos and these could be infused with high detailed analytics plus content targeting (Haller & Thomas 2011). To marketers, the blippar is to offer information regarding the content that could be most efficient is driving sales alongside the manner of consumer interaction with the provided content. Costs Considering the present development state of augmented reality market coupled with the fact that many of the targeted consumers targeted in Europe would not welcome the idea of accessing digital content via physical objects, it will be necessary that Hershey carries out user education and a major aspect of the education scheme would be a Call to Action as far as the use of Blippar is concerned. The app is free and so the end users will just need tablet cameras or smartphones to be capable of recognizing images which are blippable. Again, if Reese brand wishes to create blipps, it will need to pay some fee to Blippar and the decision pertaining to this amount will depend on the complexity. As per the firm’s regulations, the involved team needs to choose a marker like a logo followed by addition of a Blippar call to action. Blippar call to action deals with issues like the specific things that consumers blip and the reason behind such moves. The concept also covers things like the value being offered plus a decision on what is to be unlocked from a marker. Some examples of Blippar clients include great media companies or giants such as Nike and Coca-Cola. Given that Hershey seems to sails in the same boat as the aforementioned companies, it might not encounter much difficulty in embracing blippars to carry out additional the advertising or promotional task in Europe. Besides, the self-publishing and self-service blip creation platform that Blippar is about to produce will allow even small businesses to use any Blippar’s innovative mobile marketing tool in creation of their personal augmented reality experiences for both regular and prospective consumers. Return on Investment Blippar features a unique capability of driving value or return at all stages of the sales funnel. In addition, Blippar has the ability to expand the conventional sales funnel while providing a new means for customers to get involved with a product post purchase. Tracking Metrics Blipps will be fully tracked based on geo-mapping, date or time or percentage response. The expected average dwelling period for every blip is expected to be 2.5 minutes though top campaigns have managed to receive as high as 250000 per blip. Other than the set of creation tools that Blippars provide, the app also acquaints users with other additional tools that are necessary for carrying out Blippar campaigns. On a front end, there is the consumer’s experience tough the back end features can allow a person to learn much regarding the engagement of customers and the means to increase the scope of the identified pattern engagement while making the same effective. Examples of back-end features include things like data-metric dashboards for gauging the manner of involvement of users and heat maps containin granular data to show information like the number of individuals that are blipping together with what they are clicking on. Implementation Phases and Impact on People Creative Production Embracing Blippars means Hershey will be in a position to target an already existing market like Europe instead of creating the same from scratch. In most advertising efforts and campaigns, building a momentum has often been the greatest challenge. Thus, a blippar will be a suitable tool for use in marketing of Reese’s brand. Any tool that a person can quickly respond to and deliver cheaply will often be attractive to a marketing team. This being a marketing context, it will be possible providing advertisers with extra digital options. Promotional Set up Blippar will have a potential for prolonging the time period within which the consumers get engaged to an average of 4 minutes and 36 seconds alongside value creation on Reese’s brand. This already has an advantage over physical advertising and can increase the size of the customer base so the marketing team could be optimistic about higher sales volumes. With the blippars, Reese’s brand will be capable of modifying content on the fly based on a location or the time of the day. This has the potential of creating a promotional set up with adverts that are tailored to meet the changing advertising needs. Risks and Mitigation Plans In spite of the benefits that are likely to accrue to a brand that adopts a blippar for marketing purposes, there exist certain risks associated with the use of the same. Discussed here below are some of the risks alongside the appropriate mitigation plans;- Lack of Usage It is not guaranteed that the Europe-based consumers targeted by the new app will own the needed app on phone. Besides, some of the clients targeted with the adverted on Reese’s brand might not even have the phones on which the app is to be installed (Kent 2011). This gives the meaning that the promotional strategies might not succeed and consequently result in lower sales volumes in comparison with the sales figures that was anticipated by the marketing team. In view of this potential risk, the appropriate mitigation plan would be a prior survey of the targeted market section with the aim of assessing the level of ownership of smartphones or devices needed to install the Blippar. This would help to know whether the use of Blippar for promotional exercises is the best way to go or to see whether some other promotional strategy could be explored. Lack of User Familiarity It is possible that the targeted European customers own smart phones and even have the app installed in their devices but find the app to be somewhat strange to use. This can make a mission on promotion of Reese’s brand to suffer the same consequences as it is the case in regions where customers do have the app except for prospective customers who seek help within the neighborhood. Concerning this, the recommended mitigation plan would be to carry out user education focused on benefits of Blippar within the European markets before Hershey considers the use of Blippar. Is Promotion Enough? Promotion is not efficient to trigger engagement as far as the advertisement of Reese’s brand is concerned. Given that it is human beings that are being deal with, it would be in order for Hershey Company to bear in mind that some promotional strategies must have been under use and to make it worst, some customers might have got very accustomed to a particular promotional strategy to an extent that they find difficulty in switching to a new strategy. One way of mitigating this would be grant some benefits like reduced prices among a customer who is first to engage. Conclusion Experiences of Coca-Cola and Pepsi augmented reality is a technology which has already brought about a number of the most staggering engagements and return on investment in the marketing world. Augmented reality is beginning to be a real scene in the near future. Technologies such as Google Glasses have helped in attaining this. However, the latest startup by Blippar, it is possible using the stated glasses in recognizing given products and images and calling up any definite information pertaining to them. Considering this, it is worthwhile that Hershey settles for use of Blippar in advertising Reese’s brand in the European markets. References Alem, L., Huang, W., & SpringerLink (Online service). (2011). Recent trends of mobile collaborative augmented reality systems. New York: Springer. Gerzema, J., & DAntonio, M. (2011). Spend shift: How the post-crisis values revolution is changing the way we buy, sell, and live. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Haller, M., Billinghurst, M., & Thomas, B. (2011). Emerging technologies of augmented reality: Interfaces and design. Hershey: Idea Group Pub. Kent, J. (2011). Augmented reality: The Augmented reality handbook - everything you need to know about Augmented reality. S.i: Kent James. Read More